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Swat Operation Almost Over says Pakistan, only a few more days are required to clean out the last resistance. Seeing as the Taliban (Baitullah Mesud) forces are almost completely intact, we'd be wary of claiming victories. Nonetheless, since Baitullah is under pressure in South Waziristan, it may take him time to restart operations in Swat.
Meanwhile, Pakistan says it lost 16 soldiers in an ambush in South Waziristan; Taliban says it killed between 50-60 soldiers traveling in a convey. Pakistanis says 10 militants died.
Honduras We forgot to add the disposed president had till January 2010 to go in his term, so technically this is a coup, however much the courts, national assembly, and people did not want the president to run a referendum.
The ex-prez says he would have been overthrown earlier had the US not been working to persuade the Army to leave him alone. Our man Hugo has immediately jumped into the act, supporting the former president. Which puts Hugo on the same side as the US. We wonder if that is not bothering him a teensy little bit?
India, democracy, and infrastructure We'd mentioned how its hard to get major projects done in India because it's a democracy and everyone is entitled to their rights. A new 5.6-km 8-lane freeway bridge connecting two parts of Bombay has just opened. The project was proposed in 2000, and held up for four years by local protests, including fisher-people who said their lives would be disrupted. So the project has taken twice as long as it should have.
It will carry 125,000 vehicles a day, greatly reducing congestion in Bombay, a mega city of 18-million people that grows by the day.
But consider this: estimates are the bridge will carry 250 new vehicles a day, meaning in less than 18-months the traffic will double. We don't know what the vehicle capacity estimates are, but it seems to us Bombay had better get down to building a second 8-lane bridge right away.
Bombay Metro Phase I of 68-km of rapid transit lines (elevated and subway) is underway for 2011 completion; two more phases adding 84-km are in planning for 2021 completion.
Bernie Madoff Fraud They got this gentleman to jail very quickly, given the $65-billion size of the fraud. 150 years. Apparently the judge got hundreds of letters asking for a long jail sentence; and not one asking for leniency. Of course, he did plead guilty - we still think to stop too much investigation into his wife and sons. But his sentencing will stop nothing, the Feds will now be able to proceed more slowly and carefully against the rest of the family.
Boeing vs Airbus Last year we had much fun putting down Airbus because of the delays on its 380 program that were helping Boeing. In all fairness, now Boeing is in serious trouble with its Dreamliner because it keeps getting delayed, and people are dropping Boeing for Airbus. The latter is racking up sales at a remarkable rate, seeing as we're in a global recession.
In 2006 and 2007, after many years of taking a beating from Airbus, Boeing pulled ahead. In 2008, Airbus was out front, 777 orders vs 662 for Boeing

0230 GMT June 29, 2009

Honduras How times have changed that one actually takes notice of a Latin American coup; once certainly the Editor would not have bothered to read about the event, as coups were so common.
This is not your typical military coup. The deposed president is term-limited to four years. He wanted to stage a referendum on extending his rule, a la Senor Hugo. The court said no way. He asked the Army for help. Army arrested him in his pajamas and sent him into exile. Now the Speaker of the legislature - who we assume is next in line - has taken over and declared a two-day curfew.
No one seems to be hurt, and we presume the next election will go through as it is supposed to do.
We hope the Army permitted the deposed President to take his teddy bears with him.
Lebanon The majority party and Amal, which is supporting the majority party (earlier they supported Hezbollah when the latter seized Beirut for a few days to show their power) have been discussing formation of the new cabinet. Somehow armed militias of both sides started mixing it up in a firefight that lasted two hours and saw 1 bystander killed and two others wounded. Lebanese Army has rolled out and told the warring factions to lay off each other.
This may mean nothing, but it may also be - as we are quite ignorant of internal Lebanese politics - that this is a lead-up to something more serious. Lebanon for decades has been living on the edge; the smallest things can flare up.
Pakistan Bill Roggio of www.longwarjournal.org quotes a story from Dawn of Karachi saying government forces have leveled the bazaar in Jandola, a stronghold of the Bhittai tribe, and destroyed 700 shops.
Normally this is done when a tribe has given offense and failed to discipline its own, though these days no one can say what's right and what's wrong in NWFP.
What baffled us is Mr. Roggio says the Bhittai Taliban are government allies in the fight against the Mesud - the bad fellow who's been staging suicide attacks all over the place and the one who started the current fracas by walking into Buner and so on.
We asked Mr. Roggio his opinion of what's going on, and he is as baffled why Pakistan Government would inflict so severe a punishment on an ally. Given the way retail businesses work in South Asia, and given Pakistan's joint family system, 10, 20, or even 30 people could depend on a single business, and this is going to financially ruin thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people - who will no longer be allies of the government. Mr. Roggio said it made no sense. It could either be the Government is being stupid, and that it is all the time, or someone is trying to sabotage the Bhittai Taliban - Pakistan Government alliance.

0230 GMT June 28, 2009

Iran Times London quotes Iranian sources as saying there likely will be a massive purge when the reelected president takes office in August. We knew he isn't a forgive and forget type, but had failed to make the connection since we were caught up, like everyone else, in the protests. Makes sense, though. When a dictatorial regime is secure, it loosens up. When it is under threat, it tightens up. The protests, justified or not, put the regime under threat. So there will be blood; hopefully not a lot of it, hopefully we've moved past the Shah's times and Khomeni's time, when execution was usually the way of deal with dissents - or presumed dissidents.
Pakistan Seems the government has got another tame Taliban commander to come out against the Mesud character. The first commander was murdered some days ago. Prima facie, any fighting between the scumbag factions is welcome. But we expect at some point there is going to be a fatwa ordering the internecine disputes to stop. Taliban have their differences of opinion; but we haven't seen anything so far to suggest their are suicidal.
Meanwhile, Bill Roggio of Long War Journal reports fighting in South Waziristan continues, and has reached Orakzai.
Also meanwhile, the first suicide bombing ever in Pakistan Kashmir took place the other day, the bomber and two soldiers were killed. This is just one more thing adding to the general sense of doom and gloom in Pakistan - and with the Editor.
Biofuels Version 2 Scientific American says ethanol is just about on its deathbed, but the second-generation biofuels like switchgrass are coming along nicely. No one is claiming they are a short-term fix for anything; a lot of research needs still to be done, and there is the problem of transport from production points to retail outlets, but the second-gen materials promise fuel at $1-gallon and could replace 3.5-billion barrels a year of crude. That would create a whole new setup in the matter of US national security and international trade.
Talking science we heard a new thought the other day: the US Space Shuttle effectively killed both the moon program and the Mars program. Had we stuck to rockets (to which we have returned as readers know, now that the Shuttle is to be retired) we'd have reached Mars by now. There seems to be a lot of truth to this thesis, except for one thing. The Shuttle had a very serious military component to it, because now not only could you deliver massive satellites to orbit, you could fix them in space. One day when everything is declassified perhaps we'll be able to discuss the Shuttle vs rocket thing better.

0230 GMT June 27, 2009

Iran's Supreme Leader wants death for those who challenged the recent election because, he says, questioning the election were waging war against God. Looks like there must be serious trouble among the theocrats because the old boy, as head theocrat, seems to be losing his grip on reality. This is not a good development.
Aside from which, Mr. Supreme Leader, since when did God need man to protect Him from man?
Russians and Vodka From London Times, quoting the British medical magazine The Lancet "three quarters of deaths among men and half of deaths among women aged 15-54 were attributable to alcohol abuse. The mortality rate in Russia in this age group was five times higher for men and three times higher for women than in Western Europe."
And "Professor David Zaridze, who led the international research team, calculated that alcohol had killed three million Russians since Mikhail Gorbachev tried and failed to restrict sales in 1987. He added: “This loss is similar to that of a war.”
Times London adds Russian Vodka is 176 proof versus 80 proof for "normal" vodka. Good grief.

0230 GMT June 26, 2009

No news today

NATO preparing for summer offensive in Helmand and Kandahar Provinces says Reuters. Reinforcements have been coming in for some months now. NATO says incidents in Zabul and Urugan Provinces, also in the south of Afghanistan, are down, but no figures were provided.
India is scrambling to add 14-GW of power generating capacity by end fiscal year 2009-10. China is expected to add 80-GW in 2009. This is the "price" you pay for operating in a democracy. In India the biggest problems have to do with the bureaucracy, which moves at its own speed, and the acquisition of land. Indian peasants are fully cognizant of their rights; they do not give up their land without legal fights and demonstrations that can stall projects for years. In China the order simply comes from the top and the peasants are picked up and thrown somewhere else.
Somalia US has sent some weapons to the government this year, and is leading an effort to stop arms from reaching the jihadis. Fat lot of good it has done. For all the calls to action to help Somalia, no one has come forward with troops. Somalia needs to be put in the "going, going, gone" column in the GWOT, or as Mrs. Clinton so delicately calls, "Overseas contingency operations".
Iran Can someone explain to us why American commentators have attacked President Obama left, right, center on his refusal to get involved in the Iran crisis, but no one seems to mind the US supports wholeheartedly another great dictatorship, Egypt, not to speak of that beacon of democracy Saudi Arabia? US has to get out of the hypocrisy business. By all means support democracy in Iran. Now lets see sanctions against Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
US has disinvited Iranian diplomats from overseas 4th of July festivities. The Iranians must be so broken up.
India and the Fat Brigade We should have mentioned, in all fairness, when we criticized Americans for not keeping healthy, that obesity/diabetes is rising fastest of all in India as income levels shoot upward.
When Editor left US for overseas in 1970, he weighed in at 125-pounds. When he returned, in his late 40s, in 1990, he weighed 135-pounds. As we approach 2010, Editor weighs 184-pounds. Now, a good deal of that is he has bulked up thanks to years of weights at the gym as he pursues his futile effort to get a date. But truthfully, despite his going to gym every day, he gets nowhere near the exercise he did in India, and he stuck to traditional Indian food which is high in protein and short on carbos and fat.
Incidentally, Editor is going blind as well as everything else. He was quite taken by a lady at the gym, and carefully determined (a) she was single; (b) was 40+ and thus older than his oldest kid; and (c) liked men. And she was extraordinarily fit. So he got the kids at the desk to introduce him to her, and at the first meeting he saw she is six inches taller than he is. When you are gasping and panting and drooling over an attractive female AND you are on the weight machines, somehow you don't really get a good idea of how tall people are.
So it's like Pinky and the Brain all over again: "Brain, what are we doing this weekend?" "What we do every weekend, Pinky: homework and Orbat.com."
Speaking of which, Concise World Armies 2009 is 70% ready. You won't learn much new, if anything, about the west, as that is well-covered by people like Jane's. Everywhere else in the world, you'll learn a great deal.

