CDR Salamander

Last Friday we looked at the seven points we discussed a year earlier the day the Russo-Ukrainian War broke out. As promised, today we look at seven points a year in everyone needs to hoist onboard.

Though I nibble on the edges a bit, these are not detailed, tactical “lessons learned.” Land combat details simply are not my bag. No, these a big pixel items. Mostly land centric like the war, but are directly transferrable to the maritime and other domains.

1. Short-War Snake Oil Salesmen are Worthy of Little but Scorn: a bit more muted than a year ago, even in winter of 2023, American short-war salesmen continue to push the WESTPAC 72-hour victory concept. In the run up to the start of the war in the winter of 2022, Russia’s leadership was sold a quick victory in Ukraine. As we’ve discussed in prior posts, their decision making process was a classic case of multi-layered optimism filtering. Political leaders like shortcuts. They like hearing things that confirm their priors - and like flies around a barnyard, yes-men (and women) surround such personalities. Smart leaders ensure they are not surrounded by yes-men. Unwise leaders create organizations where only the obsequious rise. 

Short wars are seductive and brief well. They are easy to wargame. Unless you are off Zanzibar or Grenada, they never really work out. They are products of the delusional, corrupt, or criminally incompetent - uniformed and civilian. 

If you desire a short war, you have to be positioned to fight a long war. You need to clearly plan, train, man, and equip your military to wage a long war against an adversary and win. The extra added benefit to this posture is that if done right, such a war may never come. Then in peace, you can safely argue with the peaceniks why we don’t have war, just a bloated military, as opposed to burying our children and waiting in lines with ration cards. If it does come, it ends quickly. Plan for a short war and you will probably get a long war with better than average odds you’ll lose it.

Since WWII, what are the larger wars and imperial policing actions we’ve been involved it? Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and the aggregated Iraq campaigns. That is, what, two losses (Vietnam & Afghanistan) and two draws (Korea and Iraq)? OK, if you squint you can say Iraq is a “little w” – but that is an arguable point.

2. You Must Have a Sovereign Military-Industrial Complex: forget efficient in peace, you need to be effective at war and there is no long ramp-up if you get surprised. You go to war with what you have. At peace, wise policy makers must fight a hard battle against the green eye-shade accountants who spent too much time in MBA school and not enough studying the profession of arms. If a nation cannot produce the weapons its forces need, it must rely on the grace and mercy of other nations. If you are the USA, there are no other nations who have the capacity – even if they have the will and political ability to support us – to supply more than a fraction of what we would need if we found ourselves at war west of Wake. Ukraine could look to the USA and some of her allies for significant help against a larger opponent. For the USA, we’re it.

3. Deep Magazines, Running Production Lines, and Distributed Risk: If you wonder if prior and present leadership were serious in their responsibility to prepare the nation to fight and win a war against a top-tier competitor, look at the depth of your magazines and robustness of your stockpiles. Have your planning staff examine what it would take to win against the conventional “Red Most Dangerous Course of Action.” Have them include how many months, weeks, or even days of supply there are for your most important weapons systems for that fight. Where are these magazines located? What percentage are located in each area? How long can you fight if you lose the inventory of 10%, 30%, or 60% of your magazines through enemy action?

For your highest demand weapons, is there an active production line open? Is it scalable for larger production numbers? Can you produce in a year more than what you expect to expend? 

The Ukrainian experience underlines a requirement I've yet to see get traction; if the USA expects a WESTPAC conflict in the next 10-years, there is one bold-faced requirement; under no circumstances should any production line of weapons systems be allowed to go cold until its replacement achieves initial operational capability. Once those lines – and its equipment and craftsmen – are lost, they are almost impossible to get back. 

4. Range Matters: If your opponent has land-based, mobile anti-ship weapons, and the ISR to support them, you will be kept at distance from shore until that threat is eliminated. If not, be prepared to lose your capital ships in number. 

Your sea-based weapons systems must have the range to enter the fight outside that threat distance plus the additional distance to get to target. If not, be prepared to lose your capital ships in number.

Your land-based weapons systems that are inside the range of the enemy – especially in small, isolated and difficult to defend locations, cannot be considered more than a D+0 capability. To expect to use them for any length of time under the enemy’s multiple vector extended fires is a waste of personnel and resources. From 1941’s Wake Island to 2022’s Snake Island, this is a known reality the new generation need to be reminded of. Only when you own the air and water around them are they of use.  EABO call your office.

5. Cutting Edge is a Mirage: Technology (tools) are always evolving, but they are not magic beans. For every Manhattan Project there is a ME-262. The USA and her allies would have defeated Imperial Japan without the nuclear bomb – slower and with a larger butcher’s bill, but Japan's defeat was inevitable. Nazi Germany would have lost WWII even with triple the number of ME-262 – though they would have lasted a little longer and the Red Army would have penetrated much further in to Germany as a result.

Yes, the video of 2023 quad-copters dropping grenades on hapless Russian conscripts in WWI-era trenches is exciting for those raised on video games, but they are a marginal supporting system, not supported. This war will be won or lost because of artillery, armor, infantry, logistics, and intelligence. War is as it was. There are no short cuts. There is no offset. There are no easy answers. Mass, power, will.

6. Diversity Matters: …in weapons systems, that is. At peace, “one stop shopping” briefs well - where one weapon system or system of systems will be your war winning platform – but that is only true if the salesman, and that is what these people are, can see the future and have perfect knowledge of the enemy, geography, terrain, weather and even psychology. They don’t; no one does.

