Military – Page 287 – Public Intelligence Blog

India-Russia: India will buy 250 to 300 advanced stealth fighter aircraft from Russian, according to Defence Minister A.K. Antony, as he announced the deal worth nearly $30 billion. Antony and Russian Defense Minister Serdyukov said Russia would supply the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) as well as 45 transport aircraft. India also will jointly manufacture the fighters under license for ten years.

NIGHTWATCH Comment: The future of the Indian Air Force appears to be linked primarily to Russian rather than US firms. This agreement thinly hides an Indian strategic judgment about the threats it faces from China and Pakistan, about the US as a supplier for coping with those threats compared to the Russians.

India is making long term preparations to be ready for a major war after ten years that will require fifth generation fighters because the most likely enemy – presumably China – also will have those air capabilities. The Russians are willing to sell India the aircraft and to license the technology. The US is not building significant numbers of fifth generation fighters and will not sell them even to Israel.

The Indians, Russians and Chinese do not share the US strategic outlook favoring small wars and counterinsurgency forces.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota: Since the mid-1990's, when the best minds associated with the U.S. Army's Strategic Studies Institute turned decisively away from the two-major theater war model, and we presented the 1+iii (One Plus Triple Eye) strategy, the US has been incoherent with respect to strategic policy, acquisition, and operations. Ideology is not a substitute for intelligence, and technology is not a substitute for thinking.

2009 Perhaps We Should Have Shouted: A Twenty-Year Restrospective

2001 Threats, Strategy, and Force Structure: An Alternative Paradigm for National Security

2000 Presidential Leadership and National Security Policy Making

1998 JFQ The Asymmetric Threat: Listening to the Debate

1995 GIQ 13/2 Creating a Smart Nation: Strategy, Policy, Intelligence, and Information

1993 On Defense & Intelligence–The Grand Vision

and some graphics….

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH Extract: East Prepares for Big War”

2010/10/07

Journal: $100 Billion Up in Smoke

Commercial Intelligence, Definitions, Military

David Isenberg

Author, Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq

Posted: October 7, 2010 12:24 PM

A Hundred Billion Dollars Up in Smoke

It is a pity that last week's Senate Armed Services committee hearing on “Department of Defense Efficiencies Initiatives” did not get more coverage, as there were some startling assertions made.

Consider what Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) said. McCaskill, by the way, is more qualified than most members of Congress to talk on the subject of contracting. During her years as a prosecutor she conducted performance audits on state programs. She was named as one of the select senators to sit on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, formerly known as the Truman Committee. In fact, she was a co-sponsor of a major bill that established a modern day Truman Committee called the Wartime Contracting Commission, charged with investigating wasteful, fraudulent and abusive contracts in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In addition to working to establish a committee to examine wartime contracting, in 2009 she was named chairman of a new subcommittee that investigates contracting abuses throughout the federal government. The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight strives to root out government waste by focusing on contracts and the means by which the federal government provides accountability to those contracts.

So when she says the following we should pay attention:

I–I'm a conservative person when it comes to estimating numbers, because of my auditing background. I think it's very conservative to say that we've had $100 billion go up in smoke in Iraq, from bad contracting, that it's not as if there weren't competing people who could have been brought in; it just was easier not to. And so, I urge you to keep us posted on how you're integrating that kind of contracting into the contracting reforms.

Read rest of blog….

Phi Beta Iota: It occurs to us, reading this, that “Deep Corruption” is the equivalent of “Deep Secrecy.” Deep Corruption is corruption built into the system as legal or “within the bounds of reasonable dishonesty.” Individuals can claim to be honorable, and believe themselves to be honorable, but in “going along” they are in fact part of Deep Corruption.

2010/10/06

Journal: Army Shines with Bee Deaths But Case Still Open

01 Agriculture, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Military, Mobile

bees-1-articleLarge — Full Article Online

Possible Cause of Bee Die-Off Is Found

The New York Times

By KIRK JOHNSON

Published: October 6, 2010

DENVER — It has been one of the great murder mysteries of horticulture: what is killing off the honeybees?

Since 2006, 20 to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States alone have suffered “colony collapse.” Suspected culprits ranged from pesticides to genetically modified food.

Now, a unique partnership — of military scientists and entomologists — appears to have achieved a major breakthrough: identifying a new suspect, or two.