0230 GMT June 25, 2009

US Leaves Sadr City and will leave all Iraq cities by June 30 as scheduled despite an uptick in violence. US is absolutely right to stick to its deadline. There has to come a parent has to let go, even if the child is going to make mistakes. In this case the child wants the US out, and it is surely of age.
Good job, USA, and good luck, Iraq.
Iran Same old same old, the demonstrators are down to a few hundreds because the security forces are making it impossible for them to congregate.
Bush I's national security advisor says US has agents in Iran, obviously, but he has no idea if they are aiding the demonstrators and in any case its an Iranian affair, US does not control Iran. Fair enough, but is any point served by Mr. Brent Scowcroft's statements? This will give the Iranians yet another excuse to repress demonstrators and to arrest more people, including Iranian born foreign nationals and foreigners.
Germany To Invest Half-Trillion Dollars in Sahara Solar power schemes, This is over several decades, and intended to supply 15% of Europe's electricity needs.
A Nevada project is getting about 150 KW/acre; a million acres would give 150-Gigawatts, about 15% of US electricity production.
Somali Legislators Flee 288 legislators of the 550 member parliament are abroad, only 50 on official business. So its bye bye Parliament, it doesn't have a quorum so it can't meet.
Get ready for Al Qaeda to get a new country: US chased AQ out of Iraq, and out of Afghanistan, and is stalemated getting them out of Pakistan. Meantime the scum has taken over another country altogether except in name, which it may well do in coming weeks.
US banks back to their old ways says a European bank regulator testifying in the US Congress. He says they are hiring traders galore - which means a return to massive speculation and bonuses. He says Citibank, which the US Government forced to keep bailout money, is planning to raise salaries 50% because it cannot give bonuses while keeping government money.
For once we are going to agree with reader Flymike, at least partly. The Government is planning more and more regulation. We have no idea if this is going to work; American companies seem to be geniuses at working around regulations or bribing Congresspeople to change them. So we are going to call for greater individual responsibility: you, reader, have been through the greatest meltdown of wealth since the Great Depression. You should understand that when it comes to big money, Government is NOT on the side of the little person, but of the banks. If you're going to trust the banks again after what happened in 2008, all we can say is, good luck with that.
Please note that even as the world economy is struggling to reverse the GDP fall, and with the recovery so anemic that the patient is still in a coma, but the price of oil has doubled. Market forces? What market forces? When economists used to talk about market forces, they had no clue that one day a few people would control resources to vast that they, and not competition, determine the way the markets work.
Also, just to slow people who are thinking recovery down a bit: there are apparently a million homes in default but on which the banks have not yet foreclosed. The second shoe hasn't dropped.
Oh yes, we read the Baby Boomers are mending their bad old ways and are starting to save, if for no other reason then the leading edge of the Boom is reaching retirement. This will slow the country's economic growth for up to 14 years. Then the first of the Boomer Echo generation, which is said to be larger than the Boomer generation will arrive to save the day by spending, spending, spending. But what if the Echo doesn't spend, spend, spend? What if it has learned something and saves, saves, saves?
Then, unless America comes up with ways to grow without everyone being in perpetual debt, we are up the creek with a paddle and without a boat.
"Why are Americans so fat?" asked a friend who just visited Washington. We were in Virginia, where truthfully, the Editor at least did not see that many fat people and said so. But the question remains: what's the sense of health care reform if we are going to TV, videogame, drug, drink, smoke, and eat ourselves to death? Editor firmly believes everyone has a right to health care. But does that mean we have the right to abuse our bodies and then expect top notch care from a universal system?
The same friend wanted to know how America could produce helicopters (the Presidential fleet replacement, now cancelled), at half-a-billion smackers each. He's in the defense business, and knows a bit about what aircraft cost. Well, truthfully, Editor had no answer to this question. He pointed out even with the Russians sneakily tripling the cost of a Su-30 for India from $32-million to $82-million, what US was proposing to spend on one helicopter would buy six Su-30s, which is a top of the line fighter.

0230 GMT June 24, 2009

NY Times Blog http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/latest-updates-on-irans-disputed-election-4/#t17h3m says reports from outside Teheran indicate there are no demonstrations, probably because of large security force presences. Deaths outside the capital have been reported.
Teheran is quiet, but there is a call for a day mourning. security forces say they will not let any demonstrators gather.
The same source refers readers to an article on a George Soros supported website which does not source its assertions; nonetheless, the website says Rafsanjani, who supports the opposition leader, is preparing to outflank Supreme Leader and the sitting President. In effect, this means a coup among the ruling theocracy. If true, this could go two ways: one, Mr. Rafsanjani ends up in the tender hands of the Revolutionary Guard and we can bid him farewell; two, Mr. Rafsanjani becomes Supreme Leader and calls for a new, fairer election.
Either way makes no difference to to the US - none of these folks are friends of the US.
But you must be careful with anything to do with billionaire Mr. Soros. He believes in his cause of spreading democracy, a worthy thing to engage in, but that doesn't mean his lot are angels. He could be engaging in some subtle propaganda to unnerve the current rulers of Iran.
Correction We said the US is tailing a DPRK suspected to be carrying chemical weapons. This is incorrect. The ship, currently off China, is suspected of carrying missiles and missile components.
Somalia As far as we can tell, no one has yet reacted to Somali Government's call for foreign intervention to stop the jihadis from taking the entire capital. Fighting continues, as does the flight of refugees.

0230 GMT June 23, 2009

Iran The Iranian Islamic Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is the real army in the country, has threatened action against demonstrators if they don't stop.
While media insists on whipping up an escalating confrontation, media reports themselves clearly indicate the confrontation is deescalating. On Monday, for example, Al Jazeera said 1000 demonstrators turned out, which is down from 3000 on Saturday, which itself is an insignificant number compared to the start of the affair.
Reader Chris Raggio sent this link to Stratfor which has, we feel, a realistic analysis of the situation. http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090622_iranian_election_and_revolution_test
Stratfor says what we did earlier, that the demonstrators don't represent most Iranians, that most Iran are likely to be social conservatives, and that while there is no doubt the basic ground rules for the election are unfair, there is no evidence the sitting President failed to secure a substantial majority. Further, a point which we see being made more frequently: US must accept that no matter who runs Iran, he is likely to follow the same nationalistic agenda the current president follows - and as an old-timer, may the Editor remind that the Shah of Iran, was exceedingly nationalistic too.
Stratfor notes that given there was only the vote for president to be counted, and given the number of polling stations, there is nothing intrinsically impossible about the vote being counted in 10-hours.
Further, while the Election Commission has said there appear to be 3-million double votes, under Iran law, people are allowed to vote in more than one place, and that even if all are shown to indeed be doubles, that is nowhere near enough to overturn the election.
May we also make a point: dealing with the Iranian government as constituted does not mean accepting its legitimacy. US had no trouble dealing with USSR though that government had zero legitimacy, and it has no trouble dealing with China, whose government makes no pretences about being representatives. You have to do what you have to do to secure the national interests.
We agree that this return to "realism" does not mean that America should give up on its ideals. What we are saying is that America right now is far too weak to take on another major headache. The American people are fed up of Iraq and are keeping quiet only because Mr. Bush was wise enough to understand it was time to go, and we at Orbat.com can assure you that once the casualties start mounting in Afghanistan, American ardor will considerably cool. There is a time to expand, there is a time to maintain the status quo, and there is a time to contract.
Right now is contraction time, if only because no matter how you look at it, we are headed for a supreme economic bust - the only argument can be about the timing; is it going to be 10 years or 20, or even 30 if we are really lucky.
There is just no way America can continue running its deficits; there is no way we can avoid very major cuts in government spending AND massive tax increases if we are to become solvent again, and when the belt tightening begins, you know the first thing people are going to ask is what is it we are getting for the $700-billion we spend on defense (all defense and related items counted).
Whatever we do, let's not rush into this Iranian thing. And every American has to ask herself or himself: would we be this rabid about Iran had it not seized the US Embassy 30 years ago?
Meanwhile, is anyone paying any attention to Somalia? How many more days can what remains of the government hold out in Mogadishu? Right now Somalia is far more important than Iran's election.
And if you don't already have a migraine, read this article by Bill Roggio on the revival by the Caucasus Emirate of martyrdom operations. Latest to be attacked is the President of Ingushetia; reports say he is recovering from minor injuries; other reports say he is in critical conditions with brain and burn injuries.

Letter

From Flymike on Air France crash Good chance the plane broke up but hard to say what happened at what speed and when. Impacting the water will break bones as well as well as parts flying around and true, if you get a sudden air blast. Less so at altitude but as you get to denser air it gets worse. Skydiving experience you can stand on your head and get to 220 kts and at altitude faster. Hitting a 500 kt air blast is survivable through you may incur injury, depends. Saw a notation that clothing was missing on some of the bodies. Can happen with water as well. Not discounting much of anything at this point.

0230 GMT June 22, 2009

NWFP Bill Roggio reports Taliban and Al Qaeda elders have asked Taliban leader Mesud to stop his attacks on Pakistan and for now to shift his forces to Afghanistan and focus on that country. Mesud has said he will continue his war against Pakistan. http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/06/senior_al_qaeda_and.php

AQ Leader in Afghanistan says the group would use Pakistan's N-weapons against the US if it could gain possession, says Reuters. Of course, you can possess as many N-weapons as you want but that doesn't mean you can set even one off. We suppose if the weapons contain plutonium, which we think is the case for all the Pakistani warheads, you could crack them open and try and disseminate the plutonium over an American or European city, but the movies and cheap thrillers aside, this is very hard to do.
We appreciate AQ's frankness, however, and hope its statement focuses US minds in the reality that there is only one really safe place for those weapons. That is in a facility in the US, undergoing dismantling.

Iran While calling for his supporters to show restraint. the opposition leader has refused orders from the theocracy to be a team player or face the consequences. He says he is ready to face the consequences even if it means martyrdom.

Iran State TV reports that ten demonstrators were killed on Saturday, when - according to foreign journalists a small crowd of 3000 managed to get together and stage a demonstration. if State TV says 10 one can reasonably assume the toll was higher. We mention this only because in the previous demonstrations with hundreds of thousands on the streets only seven people were reported killed; so it is likely the state has cracked down in force.

Five relatives of Ayatollah Rafsanjani, a former president and a highly corrupt but moderate theocrat, have been arrested for supporting the demonstrators. This gentlemen heads a council that has the power to dismiss the sitting president, so the development is intriguing. On their own the demonstrators have zero chance. But if the establishment itself is split, then it becomes another story - but this could also be a short story because dictators are generally adept at taking care of anti-them factions. Please also keep in mind the present President is a former commander of the Revolutionary Guard, and that 90% of his ministers are also from there. They are the real army in Iran.
(Since we wrote the above, we learn from CNN all five relatives, including Rafsanjani's eldest daughter, have been released.)
Times London says Sunday's demonstrations were minor both because security forces are all over the place and because people are still reeling from Saturday's casualties.
By the way, we have been unable to connect to irna.com, one of the official news agencies, for the last three days. The error message says: "The server at irna.com is taking too long to respond." We have no clue if this is just us, or are other people having the same problem?
In the absence of IRNA, we've been relying on Al Jazeera, and we have to admit that their reporting on Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan in general appears very fair.
Al Jazeera and other media report a major crackdown against foreign media is underway. For example, BBC has been told to leave by today, and the Newsweek person has simply disappeared. Al Arabiya from Dubai is also being sanctioned.

