20-May-14 World View -- Algeria closes Libya borders

[John]

20-May-14 World View -- Algeria closes its borders with Libya as fighting mounts in Tripoli



China brags about it's growing military power and influence

** 20-May-14 World View -- Algeria closes its borders with Libya as fighting mounts in Tripoli
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/ ... tm#e140520



Contents:
U.S. charges China's People's Liberation Army with cyber espionage
China brags about it's growing military power and influence
China's military can now destroy every U.S. satellite
Massive floods in Balkans uncovering landmines from 1990s war
Algeria closes its borders with Libya as fighting mounts in Tripoli
Thailand's army declares martial law


Keys:
Generational Dynamics, China, People's Liberation Army, PLA,
Department of Justice, Unit 61398, Shanghai, Mandiant,
Global Times, Bosnia, Serbia, Libya, Tripoli, Algeria,
Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Muammar Gaddafi,
Khalifa Haftar, Nouri Abu Sahmein, Benghazi,
Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood, Abdel al-Fattah al-Sisi,
Thailand, Bangkok, Thaksin Shinawatra, Yingluck Shinawatra

[Trevor]

One thing I am observing in events today is the kind of leaders that are taking power and gaining popularity. In places like China, India, Russia, the Philippines, and Japan, it's individuals who promise to get tough, to be more assertive with their neighbors. In the U.S., it's the very opposite. The people gaining power are the ones promising to ignore the rest of the world and focus on problems at home.

I've read the reports about China's growing military strength and almost every comment on it that I see ranges from: "These are nothing but lies to give the military a bigger budget" to "They're paranoid; we're far ahead of China and there's nothing to worry about." In the latter case, I recall we said something very similar about Japan.

When I looked up China's military capabilities and the forces in opposition to them around the Pacific, it doesn't fill me with a lot of optimism. If the war broke out today, they would rapidly be able to overrun Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, and the Senkakus, even considering the forces we've got over there. That's not including being able to shoot down most of our military satellites. They'd likely sustain heavy casualties, but they don't give a damn about that. With over 1.4 billion people and 110 more young males than young females, they can more than afford the cost.

And I can tell you, we're extremely complacent about the prospect of a Chinese attack. Our government is complacent, and just about everyone I've talked to completely dismiss the idea that China could ever be a military threat to us. At one time, I thought we could at least prepare to some extent so we wouldn't be completely caught off-guard, but now it looks like we're going to be just as surprised as we were on December 7, 1941.

[bluebird]

It appears the U.S. is complacent with China, with the media reporting about Russia this and Putin that. Maybe it's all a diversion...so that the media doesn't discuss anything what is going on with China?

[NoOneImportant]

As I read the segments of today's post I reflected on how truly fortunate we are to have access to this kind of reporting and analysis. Agree, or disagree there are few other sources that cover and distill the events contained herein, and as I might add, have been passed over by the MSM as either politically undesirable, or unworthy of their "divine" attention.

Trevor wrote:

When I looked up China's military capabilities and the forces in opposition to them around the Pacific, it doesn't fill me with a lot of optimism. If the war broke out today, they would rapidly be able to overrun Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, and the Senkakus, even considering the forces we've got over there. That's not including being able to shoot down most of our military satellites. They'd likely sustain heavy casualties, but they don't give a damn about that. With over 1.4 billion people and 110 more young males than young females, they can more than afford the cost.

All great observations. Once you get a handle on the absolute numbers situation, population speaking, the prospect of Chinese conflict in Asia leads to very few possible "good" outcomes.

The US military likes to think in terms of "force multipliers." That is, weapon systems that permit the military to be much more effective, and able to do more, or much more with fewer and fewer people. While the concept of "force multiplier" is not lost upon the Chinese, the Chinese still remember well the experience of the Korean War where the battle-hardened, sophisticated, and well armed American military was driven from North Korea when they were successfully overwhelmed by waves of poorly armed, and poorly equipped Chinese soldiers. Absent those force multiplier smart weapon, or just a large part of the force multiplier arsenal, and America is relegated to the position of a grossly undermanned combatant who must either confront military defeat, or escalate to nuclear conflict; with a salivating Russia watching from the wings. So just how do you eliminate such a significant technical weaponry advantage?

