Arms Race Update – Russian Navy Flexing Muscles

Do you yearn for the nostalgia of the Cold War? Relax, it’ll be back before you know it.

The Russian navy has successfully test fired a new model of submarine launched ballistic missile. The Sineva rocket flew more than 7,100 miles to land in a range in the central Pacific.

The Sineva comes in a variety of models. The ICBM is said to have an accuracy of 500 metres. There’s also an anti-missile variant that the Russkies boast already outperforms any anti-missile system likely to be deployed anytime soon.

But wait, there’s more! President Medvedev has told the Russian press that he’s ordered the construction of new aircraft carriers too.

There’s something of a Dreadnought race underway these days. China, India and Russia are all embarked on major expansion of their naval forces. India is on our side, sort of, Russia and China not so much.

Medvedev is also going to give the finger to Washington when the Russian fleet arrives soon in the Caribbean for exercises with the Venezuelan navy. They should be showing up any day now.

How did we ever let this happen? It’s not just the increasing risk of major power warfare but also the hundreds of billions of dollars that are so desperately needed for other problems, such as global warming adaptation, that are instead being funneled straight into weaponry. As for how it happened, there’s one person who stands out above all others. A complete moron.

 

Arms Race Update – Russian Warships to Syria

One geopolitical goal of the United States is to get the Russian navy out of Sevastapol, its Black Sea base in the Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. The idea is that, without this base, the Russian navy’s ability to project power in the Meditterranean is crippled.

Russia, which despite what John McCain says, is sliding back into Cold War mode, is moving to counter the US by establishing a naval base in Syria. Now, according to The Guardian, the Syrian fishing port of Tartous is being dredged to make way for the Russian fleet:

“Tartous is being dredged and renovated to provide a permanent facility for the Russian navy, giving Moscow a key military foothold in the Mediterranean at a time when Russia’s invasion of Georgia has led to fears of a new cold war.

The bolstering of military ties between Russia and Syria has also worried Israel, whose prime minister, Ehud Olmert, was in Moscow yesterday seeking to persuade the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, to stop Russian arms sales to Syria and Iran. Mr Olmert later said he had received assurances that Russia would not allow Israel’s security to be threatened, but offered no indication he won any concrete promises on Russian arms sales.

Igor Belyaev, Russia’s charge d’affaires in Damascus, recently told reporters that his country would increase its presence in the Mediterranean and that “Russian vessels will be visiting Syria and other friendly ports more frequently”.

That announcement followed a meeting between Medvedev and the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, at the Black sea port of Sochi in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s victory over Georgian forces and its recognition of the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia – actions Assad supported. “

The move is giving Israel fits. The prospect of a reinvigorated Russian-Syrian military alliance is troublesome. Russia is already talking about selling Syria a sophisticated surface to air missile system the only obvious target for which would be Israeli warplanes wandering into Syrian airspace.

The Guardian also mentions that modern Russian anti-tank weapons found their way into the hands of Hizbollah during the 2006 war with Israel and resulted in the destruction of some 40-Israeli Merkova tanks.

Moscow will be watching the votes come in on November 4 and it’s a safe bet that a McCain victory would only ratchet up Russian efforts to counter America’s muscle in the Middle East.

 

Arms Race Update – Russia to Upgrade Nuke Arsenal

The insanely bellicose Bush Doctrine continues to stoke the world’s arms races (in case you didn’t know, there are several underway).

Russian president Medvedev says his country will have a “guaranteed nuclear deterrent system” up and running by 2020. BBC reports that Medvedev is calling for a new fleet of nuke subs to go along with the missile shield programme.

He said it was necessary to build “new types of armaments”, and to “achieve dominance in airspace”, according to quotes carried by the Itar-Tass news agency.

“We plan to start serial production of warships, primarily nuclear-powered submarines carrying cruise missiles and multifunctional submarines,” Mr Medvedev said.

Before he stepped down to become prime minister, Vlad Putin, announced Russia would develop its own new generation of nuclear weapons and an advanced missile designed to defeat the latest American anti-missile systems.

