Illogical responses to the aggression against Ukraine

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I've shown multiple times that logical thinking is *a bit* in short supply when it comes to military affairs and military policy.

So first, the background to what I'll write about this time: Warfare is destructive, not productive. It could only be profitable if you take much away from others, which de facto requires a war of aggression. Hardly any war of aggression is profitable, though - the annexation of the Crimea a few years ago is an extremely expensive affair for Russia (a loss, not profit), as the region requires many subsidies, for example.

It thus follows that the main (and noble) purpose of a military shall be deterrence & defence; keep the peace, and if that fails protect from avoidable damage. This applies to the own country and to allied countries (defensive alliance, "collective security"). I accept intervention in genocides (a very tricky affair, as it can be misused to lie a country into war), intervention to liberate a recently invaded country and interventions to stop an aggressor in a non-allied country as acceptable motives as well.

This background clearly justifies some military spending inside NATO, primarily for deterrence. That worked just splendidly for NATO so far, albeit at high and certainly higher than necessary costs.

We had post-1992 very little outside threat to deter, mostly it was Russia once NATO accepted the Baltic countries as new members.

So the status quo as of late 2021 was a certain amount of military spending, a certain amount of planned military spending, a successful deterrence so far and a threat country Russia (Belarus is negligible) that had known conventional military weaknesses and its military power was somewhere on a spectrum ranging from "dysfunctional 2nd to 3rd rate military" to "the military reforms worked, they could overrun the Baltics + Poland + Iceland before NATO could counter-concentrate".

Again; our deterrence worked, there's no new evidence to suggest otherwise.

Now Russia attacked Ukraine and is obviously embarrassing itself. They may eventually "win" conventionally, but a long list of embarrassing details has surfaced that showed that the Russian Army and the Russian Tactical aviation are rather on the lower end of the aforementioned spectrum.

The rational conclusion is thus that Russia is much less scary to us in the short and medium term at least than was previously thought possible.

The rational consequence should thus be to re-evaluate our military spending. We obviously intended spent more (believing in a potentially more scary threat) than what a rational spending decision should look like now.

Instead, panicky spending increases (especially in Germany) can be expected.

This panicky reaction can fairly easily be explained by surprised politicians waking up from slumber and finally paying attention to the deterrence topic, which reflects terribly on their competence. It also reflects terribly on their competence that they don't seem to be able to make the rational call. Moreover, the media is primitive and irrational as usual and totally goes along with that nonsense.

No, having personally neglected the topic does not mean that the nation spent too little on the topic in the past.

For clarification; I am not against military spending increases in all cases. It might make sense to temporarily (for about five years) increase military spending to enact some reform. The sad reality is that the military bureaucracies don't use budget increases like that due to incompetent and/or ineffective political oversight. The first (and powerful) instinct of these bureaucracies is to grow instead. Hardly ever does a military bureaucracy disband some irrelevant unit without replacement while the budget is big. We could spend A LOT less on the military in Europe and still be extremely good at deterring aggression against the alliance. Germany wastes much money on a useless navy, on small/occupation wars nonsense, on excessive staffs, on predictably irrelevant procurement programs and on a ridiculously inflated medical branch. We could cut that nonsense to reduce our military spending without the slightest bit of net disadvantage and could at the same time afford more effective land forces and more survivable air power.

related:

/2019/04/fair-burden-sharing-in-nato.html

/2018/04/narratives-as-sustainers-of-excessive.html

/2018/04/patterns-of-propaganda-for-higher.html

/2017/02/stephen-m-walt-on-2-debate.html

/2017/01/human-sacrifice-and-military-spending.html

/2016/07/deterrence-and-defence-efficiency-in.html

/2016/07/warsaw-summit-communique.html

/2015/07/why-military-budgets-are-as-big-as-they.html

/2015/02/the-stupid-is-strong-in-german-navies.html

/2015/02/the-miracle-of-greeces-defence-spending.html

/2014/12/conquest-is-for-losers.html

/2014/07/a-guide-for-demanding-higher-military.html

/2014/04/parkinsons-law.html

/2014/03/appropriate-military-strength.html

/2013/08/niskanens-bureaucrats.html

/2013/05/what-does-this-tell-about-west.html

/2011/11/quick-lecture-on-military-budgeting-in.html

/2011/10/national-security-policy-rational-way.html

/2011/07/about-crazily-warped-interpretations-of.html

/2011/05/military-budgets-attempt-to-create-sane.html

/2011/01/bacevichs-takedown-of-military-spending.html

/2009/06/marathon-is-over.html

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Link drop March 2022

reminder: Defence & Freedom now has a twitter feed that mostly announces new blog posts.

https://twitter.com/DefenceFreedom

Feel free to follow it, and share/retweet whatever you think is worthy!

I don't expect to become huge in follower count, but reaching more people who would enjoy the blog's content, maybe contribute facts in the comments or become inspired would be a good thing.

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tanknology.co.uk/post/russian-turret-cages

They're improvising like Daesh, this signals very little confidence in their tanks.

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The amount of Russian armour that keeps falling off bridges or into ditches is just staggering 🇷🇺 pic.twitter.com/Bz6ixJmQEG

— Oryx (@oryxspioenkop) March 4, 2022

This may be due to too little driver training (allocated diesel sold on black market by officers), due to defective or absence of night driving aids, technical failures during movement and also due to crews  not wanting to drive into battle.