To succeed in war, you need to make sure that you have the correct weapons mix that gives you flexibility. You don’t need only a multitool – though these are nice to have – you need a diverse box of tools at your side. 

Let's just look at one area of Western supplied equipment for example: HIMARS is not the answer to all your indirect fire problems. The 105mm towed artillery is much better in some areas. 155mm towed and self-propelled are the better tool for others. 120mm mortars and 40mm grenade launchers are the only thing that will work for another set. Could you try to fight with HIMARS alone? Sure. Will you win? No.

Messy, inefficient, logistically complicated as they are, an effective military force – land, air, and at sea – must have a diverse set of weapons systems. No one can predict what will work best across the spectrum of possible conflict. Diversity in weaponeering options is the only way to hedge against technology, industrial, and future risk – not to mention it gives local commanders better options on how to address challenges as they present themselves on the battlefield – challenges those in a briefing room thousands of nautical miles away cannot even comprehend. 

7. Your Military May be Lying to You: In every military there is the temptation to not send bad news up the chain. Bad leaders let it be known that they want a green circle or up arrow - and don't care how they get it. No yellow - and unquestionably no red. They don't want to hear that your equipment is broke because there are no spare parts. Say you are fine. They don't want to hear that your personnel are not properly trained because there wasn't time or money to do it. Do the job anyway. They don't want to hear that things were not in proper condition when issued. You were issued what you were supposed to be issued. They want to know you are ready to go. That is how you got the FITZGERALD and MCCAIN in the summer of  2017, and that is how you got the Russian invasion a year ago.

When war comes, it won't care that you didn't CASREP your broken ESM gear. It won't care that you haven't tested your air search radar properly in months because the previous CO didn't think it would work properly and didn't want to have to ask for support. It won't care that you have no functioning ASW weapons unless your PMC helo carries one. It does not care that half your watch team does not know how to properly run their equipment and none are cross trained. It does not care that you are headed in to a heavy air threat environment with most of your VLS tubes filled with TLAM because there was no place to change the load out when the mission changed.

In Afghanistan, I kept an eye on the exceptional work the Estonians did in RC(S), and before I moved back to the USA at the end of the decade I had a chance to visit Tallinn ... and that set the hook for me. Well, that and their tax policy.

In any event, the more I learned about Estonia and their history, the more they became one of my go-to countries. When I saw their MOD earlier this month published Russia's War in Ukraine: Myths and Lessons, I knew it had to be good.

Few have a better national understanding of Russia than the Estonians, and it shows;

Most of Russia’s attention is currently focused on its ruthless war in Ukraine, but Putin has not lost sight of the bigger objectives. In fact, in Russia’s view, success in Ukraine serves as a major stepping stone for reaching further goals.

Russia’s long-term strategic aims remain unchanged: to dissolve the rules-based world order. Putin has written and talked about this for the past 15 years, and Russia’s actions have brutally proved it. Re-establishing spheres of influence in Eastern Europe and recreating buffer zones are the key steps in turning the current international order around for Russia. This is the most important reason why Russian tanks rolled over the Ukrainian border on February 24, 2022, and why similar scenarios have unfolded

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Putin and his policies enjoy widespread support in Russia, which has only strengthened during the war in Ukraine. 

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Should Russia manage to gain any territory as a result of this war – either de iure at a negotiationtab le or de facto by freezing the situation in its current state, keeping the occupied areas under its authority for a longer time – it will have essentially moved closer to its goal. The Kremlin will have demonstrated that altering national borders with military force is feasible and the West and its rules-based world order can be weakened. 

Hence, as long as the territorial integrity of Ukraine has not been fully restored, it is the rules-based order of the West that is facing a strategic failure. It may have come at a higher cost than expected, but Russia is still on track towards its strategic aims. Historically, political concessions are only a fast track to another “special military operation”, possibly against Allied countries. 

If it works, why stop?

If you are new here, you can go back to 2014 to see that I have been pro-Ukraine for a long time. I don't hide that. You can go just as far back to see that I am not a Russia-hater either. 

I also have no illusions about what a precarious time we are in and the dangers that are very real with the conflict in Ukraine. I also suffer no false belief that you can choose your time or preferred history. We are right to help give the Ukrainians what they need to fight for their independence and territorial integrity. We would not have achieved ours without outside assistance either. 

Is Ukraine a perfect republic? No. It is a republic at war. Our republic was not perfect either as it fought to stand on its own.

Anyway, there is no positive gain for the USA or its European allies - or anyone really - if Russia continues to gain territory through military means. She is in the middle of demographic collapse in any event. The odds of her maintaining her borders over the next 50-yrs are small. There simply will not be enough "Russians" to defend Russia.

There will be more war over land - best to have it contained in a smaller mass of the rump Russian Empire with fewer ethnic groups clawing for their place.

Read the Estonian report in full if you have a chance. Well worth it.

Could it all go south and get worse? Sure can.

Will it all go south and get worse if the West were to leave Ukraine to its fate? 

Unquestionably. 

Regardless of what cards come out of the deck, it is better for Ukrainians to fight for Ukrainian independence east of the Dnieper, than for an American-Polish force to try to hold the line at the Vistula long enough for a German-British-Franco led force to set a second line at the Oder.

Averting your eyes from what Russia decided to do west of the Azov since 2014 will not make it go away - however inconvenient it is to anyone's pet theory.

Keep in mind, that is from the guy who over a dozen years ago wanted almost everyone to come home from Europe.