A fungus tag-teaming with a virus have apparently interacted to cause the problem, according to a paper by Army scientists in Maryland and bee experts in Montana in the online science journal PLoS One.

Phi Beta Iota: This is a very exciting story, and a real accomplishment by the US Army team applying Cold War bio-chemical skill sets to what may be the single greatest threat to US agriculture other than vanishing water. The Times did not, however, reference other causes of bee disorientation and dysfunction, such as cell phones and other electromagnetic pollutants.

Journal: Electromagnetics, Bees, & Agriculture

2010/10/032010/10/03

Journal: Inspirational Personal Story

11 Society, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process, Military, Officers Call

Full Story Online

Wounded in Iraq, double-amputee returns to war

ASHOQEH, Afghanistan – When a bomb exploded under Dan Luckett's Army Humvee in Iraq two years ago — blowing off one of his legs and part of his foot — the first thing he thought was: “That's it. You're done. No more Army for you.”

But two years later, the 27-year-old Norcross, Georgia, native is back on duty — a double-amputee fighting on the front lines of America's Afghan surge in one of the most dangerous parts of this volatile country.

Luckett's remarkable recovery can be attributed in part to dogged self-determination. But technological advances have been crucial: Artificial limbs today are so effective, some war-wounded like Luckett are not only able to do intensive sports like snow skiing, they can return to active duty as fully operational soldiers. The Pentagon says 41 American amputee veterans are now serving in combat zones worldwide.

Phi Beta Iota: This is inspirational, plain and simple. Our objective, within the Earth Intelligence Network (EIN), is to eventually build the Open Source Center, the Multinational Decision Support Centre, and the global multinational information sharing and sense-making grid, around war veterans who have lost a limb or two.

See Also:

2010/10/022010/10/02

Journal: US Strategy in Afghanistan Out of Balance

09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Military, Strategy

editorial — America's Flawed Afghanistan Strategy

Added August 09, 2010 Op-Ed 2 Pages

The concluding paragraph:

Ultimately, then, the basic rationale of American strategy in Afghanistan is questionable. Certainly America cannot ignore that country as it did before September 11, 2001, and should continue supporting the national government and other Afghans opposed to the Taliban. But in strategy, balance is the key—the expected security benefits of any action must justify the costs and risks. Today, America's Afghanistan strategy, with its flawed assumptions, is badly out of balance.

Tip of the Hat to Dale Mark Benedict at Facebook.

2010/09/302010/09/30

Journal: Israelis Executed US Citizen & Five Others

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Government, Military, Officers Call

UN Fact-Finding Mission: Israeli Killing Of US Citizen Was “Execution”

Originally published in Truth-out

By Gareth Porter

The report of the fact-finding mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla released last week shows conclusively, for the first time, that US citizen Furkan Dogan and five Turkish citizens were murdered execution-style by Israeli commandos.

2010/09/302010/09/30

Journal: Chuck Spinney on Deadly Games of Deceit

09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Intelligence (government), Methods & Process, Military, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney On the Record

The linked article by William Pfaff illustrates how the Pentagon set up Mr. Obama to do its bidding.

Are Obama’s Hands Tied?

28 September 2010

By William Pfaff

A splendid and courageous new book, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, by Andrew J. Bacevich of Boston University (and for many years previously, the U.S. Army), describes with lucidity the degree to which the power of the American presidency over war and peace has been weakened in our day, and, in important respects, superseded.

One might call this a silent coup against the presidency, but a coup implies intention: a responsible actor who sets the coup d’etat into action for a defined purpose. The argument Bacevich makes implies that a coup can be institutional or intellectual, and come from outside as well as inside government. Its characteristic is to create a situation in which a president is no longer free to act as he might wish, because all of the doors except one have been closed.

Read Rest of Original Article

Chuck Spinney's Original Comments Continued

The name of the bureaucratic game, of course, is to remove all realistic alternatives to the Pentagon's preferred decision before that decision is made. Pfaff's discussion is based on Andrew Bacevich's new book “Washington Rules.” I have not read Bacevich's book yet, and will not be able to until I return to the states in November, but I have read several reviews and from that perspective can say that the behaviour Pfaff describes comports well with behavior I witnessed in my years in the Pentagon.

The picture is more subtle and far more complicated than that portrayed by Pfaff, however.

Continue reading “Journal: Chuck Spinney on Deadly Games of Deceit”