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At least (AFAIK) the U.S. stopped delivering munitions to the sandy kleptocrat state after the globe-fondling lying moron was kicked out of office.

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It's amazing how quickly the Germany-bashing over the laughable donation of helmets and resistance to SWIFT sanctions turned into memefication of the "100 billion Euros!!!" announcement as if the Wehrmacht was coming back short term.

The additional spending will be spread over years and most of the money is going to be wasted. The bureaucracy was too rotten to spend the budgets of the past well, it sure won't be able to allocate the extra money well. I expect many useless investments in the navy, munitions bought before suitable storage facilities were built, near-irrelevant purchases of additional combat aircraft, occupation wars bullshit. Maybe 20...30 billions of the extra spending will be well-spent on deterrence & defence.

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https://9gag.com/gag/aggov3K

This could be an alternative to skis (many ski troops also carry snowshoes, especially in mountainous settings).

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I mentioned this before:

/2014/12/the-stummelwerfer-and-2b25.html

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https://www.swebor.se/what-is-armour-steel/ 

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"How the SEALs failed America"

theintercept.com/2022/02/22/navy-seals-code-over-country-matthew-cole/

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This could be hugely consequential:

1) Main Battle Tanks and other tracked vehicles are not good for long-range deployments by road

2) Rail traffic is unreliable if the alliance is under attack (especially railroad bridges)

3) Dedicated tank transporters are extra-strong (torque, hp) semi-trailer tractors with dedicated trailers 

4) We could purchase dedicated powered trailers at lesser cost (and thus many more!) than small production run tank transporter tractors 

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bbc.com/news/world-europe-60600487

This gives me flashbacks from stories of people who chose to deny the reality about a pandemic to the(ir) bitter end.

We need a renaissance of attention to reality and the scientific principle that you have to accept proven stuff, and a turn away from propaganda and fantasyland.

This includes a reckoning about mistakes made in the past. We have come to grips with

• the lies that led to the Kosovo Air War 1999
  
• the Iraq invasion 2003 with months-long barrage of "WMD" lies
  
• the approx. 15-year long denial of how badly the Afghanistan war goes
• American torture campaign
  
• trigger happiness in occupation wars
• two decades of hatemongering and discrimination against Arabs and Muslims (depending on country, more or les severe)
  
• many Western "special forces" being infested with war criminals and Fascists
• why certain countries / regions are not all that friendly to us Westerners and Americans in particular
  

And yes, there are also some things the left wing / greens would not like to talk about, but that should be talked about.

• excesses of certain emancipation movements
• new nuclear powerplants being too expensive, but existing nuclear powerplants are almost climate-neutral and don't kill many people (so far)
• greens preaching peace and wanting to leave NATO when not in power, but turning pro military intervention / arms donations within months of being in power
• evident inability to solve problems on part of establishment (moderate left to moderate right) parties
• erosion of division of powers: The cabinet is ruling Germany. The legislative branch only nods off what the cabinet proposes for legislation and the politicians also have undue influence on the judicial branch
• all parties letting the rich and banks very largely get away with theft, fraud, tax evasion - even the supposed left-wing social democrats
• de facto corruption by politicians with highly suspicious side incomes (being a member of parliament is an exhausting 60 hours per week job if you do it right, how can members of parliament also be ministers, work for millions as lawyers, be in supervisory boards of government-controlled stock companies?)

OK, this got a bit long for a quick comment below a link.

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twitter.com/507stre/status/1494445791318097925 

twitter.com/TheDeadDistrict/status/1420965495713505282 

Please note it has a railroad! I have never seen anything like it in the West, not even this mentioned in Jane's Military Vehicles and Logistics (the issue on my shelf is 17 years old because only old used copies are affordable for private persons).

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Reality and lynch mob opinion are rarely in agreement.  

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fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2022/02/a-short-history-of-public-borrowing-for-wars/

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navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/02/france-unveils-new-seabed-warfare-strategy/ 

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piie.com/blogs/realtime-economic-issues-watch/china-bought-none-extra-200-billion-us-exports-trumps-trade

Foreign policy by and for idiots.

The South Korea trade deal was a scam as well (it raised import quota that weren't fully used before).

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apnews.com/article/congress-cia-ron-wyden-martin-heinrich-europe-565878d7299748551a34af0d3543d769 

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voxeu.org/article/why-military-purchasing-power-parity-matters

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9gag.com/gag/avAA62M 

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defence-blog.com/new-french-armys-video-shows-jaguar-armored-vehicle-in-action/ 

ridiculous

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https://mwi.usma.edu/learning-the-wrong-lessons-biases-the-rejection-of-history-and-single-issue-zealotry-in-modern-military-thought/ 

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https://wavellroom.com/2022/02/04/why-europe-can-fend-for-itself/ 

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https://kamazexport.com/truck/kamaz-6560/

https://kamazexport.com/truck/kamaz-4326/

Their newest vehicle types are excellent. Performance still depends on the users and supply, though. 

