(EurActiv) — The migration crisis is a major challenge by itself. If you start mixing it with terrorism, you confuse the logic, EU counter-terrorism coordinator Gilles de Kerchove told EurActiv Czech Republic in an exclusive interview.

Gilles de Kerchove, the EU’s Counter-Terrorism Coordinator since 2007, took part in the Internal Security Forum Prague organized by Czech think tank European Values. He spoke to EurActiv Czech Republic’s Adela Denkova.

The refugee crisis is one of the most pressing challenges the EU has ever faced, and it is accompanied by various fears. Some people believe that terrorists linked to Islamic State (ISIL) and other organizations can come along the migration flow, unrecognized among the other people. Is this a real threat?

No, not at all. It would be a big mistake to mix these two challenges together. Daesh (Arabic equivalent of ISIL’s name) or al-Qaeda do not need to send their members within the flow of asylum seekers. There is a reservoir of people born in Europe who have no contact with the terrorist organizations, have not travelled abroad, but got radicalized through the Internet.

How does that happen?

These organizations try to inspire followers. Inspire is a magazine run by AQAP – Al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula. There is also a similar magazine of Daesh, called Dabiq. In one of the previous editions of Inspire, you could find a list of top targets for a terrorist attack. Charlie Hebdo was among the top ten. They also give you the recipe to build a bomb in your mother’s kitchen. People who get influenced by these media make up a reservoir which the terrorists can tap without sending anyone. This is the first source.

Then we have foreign fighters.

Unfortunately, there are approximately five thousand – if not more – European citizens who went to Syria and Iraq. Some of them had not been detected by our services. So, if I were Daesh leadership, I would rather take a Belgian, a French or a Dutch foreign fighter with a valid travel document, undetected by the security service, and send him back to Europe after having trained him. Why would I have to infiltrate among asylum seekers?

I think the migration crisis is already a major challenge itself. If you start mixing the two, you confuse the logic. At first, we have to address the humanitarian crisis. This is the top priority, and Europe has to live up to its values and commitments according to the Geneva Convention. We have to help people who suffer from one of the deepest crises we have had. These people are in danger of being killed, beheaded, raped or tortured.

So, according to what you say, there is no link between migration and terrorism.

There is a link. We know that some terrorist organizations try to engage in human trafficking at Libyan shores, because it is a very lucrative job. We have to address this problem, but it does not mean they send terrorists together with refugees.

As a participant at the Internal Security Forum Prague, you spent a few days with experts and politicians from Central European countries. Have you noticed any differences between their points of view and opinions of their counterparts in Western Europe, who have much more experience with terrorism and radicalization?

What I found were people eager to develop the needed policy. The sooner you start preventive policies, the better. It is also a legal obligation to develop these policies according to UN Security Council Resolution 2178 adopted in September 2014. On top of that, it is always useful when member states share their ideas, because no one has the silver bullet. It is a collective challenge not only in Europe, but also outside its borders. A Czech or Bulgarian citizen can become target of a terrorist attack when he travels abroad.

Your experiences are also valuable. We have to face some challenges in some of the countries in the Balkans for instance, and we would be delighted to see officers from the Polish police or members of the Czech security service involved in capacity building. We also have to help the Arab Spring countries to rebuild their security services after years of dictatorship. They need effective security services that are able to respect human rights and the rule of law. The Central European countries have been through that process after the fall of the Berlin wall, so why should the Czech experience not help in Tunisia? We are all on the same ship.

Are there any particular dangers that Central European countries may face? You already mentioned some challenges. On the other hand, we cannot see any large communities from which the radicalized people could come from.

By using the term “communities” you hint that the terrorism may be only al-Qaeda or Daesh related. But with [“lone wolf” Anders] Breivik in Norway, we have seen that far right terrorism can kill as well. In some of the member states, we have also heard about far left violence, although this is at a low level. It would be an illusion to believe that one is immune from any forms of violence linked to terrorism. This is the first thing. Second, you are a transit country and it is important to detect suspicious people in the Schengen area. Also, you should not forget that you have US embassies, Israeli embassies or other institutions in your countries that may be a target. All of these are good reasons for being prepared.

You mentioned far right terrorism. Do you think this kind of risk is increasing in Europe nowadays?

We need to say that the main risk comes from terrorism linked to al-Qaeda or Daesh. As I already said, there are lots of people inspired by them in Europe and also a high number of foreign fighters. But we also still have al-Qaeda and Daesh competing for the leadership of the global jihad. Daesh is expanding, which may prompt a-Qaeda to plan an attack to show that they are still relevant. These three main sources of threat make the life of security services extremely difficult. Talking about far right extremism, we have to address that. This is the reason why the Vice-President Timmermans is holding a big conference at the beginning of October, about how to address Islamophobic and anti-Semitic behaviour in Europe. I really welcome this initiative, as these are very serious problems.

You are a counter-terrorism coordinator. Do you think that the cooperation among member states works well, or could it be improved?

You can always improve, but member states have made a lot of efforts during the last three years because of the crisis of foreign fighting. We need to make a better use of the tools we have, not necessarily to invent new tools – except that we would like to secure an agreement on the PNR (Passenger Name Record) directive. There is still room for improvement in the way we use Europol and the Schengen Information System (SIS), because we need fluid information sharing. Europol is an information hub. It is not only a channel for sharing the information, but also the place where you can analyse the data you have. Recent attacks showed that sometimes we had the needed information, but we were not able to interpret it in a proper way.

On the other hand, I am impressed by the way the security services work among themselves, the policy of exchang(ing) data, or the way we try to link intelligence, police and border guards. We have now start bringing Frontex and Europol closer to each other, and we are working more on the internet risks.

So, do you think that Europe is reacting well to the current threats?

The statement of the heads of state and government from February 12th, after Charlie Hebdo, is quite a strong one. It asked for much more action on the internal security side but also on the soft side – prevention of radicalization, the promotion of European values, the promotion of human rights – and in cooperation with international partners. Vice-President Mogherini is extremely active on this, as the EU wants to engage more than before in the neighbourhood and fight against terrorist threats. Together with the colleagues from the External Action Service, I have been also active in the recent months and (will) be even more in the months to come, in order to develop bilateral partnerships with Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. It is very crucial.

You mentioned PNR [Passenger name record] directive. What will be changed if it is adopted? How can it help?

We want to ask companies flying to the EU to share passenger data with us. It is one of the few ways we are able to detect passengers with suspicious behaviour. When you look at [Mehdi] Nemmouche, who attacked the Jewish Museum in Brussels, he went to Syria first by going to Brussels, London, Beirut, Istanbul and on his way back from Istanbul to Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, then to Frankfurt, Brussels and France. We need to spot such behaviour. They do it deliberately to fly below the radar. We cannot spot everyone leaving, so a PNR directive will be a necessary tool to extract those who have abnormal behaviour from huge number of travellers. It will not lead to arresting people, it will just ring the bell and it will be up to the security services to inspect whether there is some risk.

Should it also apply to intra-European flights?

Yes, we are very much in favour of this option, although the European Parliament is not. When you look for example at the attacker who tried to kill people in Thalys, I do not know how he travelled – maybe he took a train – but he travelled a lot inside Europe.

Rail security could bring interesting debate as well. What could be done about that? Honestly, not many people can imagine that we would have security checks at all railways stations. What are the measures which could be adopted?

We are now waiting for some proposals by the Commission. At the end of September, ministers of interior and ministers of transport of eight member states and Switzerland, [Home Affairs] Commissioner [Dimitris] Avramopoulos, [Transport] Commissioner [Violeta] Bulc and myself will meet in Paris to have a discussion on this. I think everybody agrees that we have to be conscious not to disrupt railway transport, as it is the most environment friendly mean of transport, and we want to encourage people not to use cars, but to use trains.