I still want that - but facts on the ground changed. We will have to wait awhile longer.

In the middle of Walter Russell Mead's article over at WJS, "The World Rejects the Wilsonian Order" there was an interesting insight for what the Russo-Ukrainian War revealed about the internal natsec divisions within the Democrat Party.

While one could quibble around the edges, this seems sound;

Within the Biden administration, the struggle is among three groups: liberal internationalists, who want America and the West to do what it takes to ensure that Russia loses the war; pragmatists who want to check Russia but fear Russian escalation and believe that the war will inevitably end in a compromise peace that falls short of Wilsonian hopes; and Asia-firsters who worry that U.S. support for Ukraine reduces America’s ability to face the more consequential and long-term threat from China. President Biden has tried to stay in the middle, giving Ukraine more support than the pragmatists and Asia hands prefer, but dribbling it out more slowly than the Wilsonians would like.

Liberal internationalists, pragmatists, and Asia-firsters.  That seems roughly correct, but for those who have a memory more than a few years old, there is one glaring omission; the anti-war left.

Of course, that part of the democrat coalition usually fades in to shadow whenever the party is in power. I've come to think a portion of them experienced a rather strange morphology during the now discredited Russia-Trump collusion hoax that had them all of a sudden become Russia hawks. They had yet to regress to the mean when the Russo-Ukrainian War started and it kind of stuck.

Sure, there are still some musty left-over leftists who still apologize for Russia like they used to apologize for the Soviet Union - but most have turned in to something else - perhaps just shifting down the bench to the "liberal internationalists" side. 

Of course, the (R) have their own tribes as well, but WRM does not cover them here. Funny thing about that, the teams are roughly the same, except some former Russia/Soviet hawks on the right now almost seem like their Cold War mirror images when it comes to giving the Russians way too many benefits of the doubt.

So, a new "bi-partisan national consensus" in the making? No, don't think so. Just bi-partisan national chaos as the Russo-Ukrainian War moves in to its second year - and like we did on Sunday - the rest of us try to find ways to describe what we see.

The Polish-born and much feared head of the Cheka (Bolshevik secret police), Feliks Dzierzinsky, was made head of a Polish Revolutionary Committee, which would follow the Red Army and form the new government. Lenin was absolutely confident of success. Initially all went well, and within six weeks the Red Army was at the gates of Warsaw. But as the Polish Communists had warned, all classes did indeed unite, and there was no rising in the city. Also the Polish commander, Józef Piłsudski, drew up a bold, if not foolhardy, plan of counterattack. The Polish army would stand on the defensive in front of the city, and when the Red Army was fully committed to the battle, Poland’s best units would launch a flanking attack from the south, cut the Bolshevik lines of communication, and encircle much of the Red Army. Some Polish generals were aghast at the risks involved, but in their desperation there seemed no alternative.

The Red Army fought its way to the village of Izabelin, only 8 miles (13 km) from the city, but the Polish attack succeeded beyond wildest expectations. Driving through a gap in Bolshevik lines, the Poles advanced rapidly against little opposition. In the Red Army, all was chaos; commanders lost control of their units, with some divisions continuing their advance on Warsaw, others fleeing. Three armies disintegrated, and thousands fled into East Prussia, where they were interned. In an encounter that saw Polish lancers charging and overwhelming Bolshevik cavalrymen, the First Cavalry Army, trapped in the "Zemość Ring," was all but annihilated.

The Fourth Army meekly surrendered after being encircled. Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky desperately tried to pull his troops back to a defendable line, but the situation was beyond redemption. A few more engagements followed, but the war was effectively won. Lenin was forced to agree to peace terms that surrendered a large tract of territory whose population was in no way Polish—the Red Army returned to reclaim it in 1939.

Losses: Soviet, possibly some 15,000–25,000 killed, 65,000 captured, and some 35,000 interned in Germany; Polish, up to 5,000 dead, 22,000 wounded, and 10,000 missing.

Peace is the ultimate goal and is a wonderful thing – but what makes it so special is that peace is not the natural state of things for our species. If you are lucky, you might get a couple of decades of peace before the next conflict of significance. More than that is a blessing few get to enjoy.

That is the human benefit of peace, but peace also has a heavy price. As eventually wars come, nations have to be ready for them. From the time the first band of men walked in to your valley, you heard the horses of the steppe archers in the distance, or the tank rumbled through your local gas station – war comes and demands you join it immediately. 

You go to war with the people, equipment, and concepts built when you were at peace. Good, smart nations make sure that their militaries do their best to ensure they know how the tools of war have advanced since the hard lessons of the last war, and the ideas and techniques that take advantage of those changes adjust with them. You hope smart people with the ability to effect change have a good, if not imperfect, understanding of what the next war will require. 

The longer the time of peace, the greater the error will be between what you have/think and what you will need/demand.

The wisest thing to do is to step away from anyone in the natsec arena who – like some late-night televangelist – tells you they have THE vision of the future or has the ONE thing that you will need to succeed.

No, the wise planner and strategist is one who is first humble and has that humility grounded in history. 

Why humility? Simple. The humble mind is a flexible mind, a mind that can change when facts present themselves. The humble mind is a harder working mind as well. Knowing it might be wrong, it will try harder to get it right and will continually look for indications that it was wrong and will correct accordingly.