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http://cast.ru/files/The_Tanks_of_August_sm_eng.pdf 

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defence-blog.com/rheinmetall-unveils-new-light-tank/ 

[German] esut.de/2022/02/meldungen/32519/lynx-familie-waechst-um-die-feuerunterstuetzungsvariante-lynx-120/ 

More about that later, probably. Much distraction is going on. 

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It handles containers AND pallets and presumably it can also pull a pallet out of a container, so it's the answer to many logistical challenges.

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(edited in on Sunday:)

War of words, songs and bombs: Russian offices struggle to communicate attack plans on short-wave radio, while Ukraine jams them with... their national anthem. Shivers. pic.twitter.com/B6dcQTE1Qm

— Christo Grozev (@christogrozev) March 5, 2022

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https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/feeding-the-bear-a-closer-look-at-russian-army-logistics/ 

I mentioned this before, worth a read. 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

Exposed delusions

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The Russian government influenced the right wing in the West for years, if not decades. Russia was presented as a beacon of civilisation against the gays, against anti-racists, against anything "soft", against feminism. Putin published a photo of him riding a horse half-naked and the right wingers of the West immediately sprung into action and photoshopped their hero from a horse onto a brown bear (multiple times).

This adoration went far and was much newer than the bit of far left sympathy for Russia that went back to the Cold War.

(Far) right wingers just love(d?) Putin et al, for they were bullying all the people that right wingers love to bully and talk shit about. Gays, minorities, women, effeminate men.

The grim-looking Russian minister of defence was immediately believed to be a much better choice than some Western female ministers of defence, as if whether there's something dangling on your chest or between the legs was an indicator for how well you can (and want to!) tame and steer the selfish beast that is the military bureaucracy.

Now how well did that work out? 

I told you guys, that Russian minister of defence is no beacon of competence at all just because he can look grim, he's rather part of a corrupt clique.

Russia has a shitty and uncompetitive economy (1)(2) that's unable to invent, design, develop, bring to market many new manufactured products or services. All it does (kinda) well is exploit natural resources, living off substance. The widespread corruption allows oligarchs to crush innovative competition with help of corrupt bureaucracies and courts, and basically steal upcoming businesses by making "irresistible" offers. The entire economic system discourages what a modern prospering economy requires.

 

Now it's become obvious that Russia is an antagonist to the West and Western values. It doesn't just attack some brown people and commits war crimes against them (which would not have irritated far right wingers the slightest bit), it does so against blue-eyed, blonde Christian people who fight admirably for their freedom.

Putin wasn't the only authoritarian who easily captured the imagination and followership of Western (far) right wingers. The obvious lying moron, a fat lard who would rather order a golf cart than to walk 400 metres and who usually only talked gibberish, was able to pull of the very same thing. That fat lard was photoshopped to ride a lion, and a very popular photoshop added his head onto Rambo's 1980's bodybuilder body, in total defiance of the obvious obesity.

They followed him because he hated, insulted, denounced, bullied the very same people whom they hate; mostly brown foreigners, brown people at home, women who are not totally submissive to men. He also simplified the complicated world to the level of 10 to 12 year olds (which reflects his knowledge about economy, geography, foreign policy and how to hire competent people).

 

What about the far right wing's bashing of feminism, the bashing of effeminate men, the bashing of Western culture as too soft and worthless for the defence of the country in hard times?

It proved to be yet more bullshit, designed to make the right wingers feel better about themselves (superior to others, especially  in their own society). 

That's a typical symptom of how people who don't feel successful or useful. Instead of putting in the effort to become so they choose to ensure that others are lower on the social ladder, and then they kick everyone who's below on the social ladder to keep them below.

An anecdote about this is how a father and little son watched a KKK march and the father told the son to ignore the white cowls and look at the shoes instead - and they were poor men's shoes. Those KKK marchers wanted to keep the negroes down because they were fearful that else they might end up being at the bottom of society.

 

Meanwhile, said (far) right wingers are whining about being expected to get two tiny needle jabs and to wear some surgical mask over mouth and nose when among foreigners to fight off a pandemic that killed 124k people in Germany despite mostly unheard-of countermeasures and would have killed hundreds of thousands more if left unchecked. 

They're strong, manly protectors of their society ("wolves"/"sheep") in their minds, but in reality they're selfish, whining, bullying, unpatriotic, hateful and pitiful people. Not one actual solution to actual problems came from their corner of the German society. The whole German right wing (not just looking at the far right) didn't produce a single solution to any major problem during the last 27 years.

It's all whining and hating by the far right and the right wing as a whole only fighting against efforts to do something about problems such as the push for renewable energies. They're useless pussies.

They're failing to cope with a society that's not simplistic and static. A society that requires knowledge and intelligent thought to recognise actual problems and challenges and requires the same to find or recognise solutions.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

P.S.: To be fair, Ukraine has a very racist and anti-gay society. I very much doubt that this is a necessary or important ingredient for the readiness to fight an invader, though.

