NATO Spending

ComNavOps has opined that it is long past time for the US to pull out of Europe, militarily, and that Europe/NATO can more than stand on its own.  The bogeyman specter of the Russian bear has been shown to be an illusion, thwarted by the tiny state of Ukraine.
 
Here’s some interesting data on NATO spending for 2023.
 
Here’s the top 10 countries for defense spending as a percentage of GDP.[1]
 
Poland              3.9%
United States    3.5%
Greece              3.0%
Estonia              2.7%
Lithuania           2.5%
Finland              2.4%
Romania           2.4%
Hungary            2.4%
Latvia                2.3%
UK                     2.1%
 
 
Here’s the top 10 countries for total defense spending (million USD).[1]
 
United States   $860,000
Germany            $68,080
UK                      $65,763
France                $56,649
Italy                    $31,585
Poland               $29,105
Canada              $28,950
Spain                 $19,179
Netherlands       $16,741
Turkey                $15,842
 
 
 
The US spent $860B.  The rest of NATO spent $400B combined.
 
 
The reason for NATO’s existence has ended.  It’s past time to leave NATO and let Europe take care of itself.
 
 
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[1]https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/nato-spending-by-country

Cable Cutting – Act of War

You may or may not have heard of the most recent cable cutting incident involving a cable connecting Finland and Estonia in the Gulf of Finland, off the Baltic Sea.  A Russian tanker is believed to have been responsible for the act, as described in a Redstate website article.[1]
 

Finnish commandos boarded and seized an oil tanker Thursday that is believed to have temporarily disabled the Estlink-2 power line connecting Finland and Estonia. The vessel in question, the Cook Islands-registered Eagle S,  was traveling from St. Petersburg to Port Said, Egypt. The Eagle S is thought to be part of Russia's "shadow fleet" that smuggles Russian crude oil to market.[1]

The proof of sabotage is pretty convincing as shown in the photo below which tracks the ship’s path as it crosses back and forth over the cable.
 

Track of Russian ship showing back and forth
movement over cable

This was a deliberate act of sabotage against the infrastructure of Finland and the world at large, arguably an act of war, and it was not a one time accident. 
 

This is the fourth time power or telecom cables crossing the Baltic have been damaged by deliberate actions. In October 2023, a Chinese container ship damaged a gas pipeline and two telecom cables between Finland and Estonia by dragging an anchor across them … In November 2024, a Chinese ship disabled a 745-mile cable linking Germany and Finland and a 135-mile cable linking Lithuania and the Swedish island of Gotland, again by dragging an anchor across them.[1]

In each case, the Chinese have refused to cooperate in any investigation.  Russia and China are at war with us, and the West, only we refuse to pull out heads out of the sand and see it.  As a result, we’re losing the war.
 
I like that, in this case, Finland finally took some moderately decisive action by quickly boarding the ship.
 
This also refutes the legion of Chicken Littles out there who are terrified that sneezing in the direction of Russia or China will bring nuclear escalation down upon us.  Finland seized the offending vessel and, shockingly, did not immediately get attacked with nuclear weapons.
 

The Finnish customs service said it had seized the vessel's cargo.[1]

What is the lesson in all this?  As the article’s author opines,
 

The obvious collaboration of Russian-controlled and Chinese-registered vessels to damage the telecom and power grid running beneath the Baltic Sea threatens NATO and the EU. NATO must take this hybrid war being waged underwater seriously and develop equally serious strategies for combatting it. What can't be tolerated is China stepping in to block investigations and legal actions by affected countries.[1]

We are at war but it’s a one-sided war.  We refuse to engage.  That must change.
 
 
 
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[1]Redstate website, “Finland Boards Russian 'Shadow Fleet' Tanker in Connection With Damage of Undersea Electric Cables”, streiff, 26-Dec-2024,
https://redstate.com/streiff/2024/12/26/finland-boards-russian-shadow-fleet-tanker-in-connection-with-damage-of-undersea-electric-cables-n2183645

Marine Light Amphibious Warship Debacle Continues

As you’re well aware, the Marines have come up with a poorly conceived idea to act as hidden anti-ship missile shooters.  The absolute key to the entire concept was the Light Amphibious Warship (now called the Landing Ship, Medium, LSM), a small landing ship which would ferry small Marine units among the first island chain islands, enable relocation, and conduct resupply.  The Marines were asking for something on the order of 30 such vessels although the Navy seemed to be in mood for around 18.
 
The LSM is envisioned as a small vessel with cargo carried on an open deck, a capacity for around 70 troops, no viable defensive weapons, and a transit speed of 14 knots.  Construction was to have started a few years ago but that hope quickly fell by the wayside due to lack of Navy interest and buy in.
 
Now, with the Navy finally ready to proceed, the program has suffered a resounding setback.
 