Can somebody tell me why we’re starting this Cold War thing again? Just who is getting precisely what out of this? Or is it just bloodyminded idiocy?

 

Arms Race Update – Welcome to the Bad Old Days

Too young to remember the Cold War? Don’t worry, it may be back before you know it.

The Times reports that Russia is considering re-arming its Baltic fleet of subs, cruisers and bombers with nuclear weapons.

“Under the Russian plans, nuclear warheads could be supplied to submarines, cruisers and fighter bombers of the Baltic fleet based in Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave between the European Union countries of Poland and Lithuania.

A senior military source in Moscow said the fleet had suffered from underfunding since the collapse of communism. “That will change now,” said the source.
“In view of America’s determination to set up a missile defence shield in Europe, the military is reviewing all its plans to give Washington an adequate response.”

The Russian military also said it would ignore attempts to restrict the movement of its Black Sea fleet in and out of Sebastopol, in Ukraine. The Crimean port was emerging as a potential flashpoint in Russia’s efforts to prevent former Soviet countries on its borders from joining Nato.

This weekend Ukraine further angered Russian officials by offering to create a joint missile defence network with western countries.

The Russians have already indicated that they may point nuclear missiles at western Europe from bases in Kaliningrad and Belarus. They are also said to be thinking of reviving a military presence in Cuba. “

The Americans are predictably outraged even though the Bush regime itself is pressing ahead with development of a new generation of nuclear weapons for America’s military. Once again it’s “do as I say, not as I do” smothered in a layer of fetid hypocrisy.

Added to the other known arms races already well underway – China and India for example – this is just the sort of thing we can expect when rational diplomacy is trumped by red-meat ideology. We’ve gone down this road before. Then we were called back from the edge by sensible leaders. Today we’ve got Putin and the prospect of McCain. Oh dear.

 

Arms Race Update – Space in India’s Crosshairs

The Chinese-Indian arms race is one of the least mentioned but most interesting now underway (yes there are a few others).

The world’s two most populous states have been pursuing military co-operation even as they stoke the boilers of military rivalry. There’s a great naval race underway with both countries eager to deploy true “blue water” naval muscle to secure their sea lane access to the Persian Gulf and the oil that serves as the lifeblood of their economic miracles. Washington is actively courting India to assist it in containing China.

It’s Chinese advances in space, however, that now have India’s military worried. China has already achieved manned space flight and has developed proven anti-satellite missiles. From The Times:

“General Deepak Kapoor, India’s Chief of Army Staff, has spoken publicly for the first time of his fears about China’s military space programme and the need for India to accelerate its own.

“The Chinese space programme is expanding at an exponentially rapid pace in both offensive and defensive content,” he told a conference attended by India’s military top brass this week. “The Indian Army’s agenda for exploitation of space will have to evolve dynamically. It should be our endeavour to optimise space applications for military purposes.”

Beijing’s space programme is already several years ahead of Delhi’s: China sent its first man into space in 2003, the third country to do so after the Soviet Union and the US. The Indian Space Research Organisation said last year that it aimed to send a manned mission to the Moon by 2020 — four years before China — but did not plan to send its first astronauts into orbit until 2014.

What really shocked India was China’s shooting down of one of its own weather satellites in January last year — again placing it alongside Russia and the United States as the only countries capable of such a feat. By comparison, India does not yet have a single dedicated military satellite, relying instead on the dual-use telecommunications satellites for surveillance and reconnaissance.

One of the military’s priorities is to match the technology China used to shoot down its satellite with a ballistic missile about 860km (535 miles) above the Earth’s surface. Abdul Kalam, a former President of India and missile engineer, said in February that India already had the capability to “intercept and destroy any spatial object or debris in a radius of 200km”.

 

Arms Race Update – Space Wars

Is this blunt enough for you? From Asia Times Online:

“Chinese military experts believe a confrontation in space, probably with the United States, is inevitable. What they haven’t said is whether they expect to win.”