0230 GMT June 21, 2009

Pakistan Offensive in South Waziristan

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/06/pakistani_military_b.php

Several thousand demonstrate in Teheran The security forces kept people from congregating, but 3000 managed to stage a demonstration before it was broken up by tear gas and Basij paramilitary. Reports say several people were killed; there is no conformation as media is prohibited from reporting.
Letter
Ethiopian troops back in Somalia says Al Jazeera. The TV service says that several neighboring countries asked Ethiopia to re-intervene before the Somali government is wiped out, and promised their own interventions. Al Shabab warned Kenya if it becomes involved as it has threatened, the jihadis will destroy "the tall buildings of Nairobi".
Since this time around it seems that a US-led effort to prevent Eritrea from supplying weapons to the jihadis is underway, Ethiopia and other regional states may be able to stabilize Somalia faster. But again, unless people are willing to stay for the years neccessary to rebuild the country's shattered institutions, this intervention may prove as futile as the last.
Air France plane appears to have broken up in mid-air, according to autopsies on the ~50 bodies recovered so far. If the aircraft was moving at, say, 500-knots when it broke up, for the passengers it would be like hitting a stone wall at that speed.
Indian unlikely to buy US fighter aircraft says a defense person whose name we must withhold. He says that several smaller deals, still worth billions of dollars, will be signed: in addition to the 6 x C-130Js already ordered for the Special Forces, another 8 will be ordered; as will 12 CH-47s, likely 22 attack helicopters, and Harpoon SSMs. The reason the fighter deal will not go through is that India refuses to accept US controls over the aircraft, the so-called end-user requirement. Since the US Congress for its part will not budge, this $10-billion deal for 126 fighters (six squadrons) will not happen.
Meanwhile, we learn in the latest twist in the Indian medium artillery competition that has been going on for 25 years now, the Singapore light 155mm gun has been disqualified for unspecified improprieties. Aside from the initial order of 400 Bofors 155mm, India has still to buy a medium gun, despite the decision taken some years ago to standardize on the 155mm for division artillery.
The Indian MOD is the only ministry in the world to regularly return allocated money to the Indian Exchequer: money not spent by the end of the Fiscal Year has to be returned. We are told the sum returned in 2008-09 is a shockingly high $10-billion budgeted for weapons.
It takes only a single unsubstantiated allegation of impropriety to be made by a rival and complete deals are jettisoned. after the fuss on Bofors kickbacks in the 1980s, no Indian bureaucrat or senior military officer is willing to risk her/his career even if a whisper of scandal exists. Some deals go through because there is no competitor, like with the C-130s and the Chinooks.
Bombay terror attack Readers may remember that when the elite National Security Guard commandos were ordered to Bombay, there was no aircraft available to fly them until a lumbering AN-12 was commandeered. On the other side, when the aircraft landed, no transport was available, so city buses had to be commandeered.
We are told strictly off the record is that an Il-76 jet military transport was kept fuelled at Delhi, together with an NSG company that camps at the airport. It took so long for the Bombay police to admit they could not control the situation and for the State Government to ask for Federal help, that the Il-76 crew were nowhere to be found. They probably went back to the barracks to sleep after having been held on alert for 12 or more hours.
Jai Ho. This is India that is Bharat, the wannabe world power. Both the Chinese and the Pakistanis apparently realize that the Indians cannot fight their way out of a paper bag and are no practical threat.
Oh yes, did we mention the Pakistani courts have released the alleged mastermind of the Bombay attack, saying there was no evidence against him. He apparently exclaimed "thank goodness for the Pakistani courts!" which must refer to some kind of inside joke.
So - again - India allowed itself to be diddled by the US. Washington told India not to retaliate, US would put pressure on Pakistan to see justice was done. US didn't want an Indo-Pakistan war upsetting Washington's grand design for AF-PAK, the latest pathetically stupid acronym Washington has generated.
Can we tell the Indians something? No one can be victimized without his or her consent. If Washington has taken you for yet another ride, rather than blaming Washington, look to yourself for reasons why.

0230 GMT June 20, 2009

DPRK Planned Missile Test US has sent a THAAD unit, which we believe to be a firing platoon of 3 launchers each with 8 missiles, to Hawaii to strengthen the missile defense in advance of a planned DPRK ICBM test.

THAAD is intended to intercept incoming missiles/warheads via Hit-To-Kill. Each missile has a claimed 0.9 kill probability, which means three missiles for 100% surety. THAAD is both an exo atmospheric and endo atmospheric interceptor with a maximum range of 1000-kms and a maximum altitude of 200-kms.

Though the system became operational only in 2008, it has been under development since the 1990s. It has scored 35 kills of 43 attempts since 2001, and 29 of 30 since September 2005. Most of the tests have involved theatre ballistic missile targets.

In a related development, we are told no one is still certain if the N-test staged some weeks ago was a real N-test or employed thousands of tons of conventional explosives. We'd pointed out the possibility after the first test, suggesting DPRK may have salted the explosion with radioactive rods to give the impression it was the genuine article.

DPRK threatens a third test.

US is tailing a North Korean cargo ship which may be carrying 2500-tons of chemical weapons.

Story on Mutinies in Pakistan Army www.longwarjournal.org says the source of the story was a review of the situation made by the Indian DIA for the Integrated Defense Staff, rated "Secret". Mandeep Bajwa confirms the data presented. We still do not understand how this document was leaked. Given that both Mr. Bill Roggio's and Mandeep's sources have confirmed the data, it cannot be disinformation.
Iran Opposition leaders are considering their options after the direct warning by the theocrats to cease and desist. Word is opposition is not planning a rally Saturday or Sunday. Reuters says tens of thousands of demonstrators may turn out anyway.
Conservative commentators are having a whale of a time slamming the Administration for its hands-off policy on Iran. These ladies and gentlemen need to chill and stop yapping for the sake of yapping. They want US action, without explaining in the least how this will help - US support for Cuba's democracy has served only to keep the Castro brothers in power decades longer than would have been the case if the US had kept out of things. For 30 years the mullahs have used the US "threat" as an excuse to keep the masses in line; the last thing the US needs to do is to become involved in this mess and actually become a threat to the established order.
US is vastly overextended already. Its time conservatives returned to conservatism - and that means minimal overseas involvement. We can all see the results of the Iraq II and Afghanistan invasions. Let's worry about domestic issues for a change.

0230 GMT June 19, 2009

Iran We haven't commented because we were unclear what was going on, but the picture is finally clear enough for us to comment.

First, we may agree that the Iran electoral process is completely undemocratic: the theocracy approves who may run, and clearly anyone who might challenge its power never gets to first base. Those that do get to run face a rightly controlled government media, and that the government does it best to make sure it won't lose is also well known.

This said, however, it is by no means certain that the sitting president stole the election overall. Teheran does not represent Iran, and while the younger people especially have been chafing against the restrictions placed on them, it's also known that much of Iran is quite socially conservative. The sitting president is said to be a formidable campaigner, and he controls the public purse. As is the case in many countries, this permits him to bribe the electorate with public funds in exchange for votes.

This said, while we have complete sympathy for democracy supporters in Iran, it's completely unclear what can the US do about the situation. Personally we think the N-weapons issue is a dead issue; we don't see how Iran can accept controls on its program. We also think the prospects for rapprochement with Iran are much dimmer than Washington may want to acknowledge.

The reason is simple: to be friends with Iran, the US will have to take the Shia side in the vast Sunni-Shia split in the Arab world. US has already crippled its credibility by permitting the Shia majority of Iraq to rule after destroying the power of the Sunni minority. If US sides with Iran, it's goodbye Gulf and almost the entire Arab world.

So we do not think the US has anything to lose by coming right out against the ruling regime in Iran.

The question is, what does it have to gain? We cannot all over again scream the platitudes about democracy and how the US must support it everywhere. The US is in a time where for at least twenty years it needs to pull back from its staggering international involvement, not expand it further.

Our advice to Washington would be: continue as at present, say you support democracy, but its for the Iran people to do their thing.

Given that Supreme Leader has basically told the opposition challenger to present himself at Friday prayers where SL will issue a call to end the street demonstrations and to let the limited vote recount go through - we may guess in advance it will not change anything - or the challenger will face the consequences, the game is over. Do not doubt the ability of the Iranian state to complete smash dissent. The Shah did it, Khomeni the Mullah did it, and his successors will also do it.

This is because the demonstrations are challenging the power of the theocracy. The theocracy has made clear that its power is not a subject for negotiation.

Our suggestion to readers: things may change, but as of today, your time is more profitably spent on beer, chips, and ESPN. We feel the Fat Lady is going to sing in a few hours at Friday prayers.

0230 GMT June 18, 2009

If Estimates of Taliban Forces Are Correct, Pakistan Cannot Win

For many years, each time the Pakistan Army has said it lacks the resources to fight the Taliban, at Orbat.com we've engaged in rude sniggering. The Pakistan Army has close to 30 division-equivalents worth of troops, 80% infantry. It is one of the largest armies in the world. Its men are long-service professionals - long service means 10, 15, and 20 years for the soldiers and NCOs. It is well-trained, reasonably well equipped by Third World standards and well led.

How then could Pakistan claim it cannot fight the Taliban?

Of course, it didn't/doesn't want to fight the Taliban because even today with the exception of Baitullah Mesud whom the Pakistan Army says it is hunting, the other three major commanders are pro-Government, as are a host of minor commanders.

But from www.longwarjournal.org June 17, 2009 we learn that this Mesud gentleman has 30,000 fighters under his command and another 20,000 in allied/associated groups. The three other major commanders have 50,000 fighters. AQ in Pakistan has 10,000. This makes 110,000 fighters, and it doesn't take too much math to calculate that at 600 fighters per Pakistan army battalion (rifle and weapons companies) the Pakistan army has 130,000 infantry to the Taliban's 100,000. Of course, that doesn't count the Pakistan Army's approximately 130 or so towed artillery battalions and the approximately 300 or so fighter aircraft in the Pakistan Air Force.

No one can argue that the Pakistan Army has firepower superiority. But the Taliban's forces, for all they operate in units as large as brigades, do not fight a conventional fight when facing the Pakistan Army. They are guerrillas, and while that firepower comes in handy if the Taliban commander makes a mistake, it is of basically no help except to make holes in the ground and kill civilians.

So Pakistan could send every single soldier it has facing India to the west, it is absolutely, completely, totally not in a position to fight the Taliban and win. Even the US, for all its phenomenal surveillance, reconnaissance, intelligence, mobility, and firepower resources cannot win at such odds.

So - something we'd better get used to as a concept - even if Pakistan suddenly got religion and decided to go after the Taliban, it is not going to win. You are going to get one ghastly mess that will, within a year's of fighting, destroy what remains of Pakistan's economy and unity because all out wars inflict unbearable stress on any country, leave alone a 3rd world nation riven by ethnic divides on every side.

Now, Pakistan is not going to get religion. It's going after the Mesud because the US has given the 10-centimer diameter steel shaft and because it seems the Pakistan Army has decided to come down on the Government's side - at least for now. You must keep in mind the Army's leadership is totally opportunistic. At any rate, its not going to go after the other commanders because they are vital strategic assets against the US in Afghanistan and India.

The prospect of taking on the Mesud and his 50,000 own/allied fighters is bad enough, AQ will have to join in because the Pakistan Army is intruding into its safe havens. Now here's what's really scary: the Pakistanis are doing their level to keep the "good" Taliban out of this battle and perhaps even get some of them to help with eliminating Mesud. But, as Bill Roggio at LWJ says, basing his opinion on local information and media the good Taliban are tied by promises and ethnic loyalties to the Mesud fellow. The Pakistan army can say all it wants "we are only targeting an anti-Pakistan person", and it is true in the Frontier money does run thicker than blood, but if for no reason other than that the "good" Taliban have to wonder if Mesud is knocked out the Pakistan state is not going to go after them to bring them under control they way they were under control before the fall of Kabul in 1996.

So: to sum up. Mesud and AQ have 60,000 fighters which is way too many for the entire Pakistan Army to take on to begin with. The whole kit and kaboodle has 110,000 fighters. This is not a winning situation no matter which way anyone looks at it.

Here's more bad news: according to the Indians, Pakistan has deployed 22 brigades against the Taliban. That's almost a third of its infantry, and people, you have to realize that so far the Taliban haven't really put up up a fight. For all the drama the ISPR tries to keep going, if 390 Pakistan soldiers/Frontier Corps have been killed, that's 65 a week. That's not a war, its a bunch of skirmishes.

As someone who has closely studied the Pakistan Army for forty years, Editor can testify that by its lights, the Pakistan army is doing what it can.

Because - please don't forget - there's the equivalent of 40 powerful Indian divisions sitting to the East of the Kashmir Cease Fire Line and International Border, excluding the minimum defense against China and the 70,000 specialized CI troops - who are all regular soldiers, by the way, not paramilitary. You want paramilitary, India can deploy 500,000 against Pakistan if it needs to.

Beyond a point, if anyone thinks the US is going to be able to restrain India indefinitely so that Pakistan can shift all its infantry to the west is plain dreaming. Study the history of the subcontinent for just the last 1000 years and you will see this is just the right time for Delhi to start preparing to bring India's fractious and turbulent northwest under control. In case someone doesn't get it, India's northwest includes ALL of Pakistan.

The Pakistanis would have to be absolute lunatics to even think of moving many more troops to the west. Now if an Editor as an Indian citizen is saying that, think what the Pakistanis will say if the US wants them to move more troops. And that's if they want an all-out war with the Taliban that they cannot win. And they don not want such a war.