Also the scale is different. Seven million people travel by train in Germany every day and there are hundreds, if not thousands of stations. It would be an illusion to expect that we could distinguish between speed trains crossing borders and the others. We cannot transpose what we have been doing in aviation. There are several steps that can be taken. We will explore them on 11 September with the land transport security expert group (LANDSEC). [Read more]

So maybe in the future, a train ticket could be linked to a certain person, which means passengers would have to share their data…

This is one of the ideas. Another could be to allow the people checking in the trains to be connected to the Schengen information system so that they know if the person is suspected of Jihadism. We could work on security related research. There are ways to detect suspicious behaviour at railway stations, on trains or to train people working on railway. Ministers of transport will discuss this on the 8th October, the same day as ministers of justice and home affairs. We will see if we can do more to improve the security of trains.

By Samson Demissie Teffera*

A profound change has taken hold in Africa over the last decade and half. So has a change in the world’s perception of the continent. In 2000, The Economist magazine heralded Africa on its front page with a regrettable title: “The Helpless Continent.” This is the world’s premier economic newsmagazine that was established in 1843 with a mission “to take part in a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress.” It took only a decade for ignorance to give way to intelligence. In 2011, the magazine sported a front page shouting aloud: “Africa Rising.” Two years later its front page flagged an “Aspiring Africa.”

The Economist is not alone in recognizing the social and economic transformations that have taken root in Africa. In the January 22, 2015 issue of the New York Times, David Leonhardt observed that “the continent is in the early stages of a trajectory that could mimic that of Latin America or, more ambitiously, parts of Asia… Africa has finally become part of the story.” And the story is that African economies are no longer “the world’s economic laggards.”

A 2010 research from McKinsey & Company, the prestigious global management consultancy that boasts of being a knowledge base for 80 percent of the world’s largest corporations, showed that Africa’s growth phenomenon is driven by structural changes. The key factors that have spurred Africa’s structural transformation include the vibrancy of its youth, rapidly growing business opportunities, average rate of return on investment that is higher than in any other developing region, and the rise of the African urban consumer, to name just a few.

Echoing a similar outlook, in Africa Attractiveness Survey (2011), Ernst & Young declared: “It’s Time for Africa.” Its 2015 Survey noted that “Africa’s share of global capital investment and job creation hit an all-time high in 2014. Only Asia-Pacific attracted more Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) funds than Africa last year. Africa attracted more FDI funding than North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Western Europe, which historically draw significantly higher FDI flows than Africa.”

The assessments that are coming out of the World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB) research facilities espouse similar sentiments, with more upbeat tone and tenor. According to the AfDB’s African Economic Outlook, apart from a rapidly growing FDI inflows, remittances to Africa are projected to reach USD 64.6 billion in 2015. This, the report noted, is six fold since 2000.

More importantly, AfDB’s report also highlighted that international aid as measured by “official development assistance (ODA) will decline in 2015 to USD 54.9 billion and is projected to diminish further.” Notable also is a paradigm shift afoot in Africa’s development discourse, away from viewing Africa’s relationship with the rest of the world with a “donor-recipient” frame of mind toward that rooted in strategic partnerships based on mutual interest.

Indeed, “Africa is on the move [and] a new Africa is emerging”, as President Obama announced in his historic speech at the African Union (AU) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The US President noted:

“As President, I’ve worked to transform America’s relationship with Africa — so that we’re truly listening to our African friends and working together, as equal partners. I believe Africa’s rise is not just important for Africa, it’s important to the entire world. We will not be able to meet the challenges of our time — from ensuring a strong global economy to facing down violent extremism, to combating climate change, to ending hunger and extreme poverty — without the voices and contributions of one billion Africans.”

I had the privilege to attend his historic speech and the opportunity to talk about it afterward with African scholars and dignitaries. As one senior African official put it, “What a momentous speech! Where he came short was in articulating his views and cashing his unparalleled international political capital to empower Africa on international forums.”

Days before President Obama’s speech, there were widespread and impassioned discussions within the African community on this particular issue, sparked by Reverend Jesse Jackson’s open letter to President Obama. The Reverend urged his President to use his historic speech at the African Union as a platform to address the under-representation of Africa’s voice on global forums.

The Reverend made his point highlighting “Africa’s gross under-representation in the G-20, an institution whose overarching objective is to promote growth across the developed and developing world to benefit people in all countries.” His letter was grounded in facts: “Europe and North America account for 14 percent of the world population, but occupy nearly 50 percent of the seats at the G-20 table. Asia has six seats including Australia. Latin America, which accounts for eight percent of the world population, has three. By comparison, Africa, home to 16 percent of the world population, occupies only one seat (South Africa).”

The virtual exclusion of Africa from the G-20 entails exclusion from other powerful international forums, including the B-20 forum for business and the C-20 forum for civil society. The B-20 provides “links between global policymakers and business communities around the world.” Through the C-20, the civil society in the G-20 countries has “a say in the discussions shaping the global economy.”

The expectation was high that President Obama would pay heed to the Reverend’s call and make it a prominent part of his speech. His above-noted acknowledgment that the world “will not be able to meet the challenges of our time — without the voices and contributions of one billion Africans” is right on the spot. It may even be an acknowledgment of the Reverend’s open letter. Africa was hoping for more.

President Obama indeed has unparalleled international political capital. Many in Africa hope that he will use his influence to ensure that Africa is accorded fair representation in the G-20. Let us hope the Reverend’s clarion call for a historic change will not be crowded out by the sirens of the defenders of the status quo. Let us hope ,also, that the Reverend will speak louder and more often. Africa is happy to hear from him.

* Samson Demissie Teffera is an Ethiopian American, very active in youth mentoring, community leadership and works and reside in the Washington Metropolitan Area. samdteff@yahoo.com

(RFE/RL) — European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has unveiled an emergency plan for dealing with Europe’s biggest influx of migrants and asylum seekers since World War II.

Delivering his first EU state-of-the-union speech to the European Parliament on September 9, Juncker outlined a proposal for a compulsory program to relocate across the European Union a total of 160,000 refugees who are currently in Greece, Hungary, and Italy.

Juncker said the program would involve mandatory quotas on the number of refugees, mostly from Syria, that each EU country should host.

He said the program would expand on a proposal made by the European Commission in May for the relocation of 40,000 refugees in Italy and Greece — adding an additional 120,000 refugees to the program.

“We are not talking about 40,000,” Juncker said. “We are not talking about 120,000. It’s 160,000. That’s the number Europeans have to take in charge and have to take in their arms.”

“This has to be done in a compulsory way,” Juncker said, urging EU member states to support the plan at a meeting of EU interior ministers scheduled for September 14.

Juncker said the EU should create a “permanent relocation mechanism” that would allow national authorities to deal with refugee crises more swiftly in the future.

“Where Europe has clearly under-delivered is on common solidarity with regard to the refugees who have arrived on our territory,” Juncker told the European Parliament.

“To me, it is clear that the member states where most refugees first arrive — and at the moment, these are Italy, Greece, and Hungary — cannot be left alone to cope with this enormous challenge,” he said.

Germany, the main destination for many migrants, supports quotas. But some EU countries such as Hungary, a key point on a migrant route, oppose a compulsory system.

After Juncker’s speech, Slovakia’s Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak repeated Bratislava’s rejection of proposals on how many migrants must be taken by each EU member state.

He said Slovakia also opposed giving the Europe Commission too much power in dealing with the refugee crisis.

Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said Prague also opposed mandatory quotas, but he welcomed the commission’s plan to put more focus on long-term measures to deal with increasing numbers of refugees reaching its borders.

Sobotka reacted to Juncker’s speech by saying that Europe neeed to implement measures that it already has agreed upon in recent months, rather than drafting new plans.

