Preaching To A Choir?

The world is a strange place and I am a pretty strange man in this world, all things considered, since I have a luxury (not afforded to many) to experience, as it turned out today, twice, two opposing sides in a huge geopolitical spectacle of the 20th and 21st centuries. Once one considers my background, this experience, or rather experiences, do look like a good place from which to start writing an interesting story. I am totally aware of this place and that is what I was doing since 2014 openly in public. For anyone who read my Runglish throughout the years they should (if they don't--then I failed them) get the whiff of my profound hatred for war and rejection of the military porn. I could write a good military porn fiction but I abhor the every minute of this writing, in fact, I abhor the very thought of me writing some military porn with fictional wars and all those big words such as "pincer movement", "armored columns", "close air support", "engagement envelope" and, God forbids, "attrition rates" or "fractional exchange rates". 

I, however, wrote two years ago this book in which I explained why I am scared shitless by America's military hubris and incompetence of her political elites, because they may get us all killed because they have no fvcking clue about modern war and how it is fought. So, I had to suffer through simplification of math for people to understand that the math for the US is simply not there anymore and the US cannot win the conventional conflict with such powers as Russia or China and as a result will sustain conventional defeat and will escalate towards nuclear threshold. Remember?

Allow me to quote myself from page 22 of this book of mine:

Such avoidance starts with understanding the nature of military power and of its application. This becomes absolutely crucial in such cases as the demolition of Saddam Hussein’s Army by a coalition led by the U.S. Armed Forces in 1991. If whatever lessons of the Battle of Lepanto in the tactical and operational senses are inapplicable for the Battle of Midway or the Falkland War due to a massive technological gap, the same could be stated about the “lessons” of the First Gulf War which, generally, devolved into a turkey shoot of the vast undertrained Iraqi Army, which enjoyed no operational Air Force nor even a remotely capable Air Defense to speak of. In fact, any lessons from that war could and, in fact, did provide a baneful influence on the state of mind of many Western civilian and military leaders. Hubris and gross misinterpretation of the results occurred despite many professionals describing in depth the Iraqi Army’s dramatic lack of capability, ranging from low quality of leaders and personnel, over-centralization of command, lack of ability for strategic assessment, lack of modern battle management means, not to mention gross technological inferiority.

Any of you who read this book should remember this. You see, I used the word "hubris" eight times throughout the book, on other occasions in the same book I wanted to use words such as "utter bullshit", "pulling fingers" and "dumbfuckery" but was forced to use more civilized and appropriate terms such as  "propaganda" (22 times), operational art (4 times) and operations (47 times) plus this horrible unholy profanity known as "Strategy". I used this whole book, and parts of previous one, and parts of  the new one to explain that one doesn't go into Russia's sphere of interests, create mess the scale of a Ukrainian one and expects that it will not get punished by Russia which has an overwhelming escalation dominance in Europe. 

As the latest events in Ukraine have shown the main danger for the United States could be America's desperate desire to get what it wanted since 2014. Namely seeing Russia getting involved in Ukraine openly big time. Always think twice what you wish for, especially for operatives in US State Department and organizations such as CIA, who only know how to handle a small fish and even that they cannot do right, those wishes may come true. As Russia has demonstrated it in April this year, if the US really wants Russia to get "involved" in Ukraine, she can have equivalent of two combined arms armies, two fleets and couple of VKS "fleets" ready to take on Ukraine within couple of weeks. While annihilating Ukrainian Armed Forces, together with neo-Nazi Kiev regime, Russia would do the unthinkable--she would parade both the United States and NATO as militarily impotent paper-tigers because they would be able to do exactly nothing to "help" Ukraine because everyone wants to live. This is precisely the reason Anthony Blinken visited Kiev this week and told Kiev behind the scene to "dial it down", amidst the fluffy tropes about US concern for Ukraine's "soverinity" and "security". As I say all the time since 2014 in this blog, math is not there for the US and NATO. It wasn't there in 2014, now it is not even close. 