China is concerned because of Bush’s space doctrine that reserves to the United States the unilateral authority to decide which nations will be allowed to use space and, more importantly, the right to prevent others from placing satellites or other space craft into orbit. Sound a tad arrogant, belligerent even? It is and the Chinese know the nation that Bush is referring to but won’t mention is theirs.

So the Chinese, it appears, will be gearing up to muscle their way into a region which, in reality, belongs to no one.

“…since they successfully shot down an obsolete weather satellite with a missile in an outer orbit in January 2007, the Chinese armed forces have been operating from a position of relative strength.

So powerful was the impact from the four-stage rocket, which was traveling at nearly 29,000 kilometers an hour when it struck the satellite, that it scattered debris halfway around the globe. A definite footprint of strategic intent.

No surprise then, that the Pentagon responded in February this year by shooting down one of its own wayward satellites over the Pacific Ocean with a rocket, thus shattering a 1980s undertaking not to conduct antisatellite (ASAT) tests.

Thirty-two countries are known to have a missile capability, including Asian foes India and Pakistan, South and North Korea, Israel, Syria, Taiwan, Iran, Vietnam, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as Russia, China and the US. Any could technically wage a military campaign in space, even if it were limited to ground-to-air strikes.

Most of these countries are signatories to the Outer Space Treaty, an agreement approved by the United Nations in 1967 after tortuous negotiations between the US and the Soviet Union – though China is one of the few nations to fully accede to its provisions.

Core commitments are that signatories will not place “nuclear or any other weapons of mass destruction”, military installations or fortifications in orbit around the Earth or on any celestial body, undertake testing of weapons there or conduct military maneuvers.

Conventional weapons based in space are totally legal. And there is no prohibition on the firing of ground-based missiles into space, as both the US and Soviet Union were developing intercontinental missiles and peaceful space programs when the treaty was signed.

Similarly, there is wide scope for interpreting “weapons of mass destruction”; as US defense officials have pointed out, practically anything that could be propelled into space could be used to ram a satellite without violating the treaty.”

China has succeeded in getting American right-wingers apoplectic and suspicious to the point of paranoia.

Heritage Foundation vice president for foreign policy and defense studies, Larry M Wortzel, railed in a commentary, “China’s strategy here is to blunt American military superiority by limiting and ultimately neutralizing its existing space-based defense assets, and to forestall deployment of new technology that many experts believe would provide the best protection from ballistic missile attack.”

The Chinese are also in development of a new generation of stealthy, small, satellite killers:

“The Technology Research Academy has been working on an advanced ASAT weapon called a “piggyback satellite” that would attach itself to an enemy satellite, space station or space-based laser and jam communications or blow up the target.

A generation of mini satellites is being developed that would be so small they would be difficult to detect from the ground. They are said to be defensive, but would still be capable of surveillance, reconnaissance, communications and – theoretically – the destruction of other satellites.”

Meanwhile U.S. sources revealed today that China is poised to beat the Americans to the moon. The US landing is scheduled for 2020 but the Chinese are expected to make it there by 2017 or earlier.

By the way, if the Chinese and Americans ever do get into a battle in space, prepare to return to the 1950’s. Everything from cell phones to aerial navigation will go down if – make that when – the cascade of debris begins, rapidly taking down satellites until all that’s left is debris. And, when that happens, don’t count on anyone fixing the problem anytime soon. We’ll just have to sit and wait about two generations before all that space debris falls back to earth before it’ll be safe enough to put anything back up there again.

 

Shoving the Genie Back In The Bottle

With all the problems facing the world – global warming, resource exhaustion, freshwater depletion and desertification, species extinction, overpopulation and migration, terrorism and security – you would think there wouldn’t be room for anymore. But there is.

Also on today’s menu is nuclear proliferation and, according to a report in today’s Washington Post, it’s a problem on the verge of getting out of control:

“At least 40 developing countries from the Persian Gulf region to Latin America have recently approached U.N. officials here to signal interest in starting nuclear power programs, a trend that concerned proliferation experts say could provide the building blocks of nuclear arsenals in some of those nations.

