Where Are The Carriers?

"Great Satan is an 11 carrier nation in a 15 carrier world..."

 “Regardless of the number of carriers national leadership decides to maintain,” wrote retired Navy Commander John Patch, “because they remain the U.S. Navy’s preeminent capital ship and a symbol of American global power and prestige, they are a potential key target for both unconventional and conventional adversaries.”

Acknowledged.

However, one inexplicable aspect of the “carriers are vulnerable!” argument, particularly versus the Chinese DF-21 ballistic missile threat, is that while the carrier’s vulnerability is trumpeted, there is little mention of the fact that every ship suffers from similar, if not greater, vulnerabilities – particularly ships built to commercial standards and simply painted haze-gray.

This includes platforms on the various lists of options if the Navy were to stop building carriers. It also ignores enhanced passive and active systems––e.g., the cruise- and ballistic-missile defenses provided by the Navy’s Aegis cruisers and destroyers––that are designed to defeat tomorrow’s threats.

Finally, to put the entire vulnerability issue in context, land bases, which never move, are much more vulnerable to attack than are mobile naval forces at sea.

Charm Offensive

 

To paraphrase an ancient tune from the last millennium

 

"Pretty girls find out early how to open doors with just a smile"

 

True!

 

Can such timeless sagin' be Nation/State'd to the Diplopolitical in the New Millennium?

 

Oui M'Suer!  

There are two main reasons to doubt the possibility of an Iran-U.S. rapprochement, an idea that gained new life after Iran's charm offensive at the United Nations last week and a phone call between the presidents of the two countries on Sept. 27. The first is general to the Middle East, the second is specific to Iran.  

The general reason is easy to understand, and all-encompassing: Nothing at all works in the Middle East, so why should the U.S. find success convincing Iran to give up its nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions? 

Think about it: Every great, complicated effort meant to bring peace or democracy or tranquility to the Middle East somehow goes off the rails. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process? A 20-year failure. The remaking of Iraq? Also broadly a failure. The effort to bring about an end to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria? Failure. The entire Arab Spring? At the very least, a promise unfulfilled, and a bitter failure in many countries. The war to defeat Islamist terrorism? So far, a failure, despite intermittent tactical success.

Since nothing works in a zero-sum region where politics is defined by fanatics, I don’t feel particularly optimistic about the current effort. I used to be more of an optimist, by the way, but this is what happens over time. It wouldn’t be surprising, by next spring, if we saw the White House acquiesce to congressional demands for harsher sanctions on the Iranian regime, after several rounds of mostly fruitless negotiations.

The second reason is specific to Iran's actions last week. Many people are forgetting that Hassan Rouhani, the president of Iran and the commander of Operation Offensive Charm, is a moderate only in comparison to his predecessor, the unhinged Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Rouhani has been a superior soldier for Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a defender of the regime, and an anti-American propagandist for much of his professional life. (Not often mentioned during last week’s love-in was Rouhani’s post-Sept. 11 rel="external">commentary, in which he blamed the attacks on the “wrongs and mistakes of American policies,” and argued that the U.S. Air Force shot down Flight 93, which crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside.)

There's no proof yet that Rouhani's ultimate goals for Iran are different than those of the hardliners. Let’s look at what he didn't do at the UN last week: He not only refused to comply with the many Security Council resolutions demanding that Iran cease all uranium-enrichment activities, he also refused to endorse the idea that Iran is obligated to pay any attention to the Security Council's wishes. (Remember, the many resolutions demanding that Iran cease enrichment passed with the unanimous approval of the five permanent members.)

Until proven otherwise, there's no reason to think that Rouhani, who is acting on Khamenei's behalf, is ready to shut down his country's nuclear program, despite airy statements to the contrary. The Iranian leadership wants to maintain its ability to produce nuclear weapons while at the same time convincing the West to lift sanctions. So far, Rouhani’s difference is one of style, not of substance.