0230 GMT June 17, 2009

Mutiny in 3 Pakistan Army Brigades?

India Today, a leading multi-lingual weekly of India, says that that mutinies have occurred in Pakistan Army brigade at Kohat, Parachinar, and Turbat. The last is in Balochistan, and we have no clue why troops there should mutiny unless the Pakistan Army has also stepped up operations there at the US's behest. 900 troops are said to have deserted.
While six cases of soldiers killing soldiers are reported, we caution not to read much into this. Given the tension the Pakistan Army has been under, and given the Army has been busy destroying many of the same towns and villages its men are recruited from, this is a small figure.
Bill Roggio of www.longwarjournal.org confirms the story via his US intelligence sources.
The India Today story says according to Pakistani sources 370 troops have been killed since the offensive began, and that while on the one hand the government says it is hunting Taliban leader Mesud who is behind most of the suicide bombings, on the other hand Mesud is maintaining contact with two senior army officers and the Taliban seem to have detailed knowledge of Pakistan army movements.
Meanwhile, Mr. Roggio reports the Pakistan Army says it has killed one Al Qaeda commander and wounded another. Since Al Qaeda is composed almost entirely of foreigners, while the Pakistan Army has never particularly gone out if its way to tackle AQ, it has frequently captured AQ personnel to hand over to the US. It is quite likely that to show the US it means business - and also because these are, after all, foreigners, the Pakistan Army is making a serious push against AQ.
Could the above news about the mutinies be a plant? We don't think it is an Indian plant because there is nothing in the reports that has not been happening for some time. Mandeep Singh Bajwa, for example, told us about desertions stepping up right in the first week of the offensive in Buner. The number of Pakistan soldiers given as killed is also modest. As for Mesud working with senior officers, that is no news at all.
But could it be a Pakistan plant to signal the US that the Pakistan Army may be reaching the end of its rope and needs to stop the offensive?
It's possible, but why the Pakistanis would need to leak this to the Indians is a great mystery.

0230 GMT June 16, 2009

Letters

From Flymike You will, if you look, find many of not most all of the economic as well as social issues tied up in WAY, WAY too much govt. Re. your questions and related re economic front. Government is the biggest "business." You work for the government run education monopoly so you have some insights there. A starter example. Tell me what is left of our republic which is where we came from and your past reference and contexts?
Editor Until the Industrial Revolution, education was primarily a private business. The demands for a skilled labor force led to the creation of universal education, and this was seen as the government's business, in the same way as providing military forces and roads. The people were taxed for the common good.
Private education continued in some countries - US, UK, and India, for example. But even in India and the UK, government continues to provide massive subsides to private post-secondary educational institutions.
People who want to privatize education on the grounds that business can run schools better are always welcome to put in their own money and start their own schools. But that is not what they want. They want the government to give them taxpayer money so they can make a profit not on their own money, but on your money. One of the most remarkable things about how how Americans run their propaganda is that this absolutely amazing proposition - you give us tax money so we can profit - actually enjoys considerable support.
Now, we perfectly understand what reader Flymike is getting at, and we've asked this question before: where does personal responsibility end and being looked after by the government start? To readers like Flymike, the process appears dismally one-way: we give up more and more of our personal responsibilities - and in the process give up more and more of our freedoms - and put more on more responsibility on the government, so that one day we wake up and we are no long free, but slaves, this time of the Government.
But we already are slaves, of American corporations. We exist solely to consume, for ever remaining in debt, so that the corporations can profit. Right now the Government and the corporations are terrified that Americans have started committing a great sin: they've started to save again. And as they save - taking responsibility for themselves - corporations and government keep warning the "recovery" is going to stall. Go figure
Flymike would say it is our choice to consume. Here is the problem. Corporate control of the media means we are daily brainwashed to continue as slaves to the corporations, all the while insisting we are free.
You see, this is the genius of American corporations and the American government. Under communism, fascism, totalitarianism, authoritarianism and so on, the people knew they were enslaved. Capitalism as refined by America has created an astonishing system where we say we are free to choose but are enslaved.
Editor can hear Flymike tut-tutting: Its your choice to get a mortgage and keep yourself in debt for a minimum of 30 years. It's your choice to buy a car on credit and then buy a new one every 8 years. Etc. etc.
And on many levels, we can agree with him: after all, no one is holding guns to our head and forcing us to borrow to spend.
Mrs. R the Fourth and the Editor eventually broke up on just one issue alone. Editor believed you should limit your needs, and then earn enough to meet those limited needs, and use the rest of your time to live life. Mrs. R IV believed you got a better job so you could earn more so you could spend more. Then you went out and got an even better job so you could buy more things. One always wants to keep one's spouse happy, but what Mrs. R IV could never understand American is the cruelest country of all to return to when you are old. Many, many opportunities are closed to you simply because you are older. No matter how hard one works - and Editor has for last 20 years on returning to America has done nothing except work 12 hours a day, 365 days a year - the opportunities are not there.
And, here is an irony. Because of the way American school funding is arranged, and because we wanted the best education for our children, we had to leave Prince George's County where houses were then cheap, for Montgomery County, where they are expensive. There is no way we could ever have saved enough to pay cash down for a Montgomery County house.
Flymike may say: "That was your choice, too." Not really, because without the best education our kids would have been handicapped before they looked for their first jobs. And we wanted to leave Prince George's because crime and violence were rampant: Editor knows of 5 murders in five years that occurred within half a mile of where we lived, including three in the immediate neighborhood of four blocks.
Is that our choice too? There comes a point when unless you want to live in Idaho as a survivalist - and Editor doubts the good people of Idaho welcome brown-skinned survivalists - you cannot be independent of the society around you. The breakdown of American society has much to do with the Government's failure, but it also has much to do with private business's failures.
That is what Editor was getting at yesterday: his graduating seniors are good kids. But because of their socio-economic background, 80% or more are not going to college. and because of the failure of private business, which favors personal greed of the top managers over civic obligations, there are no jobs with any decent wages for my students. Government also plays a big role in this, because it doesn't control immigration.
But remember, folks, Government doesn't do a lot of things because private business does not WANT government to do them. The Government is run by business, not by Flymike and me.
In closing, Editor has to present to readers a point Flymike has made in several private e-mails. He wants the government to get out of our lives, but he is consistent because he also wants government to stop using our money to intervene everywhere across the world. Editor is starting to think Flymike has a serious point here. But how are we as citizens and individuals to fight that all-powerful government-congressional-corporate-media combine that tells us unless we fight to the last on the remotest piece of land in the world, the terrorists will murder us in our beds?
Please don't misunderstand the Editor: he is all for a Pax America because he believes the American way - Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness - is the best way. But 8 years into this war, Editor would be remiss in his duties to readers and himself if he failed to ask: are we going about this war the right way? If it isn't the right way, then we are going to fatally weaken ourselves just as Rome did, and then forget about Pax Americana, within a century the world will be forgetting about America. Editor always prefers war over peace to resolve disputes. That doesn't mean we get into endless, and mindless, wars. No one says we have to be stupid about using force, so stupid we do in ourselves.

0230 GMT June 15, 2009

Good News On The Long Range Economic Front

Business Week in its June 15, 2009 issue says that because of yuan appreciation, rising wages, and increased shipping costs, China is no longer the default choice for mass manufacturing.
It costs a hypothetical auto part: $20 Mexico, $25 China, $29 US. Because of a whole list of hassles, the 20% advantage that China still has may not translate into real savings; and in any case, the 25% advantage that Mexico has over China is going to start pushing business back to Mexico. Then it is a matter of time before wages in both places go up sufficiently that the US will find it economical to once again engage in mass manufacturing.
Business Week offers several cautions about all this happening immediately or even very soon. The Chinese could push down the yuan again (if they do, as far as we are concerned, that's grounds for an all-out trade war), and more important, so much of the global supply chain is now based in China that even if it makes sense to bring home to the US a factory producing XYZ, it will take years for the dovetailing industries/suppliers to move back.
Nonetheless, the reality is that as China ages, it will start running out of its endless reserves of cheap labor. And at some point the 10% annual growth the Chinese claim has to raise wages much, much higher than the $1.25/hour that Business Week says is the average for manufacturing. Also, oil will get more expensive, and as environmental regulations kick in, ships will have to start using low-sulfur oil, which is more expensive. Etc etc.
Business Week warns that no one should expect labor intensive industries such as toys and apparel to return to the US because China will keep its advantage there for many years.
All said and done, we wish someone would explain to us why the US has gone into the 2nd world low-wage structure mind-set that has destroyed American manufacturing. An advanced country is supposed to use advanced technology to replace high wages, not to farm work out to distant corners of the globe so that the corporate bigwigs make their gazzilions and American workers no longer have decent jobs.
And the 1000-kilo gorilla in all this is: America can no longer afford to let tens of millions of immigrants simply stroll into the country. No one advocates shutting down immigration; its immigrants that have made this country what it is. But looking at 80% of the Editor's seniors that graduated last week who are never going to make it to college and are condemned to low paid work for the rest of their lives, Editor is forced to ask: doesn't the US elite have a responsibility to run things in a way Americans benefit before outsiders?
We've said this before: we're starting to think the greatest national security threat in coming decades is not the jihadis. Its the ever growing number of people who are willing to work, are begging to work, but cannot any more make enough money to live the American middle class dream. Hint: true unemployment is 16%, one of six people in the labor force.
America has been far more socially stable than other countries because everyone's economic status improved. Americans are not much for resigning themselves to their fate and living a life where your biggest task is to get through today because you cannot even afford to think of tomorrow. Americans are violent, restless, ambitious. So far the mass-narcotic effect of TV and drugs illegal and legal (we include alcohol and tobacco because they are as much drugs as Prozac and meth and cocaine and what have you) has served to keep the American people passive.
For instance, our elite has gutted the lives of millions of white blue collar workers. This worker is still much too dazed, and still much too inculcated with the mantra that if you fail its entirely your fault, to react violently.
But soon enough people will start realizing that no matter how hard you work, no matter how thrifty you are, you don't stand a chance because the jobs you once did are exported, and an endless supply of immigrants has further pushed down wages.
Editor can harangue his graduated seniors all he likes about personal responsibility. The truth is, if you don't go to college, you cannot any more count on a middle class life. And with more and more people going to college, you now need a Bachelors to earn a salary once earned by an Associates, and the Associates earns what a GED did, and so on. But what if you are not college material? Don't you have a right to earn a decent living?
Here's a story: Editor got his Masters of Education and that should suffice for a teacher. (In his parents' generation a Masters was good enough to teach at a good British university.) But Editor has to look to the day, which is coming sooner than he would like, when he will no longer have the sheer physical stamina to teach in high school. So he got another MEd. Then he looked around at counties that pay well, like Montgomery County, Maryland. To stand out in the crowd you have to have a doctorate. Well, Editor has been a scholar all his life and he knows nothing kills the desire to learn faster than a doctorate, and besides, he doesn't have the money and is borrowed out on his two MEds. So he's doing an MBA with money he saved from his student loans, and is preparing to do a free Master's offered by an area university after he finishes the MBA. So now he hopes to stand out because he'll have four masters degrees when he goes looking for an office job. Of course, with his luck, by then competitors will have two Doctorates.
Editor trusts you get his point about when everyone goes to college, degrees stop meaning anything.

Letters

From CPT Jason I appreciated the entry on Noor Inayat Khan. I am stationed in Germany and recently visited Dachau. I did not know of her history, but now I do, and my memories of the memorial will be tied to thoughts of her bravery.
Air France Both Lou Driever and Flymike sent us extensive discussions in aviation forums on the Air France disaster. The discussions center around a common theme. To keep down weight, Airbus has made use of composites even when safety is at risk. Specifically, Airbus 330s have a history of the tail detaching when subjected to excessive wind gusts. An aviation expert who is very familiar with the Airbus problem of conflicting sensor readings and the computers going bonkers is visiting Washington next week and we'll ask his opinion. He once noted to us that yes, you can switch off the computers and fly manually in emergency, but first you have to know the computers have gone haywire. This not being a civil aviation blog, we can't get too deep into the issue, but we did bring it up and readers have responded. Right now it seems its too early to definitely say what went wrong.