Enter Scott Ritter with his piece today in RT. I hate military porn, Scott managed to read it three times. He is certainly much tougher than me to endure this and not to get aneurysm. I would:

An American war hero teamed up with a former NATO commander to write a novel about the final days of US global hegemony. The result is a plea for a common-sense policy that seeks to avoid an end game as tragic as it is inevitable.This is a review of a novel. I feel that I need to make this point up front, lest people read too much into what I have to say about it. It is a work of fiction – and an admirable one at that, extremely readable and possessing a narrative that grips you from the start and holds you until the end. It is also highly believable, even when one factors in the need for elements of fantasy in order to keep the plot streamlined and the length reasonable. Reality can be complicated and messy. ‘2034’ is a novel. It is not real.

Scott writes about this book. It came out in March this year. 

As I said, I cannot stand military fiction, but according to Ritter this book does indeed contain some ideas which are extremely important. 

‘2034’, by Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis, takes us to a world that is but 13 years removed from ours. It is one where the United States no longer possesses military supremacy but continues to act like it does. Where China’s economic and technological strengths have been used to craft a military capable of strategic power projection. Where Iran has emerged as a major regional power, and India is positioning itself for a global leadership role. None of the underpinning conditions that make ‘2034’ work as a novel exist today. But when examined in terms of historical continuity, using 2008 as a starting point, continuing through today, and then projecting into the future, every scenario painted in ‘2034’ is not only plausible, but probable. ‘2034’ depicts a world gripped by a multi-polar reality, where an America still operating on unipolar assumptions struggles to find its feet. Two terms appear often in the novel: ‘hubris’ and ‘overreach’. Everything that happens in ‘2034’ is borne of those twin concepts, where a former unilateral superpower finds itself challenged by regional powers no longer willing to accept American hegemony, and the overreaction to this challenge results in global catastrophe.

As you all may know, and I am on record for years, the United States is (always was) nuclear-biased country. It is the only country which used nuclear weapons, and it is the only country which came close to serious consideration of a use of such weapons in conventional conflict. Recall that Truman authorized moving nuclear weapons (without triggers, though) to Guam in 1950. "Just in case". So, it is totally conceivable for the US to go nuclear in case of sustaining serious losses in a conventional conflict even in a war with a nominally inferior conventional power.  With global power? Russia doesn't need to "project" her power against US, she can defeat any conventional force in Eastern Europe purely conventionally and, God forbids, destroy human civilization with her nuclear arsenal. Ritter notes this:

None of the adversaries depicted in ‘2034’ had the ability to project military power globally like the United States. But then again, none needed to. All they needed to focus on was being able to project superior military power into a defined region. In short, a multi-polar world is beyond the ability of the United States to dominate militarily, and any continued effort by the United States to do so can only lead to conflicts which the United States is no longer guaranteed to win.

Well, today the "ability to project military power globally" against the background of the ongoing real revolution in military affairs means merely exposing your forces even in staging areas and rear to serious attrition. Here is how Iran did this. 

As you may expect, even a single tactical nuke in the vicinity of a 0.5-2.0 kilotons yield would have rendered such bases completely inoperable. I know Vicki Nuland doesn't know this but Stavridis does. The United States hasn't been in a classic concentration of force paradigm in decades, and every single US military base today is a fat and easily acquired target. That is why he and his co-author wrote this book. Things changed. Stone-rearranging business advanced tremendously in the last decade, with it came a threat of a huge conventional miscalculation on the American part. And the only thing I disagree with Scott Ritter is the fact that America's unipolar world end is not in the nearest future, but it became a fait accompli  in 2014, and since then we only observe the bubbles and whirlpools a huge sinking ship leaves on the surface after she is completely consumed by the water. Remember? Math is not there, neither is technology on the American side and it is NOW not in 2034. If, as Ritter states,  Stavridis and Ackerman wrote this book as a warning, then it makes it an important book and we can only applaud approvingly the effort by these two authors. 