Americans are easily charmed by smiling clerics, and Rouhani understands this. In 2007, he said, "We should talk carefully so as not to provoke the enemy, we should not give them any excuses."

Who is the enemy? Great Satan is the enemy. According to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy's dossier on Rouhani  the preacher believes “The fundamental principle in Iran's relations with America -- our entire focus -- is national strength. Strength in politics, culture, economics, and defense -- especially in the field of advanced technology -- is the basis for the preservation and overall development of the System, and will force the enemy to surrender.”

H edoes not wish to see an `increase in tensions' with Great Satan, he has no desire to see a `decrease' in them either: `Today, we cannot say that we want to eliminate the tension between us and Great Satan... We should be aware that we can have interactions even with the enemy in such a manner that the grade of its enmity would be decreased, and secondly, its enmity would not be effective.'"

44 seems somewhat enthusiastic about the possibility of real rapprochement with Iran.

Pic - "The Iranians are going to try to see how far they can get on charm alone."

Mission Action 2013

Shashoujian!

Collectivist China cranks out another Military Ex - called - you guessed it - Mission Action 2013:

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force has dispatched fighters, bombers, scouts and aero-transport aircrafts for the exercise involving over 10,000 personnel.

The PLA has over 2.3 million personnel in its Army, Air Force and Navy, making it the world’s biggest defence force.

In the current exercise, the Air Force will collaborate with naval aviation forces, naval ships and land troops to conduct far-distance manoeuvres, joint air defence, air confrontation and joint aid in strange terrains and war environments.

‘Mission Action 2013’ is part of the annual military training plan approved by the Central Military Commission.

Ahead of the exercises, Chinese Defence Minister General Chang Wanquan called for a national defence mobilisation system that meets the needs of both emergency response and war preparation.

The current military exercise, involving over 40,000 troops, was aimed at testing the logistic ability of the army to move soldiers and machinery for long distances in war time conditions.

“The defence mobilisation system would serve civilians in peaceful times and respond to emergencies and possible wars.

The country should make concrete moves towards a defence mobilisation system so that it can be well prepared for possible conflicts in the future and new circumstances”

Pic - "Assassin's Mace"

Remapped

Oh. it is so. At least in certain mindsets. When the vic vic vitorious Allies defeated the Central Powers - Ottmanic Empire got all resized via Sykes Picot

Many cats feel the dyvying up of the ancient Caliphate unfairly made Araby weak and unthreatening to the wicked women worshipping West or anyone else in weapons range.

Reckon it's time to for a remapping redo?

The centrifugal forces of rival beliefs, tribes and ethnicities — empowered by unintended consequences of the Arab Spring — are also pulling apart a region defined by European colonial powers a century ago and defended by Arab autocrats ever since.

A different map would be a strategic game changer for just about everybody, potentially reconfiguring alliances, security challenges, trade and energy flows for much of the world, too.

The Arab Spring was the kindling. Arabs not only wanted to oust dictators, they wanted power decentralized to reflect local identity or rights to resources. Syria then set the match to itself and conventional wisdom about geography.

New borders may be drawn in disparate, and potentially chaotic, ways. Countries could unravel through phases of federation, soft partition or autonomy, ending in geographic divorce.

Libya could devolve into two or even three pieces. The Cyrenaica National Council in eastern Libya declared autonomy in June. Southern Fezzan also has separate tribal and geographic identities. More Sahelian than North African in culture, tribes and identity, it could split off too.

A new map might get even more intriguing. Arabs are abuzz about part of South Yemen’s eventually merging with Saudi Arabia. Most southerners are Sunni, as is most of Saudi Arabia; many have family in the kingdom. The poorest Arabs, Yemenis could benefit from Saudi riches. In turn, Saudis would gain access to the Arabian Sea for trade, diminishing dependence on the Persian Gulf and fear of Iran’s virtual control over the Strait of Hormuz.