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(Long) Last Stand opportunity for Ukraine

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Have a look at this map:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/78/Ukraine_adm_location_map.svg/2600px-Ukraine_adm_location_map.svg.png

or this 

 

There's a section of Ukraine in the far west that's protected by the Carpathian mountains and another section in the Southwest that's protected by

• beaches that are unbelievably bad for an amphibious landing
• a 4 km wide water obstacle (Dniestr river estuary)
• a single 200 m bridge on an extremely narrow strip of land, which at some point appears to offer only about 30 m wide strip where a T-90 tank would not risk getting stuck

These are potential defensible last stand areas for Ukrainian defenders, with easy resupply and radar + electronic warfare support by NATO if need be. The West should now talk to the government of Moldova (also because of Lukashenko's map brain fart that indicated a planned push into Transnistria in Moldova).

Our purses are easily deep enough to convince them to allow NATO troops in Moldova to secure it against an incursion (at least outside of Transnistria). This would make a Russian right hook around that Dniestr estuary impossible.

It may be politically decisive for the future of Ukraine to keep fighting instead of surrendering.

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BTW, allowing the Russians to cross a bridge (or maybe the dam) at the lower Dnjepr river was an unbelievable fuck-up by the Ukrainian military. 

Their Eastern forces will soon be toast if they don't hurry using the hydroelectric dams at Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia to withdraw to west of the Dnjepr. The Dnjepr line should be defensible for a while when the Cherson breakthrough gets cleared by some "Schlagen aus der Nachhand" counterattack.

You can easily look up all bridges and dams (which are de facto bridges that you shall not blow up) along the Dnjepr from Black Sea to Kyiv in Zoom Earth:

https://zoom.earth/#view=46.672321,32.751809,14z

I'm not so terribly concerned about that huge convoy NW of Kyiv. The Russians attempted an Ardennes Offensive-level bet there. The area is swampy, marshy - the famous and huge Pripyet Swamps. It's no wonder they get stuck left and right of the road and thus got shot up on the road. There are too few roads in the area to support huge Russian forces logistically. The bombardment of Kyiv from the East (other side of Dnjepr than most of the city is located at) is soon going to be the main issue, not the attacks from the Northwest push.

Now if the Americans wanted to make a statement, then some B-2s could at night drop hundreds of Mk 83 bombs with JDAM kit along that road, but the American military is good only for beating up poor brown people and then withdrawing.

I very much hope that Putin's advisors/lackeys find a face-saving way for him out of the mess that falls short of taking the freedom of most Ukrainians away. Right now I'm not sure he's in the mood to accept such an offer. He may want to at least get a certain scalp first.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

P.S.: This blog post was previously published for a few minutes in a version that had lost almost all lines. I have no idea what happened there.
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Convoy spacing

.So this

  

and this

are a thing, and that's evidence for incompetence or lack of discipline.

I've seen spacing ranging from 25 to 200 m between military convoys advised in literature (including field manuals), but typically it's 50 or 100. You need extra spacing between units in addition to this.

The very minimum spacing is the same as in civilian driving; speed multiplied by 1/(2,000 h), such as 40 m at 80 kph (actually it's km/h). This is necessary for avoiding crash accidents when the front vehicle brakes.

A disciplined military can make use of its discipline and avoid many traffic jams by driving steadier than civilians

and this requires some extra distance. So for a fast-moving convoy (80 kph) we're at 50 m spacing minimum, and additional defusing of traffic jams and other troubles by extra spacing between units.

Now let's remember that a 152 mm HE or DPICM shell is dangerous to basic armoured (bulletproofed against normal rifles) vehicles out to 100 m. An airburst HE shell could puncture tires and unprotected diesel fuel tanks at such a distance with a low yet at the receiving end unacceptable probability.

The more vehicles are within such a shell's radius of effect, the worse (obviously). A spacing of 100 m largely negates the effect compared to 50 m. This is also relevant for bombs and Napalm tanks. The risk of secondary effects jumping over from vehicle to vehicle (one explosion or burn triggering the next) through much of the convoy is largely negated with spacings of 50+ m.

The direct damaging effects aren't the only issue with HE munitions, though. WW2 shells created craters of this size (at least when delay fuses were used):

and today's commonly-used 152 mm HE shells have much more explosive power.

One such shell hit on a road and the convoy would come to a halt. All wheel drive military vehicles would likely be able to bypass it on many roads, but not necessarily without some prior effort (digging, cutting trees, removing signposts, filling up a parallel drainage channel in some places). There's almost never a bridgelaying vehicle at hand to instantly bridge the crater and the situation is about the same with excavators and dumpers that could quickly fill the crater.

So the competent way to deal with such an obstacle is to immediately signal the entire convoy (minimum the march unit leaders) by radio to stop. This maintains the spacing and thus the reduced lethality of attacks by mortar, artillery or air (it's not helpful against infantry ground attack and thus not something you need in stupid occupation wars).

The alternative is a bunching up of the convoy, and it becomes an easy target. The soldiers might be tempted to leave their vehicles to bunch up and chat, and might miss radio calls of their cab-installed radio. Bunched-up convoys might even begin to block the road entirely (see previous link).

Another competent response it to immediately initiate the obstacle removal (trees felled by explosive charge to cover a road qualify as well, not every obstacle is a crater) or prepare and initiate the bypassing. Medical, wrecker, excavator vehicles might need to bypass the waiting vehicles on the road and military police should also be able to move freely (one good reason for giving them motorcycles, or at most narrow 4x4 cars).