Ritter concludes:

Thirteen years goes by in a blink of an eye. ‘2034’, the novel, explores a plausible outcome should the United States continue to incorporate hubris and overreach as the driving force behind its relationship with the world. It is not an outcome any American should endorse, but it is an outcome that is inevitable should America’s relationship with the world not change.

If that is the point of the book, it is all for the better. I still will not read it, but I am grateful that Scott Ritter did it (three times) and the fact that this book is based around the same set of strategic ideas I write about for many years, makes me feel not so much vindicated as hopeful that people of such a rank try to be realistic and militarily reasonable and only add to the choir of voices which calls on the US to face a reality and adjust its behavior accordingly. In fact, it may even work for the US benefit. Obviously, the US State Department and US utterly incompetent think-tankdom never read Bismark about the art of possible and have no concept that real international relations are not always a zero-sum game. But who knows, maybe a sheer volume of voices will get through, especially when S-500, A-235 and 3M22 become fully operational, like this year. 

Why START.

Among many "accomplishments" of Donald Trump in what passes in the United States for foreign policy and national security, one of the major achievements was exiting pretty much most arms control treaties with Russia, among them START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) being most notable. As I pointed out not for once, Russia's being rather nonchalant about Trump effectively demolishing arms control regime has its reasons. The main of those reasons is Russia having a decisive qualitative advantage over the United States in delivery systems, especially in the field of stand-off high precision weapons which changed the nature of modern war and deterrence dramatically. Yet, keeping not just the United States but the world, through keeping nuclear strategic arsenals under control, from ruinous and unnecessary investment into nuclear strategic weapons, which realistically are not the weapons of war. Upgrading them, keeping them in a working order? Sure. As simple logic goes: makes no difference how many times over can the United States and Russia obliterate each-other--5-6-7, makes no difference. So, some news from POTUS, a new one. 

President Joe Biden has decided to accept Russia's offer to extend the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty for the full five years and is proposing that the two sides "explore new verifiable arms control agreements" in the future. The overture could be a bright spot in an otherwise tense relationship in the opening days of the new administration. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which caps Washington and Moscow's deployed nuclear weapons at 1,550 each, is set to expire on Feb. 5 unless both sides agree to keep it in force. "The United States intends to seek a five-year extension of New START as the treaty permits," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Thursday. "The president has long been clear that the New START Treaty is in the national security interests of the United States. "This extension makes even more sense when the relationship with Russia is as adversarial as it is at this time," she added. "New START is the only remaining treaty constraining Russian nuclear forces and is an anchor of strategic stability between our two countries."

The explanation of this change of heart is rather simple. No, it is not because Biden ran on this agenda in his bid for the White House. No, such an explanation is akin to explaining a wind as a result of the movement of the trees' branches. The answer is much-much simpler. And is looking at us from the news.

The Biden administration also says it hopes to use the extension to begin talks on a new series of arms control measures.

There we go. Plans within plans, within plans. Granted, those plans are rather obvious and are not surprising. It is the only way for the United States to get anywhere near technologies which the United States doesn't have and, highly likely, will not develop anytime soon. Sure, the United States may create a system somewhat reminiscent of the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle and, possibly, some sort of analog of the aero-ballistic Kinzhal, but in terms of multi-platform genuine hypersonic cruise missiles similar to 3M22 Zircon I doubt the United States is anywhere near to mock-up, forget technology demonstrator, not to speak of weapon nearing IOC. That's the secret to all that. Once one takes into account such system as Poseidon, let alone Peresvet capable to disable incoming MIRVs one sees immediately America's intentions in terms of START. Obviously, The National Interest's own alternatively gifted Michael Peck comes up, yet again, with self-medicating cretinism of, say, Poseidon being developed because... Russian submarine technologies are lacking, but then again, for the guy who proposed to fight hypersonic anti-shipping missiles with a standard Aegis-SM-6 package, one can also expect a proposition to fight cancer with Band-Aid.     