0230 GMT June 14, 2009

Pakistan

For the latest, read http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/06/pakistani_military_t_1.php After reading of you hit your head against the wall and go "Oi Vey, what a mess!" we won't blame you. We feel the same way about Pakistan every day.

Against our inclinations we are forced to return, at least momentarily, to the subject of Pakistan. This is only because the media seems to have no interest in discussing what is happening and is focusing on spot reports of the latest Pakistani military action against the Taliban.
First, let's dispose of the official Pentagon take. Officially, Pentagon is thrilled and delighted that the Pakistanis, against all expectations, are continuing their already extended six-week offensive. It is now being expanded into Bajur, South Waziristan, and other nearby areas. Dir, Swat, and Buner represented Taliban advances over the last two years, so rolling back the insurgents returns us to the status quo ante 2007. Not to be sneezed at, but the real problem is is to roll back the Taliban in the border districts, where they have held sway for three decades and rabid control for one. The districts the Pakistan Army is now entering are kind of home territory. Pentagon acknowledges this will be a very lengthy, very tough process, taking years, but Pentagon is very much heartened that the Pakistanis are getting down to the serious business of reclaiming their country.
Cue the pixie dust, roses from the skies, and fireworks, with the Disney motif castle in the background.
Before we slash the Pentagon to thin ribbons, let us freely admit that we at Orbat.com, at least, have been quite surprised that the Pakistan Army has lasted this long. Our analysis before the offensive began was that the Pakistan Army was a right royal mess as far as fighting insurgents was concerned. It had lost every major campaign over the past years, and there seemed only one direction the Pakistan Army was capable of advancing, and that was eastward. So just as the Pentagon by looking at superficials is lauding the Pakistan Army, we too look at superficials and laud the Pakistan Army.
Now let's get down to business.
As before, the Pakistanis are using massive firepower and doing little ground fighting unless forced to, such as when they are ambushed or surrounded by the insurgents. Now, nothing wrong with using firepower, except the Pakistanis are continuing to do what they have done for the last six weeks: level entire villages and towns. Their advance westward will take the immediate refugee total to 3-million, which kind of makes the Sri Lanka hoo-ha look like a Boy Scouts picnic. The locals may hate the Taliban, but as in Afghanistan, they accept the Taliban as brothers gone wrong; its the Pakistan Army they will show their anger. Peace had returned to these regions after years of fighting when the Pakistan Government ceded much of NWFP to the Taliban; now once again people are being bombed, driven from their homes, and losing the pathetic little they had to begin with.
None of this troubles the Pentagon, the US Government, the US media, or the American people. we are tired of lecturing to the American people on this subject. Suffice it is to say that just as what went around in Pakistan in the 1980s came around in the 2000s, what's going around in Pakistan in the 2000s will come around soon enough.
Indeed, the Pakistan Army is being so absurd that when thousands of tribals decided to chase a Taliban group of several hundred out of town after the mosque bombings, the sole help the Army is giving is fire support - its attacking the villages of the pro-government tribals - read about it in LWJ. Nice going fellas.
Halt cameras. By refusing to support the locals - as it also failed to do in Buner -the Pakistan Army is NOT behaving irrationally in its own terms. When you aid the locals with guns, ammunition, money, the locals have a nasty habit of turning on the Pakistan army when the immediate threat is gone. None of this excuses attacking your own supporters, but there it is, what can we say.
Roll cameras. You see, right now the locals are very upset with the Taliban. But that doesn't mean they have changed one bit their centuries old hatred of central authority.
Next point. The Taliban are guerillas, albeit they have reached what in the old days we used to call Stage II: they control territory, and fight in organized units. When guerillas are stressed, they disperse. No one in their right mind - and this time not even the Pakistan army for all it's previous empty boasting - thinks the problem is anywhere near solved. Everyone is expecting the Taliban to hit back the minute the Pakistan Army reduces pressure. And the Pakistan army has to reduce pressure, because despite whatever carrots/sticks the US has used on Pakistan to get Islamabad moving, the Pakistan Army does NOT want to stay in tribal territory a day longer than it has to. To maintain the kind of relentless, single-minded pressure for decades such as India does in its CI campaign requires much, much more manpower and much more money than the Pakistanis have. It requires a mindset of endless sacrifice, of shutting off your mind from the present, and simply slogging on and on and on. Lets see the US Army fight the kind of decades long campaigns the Indian army engages in, and you will get the point. Next year will mark the start of Decade Six in the first of India's CI wars, in North East India. Can the US Army continue fighting into a sixth decade with absolutely no assurance there will not be a Decade Seven or even a Decade Ten? It cannot, and nor should the US expect the Pakistanis to do so.
The Pakistan army is winning right now. It will not be winning tomorrow.
Stop cameras. In all fairness to the Pentagon, it doesn't give a single darn what's going to happen in the 2010s, 2010s, and 2030s. All it wants is to ease the expected pressure on its forces in Afghanistan this year and the next. It is already looking to getting out of Afghanistan, not spending the next 50 years there. As far as the Pentagon is concerned, as long as its short term objectives are met, Afghanistan and Pakistan and so on can go where they want to.
But now we come to the truly dismal part of this campaign the Pakistan Army has engaged on.
You see, nothing has really changed and it cannot change as far as Pakistan and its insurgents are concerned. Kashmir is still very much on the agenda, getting the Americans out of Afghanistan is still very much on the agenda.
Just as the Pentagon is playing a short-term game, so is Pakistan. With US backing and "encouragement" It has no particular trouble whacking those Taliban that turned renegade. These are the ones that grew so strong they told the Pakistanis to stick it to themselves. These are the ones that broke the compact between Pakistan and the Pushtoon tribes: you and we will wage against Afghanistan, against the foreigners and the non-Pushtoons; we will leave you alone in your homes, but outside of tribal territory you are to leave us alone.
Meanwhile, this war that Pakistan is fighting on the US's behalf is taking its toll of Pakistan. Any war creates instability, the longer it goes on the more the instability. The Taliban are already resorting to the kinds of brutal suicide attacks that sap a nation's morale.
Soon the Taliban are going to be visiting villages in the territory they have allegedly lost but actually have not, and they are going to start executing those that collaborated with the government. The only way you can stop them is to station government forces in every village. That is not going to happen. And as for the "Awakenings" business, forget it. Pakistani frontier tribesmen are genetically encoded to fight authority.
If the US wants the Pakistan Taliban out of the game, there is only one thing it can do: implement the Russian solution. Shoot one of ten males to introduce yourself to the villagers. If they cooperate, okay. If they don't, shoot another one in ten males, and go on doing it until there are no males left alive. Obviously the US can't do this. But what the US needs to see is that the Pakistanis cannot do it either. So the US has to live with the reality there will neither be Awakenings in Pakistan, nor can the Pakistan Government protect every village.
When the Taliban come back, there will be blood - a lot of it.
By the way, doesn't all this seem a bit familiar to the old timers the Editor's age or older? It should. That show was called Second Indochina, which followed First Indochina, which followed the war against Japan and so on. We Americans always have a home to come back to when we're sick of killing. Where will the Pakistan Army go when it is sick of killing its own people?

0230 GMT June 13, 2009

DPRK Sanctions So some bright spark has figured out that the 2006 sanctions imposed on DPRK didn't hurt all that much, because its overland trade with PRC grew manifold. Someone else has figured out that DPRK does not - at least not now - depend on exports of missiles and such for its foreign currency - again, refer to PRC. So we're not quite sure what the new sanctions imposed by the security Council are supposed to do.
You cant really blame PRC either. If DPRK collapses, millions of refugees will head north as well as south. And if DPRK gets the Big Bye Bye, ROK will pick up the pieces. So it will take a couple of decades to bring the north to par with the South, but then ROK will be bigger, richer, and stronger than before. Its already a trillion dollar economy, by the way. A bigger ROK is not to PRC's advantage.
Lebanon We were pleased when the pro-western faction won the elections and Hezbollah lost. Now, however, we learn from analysts that the victory was not quite a famous one. Unless the new government moves against Hezbollah, it will lack credibility and the latter will only grow stronger, expanding its state-within-a-state. If the government does move against Hezb, people are saying the Hezb can quickly take over Beirut, and then its Bye Bye Government.
India will station a Su-30 squadron in its Northeast region and is not discouraging comments that this is to counter the continuing Chinese provocations in the region.
We are sure the Chinese are quivering in their pink booties and weeping with fear into their lace hankies. Not. We doubt the Chinese are particularly bothered one way or the other what India does because the Government of India is first in the global Wussy standings - the US Government coming second.
China has been building roads all over Indian territory in the Northwest and Northeast. The last time it did that, in the late 1950s and 1960s, India went to war. That India completely fubared the war is another matter. At least India stood up for itself. Right now India is doing nothing - and replacing obsolete aircraft in Eastern Air Command with modern aircraft hardly counts as doing something.
India should be engaged in an all out program to build roads and rail connections with the region - not produce plans that will take 20 years to execute, if not more. Moreover, India should be building up its offensive capability that it ran down in the 1990s. That means adding at least two more mountain divisions to bring the total back to nine in three corps, and making the reserve corps into an offensive formation instead of using it to reinforce the two corps that are at the front.

0230 GMT June 12, 2009

For latest Pakistan developments, click

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/06/fighting_intensifies_2.php

Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, and the US

An odd story in the Nation (Pakistan) says the US has asked India to reduce its consulate at Jalalabad because of Pakistani allegations that India is using the consulate for anti-Pakistan activities.
To be clear: India is using the Jalalabad consulate, and all Afghanistan consulates and its embassy at Kabul for anti-Pakistan activities. In case anyone has not noticed, Pakistan is in a state of undeclared war against India; under international law, India is entitled to defend itself as it decides best.
Likewise, Pakistan uses its missions in Afghanistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh - among others - for anti-India activity, and it has every right to so do.
We can't even imagine what India's reaction will be if the US should bring up this point in discussions. Indian diplomats aren't known for being deferential to the United States when it comes to India's national security. Just as American diplomats would, no doubt, be deferential to the Indians if the latter had thoughtful suggestions on US subversion conducted through its global missions.
We suspect the Indians will be very annoyed, to the point that nationalist forces in India - which grow stronger every day - will use US interference to attack the Indian Government and the result will be a fine mess.
India is in Afghanistan because it has ten centuries of interest in the region - and that's in what by India's standards is modern times. In other words, while Mr. Erickson was doing his tourist thing on the North American coast, India was very much concerned with events in Afghanistan.
So India has not gone to Afghanistan to help the US or to oblige the US, or as a US ally. It has gone there to further its national interests. If and as these interests coincide with US interests, India is happy to cooperate. But if interests do not coincide, or even clash, well, that's simply too bad, isn't it? After all, even the most harmonious couple can have different interests, and the essence of a good relationship is to recognize that and work within the constraints.
We are wondering when - of ever - the United States is publicly going to call Pakistan out on its continuing infiltration of terrorists into India. All the US has done is waffle and wuss: leave it to us, the US has told India, we'll push Pakistan not to attack you. Gee, Sam, we are so grateful. But the Pakistanis are not listening to you. Is the solution then to counsel the Indians to be more patient?
What would US reaction be if the Indians asked the US to stop subverting Iran, with an underlying threat that if the US did not comply, India would be very, very, very unhappy. Because, you know, India has no issues with Iran. It really worries the US is destabilizing Iran which will impact everyone in the region including India. India and Iran have a historic friendship and India on many levels has more vital interests in Iran than the US has.
We suspect the US would say something terribly rude. So if The Nation story is not a red herring, we hope America will understand if the Indians are terribly rude about the Jalalabad thing.
Meantime, on behalf of the American people - and this has nothing to do with India which does not have a horse in that race - Orbat.com would like to ask: When will the US Administration see fit to inform its people of the extent to which Pakistani money, training, weapons, intelligence, not to say several thousand Pakistani soldiers and officers, are destabilizing Afghanistan?
Or is it the US Administration's position that Americans need not know how, when, where, Pakistanis are killing, and helping kill, US/NATO troops and their Afghan allies?
Pakistan is at war against America too, just as much as it is against India. Please be clear, Editor does not blame Pakistan: everyone has to be free to follow their national interests.
So what US national interest is being served by the Administration's hiding Pakistan's war against America?
The Administration may call it realistic politics. We call it treason committed by the United States Government against it's own people. If USG thinks it has a reasonable case why it is acting this way, why the secrecy? Why not put it before the people and let them decide?
Oh, sorry about that. We forgot that for the American elite, American democracy is to be allowed when it benefits the elite. When it doesn't benefit the elite, such as telling the truth on Pakistan, then the people are too stupid to be trusted and USG must lie to them for their own good.