After receiving bids from industry, the Navy canceled the request for proposals for the Landing Ship Medium …
 
“We had a bulletproof – or what we thought – cost estimate, pretty well wrung out design in terms of requirements, independent cost estimates,” Assistant Secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition Nickolas Guertin said at an American Society of Naval Engineers symposium last week.
 
“We put it out for bid and it came back with a much higher price tag,” he added.[1]

The LSM, the key to the Marine’s concept, has been abruptly halted due to being shockingly expensive.  Shocking to the Navy, perhaps, but to no one else.
 
This raises a few issues.
 
Cost Estimate – This demonstrates just how unrealistic and incompetent Navy cost estimators are.  I don’t have the exact number in front of me but the Congressional Budget Office, for example, estimated the LSM cost at over twice the Navy’s estimate and it looks like they were much closer to reality.  If this were just one isolated incident of a cost estimate failure we might write if off as a fluke but the history is that every Navy cost estimate is ridiculously, absurdly, laughably, stupidly, incompetently low.  That kind of a pattern isn’t bad luck, it’s intentional, systematic fraud on the Navy’s part.
 
Look at the mismatch between CBO estimates and the Navy, as documented below.
 

The Congressional Budget Office projected the lead ship in the class costing anywhere from $460 to $560 million, according to an April report. If the Navy buys the 18 to 35 ships according to current plans, each hull could cost $340 to $430 million. Initial plans in 2020 called for each ship to cost $100 to $150 million.[1]

The Navy believed the ships would cost $100M-$150M versus the CBO estimate of $340M-$430M with a lead ship cost of up to $560M!
 
Priority – The key to the entire Marine concept (setting aside the idiocy of the concept) was the LSM.  It was the first piece of the puzzle that had to be nailed down before anything else could proceed.  Without the LSM, you have nothing but a stupid idea on a piece of paper.  Did the Marines secure the LSM first?  NO!  Instead, the Marines (and by ‘Marines’, I mean Commandant Berger) proceeded to dump armor, tanks, artillery, and firepower and reshape their entire organization and focus with the assumption (when you assume you make an …) that the LSM would magically appear when needed.  This is program mismanagement of the worst kind.  Commandant Berger destroyed the Marines and now has nothing to show for it. 
 
Buy In – It doesn’t matter whether it’s the military or industry, when you attempt change, you have to get buy in from all affected parties or you won’t succeed.  Not only did Commandant Berger fail to get buy in from his own personnel, active and retired, he failed to get buy in from the party that would have to pay for the most important element of his concept, the LSM.  Berger simply issued commands and assumed everyone would see the brilliance of his idea and fall meekly in line.  Well, that worked internally with active duty Marines who were intimidated into silence but the Navy, being outside Berger’s chain of command, responded with indifference, to put it mildly.  Again, buy in from the Navy is something the Marines should have secured before tearing down their organization.
 
 
Future
 
The Marines seem determined to ride their ill-conceived concept down to combat-irrelevance, if they haven’t already gotten there.
 
Along with a stunning failure to deploy when requested at the beginning of the Ukraine conflict, the Marines have lost their place as America’s crisis response force and are now relegated to an afterthought, if that, by civilian and military leadership.
 
Nothing is going to progress regarding the LSM for the foreseeable future.  For the immediate future, the Navy may obtain a used vessel for the Marines to play with while negotiations between the Navy, Marines, and industry resume and drag out.
 

For now, to quickly get the Marines a ship that can move them around the region, the Navy plans to buy a “non-developmental vessel” while it works on the requirements … [1]

The utter failure of the program and the cancellation of the RFP offers a way out for the current Marine Commandant.  The Marines can cancel the entire concept, claiming that industry and the Navy have made the LSM unaffordable, and that the Marines are going back to doing what they historically should have been doing.  Will the current Commandant, General Eric Smith, have the courage and wisdom to seize this opportunity?  Unlikely, but it’s there for the taking.
 
The more likely scenario is that the LSM will linger in negotiations for several more years and the Marines will wind up with a missile shooting organization that has no way to deploy.  What an embarrassment and a waste !
 
 
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[1]USNI News website, “Landing Ship Medium Program Stalled Over Price, Navy Cancels Industry RFP”, Mallory Shelbourne, 17-Dec-2024,
https://news.usni.org/2024/12/17/landing-ship-medium-program-stalled-over-price-navy-cancels-industry-rfp

Open Post

It's the end of the year and it's been while since the last open post so let's do it again.  This is your chance to offer a comment on whatever interests you.

Got a suggestion for a post topic?

Want to talk about something that's been neglected?

Want to tell me what you'd like more (or less) of?

Want to tell me how you'd make the blog better?

Got a rant you want to get off your chest? 

You pick the topic!

Have at it!