Obviously, a "combat" clown David Axe is not far behind, inventing all kind of amateur shit about subjects he has no clue about, but it shows an interesting pattern with the two of the most hilarious America's military "analysts" having 2018 piece reprinted (Peck) and one new published (Axe) today, precisely when the news about Biden willing, quoting Eric Zoolander, to continue talking about conversation on START, broke. This is not accidental. I want to stress it again, START by itself is not anymore about classic strategic deterrent--it is about the United States gaining any kind of insight into the technologies which drove real revolution in military affairs and, if possible, trying to squeeze as much of strategic benefits as possible. Sure. As Russia stated before--she is ready to continue talking about this conversation (c) and is even ready to consider some weapon systems, such as Poseidon, at the negotiating table. Probably, Russia may agree limiting deployed Avangards to a single division.  What Russia is not going to talk about is RS-28 Sarmat, and Zircon and related systems. This is not negotiable. Sarmat is a strategic missile, but it is a substitution for ageing Satana R-36 ICBMs, while Zircon is an ambivalent weapon capable of having a strategic impact even in conventional variant. 

So, I have a bucket of pop-corn and am getting ready to observe this whole dance around the main issue which is at the core--if Russia will rub copious amounts of salt (pun is intended: SALT) into the American wound from the necessity to negotiate from an extremely weak position. We'll have to wait and see how this plays out but Russia nowadays is extremely business-oriented and, unlike the United States, has a crispy clear understanding of her national interests. There is even a school of thought that Russia may "exchange" something for Nord Stream-2. I don't know about that. You know, I hate to speculate. Russia can freeze NS-2 for a very long time since she is increasingly involved, hydrocarbons-wise, with the Asian markets and Europe is not anymore a priority. In the end, it is primarily in Europe's interest, not Russia's. Let EU deal with it. Russia has more important business to attend to. How about keeping the world peace.

Story, Never-Ending Story (c).

Ah, so now we hear... the same ol' song. 

The new U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff is warning his service it faces stiff competition in a future war, involving aircraft and personnel losses not seen for 80 years. General Charles Q. Brown, Jr. believes the Air Force must work to accelerate change, adapting to new technologies faster than its potential adversaries. Brown warns that “good enough today will fail tomorrow,” with grave implications for the entire country. 

He also goes as far as to predict WW II level loses for USAF against peers. This is really a classic "cry wolf" situation because Pentagon inflated threats so many times that when, actually, the statement has a ring of truth to it, few will publicly aknowledge its merit. USAF, of course, still blows the smoke up out asses because what the USAF wants is to fight some third-tier opponent with grossly inferior air-force in order to make such statements (famous "analyst" Mizokami does it for them):

The Air Force has essentially been the supreme air force on the planet since 1991. The destruction of the Yugoslav Air Force in 1999 marked the beginning of more than 20 years of virtually uncontested air operations for the service lasting to this day. Since then, combat operations over Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, and elsewhere have largely been uncontested. 

For starters, Mizokami mixed two different things. "Uncontested" merely meant that the US was and is bombing the shit out of countries which didn't have viable air forces to start with. Yugoslav Air Force was barely a factor in NATO's gang-rape of Serbia, which didn't prevent the US from threatening Russia trying to ensure that no S-300 AD complexes ever made it to Serbia. Moreover, in Syria the USAF is contested in a sense that Russia's VKS guard vast territories of Syria from the US control. Russia closes her eyes mostly on Israel's operations against Iranian assets there. The decision is purely political and underscores an immense complexity of politics in the Middle East. Lastly, the USAF met a proper peer in a proper, classic, air-to-air combat only in Korean War against Soviet 64th Fighter Corps and it was an unpleasant account for USAF. I do not include Vietnam here, but even there Vietnamese gave a good account of themselves in the air, while making sure that Air Defense becomes a more complex affair than merely AAA and dogfights. They, with the help of the USSR, surely succeeded. 