The ease of bypassing is important for the choice of routes (roads through forests are a terrible, but often the least terrible, choice) and is the reason why the heavy logistics vehicles meant for hauling diesel and artillery/mortar/tank main gun munitions at battalion to corps level should have all-wheel drive (8x8, 10x10) and shouldn't be semi-trailers. Civilian-style motor vehicles can haul supply from depot (or fuel storage) to some corps supply hub, where the military all wheel drive vehicles can pick the supplies up.

Their limited offroad abilities are not crucial for driving over agricultural fields or through nature's reserves; they're crucial for being able to hide offroad, for better performance on wet unpaved roads and for being able to bypass obstacles.

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One more thing; I don't understand why a proven technical solution to nighttime driving has fallen out of favour, partially being replaced by primitive and much less effective alternatives: I'm thinking of the Notek lights. They were designed to work at a specific distance, which was fine for certain speeds. Note lights cost almost nothing and should be installed on all military vehicles for use in the field other than motorcycles in my opinion.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notek

So this Notek system had four taillights in a box, spaced a bit. At distances of 35...200 m the human eye saw only one light, so the driver know he had fallen behind. At 25...35 m the following driver saw two lights and knew his distance was fine (for the cruise speeds of WW2). He saw all four lights when he was too close, at less than 25 m. We could easily adapt this for higher cruise speeds of today by making the spaces a bit wider and the (green) lights brighter. The costs would be negligible. We could maintain an acceptable spacing even during nighttime road marches. Instead, today's planners would rather think of installing mil spec infrared driving aid vision systems and then nobody would train the drivers to make good use of them to maintain the correct spacing.

Enemy air power doesn't require the visual spectrum; it can use radar and infrared. Light discipline is still helpful to reduce the threat of stragglers ad other poorly equipped ground threats and it makes traffic reconnaissance and dumb munitions bombing runs much more demanding.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Unacceptable behaviour

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So there's a country which 

• has nuclear weapons,
• practically by government policy discriminates against its minorities,
• is known for committing war crimes,
• has way too often attacked its neighbours,
• eludes sanctions by the United Nations Security Council,
• kept territories of neighbours illegally occupied for a long time,
• is known for extensive hacking and illegal eavesdropping on private communications,
• wants more "strategic depth" at the expense of neighbours,
  
• is known for economic espionage and generally disproportionate intelligence service aggressiveness,
• is known for corruption of top politicians,
• has a censored news media,
  
• for a long time already pursued a grand strategy that involves conquest,
• is destabilising neighbours, 
• is known for assassinations abroad,
• calls everyone "nazis" who says something against its actions and
• once again decided to become an aggressor against a weaker neighbour that does not enjoy alliance protection.

We should find ways to do something decisive about it, maybe a total communications & travel & transportation embargo and blockade, with exceptions only for food and medical goods imports.

 

THIS is unacceptable behaviour.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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My bad

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The invasion of Ukraine shows that I mistook a few things. This includes that Putin would indeed use a lengthy preparation for war - both in terms of military logistics and political mobilisation at home. I believed he'd rather be a strategic surprise attack guy. Such a move would still be on the table for him, but I evidently supposed he'd use it on Ukraine if he really wanted to invade, and he didn't (use it).

Why did I get this wrong?

For one, I constructed a standard scenario for Baltic invasion that on the one hand showed what needs to be done for better deterrence and defence IMO, and on the other hand it was constructed to give a plausible raison d'être for the (approximate) size of Western armed forces at all. A Russia that  attacks only after months of crisis would be much less demanding for NATO or EU members regarding deterrence and defence.

Second, I didn't connect an insight that I had for a very long time: Specifically, the insight that even seemingly absolutely powerful dictators are actually very concerned about garnering and sustaining support. They bribe key people, they hand out gifts - and the particularly evil kind like Mao works with terror waves to scare people into supporting them. Seemingly powerful dictators like Hitler, Mussolini, Ceausescu, Louis XIV., the dictators of decolonialised Africa - all of them were actually quite weak and busy managing the necessary amount of support for their own survival.

Putin is a de facto dictator because the legislative branch obeys him AND the Russians cannot vote him out of office in practice. His leading political challengers get jailed by a corrupt judicial branch. He still needs to garner sufficient popular support and toleration for any big move, and thus he engineered the crisis and launched a propaganda campaign of jingoism, lies and deceptions prior to daring an overt war of aggression against Ukraine. He would likely need this kind of preparation prior to a Baltic invasion as well, which is a very good-to-have news/insight for NATO and EU.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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A messed-up international disorder

 

So, looking at the mess in Ukraine, what's my take?

The upside: Putin is apparently not the type for strategic surprise attacks. This calms my fears for NATO, as Russia could only hope to succeed with an aggression in the Baltic if it attacks by surprise. I am very pleasantly surprised about this.

Why did Western policy fail in Ukraine? In short; it was half-assed. No great power signed and ratified a bilateral alliance treaty with Ukraine to cover it until a much longer (and more overt from the beginning) NATO accession process could be concluded. Either draw Ukraine into the West or don't, half-assed measures are prone to disappoint.