Another proposal by the European Commission is to create what Juncker called a “list of safe countries” that would allow national authorities in each EU member country to more quickly streamline their efforts to cope with the unprecedented flow of refugees arriving in Europe form war-torn Syria.

“The list of safe countries is only a procedural simplification,” Juncker explained. “It cannot take away, and I would act strongly against that, the fundamental right of asylum for asylum seekers coming from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, and Turkey,” Juncker continued.

“But it allows national authorities to focus on those refugees which are much more likely to be granted asylum — notably those from Syria,” he said. “And this focus is very much needed in the current situation.”

Juncker also said countries on the proposed safe list would be obliged to maintain a good record on human rights.

“The countries being on the list of safe countries have to know that if they are taken off of this list because fundamental rights would not be ensured in these countries, they are losing their chance to join the European Union,” Juncker warned. “These two things are going together.”

Juncker also announced that the European Commission would propose an integrated legal migration policy early in 2016 that opens legal channels for migrants.

He said that migration policy would discourage human smuggling by criminal organizations and reduce the number of tragedies involving ships and trucks that smuggle migrants illegally.

Juncker also argued asylum seekers should be given the right to work and earn money in their host countries while their asylum applications are being processed.

He vowed that the European Union’s borderless Schengen system “will not be abolished” under the mandate of the current European Commission.

But he said EU member countries in the Schengen area must work more closely together in order to manage their internal borders.

Juncker said Europe had seen an influx of nearly 500,000 migrants and refugees since the start of 2015, including those from the Middle East and Africa.

By Yermi Brenner

As 18,000 asylum seekers arrived in Munich over the weekend, local authorities scrambled to find them all beds. Sites for trade fairs, an abandoned car showroom, even railway carriages, have all been turned into emergency accommodation. But as trainloads of newcomers keep arriving, the options are dwindling and the shortage of refugee housing has reached crisis levels.

Germany registered 218,221 asylum applications in the first seven months of this year, already surpassing its total number of applications for 2014. It is expected to receive as many as 800,000 asylum applications by the end of 2015, according to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees.

Silvia Kostner, spokeswoman for the Berlin State Office of Health and Welfare, the authority in charge of registering new asylum seekers in the German capital, said city officials are constantly searching for facilities that can serve as temporary or permanent accommodation for the refugees.

“Every day, we have about 500 people new, totally new, coming to our place to be registered – every day!” Kostner told IRIN. “On Friday, we opened a new emergency place where 1,000 people can sleep, and now it is full.”

Marwan*, 26, is sharing a 20-square-metre room with his younger brother and three other Syrians in a tourist hostel in Berlin that has been converted into refugee housing.

“We don’t have a kitchen, so we spend a lot of our money on fast food and tuna cans,” Marwan told IRIN from the crowded dormitory room, which is sparsely furnished with just one closet, a mini-refrigerator, and foldable single beds.

But Marwan knows very well that he is one of the lucky ones. He arrived in Germany last December, having made the 3,700-km trip from his war-torn homeland without drowning in the Aegean Sea on his way to Greece, or being stopped by police in Hungary. He managed to reach the country that has become the most popular destination in the Western world for people fleeing war and persecution. And, importantly, he did it before asylum applications reached today’s levels.

Had Marwan and his brother arrived in Germany today, it is unlikely they would have been given beds in a hostel.

Many of the asylum seekers who have arrived in recent months are being accommodated in containers or in large tents previously used by the military.

But the rush to respond has also yielded some more out-of-the-box solutions. In Wilmersdorf, a district in the south of Berlin, a city hall building has been adapted to host 500 asylum seekers. A politician from Brandenburg named Martin Patzelt, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party, has been hosting Eritrean refugees in his own home. And, most recently, German media reported that Berlin’s city administration is considering converting an old airport into Europe’s largest refugee reception facility, with a capacity of around 3,000 to 4,000 places.

After initially registering with authorities in Berlin, many asylum seekers are then transferred to other parts of the country as German law stipulates that they must be divided fairly between each of the 16 federal states according to population size. There are now hundreds of state-provided refugee accommodations throughout the country, including in regions where the local population is not as cosmopolitan or generally as welcoming towards foreigners as in Berlin.

Rural areas, particularly in the less demographically diverse eastern part of the country, have seen a significant rise in the number of xenophobic attacks targeting asylum seekers. There have been violent protests and attacks on an asylum seeker shelter in eastern Heidenau, near the Czech border, and an arson attack on a facility intended to serve as a temporary shelter for asylum seekers in Nauen, west of Berlin. Merkel visited the asylum center in Heidenau and urged Germans to take a stand against “shameful” anti-migrant protests.

Back in Berlin, many German people are getting involved in grassroots initiatives that specifically address the housing crisis. Refugees Welcome – also known as the “Airbnb for refugees” – is a platform through which Germans can offer rooms in shared flats to asylum seekers and refugees.

“We want to give them the opportunity to live in a normal context, as we live,” Mareike Geiling, one of the co-founders of Refugees Welcome, told IRIN. “These are people that deserve to not have to live in refugee camps outside of the cities and far away from everything, but to live amongst us.”

Another initiative that aims to both provide housing for refugees and smooth their integration into German society is the recently launched Refugio Sharehaus. Sven Lager, a German author, is the director of this initiative in which 40 people – refugees and migrants from various countries as well as Germans – are living in one building and collaborating to develop social enterprises and organise neighbourhood events.

Lager congratulated the German government for taking in large numbers of asylum seekers, but said that housing them in camps was a mistake that would lead to social isolation.

“We have to understand that hosting people in a big place with 1,000 others just creates a lot of problems,” he told IRIN.

There is no integration with locals at the hostel where Marwan, the 26-year-old Syrian, is living. The facility has about 50 beds and is fully occupied with asylum seekers from Syria and several African countries. Marwan and some of the other residents are studying German at nearby schools as part of integration courses provided by the state. He plans to learn to speak German fluently and then enrol in Berlin’s Humboldt University to complete the economics studies he began in Damascus.

“Germany has been good to us,” Marwan said. “They give us as much as they possibly can.”

But he has one more wish for the German government: to be reunited with his mother, brother and sister, who are still in Syria, before it is too late.

“Now my family is in a town surrounded by the army. They have no food, no electricity,” he said, with his brother by his side. “I hope the government here in Germany will allow us to bring our family here.”

*His name has been changed for the safety of his family in Syria

Indonesia’s war on illegal fishing, particularly by foreign fishing vessels in Indonesian waters, has not only resulted in huge costs to China’s fishing industry. It has also cast a shadow on the future prospect of China’s Maritime Silk Road Initiative and Indonesia’ Global Maritime Fulcrum ambition.

By Zhang Hongzhou*

Since Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo took office in October last year, he has made the “Global Maritime Fulcrum” strategy as the centrepiece of his administration. One of the key elements of the “Maritime Fulcrum” is to revitalise the domestic fishing industry. This has started with a crackdown on foreign fishing vessels in Indonesian waters as Jakarta claims that the country loses up to US$20 billion revenue per year due to illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

Indonesia’s crackdown on foreign fishing vessels has had a far-reaching impact on China, not only its fishing industry but also the country’s 21st Century Maritime Silk Road (MSR) Initiative. It has also an indirect impact on Indonesia’s Global Maritime Fulcrum ambition.

Huge costs to China’s fishing industry

Since October 2014, Indonesia has sunk 84 foreign fishing vessels. While most of these fishing vessels were from neighbouring countries in Southeast Asia, Indonesia is increasingly taking a tough stance towards China. Jakarta confiscated more than nine Chinese-linked vessels for alleged poaching in January 2015 and sank a Chinese fishing vessel in May 2015.

Indonesia unilaterally revoked a bilateral fishing cooperation agreement which was signed between two countries in October 2013 for violating Indonesia’s domestic laws and giving Chinese fishermen an unfair advantage in fishing in the Indonesian water.