Today we are deep inside Real Revolution in Military Affairs where the USAF faces insurmountable barrier of advanced technologies and operational concepts which make all, grossly backward, views on the air-war as merely a contest between two opposing air forces as relevant to reality on the ground, or in the air, for that matter, as having a crank-shaft for 2020 Toyota Camry or Chevrolet Camaro as means of starting the engine. It is good that Charles Brown acknowledges possible losses for USAF in the modern peer-to-peer war, but as Russians say--best air defense is our tanks at enemy's airfields. Russia is not going to be sending tanks to take Rammstein or whatever forward jump air strips may be chosen in case the US and NATO want to commit physical suicide, but modern air war, even before any aircraft reaches the edges of weapons' release, which in itself a dubious proposition, will pretty much have no airfields to come back to, nor, very possible, countries from which any attempts may be made against Russia or, for that matter, China. 

Reality of modern air war is such that every single NATO aircraft will be tracked the moment it takes off from any field in Europe, in fact, many will be tracked while at the runway getting ready to take off, the first wave of counter-strike will be in the air shortly after that and even before those aircraft are properly airborne things will start happening which USAF never encountered before, ranging from great degrading, or complete shut-down, of communications to long-range EW, to disabling GPS and the list is too long to continue. And this is before anything happens at all. USAF never in its history operated in the environment like that and the remedy it suggests is, oh, boy...

How will the Air Force do this? Drones, drones, and more drones. Manned military aviation has been in a death spiral for some time. Technological complexity leads to increasingly sophisticated aircraft that require more time and money to develop. As a result, planes like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter require two decades to develop, cost $90 million each, and require months to build. The result is a smaller air force where even brand-new fighter jets feature 20-year-old technology, which isn't capable of making up for World War II-style losses.

I am having a... facepalm. A real drone, capable of any real military impact while carrying out whatever mission: strike, recon, air-to-air etc. will still be subjected, in the war against peer (Russia and China), to the same set of threats and counter-measures, which will either mitigate their impact or derail drones' mission altogether, unless it is a drone which is...well..expensive and extremely valuable, which brings us all back to the square one. The United States, as Andrei Raevsky once succinctly observed, can not fight wars on cheap, period. In fact, the ratios of US military technology costs relative to the same by peers continue to grow across the board for the United States. This is not a good indicator at all, for ANY military technology the United States procures or is about to. Same applies to drones. The world changed and any most "advanced" technologies the US tries to develop and procure are already obsolete the moment they leave manufacturing floor. 

Without understanding of modern peer-to-peer conflict as a whole, as a vertical engagement from a strategic down to tactical levels, with all forces involved in it and interacting constantly across modern battle-space, all this silly talk is just...well, silly. At least RAND's big air operations honcho understands that:

We lose a lot of people. We lose a lot of equipment. We usually fail to achieve our objective of preventing aggression by the adversary,” RAND analyst David Ochmanek told a security conference on Thursday. “In our games, when we fight Russia and China, blue gets its ass handed to it.”

Well, good that he at least understands that. As per "aggression" tropes, as I say non-stop: it so tired, it is so contrived and its really so rich coming from people whose actual combat score against peaceful weddings exceeds that against competent and determined air forces as of lately, that one has to simply dismiss this BS and admit that at this stage US military simply cannot adapt and develop a viable fighting doctrine and technology to fight serious adversary capable of rearranging stones, even without any nuclear weapons, anywhere in the world. In related news, Boeing wants at least 20% of its labor force to be black, while Hollywood issued new guide-lines for Oscars on inclusion (wokeness, that is). What can possibly go wrong? s/ 

Being Bombastic.

This is what Donald Trump is known for and, in fact, it is his defining feature. Recall his, now famous, "very smart missiles", or him touting his economic "achievements" non-stop. Exiting crucial arms limitation treaties is also a part of Trump's MO, such as ditching Open Skies Treaty and now promising to resume testing of nuclear weapons:

US authorities considered whether to carry out a "rapid" nuclear test – the first for almost three decades – to use as a bargaining chip in dealing with Russia and China, according to media reports.The proposal to cause a controlled nuclear explosion is "very much an ongoing conversation," a high-ranked official within the administration of Donald Trump told the Washington Post on Saturday. It was assumed that a "rapid test" could prove useful in making Moscow and Beijing negotiate a nuclear-weapons-related trilateral deal with Washington, the paper's sources said.