These are some of the threads that tied together to construct the great fear I have for our Navy: we have been a peace for too long. The ground and to a lesser extent the air component have been tested firsthand in the last couple of decades, though at the low end of the conflict spectrum. Our naval forces at sea simply have not. We have placed large bets on theory and hope. From our airwing to our VLS cells, we have limited our flexibility to change simply by limiting our number of systems/platforms.

I think we have been getting better since the Age of Transformationalism at the turn of the century, but we still lack enough humility. That is clearly demonstrated in the haughty attitude of many towards the quality of the People’s Republic of China’s naval growth and the turning of a blind eye to the scale of their growth in units and industrial capacity.

Recall earlier that I mentioned that humility is grounded in an understanding of history? History is just a written record of experience. Mistakes should be expected, and in efforts to constantly modernize, new structures can come up that on paper and at peace – or in the face of a different level of war – looked right, but in the practice of war their shortcomings become manifest.

Can your military adjust? Can it do so in a timely manner?

This whole thread came top of mind today in this brief graph from the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence.

This is firmly in the Rumsfeldian “Known-Unknown” realm in that we really don’t know what we have wrong, or slightly wrong.

Just one datapoint of many coming out of the Russo-Ukrainian War. The future-perfect turned out not to be, and the neglected “old-think” of artillery, air-defense, logistics, shore-based anti-ship missiles, and armor were, in hindsight, unfairly shunted to the side for not being sexy enough.

As we try to get our Navy ready for the next war, what is important is that we don’t convince ourselves that we fully understand what future war will be. That uncertainty should shape our force such that it distributes future-risk such that we have a variety of flexible tools out there, not single points of failure. 

Single points of failure are a secondary indication of hubris, as we all know what the gods like to do with that.

Sea lanes/SLOC, resource access, resource protection, environmental protection and monitoring, and just good old sound military planning kept the Arctic on everyone’s mind. The fact that especially in the USA there was no small bit of “out of sight out of mind” neglect, specifically with our icebreaking capabilities, brought as much concern. The non-Arctic nation of China deciding she wanted to be a player only made it even more important that policy makers wake up.

When you look at the playing board in the Arctic, the nations who have square-footage in the game are the USA, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Canada, and Russia. You can even throw in the island nation of the United Kingdom as she is the dominate North Atlantic power outside the USA and any problem north of her can get existential real fast.

Note the outlier in this list? Yes, Russia.

As we find ourselves in the fall of 2022, we have an opportunity here that may not come again for a long time. It is right in front of us. It won’t take much effort; we just need to step up and take advantage of it.

Yes, I said “advantage.” The NATO nations of USA/GBR/ICL/DNK/NOR/CAN have to tap into their opportunistic brain stem and make up for lost time. Russia is on her back foot in Ukraine. For the foreseeable future, her efforts, money and resources that may have been headed to the Arctic will be diverted towards the Black Sea instead.

We dropped the ball so far this century in the Arctic – now is the time, with just a little effort – to make up for that oversight; 

As Russia's invasion of Ukraine ends a post-Cold War era of low tension and cooperation, such events highlight how hard it is for states to monitor their own waters – particularly in the Arctic, an ocean one and a half times the size of the United States, where satellites are crucial to allow real-time detection and monitoring of activity.

Over recent years, NATO allies and Russia have scaled up military exercises in the region; Chinese and Russian warships conducted a joint exercise in the Bering Sea in September. Norway raised its military alert level in October.

But the West trails Russia in military presence.

Since 2005, Russia has reopened tens of Arctic Soviet-era military bases, modernised its navy, and developed new hypersonic missiles designed to evade U.S. sensors and defences.

Four Arctic experts say it would take the West at least 10 years to catch up with Russia's military in the region, if it chose to do so.

"The Arctic is currently a dark area on the map," said Ketil Olsen, formerly Norway's military representative in NATO and the European Union, who heads Andoeya Space, a Norwegian state-controlled company that tests new military and surveillance technologies and launches research rockets.

"It's so vast and with few civilian surveillance resources."

The chief of the U.S. Northern Command, General Glen VanHerck, told a Senate hearing in March the United States needed better Arctic "domain awareness" to detect and address Russian and Chinese capabilities to launch advanced missiles and destroy communications infrastructure. In a Pentagon strategy document released in October, the United States committed to improving early warning and surveillance systems in the Arctic, but the pace of the planned modernisation is unclear.

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The waters between Greenland, Iceland and the UK - known as the GIUK Gap - are the only way Russia's northern-based ships can reach the Atlantic. The shortest path by air to North America for Russian missiles or bombers would be over the North Pole.

For the NATO allies, the GIUK Gap is crucial for links across the North Atlantic. There are oil and gas fields too: Norway is now Europe's largest gas supplier.

If Sweden and Finland join the Alliance, seven out of eight Arctic countries will be members.

Also at risk today are communications cables and satellite systems including the global positioning system (GPS) linking both civilian and military users, Andrew Lewis, former commander of NATO's Joint Task Force in Norfolk, Virginia, told Reuters.

In July, President Vladimir Putin launched a new naval strategy pledging to protect Arctic waters "by all means."

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More answers may come in a stand-alone Arctic strategy document the Pentagon is expected to publish next March, a U.S. military official said, in what would be the first update since 2019. It would come as the Pentagon tries to better define what capabilities are needed for American warfighters at dangerously low temperatures.

"When it's dark all the time in the winter and it's 50- to 60-below-zero or even more, it is just brutal," the official told Reuters.