Under the bilateral fishing cooperation agreement signed by two countries in October 2013, Chinese fishermen were allowed to fish in Indonesia on condition they enter into a joint venture with an Indonesian company and own not more than 49 percent of the stakes. The agreement also required the Chinese fishing vessels to be registered in Indonesia and fly the Indonesian flag.

According to China’s official data, there were 17 Chinese fishing companies investing in Indonesia and about 400 Chinese fishing vessels undertaking fishing operations in Indonesia waters, mostly in the Arafura Sea, by October 2014. In addition, over the past few years, Chinese fishing companies have built 11 fishing bases and a large number of new fishing vessels, primarily trawlers and purse seine vessels, in accordance with Indonesia’s fishing conditions and Indonesian fishing regulations. Total investment in the fishing bases and fishing vessels stood at US$ 620 million.

Out of bounds for Chinese vessels

However, after the introduction of a new fishing law by Indonesia, most of these fishing vessels could not operate in the Indonesian waters and the associated onshore fishing facilities have become redundant. This caused huge economic losses for the Chinese fishing companies.

From November 2014 to March 2015, it was estimated by Chinese Distant Water Fishing Association that total direct economic cost suffered by Chinese fishing companies reached US$ 130 million, in addition to 24,000 tonnes of fish catch worth US$ 50 million,-not being able to be transported back to China for sale.

On top of immediate economic cost, Indonesia’s new fishing policy also created obstacles for China’s plan to further develop the country’s Distant Water Fishing sector. As the country’s domestic fishery resources have been quickly depleting due to pollution and overfishing, China considers expanding distant water fishing the critical approach to restructure its fishing sector.

Indonesia has a key role in China’s distant water fishing plan. In 2014, it was estimated that China’s distant water catch in Indonesian waters amounted to 330,000 tonnes worth nearly US$ 500 million, which made up 24% and 34% the country’s total production and value added of the Distant Water Fishing sector respectively in 2014.

Shadow on China’s Maritime Silk Road Initiatives

As China is making all-out efforts to push forward the Maritime Silk Road Initiatives (MSR), Indonesia is poised to play a major role in the future success of MSR. This is not only because Indonesia is the biggest and most populous country in Southeast Asia but also due to the fact that MSR and Indonesia’s Global Maritime Fulcrum are complementary, and offer great potential for the two countries to enhance maritime cooperation.

During President Jokowi’s visit to China in March 2015, the two countries agreed to strengthen strategy and policy communication, advance maritime infrastructure connectivity, deepen cooperation in industrial investment and major project construction, and enhance practical cooperation to develop a “maritime partnership” together. Currently, however, Chinese investment in Indonesia is still quite low.

Although in recent years, Chinese companies have shown growing interest in investing in Indonesia, China was only ranked the 10th among Indonesia’s top foreign investors, according to latest data. Low level of Chinese investment in Indonesia has been largely due to bureaucratic obstacles, weak rule of law and low level of protection for foreign investors. Indonesia’s recent actions against Chinese fishermen and fishing companies certainly further damaged Chinese investors’ confidence in investing in Indonesia.

Way forward

For Indonesia, while it is understandable that it intends to tackle IUU fishing which has brought enormous loss for the country, the legitimate interest of foreign investors need to be protected, particularly given the fact that Indonesia’s “Maritime Fulcrum” desperately needs foreign investment.

For China, as far as the fishing sector is concerned, the focus needs to shift away from outward expansion of marine fishing to sustainable aquaculture and fish processing, which should also be one of the key areas for maritime cooperation with Indonesia under the MSR framework.

*Zhang Hongzhou is an Associate Research Fellow with the China Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

By Luis Simón*

When it comes to security in the Asia-Pacific, China’s strategic rise is often the first thing that comes to mind. But Japan’s changing security role both in the region and internationally is also of great significance. On 16 July 2015, the lower house of the Japanese Diet approved two bills that pledge to bring about the most substantial shift in Japanese security policy since the end of the Second World War. One of the bills eases current restrictions on the Japanese Self Defense Forces (JSDF) in so-called collective self-defense contingencies; the other promises to make it easier for the JSDF to engage in international peacekeeping.

This legislative package, backed by Prime Minister Abe, will continue to be debated by Japanese lawmakers until mid-September, as it requires the approval of the Diet’s upper house. Even if the bills become law, the JSDF will continue to be constrained by important legal caveats, owing to Japan’s pacifist constitution.
When it comes to collective self-defense, the JSDF would only be able to use force in response to a third party attack against an ally (e.g. the US) if that ally is performing duties deemed to be essential to Japan’s own survival. With regard to international peacekeeping, while the new legislation expands the remit of supportive functions the JSDF can play, their engagement will remain contingent upon UN approval – and armed combat will continue to be off limits. Those caveats notwithstanding, the proposed bills are an important boost to Prime Minister Abe’s plans to turn Japan into a more “normal” country in terms of its defense policy, and increase the country’s contribution to international security.

Perhaps most importantly, the proposed security legislation is likely to invigorate the US-Japan Alliance. The timing could hardly be better, given mounting strategic tensions in the Asia-Pacific, a region where Japan and the US see pretty much eye to eye. One key concern for Tokyo and Washington is the growing nuclear and missile threat posed by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). This has led to increased US-Japan cooperation on Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) in recent years.

More broadly, the US and Japan worry about China’s military rise, and ongoing efforts to strengthen its position in the East and South China Seas. A more specific concern for the US-Japan alliance is China’s development of so-called Anti Access Area Denial (A2/AD) capabilities, by way of an expanding fleet of cruise and ballistic missiles, attack submarines and offensive cyber-weapons. These capabilities pose a risk to US naval assets in the Western Pacific, but also threaten the security of US military bases in Japan, which constitute the cornerstone of US force and defense strategy in the Asia-Pacific region. In this regard, the recently revised US-Japan defense guidelines mention the Alliance’s need to address China’s A2/AD challenge, and call for greater US-Japan coordination in areas such as Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, BMD, undersea warfare or cyber-security.

Moreover, Tokyo and Washington have recently decided to expand the geographical scope of their military cooperation. The old US-Japan defense guidelines, dating from 1997, allowed the JSDF to provide “rear area support” to US forces in “situations in areas surrounding Japan” (SIAS-J) – generally understood as relating to the Korean peninsula. However, the 2015 guidelines have removed the SIAS-J clause, to allow greater operational flexibility, and emphasize the “global” nature of the Alliance. This, for instance, will make it easier for the JSDF to engage in patrols over the South China Sea, where China’s construction of artificial islands has led to heightened tensions with surrounding countries. This would represent a boost to Abe’s efforts to expand Japan’s diplomatic and strategic ties in South East Asia. Vietnam and the Philippines stand out in this regard, in that they have both repeatedly called for greater Japanese engagement in South East Asia.

In addition, the prospect of easing restrictions on the JSDF would clear the way for a more meaningful strategic relationship with Australia and India, both bilaterally and in the framework of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD), which also includes the United States. This, in turn, would help consolidate Japan’s position

in the broader Indo-Pacific maritime corridor – a geographical space that is key to its energy security and economic prosperity.

As far as the EU is concerned, the promise of a more “normal” Japan also opens up a number of opportunities. In the context of their broader negotiations of a Free Trade Agreement and a Strategic Partnership Agreement, the EU and Japan are currently discussing a framework agreement that would allow Tokyo to participate in EU-led military (and civilian) operations. So far, existing legal restrictions on JSDF deployments overseas have constituted an obstacle to the negotiations – albeit one that might well be removed soon. In fact, the EU could prove to be an ideal partner for Japan to take its first peacekeeping steps as a more “normal” country – given its emphasis on transnational threats and low-intensity, policing operations, as well as the UN-friendly nature of its engagements.