0230 GMT June 11, 2009

Air France

Flymike

A week after Air France FL 447 Airbus A330-200 flying at 35,000 feet approximately 350 miles off the Brazilian coast in route to Paris went down, recovery is still underway on the ocean surface. A French submarine Emeraude is in route due to join the search and recovery Wednesday. We assume Emeraude will listen for the signal emitted from the so called black box which records flight data, various systems, controls and cockpit voice recordings. Ocean depth in the area reaches 9000 feet well beyond submarine reach where the signal of the black box may be masked by thermal layers though the sub may have a towed sonar array which may prove useful but likely still limited in this deep ocean region.
Prior to the crash the aircraft was approaching an area of storms which satellite data estimated may have reached an altitude of 51,000 feet. The exact route the aircraft took through the area of storms is unknown, however a manual message was transmitted by the aircraft indicated it was entering an area of CBs (cumulo nimbus). Most aircraft try to circumnavigate and stay well clear of build ups due to the severe turbulence, lighting and other related hazards such as gravity waves which may emirate for several miles from CBs. Shortly after the manual report a series of automated fault reports, Ascars, were transmitted indicating a cascade of system failures, from instrumentation critical to flight and including severe, perhaps insurmountable, degradation of flight control systems given the rapidity of failures, (around 1 minute total).
One may speculate, due to the nature of the ending reports, the aircraft had departed controlled flight and was experiencing structural failure. A great deal of speculation and mystery surrounds what may have occurred to flight 447. The A330 is a highly automated aircraft that differs in the flight control philosophy employed by Boeing. As an example ultimate flight control is left to the pilot In Boeing aircraft whereas it is left to inertial systems, computers and flight data systems in the Airbus.
Some of the current controversy/investigation seems to center around the pitot systems which sense air speed and the possibility of icing. The aircraft was at 35000 feet and the outside air temp was likely -60 degrees thus only ice crystals may have been present and I feel an unlikely cause. The 330s and similar have been known to have a mind of their own on occasion due to malfunctions of inertial systems, air data etc. causing upsets and partial loss of control for periods.
Other aircraft (12) in the area at the time reported routine transit navigating around weather. One aircraft in the area at the time later reported seeing glowing orange dots on the ocean surface. An Air Comet flight reported seeing a bright white flash that descended vertically toward the ocean. An interesting Ascar fault indicated a rudder limiter malfunction on FL 447. This brought to mind the American Airline A300 crash in NY where the vertical stabilizer separated in wake turbulence,, but there was also rudder control interrelated in that crash. Interestingly FL 447 vertical stabilizer was found floating and appeared fairly cleanly separated at the attach points not unlike the NY accident. In yaw control mode a yaw stabilization system with no limits, turbulence, pilot control input etc., could this be a similar? failure If so it may explain differential speed readings in aid data systems which seem to be a main focus.
We'll just have to see what develops and nothing can be ruled out, including an explosion.

0230 GMT June 10, 2009

What the US should get for its defense budget

Like it it not, we have one kind of war we are fighting right now and likely to be fighting for the next 30-50 years. We should stop treating it as some kind of unpleasant contingency that will soon be over and things can go back to normal. It is the old normal kind of war that has become the contingency.
Obviously you cannot cut conventional war capability beyond a certain point without affecting the training and knowledge basis. As an example, for attack carriers our guess is that you need a minimum of six active and six in reserve. Navies take a devil of a time to build up - twenty years is a practical minimum. So we are not saying start cutting left and right; we are saying put more - much more - of the naval, air, and heavy armor forces in reserve.
Use the savings to add more infantry. And by this we do not mean add more 3000 troop brigades that give you 1000 pairs of feet on the ground. We are saying double the bayonet strength - as they used to call it in the old days - and increase the brigade base by an absolute minimum.
After all, in a CI situation you do not need to double the brigade base if you double the bayonet strength, because you are not using the vast tonnages of ammunition and POL as in conventional warfare.
In CI, the Indian Army will often assign 6 battalions to a brigade base organized to take three battalions in conventional warfare, because CI is infantry-intensive.
You don't want to just increase the number of battalions either, because then you are losing troops to the battalion base. You can try a whole bunch of different things to see what works for you: six rifle companies, or companies with four platoons and four squads, and so on.
Next, you absolutely have to stop buy weapons that cost gazillions per unit. The other day the DOD announced an award of $2.1-billion or so, for what - 11 F-35s? It doesn't matter how rich you are, $200-million fighters are going to bankrupt you. You have to adopt the Russian philosophy of "good enough." Admiral Gorshkov used to say: "Better is the enemy of good enough". Just because technologically we can make something better, doesn't mean we have to. Some of our younger readers may not know, but in World War II there was one side that made the best possible weapons, and another that made as many as possible "good enoughs". The side with the best lost. That was the Germans. The "good enoughs" were the Americans.
Next, you must absolutely rethink how you fight. some months ago we mentioned a Canadian operation to get a bomb factory that took nearly a month to plan, and involved 500 troops. The Canadians got the bomb factory, the bombers escaped, and for a whole month those 500 troops were not to be seen anywhere else. The bomb house and material inside cost what - $10,000? The Canadian spent what on the operation, including the support slice for their 500 troops - a few million dollars?
We saw a classic photo the other day that sums up Afghanistan perfectly. There was a plain, surrounded by mountains. The plain was several square kilometers in size - it was big. On this plain, searching for insurgents in the mountains, was a grand total of 7-10 Americans. Now clearly there were other troops not in the picture and other were on call. The point is, if you're searching mountain caves, you need a few battalions, not a few platoons. If you're going to provide security for villages - and this is paramount, and the main reason the US/NATO have been getting nowhere in Afghanistan, you can't show up every two weeks or once a month. You have to leave a platoon or whatever in that village to work with local volunteers. And that means you need a lot of troops.
Last, Americans have to think through their GWOT strategy. If the idea is to meet the enemy at all points around the world - Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Mahgreb, Horn of Africa, wherever these rats pop up, you aren't going to achieve it on double the current bayonet strength. You will need four times the bayonet strength and that is going to up as the enemy reacts. You will need an Army/Marine Corps of 1.5-million and up versus the current 750,000.
Don't want to expend the effort? Then redefine your GWOT aims.

0230 GMT June 9, 2009

What the US gets for its defense budget

The US Defense Budget for 2010 is about $660-billion including "overseas contingency operations". The spook budget in 2009 was estimated at $55-66 billion by Mr. John Pike of www.globalsecurity.org, who spends his life finding out such things. Then there is the DOD part of the NASA and DOE budgets, say $10-billion. Then there is the Homeland Security budget of $55-billion. Add it all up, and we around $780-billion. Add pensions, and round down to a cozy $800-billion.
The wars we are now fighting are what Editor terms Terrier Wars. Terriers kill rodent vermin, and they do it by hunting the vermin on the ground, and digging them out of the ground if neccessary.
The current vermin, aka jihadis, cannot be killed by carrier battle groups. Some are killed by tactical fighter wings, which is like using a bulldozer to kill a rat, and the result is the same - you end up by killing a good amount of harmless creatures. You don't really kill the vermin with tanks - same objection as previous.
Our Terriers are the infantry, the ones that carry the rifles and walk. Everything else is support.
With 46 army brigades and 10 Marine infantry regiments, we get about 60,000 troops that carry rifles and walk.
So we spend $13,333,333 per man per year at the tip of the spear.
The enemy spends - what? Shall we make it $5000 per man per year? That's probably reasonable, you can come up with your own figure.
This is not what one would call cost effective.
Aside from which, the enemy on a global scale numbers considerably more than 60,000 troops.
So think about this today. Yes, yes, we are quite aware that the US must maintain a conventional and nuclear warfighting capability, that the intelligence services operate against a wide range of threats, not just jihadis, ditto the spy satellites etc etc. We know the transport helicopters and the drones and the artillery and etc etc are "force multipliers" - a more useless term we have yet to come about, but Americans love it so.
But just think about what we are trying to say here: the way we're fighting the jihadis, we're going to lose. There are 1-billion followers of the Islamic faith world wide. If just 1 in 1,000 wants to do the jihadi thing, that's 1-million available.
Is that too much? Well, about 1 in 200 Americans want to do the anti-jihadi thing - that's about the ratio of active service personnel.
Are we so much more motivated than the jihadis? Don't think so. Yet for our calculation we're giving them 1 in 1000 population.
We'll continue tomorrow, but we trust we've gotten readers to think a bit out of the box.

0230 GMT June 8, 2009

We cancelled the update for tonight as we weren't saying anything Americans don't already know. If the Obama Administration has its way, US national debt will rise to 80% of GDP which will likely destroy both the dollar and economic growth. We were not ranting for lower taxes and privatization and so on. We were ranting that despite all the money the US spends on health, education, social welfare and so on, all indicators say the output is dismal. For example, we say we have the best health care system in the world. Well, it doesn't cover one of six people, it already eats up one of six dollars of GDP, and is heading for one of five. Despite the tag of "private" health care and claims of "choice", health care is rationed even for those who have it. So define best. Etc etc.. But we all know this, and there's no point in going over it again.

All we know is that if the US doesn't sort itself out economically, it isn't going to remain Number 1 in the world. Military power depends on economic power. We already spend as much on defense as the whole world put together, and look what we get for it. We're watching Pakistan go down the tubes, as it will despite the recent gains against the Taliban. Meanwhile, Somalia has gone down the tubes - again. The government controls a few blocks thanks to the small African Union force. Yemen is going down the tubes. Amazingly, in the 21st Century, piracy on the seas can't be stopped - insufficient resources. US says insufficient resources to every military problem: we messed up in Iraq because we didn't have enough troops; we cant send anyone to Somalia because we can't handle it; we don't have enough ships to stop piracy; we can't do anything about Pakistan; there aren't enough troops for Afghanistan etc etc. Its the same thing as with health care and other domestic problems: we spend more than anyone else in the world, per capita, and we get lousy results.

Something has to give.

0230 GMT June 7, 2009

Two Spy Stories

Correction: In the original post, we referred to Caen as the D-Day deception landing area, and of course it was Calais. Brian Reid politely pointed this out, with minimal reference to Editor's old age and so on, for which Editor is grateful.