We need to act in our individual and collective interest. There is a rare opportunity here for our policy makers. Yes, they are busy, but they need to find the spare capacity to invest some effort that will accrue huge benefits. As mentioned in the article, with Sweden and Finland joining NATO, there will be even more reasons to get our act together in the high north.

We don't need to wait for a March 2023 document. Our NATO allies especially don't. No time is better than the present. 

Now. 

"The German Problem" when it comes to their reliance on Russia over the last few decades for their energy needs - a huge strategic error of the first order - has been a regular topic since the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War.

In fits and starts, each passing month makes it harder for the Germans to not change in at least the medium term and hopefully will have a lasting effect on the German view of Russia for at least a few generations. 

I am a believer that eventually things will regress to the mean, and for centuries Russia has not been anything but ... Russia - so humility in the face of history may help the Germans in this regard. How many times must the Germans be reminded that their fantasies in the East are just that; fantasies. This has been true since the The Ottonian Dynasty over a thousand years ago ... we have a dataset.

However, there remains a growing problem with Germany's desire to find some way to make some money off the main global threat to the West, the People's Republic of China.

One of Europe's largest ports, Hamburg has excelled at trade since the Middle Ages. Back then, the city clubbed together with other ports along and beyond the Baltic coast to form the Hanseatic League, which dominated commerce for centuries.

Now the city's port is joining forces with a Chinese shipping giant. The state-owned China Ocean Shipping Co., known as COSCO, is about to buy a stake in a container terminal.

China has been Germany's largest trading partner for much of the past decade. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz pushed the COSCO deal through his cabinet last week, despite opposition from six key ministers. 

It does not matter that a plurality of the German political elite don't want to accept it - but Germany must be a strong advocate for strength and unity in the West. Her government cannot just act like a national Chamber of Commerce, she must value Western ideals and security needs more than her balance sheet.

Why invest so much in making nice with Moscow and Beijing while at the same time seeming to make extra efforts to slow-roll investment in NATO defense and irritate friends in London, Paris, Warsaw, and DC?

Not all of the German elite institutions and leaders feel that way.  I worked with many Germans in and out of uniform who were frustrated they could not do what they need to do as a 21st Century leading medium power - but they are not the dominate voice, at least not yet.

Some are coming out of the shadows and placing markers that are there for people to see. It gives hope. 

This time their security services seem to be signaling to Germany's frustrated friends that, regardless of what the politicians do or do not do - that they are not to blame and they know what time it is.

That is the optimist's take...and I try to be an optimist when it comes to the Germans. So much potential...but so frustrating. That is my bias, so keep that in mind. I'm self-aware, but ... oh, well.

As I always seem to want more from the Germans in the national security arena than the Germans who hold the levers to power want to provide, perhaps I am trying too hard to find an intellectual structure a 21st Century German leadership could build on to make what Germany should be - a full and responsible alliance partner and cornerstone to the foundation of Western society. The stronger the collective West and her auxiliaries are, they can help guide the larger international order in a positive and constructive direction.

It is a direction Germans - and all Westerners - should be proud of promoting. There are no better alternatives out there - even for those non-Western nations who don't want it. 

We in the West may disagree with 20% of what that order should be, but 80% we should be aligned with. We need to leverage that. We can't do it without a responsible Germany.

A large part of that is blunting and pushing back on the regressive vision from Moscow and Beijing.

Germany is not ready right now to be that cornerstone I would like her to be, but I know there is a core waiting for the time to be ripe. At such I enjoyed this article coming from ... well ... the Bundestag's press office;

The annual meeting with the presidents of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) and the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) took place on Monday for the sixth time.

BND President Bruno Kahl called the war of aggression against Ukraine a "watershed," which, however, "didn't really" come as a surprise. What happened was what his agency had warned about for years, that Russian President Vladimir Putin remains willing to use force to achieve his goals and that those goals have not changed. "Unfortunately" it has been common in public discourse over the past few decades to ignore threats and dismiss warnings from the security authorities as scaremongering. The BND's reporting on Putin's tendency to violence was always "rather unreserved", however: "The tendency of politicians and the public to trust in a positive turn is simply there."

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For the time being, the Kremlin is not interested in a negotiated solution. The war will therefore certainly continue next year. Kahl acknowledged that if conventional warfare continued to fail, Putin might be tempted to use “sub-strategic” nuclear weapons to force Ukraine to the negotiating table and impose a dictated peace. However, there is currently no evidence of this: "We do not see any preparations for the use of strategic or sub-strategic weapons at the moment. There is no need to panic.”

In the long run, a significant threat is to be feared from an “autocratic China that is rising to become a global power,” Kahl warned. Business, society and politics in Germany have also been too trusting in this respect and have become “painfully dependent” on a power that “suddenly no longer seems well-disposed”. Together with the BfV, the BND has been trying for five years to raise awareness of the risks posed by China in business and science. A first success in 2019 was a skeptical statement by the Federation of German Industries (BDI) on economic ties with the Far Eastern superpower. But there is "a lot of trust and naivety in the scientific field" that is not appropriate.

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Like the BND President, Haldenwang also made it clear that in the long run the far greater threat to German security and German interests would come from China: "Russia is the storm, China is climate change." 

Read it all. Yes, you will have to sift through some boilerplate German bureaucratic belly button picking ... but that is just pro-forma. I like what I pulled above - there is some sound thinking here that hopefully will grow in influence.

Usually things flow from here to twitter, but now and then I pop something off that - knowing that not everyone who reads CDRSalamander is on twitter - deserves to flow the other way.