As is observed by many, often being bombastic is a cover for the lack of strength and substance. We have exactly this case here exacerbated with a very low level of understanding of modern geopolitics and international relations by US "authorities". They, those "authorities" want to abandon a 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty CTBT), evidently, based on this clause:

Each State Party has the right to withdraw from the CTBT if it decides that extraordinary events related to the subject matter of the Treaty have jeopardized the State Party's supreme national interests.    

One may ask, then, upon discounting totally delusional assumption of those "authorities" that Russia will tremble in horror and will offer an unconditional surrender upon US exploding some device, and what those "supreme national interests" might be? The answer, apart from Trump's propensity to do a lot of chest thumping, is simple enough:

1. Nuclear weapons are not war-fighting weapons but are primarily deterrents to avoid a war;

2. Nuclear weapons are considered the last resort weapons and by all metrics, as is a terrorism, are weapons of a weaker side. 

Recall what I wrote two years ago when speaking about China:

China is (relatively) weak militarily NOT because she doesn't have enough nuclear weapons—this could relatively fast, with Chinese financial wherewithal, be addressed. Chinese relative military weakness comes from a huge technological, cultural and organizational issues of her conventional capability, which, despite its polished outward appearance,is nowhere near with that of the United States or Russia. It is technology—always was, always will be. It is also an operational experience and the way conventional forces are deployed, which matters great deal—China has no real operational experience here. There are reasons to believe that some technological gaps will never be closed—China continues to struggle mightily in aviation, submarine, space technology and other key technological and operational concepts. 

This applies fully to the United States today who lost a conventional arms race finding herself a generation or two behind Russia in technologies which are in foundation of the Real Revolution In Military Affairs. It is preposterous to even contemplate the fate of US (NATO) forces in Europe, let alone in the immediate geographic vicinity of Russia, in case some "authorities" in the US decide to commit a suicide and attack Russia. NATO forces and their decision centers will be dramatically degraded and ultimately defeated without the use by Russia of any nuclear weapons. That is not me talking, even RAND's big honchos admit that. In this case abandoning CTBT is merely another manifestation of Trump Admin's bombastic style, designed to cover up for the fact of a loss of the conventional arms race. Luckily, not all "authorities" in D.C. are bat shit crazy and some real professionals made their voices heard:

“There are still some professionals in the room who told them this is a terrible idea, thank God,” an unnamed congressional aide told the Guardian.

But, the truth to be told, it doesn't matter. Already in late 1970s Soviet military thinkers considered Stand-off High Precision weapons approaching levels of operational and strategic impact close to nuclear weapons. Today, in the age of hypersonic missiles, combat networks, advanced electronic countermeasures and instant propagation of tactical, operational and strategic information, and instant decision-making, we are looking at the warfare of unprecedented precision and violence. In the end, who is to say that Poseidon is only for delivering a nuclear payload? With the internal volume capable to accommodate a monstrous payload of the conventional explosives, this system will have little trouble reaching and positioning itself underneath a keel of the aircraft carrier and literally blowing her out of the water without any nukes. So, resumption of nuclear testing may only create a sense of amusement in Moscow, whose nuclear and, especially, conventional war-making potential keeps the US from unleashing conflicts all over the globe. As per being bombastic--old news.

P.S. In related news:

The New and Improved Tomahawk Missile Now Runs on Corn

That, sure as hell, should make those nasty Russkie Ivans and Chinks tremble in horror. Did they try to build a new missile? No? Well, there you go....

Yvonne Lorenzo Interviewed Me.

About a couple of weeks or so ago. You can read Yvonne's excellent work at The Saker's Blog: 

The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs: An Interview with Andrei Martyanov by Yvonne Lorenzo

In fact, it is more than interview, Yvonne provides her very own, including personal, excellent input and it is, certainly, worth reading not because of my thoughts only, but Yvonne's too.