Elderly US Couple Arrested and charged with spying for Cuba for three decades. The gentleman worked for the US State Department, and then went back to work when he began his second career. This is all quite sad, given their age, but there's one thing the US is absolutely uncompromising about, and that is spying by its citizens. Unless they're spying for Israel, of course, but then no one is perfect. This couple will be sent up the river for good, and probably be put in a SuperMax facility where you are in solitary for 23 hours a day and get to exercise in a small yard for one hour. If you don't behave, you get to be in solitary for 24 hours till you - pardon the pun - see the light.
The "whys" of this couple will get lots of discussion, but its really quite basic. Its what Jung called the need for a man to have a secret. We're not sure if he extended this to women. And its also a skilled spymaster making people who are at odds with their society feel special.
Since Washington Post wouldn't give up the story without forcing us to register, we're giving you the link to the Times London story http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6446281.ece
Here is a hilarious story about a spy who helped mislead the Germans about the target of the D-Day invasion. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/ben_macintyre/article6440365.ece This gentleman invented an entire spy ring with over 20+ fake agents and as part of the Patton deception told the Germans the Allies were to land at Calais and the Normandy was only a diversion.
The person who wrote the article says D-Day wouldn't have been such a success if it hadn't been for this man's work: the Germans kept 19 infantry and two panzer divisions waiting at Calais and did not use the armor to reinforce Normandy, where they could have wrecked havoc.
You have, however, to be very careful with such claims. You see, the Allied invasion of Europe was a massive, massive affair involving millions of men and thousands of secret agents and endless possible combinations of events. The Calais deception involved a great many creative people. Even without this agent's messages, the Germans believed a huge buildup was taking place for the offensive - if we remember right, didn't Patton have several mythical airborne divisions complete with patches and so on.
Say, for example, this agent had not kept saying "Calais", there were other agents who were saying it and a whole bunch of activity saying it.
Consider just one of the many possibilities had the Germans moved the two Panzer divisions to Normandy: they would have been obliterated by the Allied air offensive and in all probability would have had no impact on events.
And just so you understand there's nothing romantic being a spy read this story of a young Englishwoman whose French soldier husband was killed at El Alamein in 1942. She volunteered for the UK's SOE, and was captured on June 10, 1944, on her second mission, as she covered the escape of a Resistance colleague after they were caught in a firefight with troops from Panzer Division Das Reich. She laughed at her captors, was handed to the Gestapo, who tortured her "atrociously and continuously" but she refused to give any information, and was executed at age 24 at Ravensbruck. She left behind a four-tear old child. She was awarded a posthumous George Cross, Britain's highest gallantry award for civilians. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article869653.ece
And if you still don't get it, read about Noor Inayat Khan, a direct descendent of the great Mysore emperor, Tipu Sultan, who fought the British invaders to the last. His great-great-grandaughter fought for the British as a member of SOE. She was captured in Paris in October 1943 by the dreaded German SD. For all the SD's fearsome reputation, she was never tortured by them during her one month in custody, even though she twice tried to escape and managed on the third attempt to flee briefly before being captured. The SD asked her to sign a document saying she would not attempt escape again. She refused, and was sent to Germany, where she was kept in solitary darkness, chained in such a way she could not relieve or clean herself properly. In November 1943 she and three other women SOE agents were executed at Dachau.
A Dutch prisoner who witnessed her end said: "“The SS undressed the girl and she was terribly beaten by Ruppert (an SS officer) all over her body. She did not cry, neither said anything. When Ruppert got tired and the girl was a bloody mess he told her then he would shoot her. She had to kneel and the only word she said, before Ruppert shot her from behind through the head, was ‘liberté’.” She was 30 years old." http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article717044.ece
She too was awarded the George Cross. Take a look at her photo and you will never figure she turned out to be so tough.
From http://www.chowrangi.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/02/noor.jpg
Her executioner, who was also responsible for the deaths of the other three women, was in turn executed by the Allies in 1946 for war crimes.
They say the times make the person. And those were extraordinary times when global civilizations were locked in a struggle to the end, so presumably that is why the war produced so many extraordinary people. Be that as it may, the Editor is absolutely, perfectly, 100% sure he could not, in any circumstances, be even a tiny fraction as brave as Noor Inayat Khan.

0230 GMT June 6, 2009

Russia

Dagestan Interior Minister Murdered by a sniper in Makhachkla. The official and was standing outside the banquet hall where his daughter was to get married. A sniper from an overlooking building killed the minister and critically wounded four people including a senior tax official who were with the minister. (ITAR-TASS report.)
RIA- Novosti says Russia has operational 8 SSBNs and 17 SSNs from a total of 12 and 30 respectively. It also has several special purpose and test boats, plus 10 conventional boats.
The agency also reports that Russia is to buy 18 regiments of the new S-400 Triumf air defence system. A regiment typically has 8 launchers with 32 missiles. The first regiment is deployed outside Moscow. The SAM-21 Gadfly missile has a 400-km range and can be deployed against theatre and cruise missiles and aircraft.
Pravda says foreigners admire Russia women for their looks, which is quite true, but then proceeds to give a list that omits Anna Netrebko, the famous opera singer who has a divine voice and has looks that put most supermodels to shame.
Pravda also says western researchers have found that women's bare legs cause so much unfulfilled frustration that men fall prey to many diseases and drop dead earlier than should. As good an explanation of why men live shorter lives than women. This is also good news for the Editor. His lady colleagues wear pants (much more practical for teachers) and his eyesight is so bad that while driving he cannot tell if women on the street are bare-legged. The ladies at the gym have legs that will definitely shorten your life - not from lust, but from horror. So Editor keeps his eyes closed while working out. The rest of the time he is at home. So clearly Editor will have a long life.

Other news

Haaretz of Israel warns that since Mr. Obama has let GM go into bankruptcy he could easily go against Israel on the settlements issue. We obviously are not smart understand the connection. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1089825.html
Indian AWACS Aviation Week & Space Technology reports that the first of three Il-76/Israeli Phalcon AWACS has arrived, with the other aircraft due next year.
But bafflingly - to us - the Indian Air Force has decided to change the platform for the next batch of three. Embrarer and Gulfstream are competing. We are not clued up on this and our Number 1 South Asian source refuses to get in touch despite coming to Washington at least once a year. There are hints that the Indians are angry at the Russians over delays with the first batch, the integration, and demands for more money.
This article seems to confirm the hints: http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/NEWS/newsrf.php?newsid=10875 It mentions that India might scrap its purchase of Il-78 tankers and stay with the single squadron of Il-78 tankers in service (No. 78 Squadron) while purchasing French MRTT (based on the A300 family).
India is buying $3-4 billion worth of equipment from the Russians a year. The IAF now has four Su-30 squadrons with more aircraft under production. The IAF seems to be destined to become one of the largest UAV operators after the US. It already has five UAV squadrons with more planned.
65th D-Day Times London has a story headlined "Tears and memories as parachutes fall." Very sad that the Brits have adopted the same stupid, over-emotional style of the American press.
If you read the American press, every day in each paper you will find at least one story that speaks of "tears", "grief", and the "struggle" to understand why X, Y, Z happened, usually in connection with someone's sudden death by homicide, accident, or unexpected illness. There is nothing to understand, people die for random reasons, and tears and grief are best done in private. Meaningless death is as much part of life as life.
What's there to struggle with meaning of the Air France flight that went down over the Atlantic from Brazil to France. You had 228 people on their way home or on business or to visit France or to catch a plane to somewhere else, with all the happiness, sadness, boredom, excitement and so on when the plane got caught in a series of violent high-altitude thunderstorms and crashed from an altitude of 10,000-meters, breaking up at some point before hitting the ocean.
Editor has no particular problem with dying, but can you imagine what it's like for a man who has his wife and his children with him and there is absolutely, absolutely, absolutely nothing he can do to save his family, worse, can do nothing to protect them from their fear? You want to talk of hell, that's hell.
Where is there meaning to be found, particularly when you have 228 people falling from 10-kilometers - that's a long way to die. Even with the plane breaking up, many would have been alive all the way down. There is no meaning. That the way life is.
When humans die, be it on the beaches of Normandy or in the Atlantic wastes, we as humans owe it to them to think of them, and then get on with the business of living, always keeping it at the back of our minds that one day it can happen that God, or the Devil, calls our number out of turn. Live while you can, that's the only meaning to be found when people die.

0230 GMT June 5, 2009

The DPRK artillery attack on Seoul scenario The other day we said that when DPRK started to bluster, a robust US response was required this time otherwise the Norks will just go on and on with their belligerence. This business of saying "oh, its just them yapping again, ignore them" leads the Norks only to yap all the louder. Just like a kid wanting attention and not getting it, one day the Norks may just find themselves having to actually do something for the attention they are not getting now. So as far as we are concerned, better to give them a solid spanking now for all the bad words, then have to do something much more serious because they get out of control.
Whatever the pros and cons of our suggestion, we got to thinking about the "fact" that came out of nowhere some years ago - was is it the 1990s? - about how the US should be very careful about taking action against the Norks because DPRK had 10,000 artillery pieces and could fire 500,000 rounds an hour and millions of Seoul residents would become casualties and so on, and the artillery was hidden in mountain caves and could come out to fire several rounds and then disappear back into the caves before retaliation was unleashed and so on. We're hazy on the details because the "fact" was so dumb that we figured someone would rebut and that would be the end of the "fact".
In today's world, however, where everyone is an expert and anyone can get published, "facts" get repeated and repeated and repeated, and seemingly never die.
Seoul is 50-km from the DMZ, and even if one stipulates that DPRK has or will line up 10,000 guns/MRLS 25-meters apart right on the border, none but the long-range 170mm home-made guns can reach Seoul - at extreme range. These guns may be ex-naval types and are mounted on the T-54. Supposedly there are 500 of them.
Assuming a round a minute - sure, in bursts you can manage more, but lets not get carried away - if all these guns were aimed at Seoul, DPRK could fire 30,000 rounds an hour. So we've already come down to 6% of the original figure.
But can they fire 30,000 rounds an hour? When you fire guns on sustained maximum charge, you greatly degrade the life of the tube. We haven't the faintest idea what the maximum charge life of these guns is: this sort of thing depends on more factors than we certainly can assess.
Regardless, however, if DPRK neatly arranges 500 guns to fire on Seoul for an hour, reaching the western and northern suburbs, they will be killed before they get to a second hour. Since there is a limited arc along which the guns must be to hit Seoul, wiping them out without airpower is not a terribly complicated job.
If they fire and pop into caves, well, certainly they will not be firing 30,000 rounds an hour. And each time they pop out for another shoot, there will be fewer and fewer to go back in.
People think war is some kind of computer game. The reality is if you have a battalion firing, and in the retaliation one of the battalion's batteries get wiped out, it is not as if the enemy goes: "Too bad, but I've still got two batteries left."
He may have two batteries left, but they are very unlikely to risk getting hit after one has been eliminated.
Moreover, in this age of 24-hour real-time surveillance, and counter-battery radar that calculates solutions well before the first shell arrives, how realistic is this pop-in/pop-out scenario? Not very. US and ROK fighters will be sitting on top of the DMZ waiting for the pop out, and that's going to be a fine mess for the artillery.
So obviously we are not saying no one in Seoul gets killed. A few thousand people, maybe even 10-20,000 may get killed. But consider that the retaliation, will effectively spell the end of DPRK as an early 20th Century nation (forget mid-20th Century even - look at satellite maps of DPRK at night, and you will be amazed how little of the country has electrical power).
So even if US blockades DPRK and starts searching its ships for missile parts or whatever, how does it make sense for DPRK to start shelling Seoul or trying to cross the DMZ or whatever scenario one may care to envisage?
One could say, "These guys are lunatics, there's no rationality." Well, there's actually no evidence they're lunatics - boring yes, crazy no. But if they are, isn't it better to finish them now than later?
We aren't going to bother refuting other scenarios people come up, such as a surprise attack, because they are feasible only if US/ROK is in a coma.
One of the greatest things about the internet is that now anyone who has information can put it out. Earlier you had to get your work into a magazine or a book, or you wrote letters to each other. So a letter might be shared among, say, ten people. Now a letter on the internet, located by a search engine, can reach any number of people.
One of the worst things about the internet is that anyone can put anything out. This puts enormous responsibility on everyone to stay educated and informed about as many things as possible, at least to the level one can say "Wait a minute, that fact makes no sense. I'd better check with an expert."

