Tag: Defense

French Warships Should go to Europe, not to Russia

Photo: Wikimedia commons.

This article was originally published by Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) on 13 May 2014.

While Germany has already put its arms exports to Russia on hold, this kind of decision is still due in France. In particular, one delicate deal, signed by Paris in 2011, is of considerable political and industrial importance: Up to four navy vessels of the Mistral type are to be delivered to Russia for 1.2 billion Euros; the first ship is to be supplied by the end of 2014. This kind of ship can accommodate troops, helicopters and serve as a landing craft for an invasion from sea to land. But it can also function as a swimming headquarters for all sorts of military operations or as a military hospital.

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An Attack Reconnaissance Helicopter for Tomorrow’s Conflict

Marine attack helicopter landing aboard ship

This article was originally published April 18 2014 by Small Wars Journal

In January the Army Aviation Center of Excellence announced its plan to divest the army inventory of the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior in favor of an attack and reconnaissance aviation force consisting of the AH-64 Apache and unmanned aircraft systems. The announcement drew both criticism and praise from various blogs and media sources. Most of this commentary centered on questions of the ability of the Apache helicopter and UAS to fulfill the aerial scout role,
and whether or not the Kiowa Warrior is truly obsolete. It is arguable however that the decision was driven as much by fiscal austerity as battlefield requirements.

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Cloaks of Invisibility: The Latest Frontier in Military Technology

Japanese and US snipers during an exercise, courtesy of Marines/flickr

Fiction and reality have meshed to incredible extents in the past decades, and it is no longer a surprise to see sci-fi-inspired inventions used in everyday life. The military field has been no exception and is now at the cusp of groundbreaking innovations that could change war-making to its core.

The next frontier in defense technology is so-called “stealth” technologies, in which the U.S. military has already invested huge funds. New research is opening up the prospect of achieving something close to invisibility on the battlefield, a breakthrough likened to Harry Potter`s famous invisibility cloak. While most stealth technologies are designated to elude enemy radars, new invisibility technologies could conceal objects in real time, not just from radar but from the naked eye.

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Credibility Will Survive Washington’s Recent Strategic Retreats

Obama
Photo: Joe Crimmings/flickr.

To its critics, the Obama administration’s foreign policy has become one of retreat. The decision not to engage militarily in Syria undermined the United States’ credibility around the world, and now there is the crisis in Ukraine. With Russia in partial control of Crimea, the critics feel further aggrieved. Surely the administration’s passivity and weakness helped provoke the incursion, they now argue.

The critics’ argument rests on the ‘demonstration principle’, i.e. the notion that how a state responds to one event establishes a reputation that others will react to in the future. It’s a principle with a rich history. For instance, historians generally believe that Britain’s willingness to accept Nazi Germany’s occupation of Czechoslovakia 1938 encouraged Hitler to think that there would be few consequences for moving against Poland a year later. In contrast, there is evidence to suggest that the US’ overthrow of Saddam Hussein had positive secondary effects throughout the broader Middle East, with Iran suspending its nuclear weapons program, and Libya abandoning its nuclear activities altogether.

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Review – Cybersecurity and Cyberwar

National Security Agency headquarters, Fort Meade, Maryland
National Security Agency headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. Photo: National Security Agency/Wikimedia Commons.

Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know
By: P. W. Singer and Allan Friedman
New York: Oxford University Press, 2014

The year 2013 saw a number of headline news stories featuring a variety of different actors and sectors, but all with their roots in the same place: the cyber world. Edward Snowden disclosed a series of classified NSA documents detailing the United States’ global surveillance apparatus, including Internet surveillance programs like PRISM. The US federal government launched the website healthcare.gov to facilitate enrollment in health care exchanges, and an acting assistant secretary of Homeland Security testified before congress in November that the site experienced a series of attempted hacks. Conspirators who hacked into the systems of Nasdaq, Visa, and J.C. Penney and other major companies were subsequently charged in relation to a $45 million bank heist that involved stolen account information. A group supporting Syria’s Assad regime hacked the Associated Press’ Twitter account, tweeting (falsely) that President Obama had been injured in White House explosions. And a report released by the US government reported that China’s People’s Liberation Army had carried out cyber attacks on US corporations.

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