The Indian Ocean is the most obvious target for EU-Japan security cooperation. That ocean straddles the Euro-Mediterranean Basin and the Asia-Pacific geopolitically, and is therefore of vital economic and strategic importance to both the EU and Japan. In fact, Japan is already contributing to global maritime security in the western Indian Ocean, through its participation in UN-sanctioned Combined Task Force 151, aimed at fighting piracy in the Gulf of Aden. Easing restrictions on the JSDF is likely to spur greater activity across the Indian Ocean.

Increasing Japanese involvement in the EU’s own anti-piracy operation off the coast of Somalia could represent a stepping-stone for EU-Japan cooperation at the operational level. Eventually, however, such cooperation should expand beyond the Gulf of Aden to cover other areas of the Indian Ocean. The strait of Malacca and the broader South East Asian maritime space stand out in this regard, given their vulnerability to piracy, their strategic importance to Japan – and the EU’s increasing interest in the area.

About the author:
*Luis Simón, Associate Fellow at FRIDE

Source:
This article was published by FRIDE as Commentary 25 (PDF)

By Jim Garamone

The commander of U.S. Cyber Command described the role of deterrence in the cyber world, the problems of defending against cyber enemies, and “operationalizing” cyber capabilities in the Defense Department during a discussion at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars last night.

Navy Adm. Michael S. Rogers stressed that these cyber challenges face all Americans. Wilson Center President Jane Harmon demonstrated the truth of that statement by asking anyone in the audience who had not been hacked to raise his or her hand. Not a soul did.

Defense of the cyber realm requires solving the challenge of “bringing together a broad expanse of organizations with different expertise, different capabilities, different perspectives inside the government, outside, whether they wear the uniform or in civilian clothes,” Rogers said. “How do we bring this together in a coherent way as a nation to deal with problems that are only growing in their complexity?”

Cybercom is tasked with defending DoD networks from attacks, and the command is at war 24/7, the admiral said. The command also responds to cyber attacks and develops the capabilities that provide options to civilian leaders and combatant commanders.

Cybercom “must learn, even as we build capabilities of the future,” Rogers said. “This is a long-term effort. It always reminds me of the counterterrorism piece in that regard. It will require a sustained focus at multiple levels.”

The admiral emphasized the need for legislation governing the cyber world, noting that it is not a panacea, but necessary to establish “rules of the road.” He also emphasized the need for public and private entities to work together.

Americans Expect Cyberattacks

Harmon asked Rogers if there was the danger of a “cyber Pearl Harbor.” The admiral said the image of the Pearl Harbor attack that precipitated U.S. entry into World War II was “a bolt from the blue” that America did not expect and had little defense against.

Americans expect cyberattacks, and the potential targets of those attacks — both public and private — have defenses, the admiral said.

“I expect in my time as the commander of United States Cyber Command, the command will be called about its mission of responding to cyber incidents of significant consequence,” he said. “It’s not ‘if,’ it’s ‘when.’ All of us, we’ve got to generate action and not just talk. Because in the end this is about a very real set of capabilities and circumstances out there that aren’t something imaginary.”

The Sony attack, the Office of Personnel Management hack and the attacks on Aramco in Saudi Arabia all show the capabilities of cyberattacks, Rogers said. “There isn’t a segment in our society that hasn’t had to deal with this,” he said.

Defense and prevention efforts in cyberspace must abide by the rule of law, the admiral said. U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency operate in a free and open republic, he added. “We cannot attempt to override [the laws] or pretend that they are not relevant to what we do,” Rogers said. “If we can’t engender trust in the nation we are serving, we are doomed to failure.”

The Role of Deterrence

The admiral said deterrence in the cyber realm has an offensive aspect to it, but defense also plays a role. Classic means of deterrence rely on convincing an opponent that they will fail despite their best efforts. “That’s one reason in the department we are investing a lot of capability … to make it harder for opponents to actually penetrate our networks,” he said.

The second idea is convincing opponents that, even if they succeed, the cost they would pay would far outweigh any value that would be generated, he said. “It’s part of the reason that when we came up with the [DoD cyber] strategy — in an attempt to deter behavior — we would talk about the department’s intent to generate a spectrum of capability from the defensive to the offensive,” he said.

Deterrence works with nation states, but will it work against non-state actors? Rogers doesn’t have an answer for that, but noted that “every group, every individual, values something. There’s a way that we can highlight that which you value and potentially threaten if you continue to pursue destabilizing courses of actions.”

China has used the 50-year anniversary of its annexation of Tibet to give a rare explanation on the fate of Tibet’s second spiritual leader as Beijing stepped up a dispute with Buddhist leaders over who controls reincarnations.

Advocacy groups have rejected as insufficient claims by Beijing, made Sept. 6, that the Panchen Lama Gendun Choekyi Nyima, the man chosen by the Dalai Lama in May 1995 as the reincarnation of Tibet’s No. 2 spiritual leader, was “living a normal life” and “does not want to be disturbed.”

Beijing’s explanation has fallen short of requests by the United Nations and human rights groups to explain where he is, said Matteo Meccaci, president of the International Campaign for Tibet in Washington D.C.

“Until this happens, the case of the Panchen Lama remains an ‘enforced disappearance’ according to international law,” Mecacci told ucanews.com.

Once known as the “world’s youngest political prisoner,” the then six-year-old Gendun Choekyi Nyima disappeared three days after being anointed by the Dalai Lama in May, 1995 and has not been seen since.

Beijing then appointed Gyaltsen Norbu, 25, as Panchen Lama following a process it said was based on a ceremony started under the Qing Dynasty in the late 18th century. But China’s choice has rarely appeared in public, although during a rare speech in Beijing in March he warned a quota on monks was harming Buddhism in what was viewed as a thinly veiled attack on government policy.

Meanwhile, Gendun Choekyi Nyima has not been seen at all. In recent years, Beijing said he was at school and his parents had taken government jobs, the latter claim repeated Sept. 6.

“This was their line in the 1990s and it’s what we would expect them to stick with,” said Alistair Currie, spokesman of London-based Free Tibet. “It might be true but if so, it leaves significant unanswered questions about the fate of his family and how their silence has been maintained.”

China’s handling of the Panchen Lama dispute is widely viewed as a dress rehearsal for the reincarnation of the still popular Dalai Lama, who turned 80 in August. The Communist Party views the process as the key to ending Tibetan resistance to Chinese rule.

At the same time Beijing has reiterated its right to manage the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation, as it released a white paper lauding its achievements in Tibet to mark 50 years since establishing a local administration in the Himalayan region.

“No matter what the Dalai Lama says or does, he can’t deny the central government’s right to confirm the new incarnation,” said Norbu Dondrup, a Chinese government official who serves as a liaison to Tibet.

State broadcaster CCTV is due to screen live broadcasts of the 50th anniversary ceremony led by Politburo member Yu Zhengsheng, one of Xiu Jinping’s closest allies, at the Dalai Lama’s former residence, the Potala Palace, on Sept. 8.

Lobsang Sangay the head of Tibet’s exiled government in India, said last week there was “nothing to celebrate in Tibet” after 50 years of brutal rule from Beijing.

He noted the self-immolation of Tashi Kyi last month, one of at least 140 Tibetans to set themselves on fire to protest Chinese rule since Beijing crushed an uprising in 2009.

Pre-empting Beijing’s paper, the exiled government last week released its own report on Tibet after 50 years of Chinese rule that warned the Chinese government faced a major backlash if it tries to control the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation.

“Now, the [Communist] Party wants to wait for the passing of the 14th Dalai Lama and then select a pliant successor to continue its rule in Tibet,” the report said. “Such a move on the part of China will create an international Furor comparable to China muscling its way into the South China Sea.”