At least half a dozen countries have also said in the past four years that they are specifically planning to conduct enrichment or reprocessing of nuclear fuel, a prospect that could dramatically expand the global supply of plutonium and enriched uranium, according to U.S. and international nuclear officials and arms-control experts.”

The list includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Algeria and Morocco. There are already seven nuclear plants underway in Egypt and Turkey. Even Yemen wants one.

“We are concerned that some countries are moving down the nuclear [weapons] path in reaction to the Iranians,” a senior U.S. government official who tracks the spread of nuclear technology said in an interview. He declined to speak on the record because of diplomatic sensitivities. “The big question is: At what point do you reach the nuclear tipping point, when enough countries go nuclear that others decide they must do so, too?”

Mohammed ElBaradei, the director general of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency and a winner with the IAEA of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize for his work preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, has likened the pursuit of “latent” nuclear capability to buying an insurance policy.

“You don’t really even need to have a nuclear weapon,” ElBaradei said at a recent international conference of security officials in Munich. “It’s enough to buy yourself an insurance policy by developing the capability, and then sit on it. Let’s not kid ourselves: Ninety percent of it is insurance, a deterrence.” I

Although they don’t like to admit it, it was the original nuclear weapons powers that made a joke out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty under which lesser nations were supposed to give up the right to nukes while the nuclear weapons states undertook to disarm. With decades of indifference to their NPT obligations by the United States, CCCP/Russia, China, France and Britain, the rest of the world saw no reason they shouldn’t ignore the treaty either. Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea so far and there’ll undoubtedly be more to come.

I suppose a recommitted nuclear disarmament agreement might be theoretically possible but don’t count on it. There’s a global arms race underway involving the US, China, India and Russia that will almost certainly preclude any agreement on disarmament by the nuclear powers.

 

Arms Race Update – American Procurement Blues

The Pentagon has enjoyed the Bush era, transforming defence procurement into one giant pinata party. Every defence contractor is invited, given a jug of tequila and a stick and, boy, aren’t they doing some bashing.

In the War on Terror era or the time of “get as much as you can, while you still can,” the US defence procurement budget has burgeoned and, with it, contract overruns. Okay, we’re talking about defence contracts and cost overruns which almost go hand in hand, only this time we’re talking about just under $300-billion for 2007 alone.

The Government Accounting Office (“GAO”) has examined 95 major defence contracts finding overruns of $295-billion that are bloating the overall tab to $1.6-trillion. Worse yet, those contractors are so busy hauling away bags of cash that projects are coming in two years late and not one of those examined met all of the military’s standards for “best management practices.”

Okay, so what is $1.6-trillion in the greater scheme of things? Well, in the final year of the Clinton administration the Pentagon’s procurement budget came in at $790-billion so $1.6-trillion is a whole lot more of something. Total acquisition cost increases during the last year of Clinton’s presidency were 6% over budget compared to 26% for 2007.

“In most cases, programs also failed to deliver capabilities when promised — often forcing war fighters to spend additional funds on maintaining” existing weapons systems, according to the GAO.

So what, this is an American problem, isn’t it? Well, not entirely. These things have a habit of spilling across borders, especially on multinational weapons acquisition programmes. Take, for example, Lockheed’s Joint Strike Fighter, which Canada, Britain, Australia and a bunch of other nations are lined up to order. The JSF cost is already 36% over budget and these aircraft are still years away from entering service.

Canada has given a letter of intent to buy 80 of the JSF aircraft for $3.8 billion only now that would come in at something closer to $5-billion and that figure doesn’t include spares or support. That’s one expensive airplane and no one knows yet what the final cost may be.

America has always had a healthy arms export trade. American weaponry has been appreciated for its quality and advanced technology. However now other nations are making big strides in developing their own high-tech systems – Russia and China and India, for example. It’s conceivable that, within a few years, these other nations could advance in technology to the point where the US defence industry simply prices itself out of the international market. Then you’ll see the fur fly.