Russian Naval Base in Syria

The Russians have long cultivated a relationship with Syria for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the access to a Mediterranean naval base. 

Before this week, Moscow in part projected power in Syria and beyond through two military installations: Hemeimeem air base near Latakia and Tartus naval base on the Mediterranean.[1]

With the overthrow of Assad, the Russians have been ejected (or elected to leave to avoid combat and losses) from Syria and the Tartus naval base. 

Open source intelligence photos indicate that Russian military ships have departed from Tartus naval base …[1] 

The loss of a Mediterranean naval base greatly complicates Russia’s attempts to exert influence in the region and cedes dominance in the region to the West.
 
Given that there is no coherent ruling government in Syria, at the moment, Russia faces difficult choices:
 

• Abandon the Syrian base
• Fight to conquer and hold the base
• Pull back and hope that they can work out a future diplomatic arrangement that would allow them to use the base again with whatever force eventually seizes power

 
None of the choices are particularly palatable or easy.
 
Similarly, the US faces choices although it does not need the base for its own use:
 

• Do nothing which could result in Russia regaining the base one way or another
• Hope to work out an eventual political arrangement that would deny Russia the use of the base
• Eliminate the base as a functional facility thereby denying it to Russia

 
The last option, eliminating the base, would require the US to destroy the facilities to deny them to Russia.  There is precedent for this.  Israel has already launched heavy attacks that have destroyed Syria’s naval assets, air force, and chemical weapons, among other targets so that those assets cannot be used against Israel in the future.
 
Since Syria no longer exists as a coherent country with a functioning, recognized government, attacks on potential threats are not a legal obstacle.  Right now, Syria is open, unclaimed territory controlled by various factions.  The US has the opportunity to act boldly, if it wishes.
 
Now, just for fun, let’s stir the pot a bit and rattle the timid …
 
An extremely bold move would be for the US to actually seize and occupy Syria, thereby obtaining a large foothold of sovereign US territory in the Middle East, surrounding Lebanon, hugely bolstering Israel and, potentially, securing actual stability in the region.  Of course, the drawbacks are many and far from insignificant.  Such an act would require a completely different approach to dealing with the various factions (an absolute smashing imposition of discipline and peace via military might), a zero tolerance policy towards terrorism, and a domineering approach to foreign relations with neighbors.  Before you go off the deep end attempting to rebut this, consider that the most stable regimes in the region have done exactly this.  Modified to exclude conquest of neighbors, this approach could work.  The US becomes the biggest warlord and rules by might – the way of the Middle East.
 
Anyway, back to the main premise of the post, crisis, unrest, and turbulence creates opportunity for the bold.  We have an opportunity to reduce Russian influence and, possibly, improve the Middle East.  Do we have the boldness to do it?
 
Once upon a time, we acquired our entire country through various bold acts. Do we still have the courage and boldness to seize the future?
 
 
 
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[1]Breaking Defense website, “Russian bases and Hezbollah weapons: Key questions follow fall of Syrian regime”, Agnes Helou, 12-Dec-2024,
https://breakingdefense.com/2024/12/russian-bases-and-hezbollah-weapons-key-questions-follow-fall-of-syrian-regime/

Base Defense is a Joke

On this blog – and everywhere else except in the military – we’ve long recognized the vital strategic position of Guam and the need to defend it during war with China.  It couldn’t be more obvious.  We’ve also noted the apparent lack of urgency on the part of the military to institute any serious base defense plans.  Well, here’s a sad joke of an announcement about a first of its kind defense test for Guam.
 

The US military announced today the first-ever test intercept of a ballistic missile from its Guam-based missile defense system … [1]

Unbelievable.  We’ve been discussing the challenges and critical need for defense of Guam for years and only now have we conducted the first ever test of the ballistic missile defense?  What a joke.  Someone is not very serious about base defense.
 
But wait … it gets better.
 

The MDA described the event as a “pivotal step” towards a larger, more holistic Guam Defense System designed to take on multiple threats at once — a “persistent layered integrated air and missile defense capability.”[1]

Are you kidding me?  This implies we don’t currently have a layered defense capability for our most important base?  What has the military been doing for the last decade or two?
 
This seems to be saying that if China attacked, today, with more than one missile, we’d be helpless.  The reality is that we should be planning to defend against saturation attacks and, given the amount of time we’ve had, our base defense should be already prepared and thoroughly tested.
 

The Guam Defense System will ultimately integrate multiple independent fire control systems into something that can cope with complex and integrated attacks with salvos across the air and missile threat spectrum.[1]

“… will ultimately integrate …” ???!  What have they been waiting for?  This implies that a true, layered defense system is still years/decades away.
 
But wait … it gets still better.
 