As a Navy guy who spent almost half a decade doing an Army guy's job as an operational planner, a few ideas popped in to my head this AM about "what next" in Ukraine.

Generally I'm not a fan of winter offensives, but when they work - they work. I am even more not a fan of wasting momentum when your larger enemy is on the back foot.

So, three Courses of Action for you to consider ... with absolutely no Commander's Intent or Higher Direction and Guidance ... but when has that ever stopped a core Joint Operational Planning Group's Core Planning Team from sketching some ideas out?

We all need plans to deviate from:

The big navalist news over the weekend was unquestionably what appears to be a successful attack on the Russian Navy at Sevastopol by remotely piloted surface craft by the Ukrainians.

Some reports call them "drones" or other such descriptors, but really they appear to be an upscaled militarized remotely piloted surface vessel on a one way trip. There is a lot of expected hyperbole about the attack, and that is what I wanted to address today. I am concerned that the overhype by the ignorant, click hunting, or agenda driven people in the public space will cause us to miss the most important lesson here.

This attack was not historically significant in a larger sense, no more than the attack on the Moskva was. This is not a glimpse into the future of naval warfare. This was simply a continuation of sound naval tactics with a pedigree directly tracible thousands of years in to the past. Not to understand this is to dangerously not understand what happened.

First of all, let's take a moment to state the obvious: the Russians should have been ready. They had about as clear of a warning as possible in September.

A MYSTERIOUS vessel widely believed to be a Ukrainian suicide drone has washed up near to a Russian naval base.

The vessel was found in Omega Bay, by the port of Sevastopol, which is home to Vladimir Putin's Black Sea fleet.

We can safely assume - as the videos below seem to demonstrate - that the ones used in the attack are of the same design.

We will loop back to this point later, but just behold the simplicity of it via the article from The Sun linked above;

This is all COTS technology riding on either a canoe or ocean going kayak. If you have someone with an understanding of explosives and communications (the only part requiring military expertise +/-) and then any garden variety electrician, small engine pro, and fiberglass guy ... you can run a production line of these on a shoestring budget at scale.

They look fragile, but ... well ... I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's finish setting the table.

In a classic, "We live in magical times.." moment, take some time if you have not already to look at the released video we have of the attack as published by The Guardian;

Now that we're through with the fun stuff, let's get to the serious lessons.

First - and this is the most important - this is no transformational breakthrough in warfare at sea. From the start of the written record of naval warfare, attacking another nation's navy - especially a stronger navy - in port with remotely piloted or unmanned surface vehicles has been "a thing."

Before the advent of explosives, they were simple "fire ships" like these Song Dynasty examples;

This is another demonstration that the military culture of Russia is broken. The human element in the Sevastopol was manifested in the complete lack of preparation for the attack in spite of the warnings so clearly provided in September.

As old as "fire ships" are to naval warfare are the defenses to them. They are as simple as the weapons needed to defend against them. Barriers at the water level and crew served weapons - preferable optically sighted - as a backup.

Part of the video above you can see both surface ship and helo gunfire taking out the threat from one boat, but other boats were able to approach surface ships underway and penetrate deep in to port. 

Why? 

What is one of the things we have repeatedly discussed here for the last 18-years? When war comes you never have enough of what? That's right, anti-aircraft defenses and medium caliber guns including crew served weapons. 

We build our ships around the most high-technology threats and equally exquisite defenses against them, but completely overlook the low-tech weapons that are just as deadly. We ignore mine warfare, and we also ignore threats as simple as a converted kayak. It isn't sexy and the contracts awarded are small ... but the threats are real.

There isn't a sexy or expensive defense against them - though you can try to sell one - and the best defense you have are Sailors on watch - with good surveillance equipment to support them - and weapons they can use at scale and volume.

Yes, there is a cost to have increased manning levels, additional weapons in the armory and drills/training to maintain readiness ... but if that is the cost to be ready for war ... then do it.

Look at the early lessons from WWII to the Falkland Islands War etc; at peace we get lazy. When war arrives, we find ourselves lining the rails with anything that can throw lead.

The Russians do not appear to have taken the most obvious and immediate steps to address this cheap, low-tech threat. They did not have significant barriers in place at the entrance to their harbors or around their ships' berths. They did not have Sailors on watch with weapons at the ready.

They were complacent. They were arrogant. They assumed too much.

Now is the time to loop back to a few points made at he top. This is where everyone needs to focus their attention.

1. For thousands of years, weaker naval forces have significantly damaged superior naval forces by using their disadvantage to advantage. When large and heavily armed warships are designed, trained, and manned for war against their peers on the high seas, how do you best attack them? Inshore with simple; small, lightly armed civilian derived boats roughly designed, simply trained, and unmanned. 

Be it a raft filled with burning straw and tar, or a butched-up sea-kayak filled with RC boat tech, commercial satellite data, Sea-Doo propulsion, duct taped explosives and contact detonators. If the larger naval force in a mix of arrogance and bureaucratic sloth, or just professional malpractice, refuses to see the full-spectrum vulnerability - even when I&W tells you it is there - then the motivated, flexible, and capable smaller power will reach in to history's toolbag to pick out the best bang for the buck.

2. You do not have to be a state power to create the modern "fire ship." You do not have to access controlled technology. You don't need even a lot of money. You just need imagination and the bare minimum of technical capability.