0230 GMT June 4, 2009

Good News: Banks Want To Repay $60-billion Soonest That's good news on two fronts. One, that's that much less taxpayer money at risk and available for deficit reduction. Two, such a quick recovery by the banks shows that maybe the US economic meltdown was not as bad as we thought.
But why are these banks so anxious to give back money?
Simple. They are very anxious to start enriching their top execs with fat compensation packages. Unless the government money is returned, they are severely restricted in feeding like pigs at the corporate trough. Now, it was this greed that got us into the mess in the first place, so this is not altogether a good development.
On the other hand, no one has got your or mine arm in a tight twist behind our backs forcing us to buy shares in these piggy feeders. At some point we as a society have to say: "you cannot be protected against all the risks of your bad decisions. At some point you have to take responsibility for yourself."
By now, you as an individual know: (A) you're better off burning your money then trusting it to Wall Street financial institutions - if you burn it at least you get heat; (B) the so-called government "regulators" work in complete collusion with the bandits of Wall Street; (C) when things go bad the fat cats get bailed out, you, poor sap, simply lose everything. Just because regulators have tightened up now doesn't mean they won't be "persuaded" to loosen up one, three, five years from now.
If after knowing this you still want to give your money to Wall Street, don't whine when you lose it.
DPRK Missile is now in an assembly building. US intel says this bird is longer than anything DPRK has launched so far, and it will be capable of reaching the US.
Secretary Gates has added to his reputation as a principled public servant. He has said that if neccessary he will reverse his decision to cut the Ft. Greeley ABM interceptor field from a planned 44 missiles to 30. He said he made his decision based on the situation as existed then, if the threat changes he will ask for more money in FY 2011. What a guy: country before his own ego.
30 missiles suffice to kill 6 ICBMs that get through other defenses; if missiles get through the long-range interceptors there are medium-range and last-ditch systems. We think the whole shmoo of multi-layered defenses should suffice - cautiously - for 10 ICBMs if Greeley gets only 30 interceptors.
We think the US is working toward a capacity within the next couple of years to bring down 20 ICBMs - think PRC, not DPRK - and as the PRC threat increases, so will US defenses. We do not think the US will permit PRC to get into a Mutual Assured Destruction frameset as it did with the USSR.
Further, we think the US is working toward knocking down attacks of 500+ missiles by the 2030s - that means Russia and/or a very aggressive PRC.
Of course, we also think Editor will finally get a date this Friday.
So who knows. Only time will tell if we are right.

0230 GMT June 3, 2009

Pakistan Students Still no clarity: students might have been as few as 200 and as many as 400. Fifty are still missing or maybe its 10. They were freed by the Frontier Corps' Shawal Scouts or by negotiation undertaken by tribal elders. They were leaving for summer vacation or were told to get out.
We don't know what the pattern in Pakistan is, but in South Asia traditionally students in mountain area schools go home for the winter, not the summer. The summer is the worst time to be in the plains and the winter the worst time to be in the mountains. Perhaps Pakistani readers can enlighten us.
All that seems certain is that political authorities have ordered all homes and shops of a particular tribe sealed and arrest orders issued for all. Frontier law requires tribes to maintain the peace. If a tribe creates problems and the matter is not internally dealt with, collective punishment is imposed by the provincial government. This is something that will have the HR types screaming, but that has been the frontier tradition forever and a day, and in fact one reason the NWFP is in a mess is because by interfering all over the place at America's orders, the balance of power between the tribes and the central government has been upset.
Nonetheless, one reason the frontier is so thinly policed is because of the tribal policing system, and now this is creating huge problems. The army, no matter what anyone says, cannot do police work. But in NWFP, police has to be built up from scratch, opposed all the way by the tribals. This is just another reason why things are not as simple as Imperial Washingtoon wants to make out.
The Kim is dead, long live the Kim Except that DPRK is such a horror of a tyranny this would just be another episode in the comic drama of the Kims.
The elder Kim has declared his youngest son his successor. So instead of having an immature 67 year old at the helm - a man who insists he was found by swans atop DPRK's most scared mountain and flown down, or something like that, DPRK will soon be ruled by an immature 25 year old.
We suppose his story, in keeping with our modern times, will be that he was a hero in Virtual Reality and brought to this reality by Nintendo or whatever.
Anne Applebaum and an explanation of events in DPRK This lady is a perspicuous anlayst of the European political and cultural scenes, so we were a bit surprised to see an article on DPRK by her in yesterday's Washington Post. She sought to find a rational explanation for DPRK's totally bizarre and insane behavior these past few months. And by golly, darned if she didn't make the best case we're heard for DPRK's behavior - in fact, the only case we've heard.
She freely admits she's using her intuition and she doesn't know for a fact, but what the heck, no one else knows either.
As an expert in using intuition, the Editor can assure she didn't use her intuition at all, only solid logics. She did this by the Hindu reasoning process of defining something by what it is not.
She quickly concluded that only one state has the ability to destroy DPRK and its leadership of perverts (our word, not hers) and that is PRC. It only has to, for example, open the border and all of DPRK will flee their swan leader. It can cut off trade and oil, and DPRK will go cold, dark, and hungry. Etc etc etc.
So she says since PRC can control DPRK but is not, Beijing is up to no good (our words, not hers). DPRK is doing all the nonsense because PRC has told Pyongang it is there to protect DPRK.
So why is PRC goosing the Swan Child (ha ha, we are so funny)? to act badly?
Because PRC wants to show RPK, Japan, and Taiwan US is just a wuss Class I, PRC is the new King of the chicken dung heap or whatever, and only Beijing can guarantee their security. And it follows that if you want Beijing to smile fondly on you, you'd better throw that bum, Uncle Sham, out of the 'hood.
We are waiting to see if the talking heads start screaming and shouting that Ms. AA hasn't a clue what she's saying. But look, has anyone come up with a better explanation? We haven't seen one. AA's explanation passes the Occam's Razor test.
Only thing we have to say is, Beijing doesn't have to push DPRK into another episode of Dictators Behaving Badly to prove Uncle Sham is a wuss. DPRK is saying they will invade ROK if their ships are checked for banned items such as missiles. They've said the 1953 Armistice is dead.
Uncle Sam's Response: mobilize the entire Army and Air National Guard (we need a full-scale mobilization test anyway), and start reinforcing ROK.
Uncle Sham's Response: we aren't playing these games with you, DPRK, and you will not be rewarded for your belligerence. But we look forward to your return to multinational talks.
Kootchie Kootchie, who's the good wuss? (Uncle Sham knocks you over because his tail is wagging so hard, he's wants so to please.)

0230 GMT June 2, 2009

North Waziristan, Pakistan After Taliban threatened a military-run college which taught civilian students, the staff and students evacuated the premises. As they traveled in a convoy of 34 vehicles, they were stopped by Taliban.
Reports are conflicting: some say 40-60 were taken captive, others say that many escaped and the rest are captive. As usual in Pakistan (and also in India), everyone loudly expresses his opinion without checking the facts, so presumably it will be a while before we get the official whitewashed "truth".
The ISPR spokesperson says that this is all to divert attention. What a clever chap. Someone give him another medal.
Pakistan Nixes US Drone Intel US flew about a dozen drone missions giving Pakistanis information on insurgent happenings. Pakistan then said thanks but no thanks. The official version is the Pakistanis didn't want US aircraft flying over their country.
Wonder what it is the Pakistanis want to hide. Moreover, what's the point? US has plenty of silent types that just kinda flit around. We're told even the killer drones are pretty quiet. Point being US is taking whatever pictures it wants no matter what the Pakistanis say.
Pakistan says it can shoot down US drones but doesn't want to start a war with the US. Bros, you won't start a war. US is intruding in your demarcated airspace. You have every right to shoot 'em down. What the US will do - ah, the horror, the horror, have these Americans no humanity? - is stop the fat paychecks you get from them. That's much worse than war.
Pakistan Government Admits Swat Taliban Leadership Escaped So much for cordon and search. Try putting 60,000 troops in Swat if you want to stop people from infiltrating at will.

0230 GMT June 1, 2009

Pakistan NWFP Folks, bad news - or good news depending on where you stand on this. Editor is now totally overcome by ADD regarding the NWFP. We'll report major developments, if there are any. Meanwhile, read www.longwarjournal.org and www.aljzeera.com to stay informed.
DPRK Moving Another Long-Range Missile To Launch Pad Should be ready to launch in 15 days or so. Everyone yelling and screaming as usual, "you can't do this." Well, DPRK is doing it. What is tiresome is US/world outrage. Why not just say you will not, or cannot, stop DPRK, and save space in the media for real news, such as British singing sensation Susan Boyle ending second in her competition, and Editor's digestive problems..
...Since you asked...aha! fooled you for a second, you really thought Editor was going to discuss his digestive problems. No. He will discuss his problems regarding the too rapid growth of his toenails. That is vastly more significant than what the US has to say about DPRK. Ever occur to anyone in Washington that while we all can agree the Norks are plain crazy, Washington is approaching that state very fast re DPRK?
Somalia Piracy: Color us Confused We at Orbat.com are simple folks. Our median IQ is 80 versus the world median of 100, and we favor not just a maximum of two syllables for a word, we favor single words like "food", "sleep", "sex", "money" and so forth.
So why is UN trying to give us a massive maximum aspirin strength headache? A reuters.com report May 29 has the UN seeing success in the piracy fight. Then we are told that in 2008 there were 100 attacks and 40 successes. In 2009 there have been 100 attacks and 25 success. Kindly note: there are six more months to go in 2009.
Toyota vs GM Business Week tells us that when GM lays off workers, it sends them home. When Toyota lays off workers, it sends them for training.
So, folks, the $64-million question: when the recession ends and the economy starts growing again, who will survive, Toyota or GM?
You guessed correct. Since Orbat.com doesn't have $64-million to give to each of you, will you take IOUs? After all, that's what the US Government is writing all around.

An informal Essay On US Auto Worker Wages

With monotonous regularity, we hear how those greedy, greedy US autoworkers have driven the industry into the ground with their refusal to give up their benefits and high wages. Someone told us the other day the US autoworker typically gets $25/hour in wages, and $25/hour in benefits, such as pensions and health.
When Editor was in college, he had a friend whose uncle had a college degree (in those days less than 25% of American had college degrees, so it was a relatively big deal). He worked for Ford, and absolutely refused to move from the shop floor to the executive suite. Why? Because he made more money as a manual worker.
In the 1950s and into the 1960s, you could still make a decent middle-class living in manufacturing.
Today, that same middle-class style is termed unaffordable if America is to compete in automobiles.
So really what people are saying is: if America is to stay competitive, we can't pay manufacturing wages at middle class levels. Instead of $25 and $25, we can afford to pay at best - say - $18 and $10. And that's autos. For lots of other manufacturing, we cant even pay $12 and $5.
Economic theory says that when an economy faces high labor costs, it innovates and uses machinery to replace labor, thus creating new skilled jobs to produce the machinery and so on down the line, and wages stay high.
What happening in the US, however, is that we're replacing higher wage labor with lower wage labor thanks to, among other things, a non-stop tsunami of immigration that keeps expanding the labor force and pushing down wages.
So presumably this process will stop when China and India overtake us in per capita income and we become a third world economy. Then we'll be able to export manufactured goods to them.
As for exporting other goods to them, oh please. Does the world really need Hollywood movies, video games, American-style finance and the like? Would work fine for - say - Chad or Nepal. And even it works, it isn't working well enough, because we continue running massive trade deficits, which shows overall America cannot compete on the global stage.
It is long past time for us Americans to stop telling ourselves how great we are and nothing needs to change. Keep talking like that, and in 25 years America will be the equivalent of Mexico in the world.
The first step to change is to recognize there is a problem. And to recognize there is a problem requires humility. Already several nations rank higher on quality of life indexes. This country is no longer the best in the world at this and at that and at everything. Its time to start admitting the reality.
As to what is to be done, Editor is an old person. He is off to sleep. He didn't contribute to America's decline. For one thing, when the decline irrevocably set in, he was overseas. For the rest, he continues to subscribe to traditional American values: God, frugality, hard work, family values, clean living and high thinking, concern for his fellow persons and what have you.

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