 

Eyeing Each Other Over Open Sights

The great military rivalry of the 21st century is bound to be between China and the United States.
Gwynne Dyer, in his latest book, contends that a key reason for America’s invasion of Iraq was to achieve military control over the Persian Gulf to thwart China’s influence in the Middle East and be in a position to cripple its access to the region’s oil should that be necessary.

The Chinese government today announced an increase of 18% in the nation’s defence budget this year. The Pentagon figures China’s disclosed budget is but half to perhaps just one third of its actual spending which would still leave China spending well less than a third of the US defence budget. That said, the Chinese appear to be getting more bank for their buck out of their defence appropriations, spending that Chinese analyst Chen Zhou explained and defended in an interview in today’s Der Spiegel:

Chen: If we grow economically, we must also strengthen our military. We must protect our sovereignty, our unity and the country’s security. Historically our military consisted primarily of land-based forces that were meant to protect our homeland. Since 1980, we have also been arming ourselves for other local conflicts and wars. Please do not forget the activities of the separatists in Taiwan …

SPIEGEL: … who you have threatened with military force, should Taiwan declare its independence.

Chen: We will defend our sovereignty with all means. If, in fact, we are forced to stop a secession attempt with military means, our navy and air force are not yet effective enough. In that sort of a conflict, we must be superior in the water and in the air, at least locally.

SPIEGEL: Does this mean that you plan to measure up militarily to Taiwan’s most important ally, the United States?

Chen: It is not necessary for China to challenge America’s position of supremacy. Our concern is to prevent an intervention by the Americans during a crisis in the Taiwan Strait. Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, and no one else, should resolve the Taiwan issue. Whether this is done peacefully or militarily is purely a matter for the Chinese.

SPIEGEL: How does Beijing intend to prevent the Americans from intervening?

Chen: Both sides hope to preserve peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. China wants to develop economically. We don’t want a war, not even a crisis. But to ensure that this is the case, we must be militarily prepared.

SPIEGEL: In other words, Beijing stresses deterrence?

Chen: Exactly. Deterrence is one of our strategies. Our goal is to preserve peace and stability on the Taiwan Strait. In the past, we did not pay sufficient attention to studies about deterrence. Now we are very interested in the effects of deterrence. We must be able to prevent, resolve and control crises. Crisis management is our top priority. We can resolve a crisis if we are in a position to deter.

SPIEGEL: You have demonstrated that you are able to give the Americans a shock. For example, one of your submarines surfaced directly next to the aircraft carrier “Kitty Hawk” without having been previously detected.

Chen: That was a coincidence. Our navy is still very small compared with the US Navy. Our range of operation has just reached the so-called first island chains, that is, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines.

SPIEGEL: Do you plan to venture farther afield in the future?

Chen: Traditionally China has seen itself as a land power. In our recent history, foreign powers were able to invade us because we had no navy. Now we want to defend ourselves at sea. To more effectively protect our national interests, we will develop our capability to operate on the high seas. Our navy will travel farther afield. But our goal is always defense. We are not an offensive power.

The US/China/Soviet/Indian arms race continues apace. It seems as though we’re about to enter a brand new Cold War.

 

Arms Race Update – The Sizzler

Russia built them, China has them and Iran may have them soon.

The Sizzler, Russia’s new anti-ship missile is said to be the best in the world and it’s got the US Navy flummoxed.

“This is a carrier-destroying weapon,” said Orville Hanson, who evaluated weapons systems for 38 years with the Navy. “That’s its purpose.”

“Take out the carriers” and China” can walk into Taiwan,” he said. China bought the missiles in 2002 along with eight diesel submarines designed to fire it, according to Office of Naval Intelligence spokesman Robert Althage.

If Iran does get its hands on the Sizzler it could feasibly lock down the Persian Gulf and disrupt the world’s oil supply.