3. Most readers here are familiar with San Diego, Norfolk, Mayport and our other major naval bases. Can you wargame the rest? Yes, we have some nice barriers you can even see from GoogleEarth, but what about getting from the pier to the open sea in 2022? Where could the enemy hide? How much warning do you have? How many crew served weapons do you have ready ... and what is your ROE in such crowded ports? I don't know about you, but I like Mayport even more now.

Good on the Ukrainians for using this time proven tactic. It was clear the Russians were not ready for it - a common characteristic of the Russian military - so the Ukrainians took advantage of the Russians' sloth.

As for the US military, I'm really not interested in the question of how we could use such tactics, but as we are the big Navy, I want to know more what we do to protect ourselves from this tactic.

We can start with what is the most obvious: more crew served weapons. 

More smaller boats to escort our ships to sea (USCG or USN, don't care).

If I were a state or non-state actor watching this scene - I'd already have plans in place and just wait for the moment to be ripe. 

I hope we are ready for same.

Ever wonder how fast things can come at you in combat ... and how fast you have to react to survive? 

When there, take time to visit their museums. I especially recommend Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom in Tallinn, Estonia.

These are small nations from Estonia's 1.3 million, Latvia's 1.8 million, to Lithuania's 2.8 million. These little ethnostates each have a unique language, culture, and have survived as a people since pre-history. They are survivors who have not had many years to be masters of their own fate.

The fall of the Soviet Union gave them their latest chance, and they've made a good run of it. They, more than most, know Russia - indeed, all three have significant Russian minorities in their nations who decided to throw their lot in with their Baltic neighbors after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Though they are small, when they speak about Russia, larger nations should listen. Their larger neighbor, Poland with 38 million souls, also has a long and brutal history with the Russians. All four nations will be the first to feel the results of making the wrong decisions towards their big neighbor to the east. A no kidding existential threat. They are also NATO allies, so their threat is in a very real way our threat.

They cannot afford vanity-filled feel-good theories.

Since February, the Baltics and Poland have repeatedly called for the provision of more and faster military assistance, including more powerful offensive weapons, only to be rebuffed by the United States and Western European allies who wanted to make clear that they were not in a direct conflict with Russia.

Slowly, that’s started to change, after Putin proved his wary neighbors right — repeatedly.

“Estonia knows the face of Russian occupation firsthand,” Kallas added. “We know that peace under occupation doesn’t mean the end of atrocities but more of them.”

Baltic leaders have long argued that Western sanctions adopted in 2014 after Putin illegally annexed Crimea showed the West’s lack of resolve in confronting the Russian president over his land grab. European leaders seemed to think the Baltics were so traumatized by Soviet occupation that they could not be objective.

“Jokingly, you know, we call this ‘West-splaining,’” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said. The West’s message, he said, was that “after 50 years of occupation, it’s understandable that you would have trust issues with a country that occupied you.”

“For us in the Baltics, it all boils down to this notion of appeasement: that basically we can appease Russia,” Landsbergis continued. “For us, it was always very clear, black and white. If a country is eager to cross another country’s border, they’re an aggressor and they will do that again, if they’re not stopped. And they have not been stopped.”

For free people to remain free - for liberal democratic systems to remain so - there must be military strength. Unfree and autocratic nations respect nothing more than power. You cannot maintain and built peace in their presence without it.

On a broader context specifically towards China, Rep. Mike Gallagher's (R-WI) speech this AM at Heritage drives this point home - hard power matters; overt hard power.

It may be cliché but it is true; the more you prepare for war, the less likely it will occur - but if it does - then you have the capability to win, vice being rolled over and your nation's future subject to the whims of another.

The last few weeks have been filled with discussions about possible Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons – probably in a demonstration first – because of their collapsing conventional war in Ukraine.

There are lots of different scenarios/vignettes you can go through and could spend all day or more on each one, but I’d like to pull one out for you today that brings together a few threads we’ve seen the last nine months.

Here are the threads we are going to pull in to the primary subject of this wargame: the Russian Federation decides to demonstrate their willingness to use tactical nuclear weapons.

Threads common to this war so far: 

• Russian “gun decking” of material readiness.
• Russian culture of not delivering bad news and hoping for the best.
• Ineffectiveness and lack of trust in Russian Air Force manned aircraft capabilities.
• Reliance on rocket forces.
• Russian leadership has no option but victory.

Facts:

• Due to the test ban treaty, the Russians have not been able to test their nuclear warheads in decades. 
• The two parts of the nuclear triad most visible to Western eyes – submarines and manned aircraft – have all demonstrated spotty levels of performance and maintenance in the post-Soviet era. One can assume the missile forces have comparable, if not worse, records.
• Open source reporting reflects that even the most basic of Russian weapons, like HE artillery rounds, have a higher than acceptable failure rate.

Assumptions:

• Russians decide for an air-burst demonstration shot vice a tactical use on the front lines. 
• The Russian’s relatively benign high altitude airburst will not mirror Western ideas of a demonstration shot over water, but will instead drive the point home by doing it over Ukraine between Kyiv and the Donbass.
• The 448th Rocket Brigade of the 20th Guards Combined Army based out of Kursk was the last Russian Army unit to be equipped with the SS-21 (Tochka-U) and in 2019 converted to the SS-26 (Iskander-M). However, we know that SS-21 have been used by the Russians in Ukraine, so we can assume that the last unit to convert would be the first to bring them back.
• The SS-26 transition has been a slow one with substantial SS-21s remaining with the brigade that enabled them to quickly use the SS-21 from the start of the war.
• We can assume that the SS-26 coming in to use are mostly conventional to save money and trouble. They need to keep the nuclear capability on the books, so they will have their special weapons crews remain in Kursk with their few remaining nuclear armed SS-21. 