The most fantastical ideas involve the Balkanization of Saudi Arabia, already in the third iteration of a country that merged rival tribes by force under rigid Wahhabi Islam. The kingdom seems physically secured in glass high-rises and eight-lane highways, but it still has disparate cultures, distinct tribal identities and tensions between a Sunni majority and a Shiite minority, notably in the oil-rich east.

Syrians like to claim that nationalism will prevail whenever the war ends. The problem is that Syria now has multiple nationalisms. “Cleansing” is a growing problem. And guns exacerbate differences. Sectarian strife generally is now territorializing the split between Sunnis and Shiites in ways not seen in the modern Middle East.

But other factors could keep the Middle East from fraying — good governance, decent services and security, fair justice, jobs and equitably shared resources, or even a common enemy. Countries are effectively mini-alliances. But those factors seem far off in the Arab world. And the longer Syria’s war rages on, the greater the instability and dangers for the whole region.

Uh, On the other hand creating 9 more Arab League Members to a total of 31, truly would keep Araby all rivalicious as well as jamming up a collective Ummah.

Pic - "“Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across m"Hammedist World”

WoW!!

WoW - the Watchers Council - it's the oldest, longest running cyber comte d'guere ensembe in existence - started online in 1912 by Sirs Jacky Fisher and Winston Churchill themselves - an eclective collective of cats both cruel and benign with their ability to put steel on target (figuratively - natch) on a wide variety of topictry across American, Allied, Frenemy and Enemy concerns, memes, delights and discourse.

Every week these cats hook up each other with hot hits and big phazed cookies to peruse and then vote on their individual fancy catchers

Thusly sans further adieu (or a don"t)

Council Winners

First place with 2 2/3 votes! The Right Planet –Defining the Enemy — Islamic Terror

Second place with 2 1/3 votes – Joshuapundit – This Time It’s Nairobi’s Turn 

Third place with 2 votes – The Razor - Ignore Iran Today – But Not Tomorrow  

Fourth place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – Bookworm Room -Is Ted Cruz’’s promised Obamacare filibuster the equivalent of King Leonidas’s stand at Thermopylae?  

Fifth place with 1 vote – Liberty’s Spirit-Politically correct dilettantes devoid of morality and a spine 

Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Glittering Eye-Life in the Petri Dish 

Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Noisy Room- Parent Arrested from Common Core Meeting for Speaking Out of Turn  

Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Simply Jews – John McCain vs Vladimir Putin: an abject failure of good intentions  

Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote – VA Right! –‘Impotent Eric’ Cantor WILL APPROVE Obamacare Before All is Said and Done. Virginia WILL GET Cantorcare 

Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote – Rhymes With Right –Palin Is Right On Ted Cruz Attackers 

Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Political Commentator – Bernanke’s successor will be caught between reality and a hard place! 

Non-Council Winners

• Victor Davis Hanson-Our Truest Lies submitted by Joshuapundit

Second place with 2 votes – Mark Steyn –Next Stop, Banana Republic submitted by Liberty’s Spirit

Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – Melanie Phillips – A Devastating Truth submitted by The Watcher

Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes -The Passing Parade-Interesting times we live in, aren’t they? submitted by Simply Jews

Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote Adam Garfinkle -More Curiouser submitted by The Razor

Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes - Accuracy In Media –New York Times Exposes Marxist Mayoral Candidate submitted by The Right Planet

Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote - John Hayward/The Conversation –Peeling back the banana republic submitted by Nice Deb

Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Glenn Reynolds –Obama selfish, stubborn on health care submitted by Bookworm Room

Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote -DoD Buzz – AirSea Battle Adds Substance to Concept submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD

Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote -NewsBusters –MRC Study Documents Virginia Newspapers’ Viciously Negative Slant on GOP Gubernatorial Candidate submitted by VA Right!

Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Self-Styled Siren –The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact With Hitler submitted by The Glittering Eye

Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote -The Independent Sentinel –New York City’s Bleak Future with Bill de Blasio submitted by The Watcher

Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Mises Daily –Fear the Boom, Not the Bust submitted by The Political Commentator

Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Gates Of Vienna –On Force, Control, and Freedom submitted by The Watcher

See you next week! And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter 

Navy Wargames

From the History of Naval Wargames!

