Military – Page 280 – Public Intelligence Blog

The first of two on IC failures….as if we didn't need any more proof. DefDog

Reports indicate China's fifth generation jet fighter rollout far ahead of U.S. intel projections

East-Asia-Intel.com, December 1, 2010

Chinese military Internet reports indicate that China may roll out its first fifth generation fighter as early as this month, far earlier than the Pentagon projected China would have the advance warplane.

Second report…..

Series of U.S. intelligence failures on North Korea highlighted by tour of enrichment facility
East-Asia-Intel.com, December 1, 2010

North Korea's recent disclosure of a new uranium enrichment facility with
a light water reactor and centrifuge cascade is seen as a serious U.S.
intelligence and policy failure that goes back over a decade.

Phi Beta Iota: We do not control what our various contributors post, while reserving the right to comment. These are both serious intelligence failures, both indicative of the inability of the US Intelligence Community to do its job across the board, from collection to processing to analysis. There are many other failures, for example with respect to China's new superiority in submarine stealth (able to sneak past an entire carrier battle group to pop up immediately astern the central carrier), and their overwhelming superiority in cyber-space, where they have mastered, among many other capabilities, the art of riding electrical power circuits into US military computers from Peterson AFB to Fort Meade MD. As troubling as these failures are, they are actually the least of our worries. Of greater importance to the over-all security of the US is the culture of corruption, not just at CIA but at all the agencies including DIA, the FBI, and the NRO, as well as within the service intelligence centers. Just as General Mike Flynn is on record as saying that US Intelligence is “irrelevant” in Afghanistan, so also can it be said that US intelligence is “irrelevant” across the board–it is not contributing anything warranting its $90 billion a year budget, with nothing to show at the strategic, operational, tactical, or technical (acquisition) levels. We need not be this incapacitated. We are choosing to be ineffective, and that is most troubling of all.

2010/12/03

Journal: Navy Sinks, Congress Throws Money

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Military, Officers Call

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Recommends....

This is priceless. Pun intended. Meanwhile the Deficit Commission is putting its final touches on a plan to control government spending. Chuck

CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS – DEFENSE
Dec. 2, 2010 – 8:46 p.m.

Navy Plan for Littoral Ships Is Winning Support, Despite Lack of Price Tag

By John M. Donnelly, CQ Staff

Lawmakers are suddenly voicing new support for a Navy plan to acquire cutting-edge warships, despite continuing apprehension about not being given enough information or time to consider it.

Continue reading “Journal: Navy Sinks, Congress Throws Money”

2010/12/032010/12/03

Journal: Smoke, Mirrors, and Hades Burning on the Hill

Budgets & Funding, Government, Law Enforcement, Military

This is a great example of the kind of gaming that keeps defense budgets high. Kudos to Winslow Wheeler for smoking it out.

On Dec 3, 2010, at 7:56 AM, Winslow Wheeler wrote:

In a midnight switch, the Deficit Commission changed the dividing line between discretionary spending elements. Was 050 (DOD,DOE, Misc.) versus the rest; now it's 050 plus VA, plus State, plus Homeland security versus the rest. The split remains 50-50 (I'm pretty sure); the total discretionary savings went up a bit, but now DOD is a lesser part of the “security” share of cuts, plus it gets to raid its new (trembling) partners in its deficit reduction cage. This was the idea not of the Republican defense apologists on the Commission but of the Democrat budget process “reformers” who were aping a long term goal to declare State a national security entity.

I bet the idea originated among the Pentagon milcrats, who fed to pliable democratic apparatchiks working for Gates, who in turn fed it to so-called democratic budget “reformers” on hill, on the commission, and/or in pro-dem thinktanks. Be interesting to see if/how Pentagon's wholly owned subsidiaries at the Post and NYT play this.

It is almost as if Frank Carlucci was back in the Pentagon and it is 1981 … remember how Carlucci snookered David Stockman (Reagan's OMB director) in early 1981 into approving even higher defense budgets than Reagan campaigned for (I wrote about Carlucci's “nature” trick on pages 14-17 of Defense Power Games – also attached).

Chuck

Phi Beta Iota: Given integrity of intent and process on the Hill, neither of which exists today, this would actually be a good change, with the proviso that Commerce be added and Newt Gingrich be made Vice President for Global Engagement, as we propose in our Virtual Cabinet at The Huffington Post. The misrepresentation of the defense budget has long been fraudulent (completely apart from the missing $2.3 trillion that DoD still cannot account for and never will), with externalized personnel and health costs not “visible” to most. Getting a grip on the US budget process is not rocket science. It requires just two elements: integrity in those at the top, and the enlistment of the public through the promised but not yet delivered transparency of process.

2010/12/02

Reference: General David Petraeus–An Examination

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 10 Security, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

David Petraeus — Hero Celebrity

By Michael Brenner (Senior Fellow, the Center for Transatlantic Relations) – Huffington Post – December 2, 2010

There is one celebrity with the makings of a national hero, someone who has the qualities that might carry him right into the White House. It is David Petraeus. He is almost universally credited with the brilliant achievement of saving American honor and gaining an approximation of ‘victory' in Iraq. President Obama himself is in awe of this warrior-intellectual to whom he defers on all matters in the Greater Middle East. Petraeus' mythic standing is a perfect example of how the compelling demand for a hero creates the illusion that indeed a savior has arrived.