Much of America's conventional capability is embodied in, and dependent upon the constellation of GPS satellites. Absent GPS and the significant arsenal of American smart weapons - the list is impressive and long - America's expensive wonder weaponry becomes instantly transformed into: unguided "bottle rockets" for the tactical missiles, and "dumb gravity bombs" for the GPS guided ordnance (stand-off GPS guided missiles, and GPS guided gravity bombs). The only thing that can be assured of working are the laser guided weapons. Virtually all GPS navigational tools cease to function, with the exception of compasses, and sextants.

The strategic impact of the absence of GPS brings into serious question the extremely sensitive, and for obvious reasons classified question of the guidance of the strategic weapons in our nuclear arsenal. Originally all US strategic missiles used inertial guidance - essentially unjammable guidance. The inertial systems were upgraded to inertial with additional star fixing for accuracy, some testing was done using GPS guidance but was discarded as being considered unreliable. GPS provides a significant cost advantage, should those weapon systems have been "updated" to take advantage of GPS (cost), the crucial question then becomes: absent GPS (if present in the guidance systems of those strategic missiles) what guides those strategic missiles, and where will they deliver their payload - how accurate are they? In the current context of the senior officer purge at the DOD this year, and the last several years these are all valid questions bringing into question the viability of the current, and future American nuclear deterrent.

It is interesting to note that China's recent actions have conditioned the world to think in terms of a single point of conflict, or theater of action; it is the "kill a chicken to scare a monkey" approach that has gained much attention as a small, well contained war (if there is any such thing) to scare American forces from the Asian Pacific theater. The world presumes that approach is China's intent. It might be noted that on December 7, 1941 the Japanese attacked not just Pearl Harbor, but in coordinated action attacked the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, Hong Kong, Malaya culminating in the eventual fall of Singapore, and Pearl Harbor. With the exception of South Korea (perpetually armed), and possibly a nuclear India all of the prospective Chinese antagonists represent what might be construed as "soft" targets. If any impediment to Chinese aggression on this scale exists it is the absence of the logistical support, and the experience necessary to maintain any such significant Chinese military adventures. Were such an action to take place the measured approach currently being taken by the Russians, and Chinese would need to be abandoned, as it could no longer provide cover for their naked aggression; but at some point that approach will have to be abandoned anyway.

To reiterate, in the final analysis the questions of interest are: absent the lion's share of the US's "force multiplier" weaponry what position does the US find itself in? What is our exposure in a conventional conflict? What is our exposure should a conventional conflict escalate into a strategic nuclear exchange? Are there other alternatives?

[gerald]

Years ago I saw a video compilation of nuclear tests from around the world. One scene stands out most in my mind. It is of a Chinese nuclear test in the Gobi desert, it is just after detonation, the glowing mushroom cloud dominating the scene is rising, and Chinese military men with rifles are riding horses at full gallop toward the rising cloud.

[NoOneImportant]

"From dust you came, to dust you shall return."

[psCargile]

Let's not forget cyberwar capabilities. And I'm not talking just about guys in buildings hacking networks and causing havoc, but current capabilities that aren't much talked about but can be found in publications like Aviation Week and Space Technology, such as aircraft infecting an enemy's radar system and masking returns so the radar operator (or the system itself) sees nothing, or decoying the radar system with false returns, and the possible (if not tested) use of the active elecrtronic scanned array radar being used as a microwave weapon to burn out unprotected electronics and avionics of target aircraft or installations. Hacking into an aircraft in flight and taking over its systems is a weapon that doesn't require a missile, or a large number of aircraft. However, it does require the targeted aircraft to be recieving radio frequency or data transmissions for the malware to be downloaded. A radio blind aircraft would be hack proof, but it's mission capability would suffer. Which means you need aircraft that can operate autonomously without communications, and can target optically instead of relying on radar, or be self-aware enough to recognize a hack attempt. And that follows John's long standing idea that he first intelligent machines will be weapon systems.