The rise of the Internet and increased computing power in personal computers pushed the boundaries of simulation complexity and the ability for multiple players distributed across vast distances to participate in the same simulation. In the mid-2000s, the Navy started work on Kill Chain, a three-dimensional naval tactical warfare simulator. Kill Chain originally began life as technology demonstrator for the DD(X) program, with the database provided by the U.S. military. The program was funded to $11.4 million in 2007, with an initial emphasis on ant-submarine warfare.

The Department of Defense has also taken to using simulations to crowdsource new ideas. The Naval Postgraduate School now runs Massive Multiplayer Online Wargame Leveraging the Internet (MMOWGLI). MMOWGLI is an online simulation that allows large numbers of participants to crowdsource ideas and options for a variety of national security issues, from 3D printing to energy security, to piracy. The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) freely distributes Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV), a computer simulation based upon the civilian wargame Dangerous Waters. Anyone can download the game, in which players control an unmanned undersea vehicle searching for hostile submarines. The game was designed to generate ideas for DARPA on how to best use unmanned submersibles in anti-submarine warfare.

The Navy has benefitted from its consistent devotion to wargames. It seems likely that a future of relatively lean budgets will push the military to embrace games even more and they will become even more popular as means of training, testing and generating ideas. It also seems likely that increased computing in PCs will ensure overlap between wargames developed for military and civilian markets.

Pic - "Anti-Access Warfare: Countering A2/AD Strategies"

Persia's Hook Up Phobia

The near miss at UN betwixt Great Satan and top cats from Persia's Preacher Command have always been about as fake as a wedding cake

See,

That's one way of putting it. Another way is that Iran's ruling clerics and Revolutionary Guard Corps remain ideologically incapable of reconciling themselves to the Great Satan. This shouldn't surprise anyone who reviews the 34-year-history of Iranian rebuffs to American diplomatic overtures, which makes the U.S. embarrassment on Tuesday all the more acute

Internal politics in Persia simply means Iran is doing the Persian Version of the olde Deutsche Führerprinzip:

Vilayat-e Faqih!

One cat calling ALL the shots and in this case it's Iran's Supreme Leader

Supreme Leader - a jumped up Ayatollah of sorts and the illegit depotry he inherited simply cannot abide anything other than dang near open enemies with Great Satan - and by extension nearly any member of Free World.

Khamenei's contempt for Great Satan, documented in three decades' worth of writings and speeches, has been remarkably consistent. Whether the topic is foreign policy, agriculture, or education, he seamlessly relates the subject to the cruelty, greed, and sinister plots of what he calls American "global arrogance." Former senior Iranian officials, including even a former president, have LOL'd in private discussions Khamenei has declared, "Ma doshmani ba Amrika ra lazem dareem," i.e., "We need enmity with America." A month before the tainted presidential election of June 2009, Khamenei declared that Iran would face a national "disaster" if a candidate who attempted to thaw relations with America came to power.

44's unprecedented and unreciprocated overtures to Tehran -- including two personal letters from 44 to Khamenei -- undercut the narrative that Iran's hard-liners, despite their own rhetoric, secretly aspire to cordial relations with Great Satan


They don't. Indeed, underneath the ideological veneer, the anti-Americanism of Iran's hard-liners is driven in no small part by self-preservation. They are acutely aware of the argument made by many Iran analysts over the years that a rapprochement with the United States could spur unpredictable reforms that would significantly dilute their hold on power. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of the powerful Guardian Council, put it plainly in a 2009 interview with Etemad newspaper: "If pro-American tendencies come to power in Iran, we have to say goodbye to everything. After all, anti-Americanism is among the main features of our Islamic state."

Pic - "Ironically, the collapse of the Assad regime would produce a common interest for Washington and Tehran in making sure that rad Sunni cats, who hate Shiite Iran even more than America, do not rule Damascus."