By Emily Schwartz Greco*

Battles are raging over whether local government officials have a religious right to refuse to marry same-sex couples. And the federal government may shut down over a dispute concerning funding for Planned Parenthood’s non-abortion reproductive health services.

As if those melodramas weren’t creating enough faith-tinged headaches, here comes Hurricane Francis.

After a three-day jaunt in Cuba, the People’s Pope will fly to Washington. He’ll become the first pontiff to address Congress while quite possibly urging lawmakers to take firm action on climate change and to promote immigration reform.

Pope Francis has a few other things planned for his U.S. visit, too — like delivering mass. In Spanish.

Among a host of reasons Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl cited: It’s the Argentine-born pontiff’s native language, the pope will be canonizing a Spanish-American Jesuit missionary on that occasion, and he’d like to show some deference to our nation’s growing Latino population. One out of three U.S. Catholics are either Spanish-speaking immigrants or descendants of Latin Americans.

Rush Limbaugh, who loves to hate what Pope Francis says about capitalism, is already complaining. This linguistic choice also clashes with Sarah Palin’s recent call for immigrants to “speak American.”

After shaking things up in D.C., Francis will mosey over to New York City, where he’ll bless undocumented immigrants and address the United Nations General Assembly, speaking truth to power more globally.

Then it’s off to Philadelphia, where he’s got a packed agenda that includes visiting prisoners held at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility. There’s a good chance that he’ll wash the feet of several inmates.

Right-wingers shouldn’t try to declaw this pontiff by badmouthing him. British writer Austen Ivereigh makes a few things clear in his biography, The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope. Among them: Having made afflicting the comfortable while comforting the afflicted a lifelong habit, Pope Francis isn’t vulnerable to bullying.

Perhaps more than his embrace of migrant rights and climate action, the pontiff’s calls for economic justice are what irk conservatives the most.

“Once capital becomes an idol and guides people’s decisions, once greed for money presides over the entire socioeconomic system, it ruins society,” Pope Francis said in Bolivia two months ago.

This kind of analysis has raised the volume in a debate over whether the pope is Marxist, or at least socialist.

It’s an ironic conversation. As Ivereigh describes in detail, the hyper-humble Catholic leader formerly known as Padre Jorge Bergoglio spent most of his last 30 non-papal years battling the misconception that he wasn’t leftist enough.

In addition to openly criticizing Cuba’s government, Francis has tried to set the record straight about his mindset since becoming pope. A passion for helping the poor and the powerless, not ideology, drives him to make stunning statements and gestures as he calls for worldwide systemic change.

Regardless of why House Speaker John Boehner thought inviting the Pope to address Congress was a good idea, the Catholic Republican from Ohio appears calm before this storm.

“I’m not about to get myself into an argument with the pope,” Boehner told The New York Times in July. “I’m sure the pope will have things to say that people will find interesting, and I’m looking forward to his visit.”

Boehner probably won’t have any epiphanies about immigration, climate action, or economic justice. But he’s right: It will surely be an interesting encounter.

*Columnist Emily Schwartz Greco is the managing editor of OtherWords, a non-profit national editorial service run by the Institute for Policy Studies. OtherWords.org

Distant Australia has done its level best to influence the refugee debate in the most negative of ways this century. Its reactionary response has deployed a range of established stereotypes that have targeted the right to asylum. Safety has been sacrificed in favour of deterrence.

While Prime Minister Tony Abbott continues to bask the ill-gained glory of “turning back the boats”, the European refugee crisis has exploded. This has produced a range of sentiments in Parliament, some verging on the overtly discriminatory. While the refugee category should be inclusive and absolute (such suffering, by its nature, should know no religion or race), the debate suggests quite the opposite: We only want appropriate refugees.

True to form, various Coalition members have expressed interest in select minorities, preferably of the non-Muslim sort. Some backbenchers have been rather open in the party room. “No more Muslim men” is a message doing the rounds.

Front benchers such as Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull see stars of hope in saving Syria’s Christian communities. “They are a minority, they survived in Syria, they’ve been there for thousands of years, literally since the time of Christ.”

Senate Leader Eric Abetz has similarly pushed the line on Christian salvation. “It should be on the basis of need and given the Christians are the most persecuted group in the world, and especially in the Middle East, I think it stands to reason that they would be pretty high up on the priority list for resettlement.”

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has also had her pick of preferred exceptionally persecuted minority groups. She favours supporting Maronites and various groups within, including the Yazidis and Druze.

The result is an inbuilt method of discrimination that assumes a self-justified, circular logic: if you are a Christian in Syria, then you will be persecuted; if you are persecuted in Syria, then obviously, you must be a Christian. This logic is shoddy on various levels, not least because it ignores numerous other communities, notably Islamic ones, that are equally the targets of terror.

While he can’t generally be guaranteed to make sensible remarks on refugees, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten made the obvious point that, “Being a victim of war doesn’t know a particular religion.” He was careful, however, to only propose an increased intake after getting word back from his focus groups.

Refugee Council chief executive Paul Power sees such a prioritisation as counter productive. By granting specific refugee groups a talismanic worth – the worthier sufferers, if you will – they will become even more exceptional targets. “I’m sure one of the consequences is that extremists within Syria and other parts of the Middle East will use this as a weapon against Syrian Christians.”[1]

The latest Australian position on refugees is fundamentally consistent with its broader discriminatory practices. It supposedly detests people smuggling, yet consents to paying boat captains to take back refugees when needed. (One claims he was recently paid as much as $30,000 to turn his boat load of human cargo back.)

The Abbott government feels it needs to act, but it is only doing so with reluctance. There are calls from across the political aisle for larger intakes of refugees – Labor has pressed for 10,000, while the Greens have asked for double that number. Liberal backbenchers spoke over the weekend about the death of three-year old Aylan Kurdi. More, it was suggested, needed to be done.

In the main, the government is far busier bungling with such visa-checking missions such as the failed Operation Fortitude, and running detention camps on Manus Island and Nauru that give purgatory a bad name. Detainees face sexual abuse, psychological trauma and an appalling safety record.

The concern here is whether the Australian recipe for dealing with refugees may prove palatable for European policy makers. Abbott has himself suggested on a few occasions that “countries facing a crisis on their doorsteps are looking at his success at stopping the boats and thinking they can learn from Australia’s experience.”[2]

The New York Times, in a scathing survey of Australia’s refugee policies, was worried by exactly that point. “Some European officials,” claimed the editorial board, “may be tempted to adopt the hard-approach Australia has used to stem a similar tide of migrants. That would be unconscionable.”[3]

It would be, but the issue of dealing with refugees ceased being a matter of conscience in Australian politics years ago. More typical are the views of the current immigration minister, Peter Dutton, who parrots the line that such a ruthless stance is actually humane. “Our policies are lawful. They are safe. And they work.”

The grief for the drowned provides the perfect alibi to repress and deter refugees – they are being treated that way for their own good. “What Australians and the world did not see were the hundreds of others who were dying while trying to reach Australia in unseaworthy boats.”[4]

Various European governments have certainly shown Abbott-like tendencies in embracing domestic unilateralism, be it Hungary’s wall solution or the Slovak response of only wanting Christian refugees. That way lies, not merely a good deal of madness, but a good deal of deflection.

Notes:
[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-08/christians-to-get-priority-in-syrian-refugee-intake/6757110

[2] http://www.canberratimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/no-tony-abbott-we-dont-have-the-answer-on-refugees-20150904-gjfjqc.html

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/03/opinion/australias-brutal-treatment-of-migrants.html?_r=0

[4] http://www.canberratimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/immigration-minister-peter-dutton-hits-back-at-new-york-times-over-asylum-seeker-editorial-20150904-gjflgk

On November 26-27, 2015, over 300 business leaders, investors and financial decision makers from Africa and China will be meeting in Marrakech for the first Sino-African Entrepreneurs Summit (SAES).