So what did Russia do? The Russian Federation with Putin as de facto dictator (voting him out of office is not really an option for Russians) violated international law (Charter of the United Nations and more) by becoming aggressive against Ukraine in 2014 and occupying parts of its territory. It's thus an aggressor and occupier comparable to Iraq 90/91, Israel since 1967, Turkey since 1974 (a NATO member and I don't see any sanctions), Morocco since 1975, the U.S., UK and Poland in 2003 for a difficult to determine duration.

As you might have spotted, only one country on that list was beaten up (repeatedly) for the offence. All others officially got away, typically due to protection courtesy by the UNSC veto feature.

This is the problem: The West routinely expects non-Western countries (especially governments it doesn't like) to adhere to international law and paints them as evil when they don't (and often does so even only because there are expectations such as Iran never having violated the NPT, but still being assailed constantly). Yet International Law doesn't seem to feel all that binding and imperative to Western great power policy, or even only to its proxies.

Do as I say, not as I do.

A great attempt was made to build a world based on international law and order in 1944 with the founding of the United Nations. The 1991 war to hand back Kuwait to its kleptocrat-tyrant was widely perceived as a most promising effort to enforce such a rule of international law in the post-Cold War era. 

Yet the Americans did not scale back their (since the trigger-happiness of Reagan in the 1980's) habitual aggressions; they bombed Afghanistan, Bosnian Serbs (with Brits and Frenchmen), Sudan and Iraq (repeatedly, but with little munitions) in the short 1992-1998 time frame. None of this was legal under international law, and there wasn't even the slightest hint of fig leaf legality in the bombing of the Bosnian Serbs around Sarajevo.

Meanwhile, the NATO bureaucrats and allied politicians worked hard to keep NATO "relevant" after its original purpose became obsolete; a defensive alliance was re-worked into an intervention/war adventure club.

Then came the 1999 Kosovo Air War, preceded by a multinational campaign of lies. There was no genocide, period. The Kosovars' intent to become independent was legitimate, but the Serbs-run governments' police, paramilitary and military actions against the violent independence movement were legal under international law and an ordinary response. The conflict happened in the context of the earlier genocidal massacre committed by Serbs at Srebrenica in Bosnia and thus the Western public was fairly easily convinced and swayed by the lie of an alleged ethnic cleansing/genocide in Kosovo (I was fooled back then as well, and never again since).

Almost all Western powers of note participated in this aggression against Yugoslavia, which was blatantly against international law. The recognition of Kosovo's independence years later and ongoing Western troops presence to keep it that way provided blueprints that were later used by Russia.

West Germany/Reunited Germany had its original sin with this Kosovo affair and our federal constitutional court threw officers under the bus who had correctly and valiantly refused orders to participate in this aggression.

Afghanistan was invaded in 2001. It was no a clean self-defence by a long shot, as the Taleban were never killing anyone outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but most if not all countries kinda understood and tolerated the American rage.

Once more, NATO was brought into the conflict for absolutely no need, and very contrary to the North Atlantic Treaty, but by this point nobody seemed to care about the treaty any more. The idea of what NATO is or should be had been warped beyond recognition. The craze about the Taleban who had merely granted hospitality to UBL who helped them in their civil war lasted for two decades and very recently the U.S. government stole billions of dollars owned by the Afghan government. It appears as if they are bound to multi-generational anger about Afghanistan comparable to how they still hate Iran's government for the 1979 embassy crisis.

The Kosovo Air War blueprint of massive campaign of lies, deception and vilification was replayed by the Neocons to lie the U.S. (and the UK under the fool Blair, plus Poland) into a completely unjustified war of aggression against Iraq in 2003 (this time I didn't fall for it at all). Again, they got away with it in the UNSC, but this time the Iraqis made it very expensive for them. The American wars in the Mid East including Afghanistan total exceeds USD 6.5 trillion expenses including long-term costs.

The lying moron did "cruise missile diplomacy" (an aggression) against Syria, and most Americans seem to think he was a peacenik who abstained from aggressions. That's how badly their perception of what constitutes aggression was warped.

Now let's skip the South Ossetia War of 2008 (the Russian Federation was and is an aggressor in both South Ossetia and Abchasia, similar to what the West did in Kosovo), and look at the Russia-Ukraine conflict:

By international law, Ukraine is a sovereign country, including Donezk, Lugansk, Crimea. Its government is legal and legitimate, but that's not even of importance. Even dictatorships are sovereign countries and shall not be attacked under international law.

By international law, Russia is waging a (most of the time limited, as for example no air power was used until 2022) war of aggression against Ukraine.

The outrage is huge in the West.

How could Russia do this? Russia is evil! 

 

Sure, it's evil, but so are we Westerners.  

The problem is that the West did not only fail to bolster International law, it systematically disregarded it and preferred "might makes right" for itself.

The U.S. and UK are just as evil as Russia.*

Other European countries stood by, supported or tolerated or sometimes called for the aggressions of the U.S. and UK. Most of "the West" is guilty by association, as much as Germany was involved in starting the First World War by giving the aggressive Austria-Hungary a "blank cheque" that it'll support it in the summer 1914 crisis. Austria-Hungary's behaviour in summer of 1914 was accurately replayed by the Neocons in 2002/2003. All those politicians who like to give speeches about learning from history are cherry pickers.

Now we live in a world where Westerners understand that they aren't the only ones who can exploit such international lawlessness and play "might makes right".