Are we frantically (one presumes) building up our Guam defenses?  Of course we are, right?  We’d have to be utter morons not to be increasing our defenses.  Right? … Yeah, about that …
 

For several years, US military leaders from the Indo-Pacific region have emphasized the need to build up Guam as both a military staging point and an air-defense hub. However, the process hasn’t been easy, and in October, the MDA proposed scaling back the number of missile defense sites on the island from 22 to 16 due to environmental impact concerns.[1][emphasis added]

We’re decreasing our defenses?  Are you kidding me?  Since when is the defensive requirements of, arguably, our most important forward base determined by environmental concerns?  I’m all for reasonable environmental awareness in civilian communities and businesses but we cannot allow environmental concerns to dictate the defensive capability of our most important base.  If we need waivers or legislative action or whatever, we need to free the military from environmental concerns that negatively impact vital defense requirements.
 
You establish vital defense needs first and then make an honest effort to shoehorn whatever reasonable environmental concerns you can around the defenses.  We’re risking losing a war because of some isolated environmental concerns?  What kind of idiots are running the military?  Well, that was rhetorical because this blog has definitively established that blithering idiots are running the military.
 
We need to wake up and reassess our priorities and environmental concerns are not the number one priority.
 
 
 
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[1]Breaking Defense, “Guam missile defenses conduct first-ever ballistic intercept in test”, Lee Ferran, 10-Dec-2024,
https://breakingdefense.com/2024/12/guam-missile-defenses-conduct-first-ever-ballistic-intercept/

Amphibious Shell Game

As we know, the Navy considers ship maintenance to be a low priority task and even that may be underestimating their disinterest in maintenance.  I truly believe that the Navy’s philosophy is that the quicker the ships wear out, the sooner the Navy can justify new ships to Congress thereby securing – or, dare they hope … increasing? – their budget slice.  The astounding part of this is that the demonstrated lack of interest includes ships the Navy actually wants: surface warships. 
 
Worse than the lack of interest in maintenance, there is a major chunk of the fleet that the Navy doesn’t really want and that is amphibious ships.  They offer nothing for the Navy; they’re purely to mollify the whining of the Marine Corps to Congress.  Thus, the Navy has even less interest in providing maintenance for amphibious ships.  Here’s some notes from a GAO report, as described in a Breaking Defense website article.[1]
 

Half of the Navy ships the Marine Corps would use to make amphibious assaults are in “poor condition,” and some of the vessels have been unavailable for operational or training use for years at a time, according to a pointed new watchdog report.[1]
 
… the report found that as of March this year, nine of the Navy’s 10 dock landing ships were in “poor material condition,” as were five of the seven amphibious assault ships and two of the 13 amphibious transport docks.[1]

Am I being fair and factual in suggesting that the Navy has little interest in amphibious ships and even less interest in maintaining them?  Well, let’s see what the report has to say.
 

The report notes several factors that contributed to the problem, including “challenges with spare parts.” But a summary of the report also noted that in order to “save money, the Navy proposed early retirement for some ships and cancelled critical maintenance on them.[1][emphasis added]

Here’s another damning tidbit.
 

The Navy partially concurred with the GAO recommendation that the Navy update its amphibious ship depot maintenance policy “to clarify that, absent operational needs, the Navy should not cancel depot maintenance for amphibious ships proposed for divestment that have yet to reach the end of their expected service life.”[1]

This demonstrates that the Navy has been cancelling depot maintenance for operational ships merely because they’ve been put forward for early retirement.  This is a self-fulfilling prophecy type of situation.  You propose a ship be retired early so you halt maintenance on it.  Then, after a few years you report that the ship needs to be retired early because it would cost too much to bring it up to maintenance standards.  Quite a racket, huh?
 
How does the Navy justify this blatant failure to properly maintain active ships?
 

… the Navy said it’s currently “prohibited by law” from modifying vessels destined for the boneyard, and waivers to do so have a narrow timeline. “However, the statute permits normal Hull, Mechanical, and Electrical (HM&E) work within the five-year window prior to a ship being removed from service. The Navy will schedule this work, including depot-level repair as necessary, to maintain the ship in operational condition.” It also noted the Navy Secretary may grant waivers for that statute in the “national security interests” of the US.[1]

Note the use of waivers?  Those keep cropping up in all types of deplorable situations, don’t they?  And yet we keep handing them out like candy.
 
The Navy clearly has no interest in amphibious ships and uses every machination they can think of to avoid spending maintenance money on them.  This is criminal mishandling of the taxpayer’s investment.
 
 
 
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[1]Breaking Defense website, “Half of Navy’s amphibious fleet in ‘poor condition,’ some ships out for years, GAO warns”, Lee Ferran, 3-Dec-2024,
https://breakingdefense.com/2024/12/half-of-navys-amphibious-fleet-in-poor-condition-some-ships-out-for-years-gao-warns/