This Forum will provide a convenient venue the Sino-African Cooperation Forum (FCSA) to celebrate its 15th anniversary. In fact, bilateral trade is over US$210 billion, 2,500 Chinese businesses have been established in Africa and have invested more than US$60 billion since 2004. According to the press statement, the summit is meant to offer “exceptional business networking and information exchange platform to participants, creating outstanding possibilities for long term economic partnerships” which in turn will accelerate industrial development on the African continent.

The “One Belt, One Road” initiative aims address these concerns and redefine the policy of China towards Africa by opening up a whole new era in business relations. This strategy will reinforce partnerships between African and Chinese businesses, encouraging the transfer of knowledge and the creation of added value for the continent.

The summit is jointly organized by the Moroccan Ministry of Commerce, Investment and the Digital Economy and by GL Events, Groupe Jeune Afrique and BOAO Business Consulting and will be held at Four Seasons Resort.

Since 2004, over 2500 businesses have been established in Africa investing over $60bn. The bilateral trade between Africa and China is valued at approximately $210bn.

The Sino-African Entrepreneurs Summit is therefore an ideal context for developing synergies in fields such as finance, industry, energy, environment, urbanization, health and culture. So the selection of Morocco to host this highly important forum is no surprise especially that Morocco’s efforts to give the South-South cooperation a face full of solidarity, has resulted in its continued commitment to noble causes of peace and development, as well as its constant position to express solidarity towards the concerns of developing countries, and their aspirations for progress and well-being.

Morocco has initiated many African countries to triangular cooperation, rich and varied, based on a true partnership and effective solidarity, in addition to cooperation programs implemented bilaterally. It has many advantages and allows many African countries to benefit from the know-how and expertise already experienced in the land of Africa and to overcome the lack of budgetary resources.

Morocco will continue to be present in Africa and reinforce south-south cooperation to contribute to the development of the African continent and collaborate with key partners and allies to bring peace, stability and prosperity to the African continent.

By Jacob L. Heim*

The Department of Defense faces a time of transition as it works to address today’s crises while preparing for tomorrow’s threats.1 One of the future concerns for US forces comes from antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities, defined broadly as “the ability to blunt or deny U.S. power projection—across all domains.”2 Within this broad definition, A2 capabilities compromise the ability of US forces to get to the fight whereas AD capabilities inhibit their ability to fight effectively once they arrive.3 Some capabilities can be employed in both an A2 and an AD role. For instance, submarines could interdict forces as they attempt to deploy into a theater and could then shift to coastal choke points to deny US naval operations inside a theater. Discussions of A2/AD highlight a set of capabilities that could be employed in this manner, including cruise and ballistic missiles, quiet submarines, sea mines, modern fighter aircraft, space and cyberspace assets, and surface-to-air missiles.4 Discussions of this threat generally cite multiple countries as potential A2/AD challenges, especially China and Iran.5

Grouping Chinese and Iranian capabilities within the same A2/AD rubric can obscure important variation in the possible threat to US forces in different theaters unless accompanying analysis highlights those differences. This article uses an operational analysis of the risk to air bases from conventional theater ballistic missiles (TBM) to illustrate how one critical component of the broader A2/AD threat can vary across theaters.6 This comparative analysis indicates that the threat to US operating bases in Southwest Asia (SWA) is significantly lower than the one they face in East Asia. The geography of SWA lessens the impact of the already weaker Iranian TBM capabilities. Iran could not significantly hold US air operations at risk outside 500 kilometers (km); therefore, it poses a more modest threat to those operations in the Persian Gulf than do Chinese TBMs in East Asia.7 The accuracy, pay-loads, and ranges of the weapons in Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal are inadequate to seriously threaten US air operations, in part because US forces could operate from a large number of bases outside the worst threat ring (i.e., more than 500 km from Iran’s border).8 Even within 500 km, the threat posed by Iranian TBMs to air bases could be mitigated in a number of ways. For example, a prudent planner could avoid parking significant numbers of aircraft in the open, distribute parked aircraft across a wide area, and operate fighters from hardened air bases. In short, the Iranian ballistic missile threat to US air bases is exaggerated by the Iranians and likely to remain modest, relative to the threat those bases face in East Asia.9

This conclusion is reinforced by a secondary analysis that examines a worst-case future scenario. Even if Iran had China’s existing TBM capabilities, the geography of SWA gives the United States basing options that still would entail a significantly lower threat than the one from East Asia. Prudence requires that American defense analysts closely monitor Iran’s ballistic missile developments, but the superficial similarities between Iranian and Chinese capabilities should not blind them to the fact that the TBM threats in SWA and East Asia differ dramatically in both scope and quality. As a result of the more favorable geography and the potential adversary’s less advanced capabilities, the United States is and should remain capable of conducting air operations in SWA. These differences indicate that substantial regional variation can exist in the nature of A2/AD threats and that overuse of the A2/AD label can obscure as much as enlighten if it is not accompanied by an appropriate analytical effort.

Overlooking regional variations in threats can cause a multitude of problems for American defense planners. First, they may overlook opportunities that exist in SWA. Basing fighters outside effective Iranian TBM attack could be a powerful component of an American war plan, but one would first have to recognize it and then act upon it to create any benefit. By misdiagnosing the Iranian TBM threat, planners could overlook this opportunity. Second, misunderstanding the regional variation of threats can produce misallocation of resources. For example, if the threat to air bases is much severer in East Asia than in SWA, then that situation implies that scarce resources for improving the resilience of air bases should be spent first in East Asia.10 Finally, such misunderstanding can create an exaggerated sense of decline in American power. If the proliferation of threats such as TBMs is uniformly eroding the ability of US fighters to operate in the event of war, then this problem would imply a general decline in US power projection. If, however, the TBM threat to air bases is more heterogeneous across regions, then existing American power projection can remain relevant in the lower-threat regions such as SWA. For all of these reasons, it is important to have a clear understanding of the regional variations in the TBM threat to air bases.

The remainder of this article proceeds in five main sections. First, it discusses why defense planners worry about Iran’s TBM forces. Second, it examines the capabilities of Iran’s and China’s TBMs as a means of evaluating their effectiveness at striking key targets on air bases such as runways and parking ramps. Third, the article compares and contrasts Iranian and Chinese ballistic missile doctrine, noting how each country envisions using its TBMs. Fourth, it analyzes how each country’s TBM capabilities interact with the bases available to US forces in each region in order to assess the degree to which the TBM threat constrains US basing options in each theater. Finally, the article discusses conclusions drawn from this analysis and implications for US force posture, force structure, and ability to project force globally.

Iran’s Theater Ballistic Missiles and the Risk to US Air Bases

Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities represent an ongoing concern for defense planners in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. In 2009 Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated that “the threat from Iran’s short- and medium-range ballistic missiles . . . is developing more rapidly than previously projected.”11

Concerns over those missiles stem from a variety of factors. Specifically, Iran’s nuclear program makes its existing ballistic missiles potential delivery systems for nuclear warheads. If Iran could develop both a nuclear weapon and an intercontinental ballistic missile, then it could hold the US homeland at risk. Even if Iran had no new longer-range missiles, nuclear weapons mated to its existing TBM force could threaten Iran’s neighbors. Beyond nuclear threats, its existing conventionally armed TBMs could serve as a coercive tool due to their ability to threaten the population centers of US partners in the Middle East as well as other lucrative targets such as ports and energy infrastructure. Finally, in the event of an open war, these TBMs might threaten military targets, denying Iran’s opponents sanctuary from which to prepare and operate their air, land, and naval forces.