This is a failure of Western foreign policy, and a well-deserved disgrace on the Western world. Putin would have had much more to fear if he ruled Russia in a world that had become accustomed to international law being followed by great powers for three decades. Now instead, he can rest assured that Western hypocrisy has dulled the blade of international law and his aggression will be tolerated by most of the world just as were Western aggressions.

Maybe we can push back the warmongers and launch another push for international law (for real), but it will be too late for Ukraine. Russia will at the very least (in my opinion) keep parts of Ukraine occupied and an open wound that very much prevents its accession into NATO, similar to what it does to Georgia.

It's much more likely that the warmongers who in large part got us into this messy, lawless world will feel an updraft and there will be more interventions and more military spending.

I hate warmongers and defense with an "s" hawks.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: France is a trickier case, and I dismiss Poland's participation in the war of aggression against Iraq as a one-off.

Holy cows: NATO and Interoperability

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Interoperability is a big topic in NATO, and I'll take some shots at it.

On land

The way allies cooperated in ages long gone was that they simply exchanged liaison officers to headquarters who had their means for secure communications with their own folks. Allied armies also preferred to fight alongside each other rather than mixed. The British Empire and the French Republic's armies fought side-by-side in the First World War in France (and a small strip of Belgium), with only one point where French and British Empire positions were neighbours. Neighbouring formations have to keep in contact (knowing what the other intends, does and where it is), and this is not terribly much more complicated across language and doctrine barriers than within an army. In worst case you keep some extra reserves to secure such a joint against trouble.

There was no chaotic British corps-French corps-Canadian Corps-French corps sequence or similar along the front line. It took thousands of years of military history until finally NATO mobilised the amount of stupid required for such a chaos,* based on end of WW2 occupation sectors.

(about mid-late Cold War)

Nowadays we have multinational battalion battlegroups, one each in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. These are for show only. These battlegroups are composite battlegroups of multiple nations with different doctrines and languages each. Such battlegroups shouldn't manoeuvre in battle as a whole, but rather with company-size taskforces. So the mixing actually happens at the company level at least in the Latvia and Lithuania battlegroups, which is insane!

I'm generally not a friend of tripwire forces (rather of actual quick reaction forces a.k.a. reserves),  but if you must have a tripwire formation you better rotate full national battalion battlegroups in. A mix of Dutch/Belgian or especially British/Canadian troops might be sensible as well within a battalion battlegroup.

Interoperability on land is a way for NATO to try make its nonsense work. It would not be a huge topic if NATO and its members (hat tip to the Franco-German brigade!) weren't behaving so stupidly in how they organise for war.

In the air

Interoperability in the air is a different topic, and this extends somewhat to battlefield air defence. The absolute minimum requirement is to have compatible cooperative IFF (identification friend or foe, a directed radio signal requesting an identifying answer with a code, and the radio signal answer has to have the correct reply code to be identified as friendly). 

Compatible datalinks (Link 16) and voice radio comms are also things that I readily agree are indispensable in modern air war unless we can separate the theatres of war very well (such as Turkey/Caucasus front and Norway would be well-separated and could use completely different norms).

Compatibility with midair refuelling tech (there are two different systems in NATO) is not a must-have, as midair refuelling seems more like a nice-to-have, particularly for offensive actions. NATO is too lazy and too reliant on regular air force bases far away from the action.

At sea

Interoperability at sea is -other than refuelling at sea- primarily about the air war, so the previous remarks apply. 

The USN sometimes incorporates non-U.S. escorts into its convoys, and to integrate these foreign escorts into the AAW (anti air warfare) coordination requires technical compatibility (or else that foreign ship could get the undesirable job of a non-essential picket ship). ASW (anti submarine warfare) coordination can be improvised a bit better because ASW actions are much slower. We should remember that it's absolutely not necessary to add such foreign ships to USN convoys. The Dutch, Norwegians, Spanish, Germans, British, Italians and French can run their own convoys each. Navies too small to run a full convoy escort group (ASW+AAW) should be reformed into paramilitary coast guards and abstain from buying anything bigger than patrol boats anyway.

The doctrine argument

Warfare has many examples of things not working as intended, misunderstandings, distrust, ignorance. Some historically relatively well-functioning armies benefited from standardised training that enabled officers to anticipate what fellow officers of another unit or formation would do, for they both had the same training for the situation. Likewise, NCOs and enlisted personnel was to some degree exchangeable becuase of standardised drills. You could take a gunner from one tank crew to replace a sick gunner in another tank crew and the tank crew would still be very effective because the tank commander's verbal commands and the processes inside the tank are standardised by training. The British Empire benefited from this kind of doctrinal similarity between British, Canadian, Australian and Indian troops, for example.

It's a futile and risky dream to expect such homogeneity from NATO armed forces, or only from some imaginary "EU army". I call it risky because an agreement on one doctrine could petrify us and be a vastly inferior path compared to having diverse doctrines with pursuit of different ideas and experimentation.

Conclusion

NATO is exaggerating the importance of interoperability. Interoperability is largely only required as a fix for voluntarily created problems.

Yes, NATO members should not operate Cold War era air defences and aircraft without compatible IFF and communications, but they shouldn't do so because it's a waste of budget to use useless equipment. Interoperability requirements are a superfluous argument here post-2010.