Read the balance of the article…

2010/12/012010/12/01

Journal: Taking a WikiLeak

Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Sense-Making, Law Enforcement, Military, Peace Intelligence

Taking a Wikileak

In my obligatory post about Wikileaks as the story du jour, I point to the great set of questions Dan Gillmor has posted in his column at Salon. These are especially lucid. I like especially Dan’s point about the character of the communications that were leaked, that many of the messages are gossip. Journalists are dutifully reporting “facts” gleaned from the leaked material without necessarily digging deeper, verifying and analyzing. Of course, they don’t have time – the information environment moves too quickly, he who hesitates is lost, accuracy be damned.

Then again, journalism is so often about facts, not truth. Facts are always suspect, personal interpretations are often incorrect, memories are often wildly inaccurate. History is, no doubt, filled with wrong facts and bad interpretations that, regardless, are accepted as somehow “true.”

The high-minded interpretation of this and other leaks, that people need to know what is being said and done by their representatives in government, especially in a “democratic society,” is worth examining. We’re not really a democracy; government by rule or consensus of a majority of the people doesn’t scale, and it would be difficult for the average citizen to commit the time required to be conversant in depth with all the issues that a complex government must consider.

Do we benefit by sharing more facts with more people? (Dan notes that 3 million or so in government have the clearance to read most of the documents leaked – this seems like a lot of people to be keeping secrets… is the “secret” designation really all that meaningful, in this case?) But to my question – I think there’s a benefit in knowing more about government operations, but I’m less clear that this sort of leak increases knowledge vs. noise.

I’m certain about one thing: we shouldn’t assume that the leaked documents alone reveal secrets that are accurate and true. They’re just more pieces of a very complex puzzle.

See Also:

Graphic: Information Pathologies

2010/11/30

Journal: AlterNet on “Beyond Madness”–Patraeus in Pakistan

Methods & Process, Military, Peace Intelligence

‘Beyond Madness': Obama's War on Terror Setting Nuclear-Armed Pakistan on Fire

Rather than seeking to stabilize Pakistan, General David Petraeus has been irresponsibly lighting matches with his shortsighted use of Special Forces and drone strikes

by Fred Branfman

EXCERPT 1: But rather than seeking to stabilize Pakistan, General David Petraeus has, incredibly, been irresponsibly lighting matches through his shortsighted and relentless effort to secure Afghanistan by using U.S. forces and drone strikes, and pressuring the Pakistani Army to attack Taliban “sanctuaries” in Pakistan’s northwest provinces. Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan's High Commissioner to London for the past 16 years and a pillar of the Establishment, has recently stated that U.S. drone and gunship attacks in Pakistan have “set the country on fire” and threatened that such acts could eventually lead to attacks on U.S. personnel in Pakistan. Petraeus has disastrously miscalculated. The more “progress” he tries to show in Afghanistan, the more he weakens the U.S. position in far more important Pakistan.

EXCERPT 2: The single most important — yet surprisingly ignored — revelation of Bob Woodward's new book, Obama's Wars, is that Petraeus and the Obama team never discussed how their strategy for attacking Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan was weakening the Pakistani state. Woodward also makes clear that it is Petraeus, not Obama, who is driving U.S. policy in “Af-Pak.” CIA Director Leon Panetta declared that “no Democratic president can go against military advice, especially if he asked for it. So just do it. Do what they say,” according to the book. Petraeus’ power derives from America’s unconscious need for a military hero and his perceived and overblown success in Iraq. But this perception has blinded normally sensible observers to his disastrous performance in Pakistan since becoming Centcom commander in October 2008.

Tip of the Hat to John Steiner via E-Mail.

Phi Beta Iota: the author has pulled together a number of linked references and this is a useful article narrowly focused. He missed the larger picture, the fact that Obama has no strategy and no brain trust (the emphasis being on brains in touch with reality). Obama will get his Wall Street reward on his present course, but he is neither leading nor serving the nation with his ideologically passive-aggressive incoherence across the board–nothing serious on all ten threats to humanity, nothing serious on all twelve core policies, an intelligence community that is pathologically expensive and ineffective, and a Pentagon that is so out of control as to be a cancer on the public blood, treasure, and spirit. these are all good people trapped in a bad system–they desperately need a “wake-up call” and we are not sure that is achievable at this point.

2010/11/282011/06/20

Reference (2): United Nations Intelligence in Haiti

05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Analysis, Augmented Reality, Ethics, Government, Historic Contributions, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Law Enforcement, Methods & Process, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Real Time

MINUSTAH1001 JPEG Small — Peace Operations: Seeing

MajGen Eduardo ALDUNATE Herman, Chilean Army (Ret), served as the Deputy Force Commander of the United Nations Force in Haiti (MINUSTAH) in the earliest rounds, and was instrumental in both sponsoring the Joint Military Intelligence Analysis Center (JMAC) concept in its first modern field implementation, but also in evaluating most critically both the lack of useful intelligence from allies relying on secret sources and methods that did not “penetrate” to achieve gangs and neighborhoods; and the astonishing “one size fits all” propensity of the allies to treat every “threat” as one that could be addressed by force.

His contributions are helpful in understanding the more recent failure of allied relief operations in Haiti that again assumed that the use of armed bodies would address the problem, without making provision for real-world ground truth intelligence (CAB 21 Peace Jumpers Plus) or intelligence-driven harmonization of non-governmental assistance (Reverse TIPFID).

Reference: Civil Military Operations Center (CMOC)

2003 PEACEKEEPING INTELLIGENCE: Emerging Concepts for the Future

Books: Intelligence for Peace (PKI Book Two) Finalizing

Reference: Intelligence-Led Peacekeeping

Review: International Peace Observations

Search: UN intelligence peace intelligence