That sets the table, and here is what I would like wargamed…and what I think will be different.

I’m not interested in flash-bangs etc … no … I want something much more difficult. I want something that will stress the diplomatic and political structures of the USA, EU, and NATO.

Before Turn-1, here is what happens (I attempted to be exceptionally abbreviated but I can’t help myself).

• President Putin orders a demonstration shot, but specifically states that he wants it overhead Ukraine as outlined above. 
• Putin does not trust the ability of cruise missiles or manned aircraft to successfully deliver a weapon where and how he wants it, and absolutely no strategic forces are to be used (so the Russian Navy good idea fairies can stow their wings).
• Colonel Dmitry Nikolayevich Martynov, Commander of the 448th is forward deployed in theater with his forces and all of a sudden has his Deputy Commander Lieutenant Colonel Igor Ivanovich Karamyshev showing up in his command vehicle telling him that he is ordered by Moscow to get on the Mi-17 he arrived in and return to Kursk.
• Upon arrival, Martynov is walked in to a briefing led by Shoigu himself and is given his orders; he has 72-hrs.
• Martynov leaves and contemplates that, yes, they have three nuclear certified crews in Kursk, but they are not his best. His best crews are forward deployed. These are the sick, old, or otherwise best left home crews. Yes, they can launch, but … he's keeping the details to himself.
• Also, the Transport Erector Launchers (TEL) are not his best, his best are forward deployed.
• His nuclear certified ordnance crews … well, they are specialists. They never deploy and when he last walked through the nuclear magazine, all seemed in order. All paperwork is in order. As long as the TEL’s can drive 5-km, the 448th should be good to go.
• D-3: Shoigu insists that they have a “Primary,” “Back-up,” and “Ready Spare” for the strike (as is expected), which is great as they only have three nuclear warheads good to go.
• D-2: some low-level USA Joint Staff J2 types received notice of Shoigu’s movement to Kursk and even saw in another report Martynov’s unusual return to Kursk – but this is not of great concern - just another Colonel. Shoigu’s movements are worth briefing – but not Martynov.
• D-1: a separate NATO CJ2 shop notices some unusual, but not unheard of, movements around the 448th’s magazines in Kursk, but in a sea of data, is barely acknowledged. In DC and Brussels, a series of high-level short notice briefings are taking place that has the staff curious, but that is not unusual so far this year. However, some pasty looking officers are going in to brief no one really sees around often. Huh.
• D+0 (early): TELs are set to move, but TEL-2’s transmission shit-the-bed halfway out the shelter, so the “Ready Spare” of TEL-3 is now the “Backup.”
• D+0 (mid-day): Final launch orders received. "Dial-a-Yield" was set earlier to .5-kilotons with airburst at 10km. “We’re here to make a point, not destroy resources we want later.” The Colonel mumbles to himself as he attempts to remain calm as he slowly realized what he is about to do. Target 320-km away; the Voloshanska Dacha Ornithological Reserve in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.  
• TEL-1 launch successful. However, word is received 10 very sober minutes later, no detonation. Orders are clear; TEL-3 begins checklist and 2-minutes later TEL-2 has another successful launch.
• The crews remain in place. Martynov steps out of his command vehicle, gets in a staff car and drives over to TEL-1. He’s a hands-on leader and wants to thank them for a job well done, duty, etc. He then gets back in the staff car to visit TEL-3 when he gets a call on the radio from Major Aleksey Aleksandrovich Kondratev who he left in charge of the command vehicle. "Return immediately."
• As he pulls up, he see’s a GRU truck full of security pulling in, “дерьмо.”

Four and a half a kilometers west of the woods of Volvoshanka at the bus stop in the village of Orlivs’ke, a farmer’s sister hears the high-pitched screech of what is to her, ten months in to the war clearly a missile. 

At the end of the street she sees something hit the ground. She walks to the southeast 50-meters towards the crossroad at the edge of her brother’s field and there it is in her neighbor’s yard.

A small crowd gathers to look at it and about 10 minutes later a few guys from the Territorial Army arrive to shoosh everyone away. Once they finish that, everyone looks to the southeast again over the field where one of the kids is pointing. Something else just fell at what looks like 500 meters away the field. Another dud. 

Everyone looks at each other. What a lucky little village. The war hasn’t reached them yet, and when for some reason it did, nothing blew up.

So, there is a bit more story than I wanted to do, but it was fun – for me at least.

Here is where the wargame starts. No one knows it but the Russians right now, but at D+0 the Russians just tried to do an airburst over Ukraine between Kyiv and the Donbass – they actually tried twice – but neither missile detonated.

We have a few things to play out:

Red (Russia): What are your possible COAs from here?

Blue (USA/NATO): What will it take for you to know exactly what happened here without inside sources? (judge will determine how many turns Red gets before Blue/Green/White know)

Green (UKR): How long will it take for Ukrainian EOD to get there and realize that is no normal warhead on that SS-21?

White (International Organizations/neutral nations/Pope/etc): Possible reactions and timelines.

…and no – in what I consider the infinitesimally small chance the Russians would ever use tactical nuclear weapons in UKR (non-zero, but close to it) – I don’t think this scenario is outside a half-standard deviation either side from the centerline.

Also, I may have some technical details incorrect here. If you feel the need to be pedantic, roll in the comments, I can take it.