It could be a lot easier and lower-risk to keep diverse forces with arrangements for working side by side, rather than to expect much cross-national cooperation. 

It is in the NATO bureaucracy's self-interest to claim that interoperability and standardization efforts are super-important, for this makes itself super-important.

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

P.S.: This is obviously a superficial view and despite the presence of a conclusion (thesis) not comprehensive at all. Read it as a push to think about it.

*: The English-speaking Brits were adjacent no English-speaking allies, despite Americans being there as well. The French- and Dutch-speaking Belgians were adjacent to neither of both. The West Germans were split into three sectors with two very different landscape types (North German flatlands, South German hilly). The two American corps being neighbours and the Dutch (who knew German by television) being adjacent to Germans were the only non-idiotic parts of this setup.

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Newbold deconstruction

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This is a deconstruction of the following article:

https://taskandpurpose.com/opinion/critical-military-theory/

 

The U.S. military has two main purposes — to deter our enemies from engaging us in warfare, and if that fails, to defeat them in combat.

Wow, delusion (or lies?) full speed ahead right at the beginning, without any warm-up. No, the purposes of the U.S. military are not those. These legitimate purposes have become an afterthought. The main purposes of the U.S. military are to bully if not take over Third World countries and to deter Russia from breaking out of its restrictive influence sphere and to deter China from setting up any kind of influence sphere in the first place. The latter two points can be interpreted as deterrence and defence to the benefit of certain foreign (not always allied) countries if one wants to be particularly nice.

[George Washington quote]

That's an appeal to authority - not a good smell

(...) the traits that deter a potential enemy and win the wars that must be fought: Conformity, discipline, unity. 

Either I don't get the translation completely right or the "conformity" part is total nonsense. More about that later.

“We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to do violence on those who would harm us.”

I had my own version of this, so I won't criticise it much. It still leaves a bad taste behind when I see such talk / writing elsewhere because this kind of talk (wolf/sheep et cetera) is all-too often linked to a Fascist-leaning demographic.

There is only one overriding standard for military capability: lethality.

No, that's bullshit. I understand he writes for civilians, but the statement is wrong (albeit it fits with usual American military-industrial talk on the topic).

These previous blog posts hint at what's most important in peer battles:

/2009/02/jericho-sirens.html

/2009/06/politically-incorrect-today-fire.html

/2010/01/repulsion.html

/2010/03/musings-about-military-theory-framework.html

In blunt terms; it's how scary you are. It sounds silly, I know. The era of armies just killing a third of each other in a day of battle are over. Nowadays (and especially during WW2) two peer armies facing each other respect the other's firepower so much that the various ways of scaring the opponent are dominant, and actual lethal action the exception. But as I mentioned before, the U.S. military is largely about bullying vastly inferior opponents, and against those you want great lethality in battle. It's too bad for Americans that too much inferior opponents understand this and minimise their exposure in long guerilla campaigns where lethality ifs again totally subordinated to reconnaissance & intelligence and the most promising path to victory is political, not military.

Combat is the harshest meritocracy

And we're on bullshit mountain again. The cowards tend to survive much longer in warfare than the high performers. His view only applies to wartime officer promotions in the field. I suppose what he's really trying to do here is to paint the military as somewhat noble.

A military force’s greatest strengths are cohesion and discipline. Individuality or group identity is corrosive and a centrifugal force.

That's kinda true, but on the other hand it's the particularly individualistic people who devise new tactics instead of simply following doctrine or blundering. German WW2 fighter and CAS strike fighter groups were astonishing examples of how extremely important - and often extremely effective - the unusual individuals were. Those pilots were also more drunk than disciplined, and NCOs didn't shy away from shouting at officers when the latter had fucked up on the previous sortie. It's very important to make good use of smart individuals despite their corrosive and centrifugal force nature. This retired Marine 3-star sounds very First World War-ish here.

Then again, I kinda wrote something similar without ever retracting it (for all I know the concerns I wrote about proved to be overblown).

(...) how conformity creates efficiency and superior group results (...)

And we're back to delusional. No, efficiency stems from letting the top performers do their thing and find for others something suitable and useful to do.

Taliban radio intercept after engaging U.S. forces.

This reminds me of how Americans told each other that the F4U fighter was called "Whistling death" by the Japanese. The Japanese were quite interested to learn about this after the war. My bullshitmeter broke.

because it’s service to others

Let's face it; enlisting in the U.S. military is nothing but a path to affordable college for a huge share of the recruits. Hardly anyone has thoughts of sacrificing himself herself or itself when enlisting.

- - - - -

The U.S. military personnel systems are known for forcing service members to attend courses on all kinds of non-military stuff, including sensitivity stuff, anti-rape, anti-STD, whatever. There were also powerful efforts to open up more jobs to women, including combat specialisations. Opposition to this is widespread. The German Bundeswehr had decades of resistance and complaining about similar issues since the introduction of "Innere Führung". In the end, soldiers are too old to submit easily to efforts of educating them.

His basic concern is understandable, and I suppose he gets his message conveyed, but he used a typical amount of bullshit, delusion and pathos along the way.

For a similar takedown, have a look at /2018/04/a-deconstruction-of-micc-propaganda.html

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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