They say the Civil War was the first modern war, I think we are in a transition period out of old modes of warfare and into a new mode. And we may already be in that war.

[NoOneImportant]

psCargile wrote:

Let's not forget cyberwar capabilities. And I'm not talking just about guys in buildings hacking networks and causing havoc, but current capabilities that aren't much talked about but can be found in publications like Aviation Week and Space Technology, such as aircraft infecting an enemy's radar system and masking returns so the radar operator (or the system itself) sees nothing, or decoying the radar system with false returns, and the possible (if not tested) use of the active elecrtronic scanned array radar being used as a microwave weapon to burn out unprotected electronics and avionics of target aircraft or installations.

To that end there is a long history of radar Electronic Warfare (EW) going back to the development of radar in WW-II: spoofing location; chaff; and numerous other techniques; it's one of the origins of the "Wild Wiesel" EW aircraft that has been fielded in various capabilities for decades. Using the electronically scannable phase array radars as an EW focused beam weapon is an interesting concept, although I never saw a proposal, and should in fact be able to be realized as the electronic sweep of a phased array radar is obtained purely by maintaining minute control of the phase relationship of thousands of relatively small individual radar elements that are used to cause the beam to "sweep" electronically without physical movement. Thus to focus those same thousands of elements on a single point (weaponize) requires "only" a controller capable of controlling the focus of all of those same elements allowing them to converge all of their collective energy on that desired single point - much like using a magnifying glass to focus the energy of the sun at a single point to start a fire on a sunny day.

psCargile wrote:

Hacking into an aircraft in flight and taking over its systems is a weapon that doesn't require a missile, or a large number of aircraft. However, it does require the targeted aircraft to be recieving radio frequency or data transmissions for the malware to be downloaded. A radio blind aircraft would be hack proof, but it's mission capability would suffer. Which means you need aircraft that can operate autonomously without communications, and can target optically instead of relying on radar, or be self-aware enough to recognize a hack attempt. And that follows John's long standing idea that he first intelligent machines will be weapon systems.

It is directly via cyberwar, that the Iranians were able to obtain control of the classified stealth drone RQ-170 in late 2011. The believed method of acquiring the drone appears to have been a spoof of the GPS signals by which the drone controls itself; when cut off from direct satellite, or land operators the drone appears to revert to a GPS pre-programmed sequence for return. Essentially you drown out the relatively weak direct control signals with a high power signal that makes the drone "deaf" to direct control; then the drone reverts to a preprogrammed set of commands that bring it back "home." From a cyberwar perspective, once the drone is "deaf" to direct commands, you overwhelm the actual GPS signals with spoofed GPS signals, and then by altering the several spoofed GPS signals in sync you can essentially "drive" the drone anyplace you desire (see the concerns regarding strategic missile guidance in the above post.)

While I ceased to call on the defense community some time ago, at that time a large part of the focus by the defense contracting community was on total theater communications, networking, and simulation. I think - but I am not sure - that a large part of the initial development money for theater networking came from the flight simulation effort. Military aircraft cost a fortune to fly, and require hours and hours of expensive maintenance time for every flight hour. Given that the cost of flight time is high the immediate question arises: how do you extensively train pilots without having them "fly-you-into-bankruptcy"? The answer that evolved out of the late 70s, and 80s was increasing sophisticated flight simulation. What began as a pilot "flying" a robotic camera over an actual miniature terrain map morphed into a flight simulated boogie, simulated terrain and a real pilot; that was upgraded to multiple boogies and a single pilot; then two pilots pitted against each other. That was upgraded to multiple pilots, then support aircraft were added. In short, lots of pilot training "flight hours" could be had with minimal real world wear-and-tear flight time, each generation of simulation becoming increasing sophisticated, leading to the concept of theater simulation, and ultimately control.

As you noted "deaf" aircraft are of limited value, and networked aircraft are vulnerable, depending upon how and what is networked. While the military is still putting big dollars into the new and improved GPS-II it appears to me that GPS's, as it currently exists, time is limited without some sophisticated form of signal verification. The ability to spoof GPS, in its current incarnation, to foil weapon targeting, once understood, can be had relatively cheaply.