Even though the role of Iran’s TBMs as a coercive tool has been discussed and although defense analysts frequently mention their war-fighting utility, no operational analysis of the ability of those missiles to accomplish military missions has been conducted.12 This deficiency is significant because the possibility of Iranian TBMs becoming a potent war-fighting force would have profound consequences on a future conflict in the Persian Gulf. US airpower has enjoyed comparative sanctuary in SWA since 1990, and the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Report highlighted the potential effects that Iranian TBM developments could have on that sanctuary:

[Iran is] actively testing and fielding new ballistic missile systems. Many of these systems are more accurate and have greater ranges than the Scud-class missiles used by Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War. As the inventories and capabilities of such systems continue to grow, U.S. forces deployed forward will no longer enjoy the relative sanctuary that they have had in conflicts since the end of the Cold War. Air bases, ports of debarkation, logistics hubs, command centers, and other assets essential to high- tempo military operations could be at risk.13

Given the importance of air superiority to the American way of war, any compromise of the US military’s ability to operate from regional air bases in the event of a conflict is exceptionally concerning.14 Forward bases’ lack of viability would create a major challenge to American war fighting.15 Iranian rhetoric makes such a threat explicit.16

Despite these concerns, no rigorous tests of the ability of Iran’s missile force to impede US air operations in SWA have occurred.17 This article seeks to fill this gap in the literature by assessing the current capabilities of Iran’s missiles and comparing them to those of China, which possesses the most active ballistic missile program in the world. Furthermore, it examines Iranian doctrine for its ideas on ballistic missiles before assessing their effectiveness in attacking air bases in SWA. These steps lead to the conclusion that air bases more than 500 km away from Iran have comparative sanctuary from TBM attack.

The Capabilities of Iranian and Chinese Ballistic Missiles

Iranian Theater Ballistic Missiles

Iran has the largest ballistic missile force in the Middle East. Overall inventory estimates vary, but sources generally agree that Iran has more than 1,000 ballistic missiles of various types. The capabilities of this inventory, however, are uneven.

Most of the Iranian ballistic missile force is derived from Soviet Scud missiles, which, in turn, were derived from the German V-2. These are liquid-fueled missiles, which are less mobile and less responsive than solid-fueled missiles.

Jane’s Strategic Weapon Systems reports that the guidance systems of these missiles have improved, compared to those of the Soviet Scuds, but they remain relatively inaccurate.18 The majority of Iran’s inventory is composed of short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM), including a smaller number of medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBM). Currently, it possesses no intermediate-range or intercontinental ballistic missiles (IRBM and ICBM).19
Iran continues to develop Scud technology. Its Shahab 3 variants are scaled-up versions of shorter-range Scud missiles using similar designs, materials, and propellants. These longer-range systems require a separating reentry vehicle, a capability that has applicability on intercontinental range systems as well.20

Beyond Scud technology, Iran is reportedly developing three new conventional ballistic missile systems. The first of these, the Fateh-110, is noteworthy because it is the first solid-fueled system fielded by Iran. Solid-fueled systems can be more mobile and, thus, more survivable than liquid systems; moreover, they can be readied to fire more quickly, enhancing their responsiveness. This single-stage missile has a range of 200 km—sufficient to reach targets in Kuwait, Bahrain, northern Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and eastern Oman. Additionally, the Fateh-110 evidently has impressive accuracy improvements (a reported 100 meters [m] circular error probable [CEP]) over the Shahab SRBMs (450–700 m CEP).21 The second new system, the Ashura or Sejil MRBM, is a two-stage solid-fueled missile reportedly in development. If successfully deployed, this missile would represent a major technological advance beyond the Shahab 3–class MRBMs due to the advantages of solid-fueled systems over liquid-fueled systems, summarized above. Finally, the BM-25 MRBM, a single-stage, liquid-fueled missile, is reportedly based upon technology from a Soviet-era submarine-launched ballistic missile. One of the important differences between the BM-25 and the Shahab series is that the BM-25 evidently uses a more energetic propellant to achieve longer ranges than are possible with Shahab propellants.22

If successfully deployed, the BM-25 could give Iran a longer-ranged, liquid-fueled missile force capable of reaching targets in Western Europe. (Table 1 summarizes the capabilities of Iran’s TBMs.) Because some analysts forecast that the accuracy of Iran’s TBMs will improve over time, a later section of this article analyzes the effect of a more accurate TBM force.23

Chinese Theater Ballistic Missiles

Although Iran has the largest ballistic missile force in the Middle East, China currently has the most active and advanced ballistic missile program in the world. It has fielded more than 1,000 highly accurate conventional SRBMs and is currently expanding its conventional MRBM force. All of these missiles are solid-fueled, road-mobile systems that possess high accuracies (less than 50 m CEPs).

China has developed a wide range of payloads for these missiles, including a variety of submunitions. (Table 2 summarizes the capabilities of China’s TBMs and cruise missiles.) China’s most numerous type of TBM is its SRBM, but it is expanding its conventional land-attack MRBM forces. China’s early DF-21/CSS-5 MRBMs were armed with nuclear warheads and had poor accuracy, but the more recent DF-21C variant has improved guidance and a conventional warhead.24

Although China has not yet built many of these systems, the Department of Defense estimates that the People’s Republic of China could double its MRBM production rate.25

Beyond the DF-21’s range (roughly 1,750 km), China does not currently possess a conventionally armed IRBM capable of ranging Guam, but it has announced its intention to develop and deploy such a system by 2015.26 Thus, within the next decade, it is likely that all permanent US Air Force bases in the Western Pacific will lie within range of conventionally armed, precision TBMs. Meanwhile, China has demonstrated the capacity to expand its force of ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCM) at a rate of more than 100 a year.27

Operational Capabilities of Iranian and Chinese Theater Ballistic Missiles

This analysis compares Iranian and Chinese TBM capabilities across two dimensions: accuracy and flexibility, with the bulk of the analysis focusing on the differences in accuracy. These characteristics play key roles in determining the ability of ballistic missiles to fulfill a military goal such as hitting the runways or parking ramps of an air base.

Accuracy. The first operational consequence of the differing Chinese and Iranian ballistic missile capabilities arises from their relative accuracies. Most Iranian systems are so inaccurate that they likely could not hit military targets. To illustrate, we begin by considering how many missiles would need to be fired to hit a notional target of 100 m in diameter (e.g., a sizable building on an air base, such as a very large hangar). As figure 1 illustrates, between one and three of the most modern Chinese TBMs would be sufficient to have a greater than 80 percent chance of striking a target of this size. It would take 10 of the most accurate Iranian TBMs (Fateh-110s) to realize a similar probability of hitting the same target. Moreover, 10 Scud-derived Shahabs wouldn’t have even a 10 percent chance of success.28

As mentioned earlier, one way to compensate for an inaccurate delivery system is to employ submunitions—particularly useful for attacking area targets on air bases, such as runways.29 Here, the objective is to damage the runways sufficiently to deny a minimum operating surface (MOS)—the least amount of space an aircraft requires to become airborne. For a fighter, a nominal MOS is 5,000 feet long and 50 feet wide.30 Not knowing the types of antirunway submunition payloads (if any) with which the Iranians have armed their TBMs, this analysis uses a representative antirunway payload derived from munitions that the United States developed decades ago. This assessment assumes that each missile is armed with 82 10-pound runway-penetrating submunitions dispersed across a circle with a 300-feet radius around the missile impact point.31 This scenario produces a pattern of submunition impacts sufficiently dense that the probability of leaving a fighter MOS 50 feet wide on a runway 150 feet wide is extremely low (assuming the TBM was aimed at the center point of the runway).

Effectively, this means that as long as the missile lands within 225 feet of the center of the runway, its submunition pattern will fully cover the width of the runway and a fighter will be unable to operate over that section until it has been repaired. With this payload, figure 2 depicts the probability of Iranian TBMs doing sufficient damage to a runway to deny a fighter MOS.32 In the runway-attack case, this mission remains challenging even when inaccurate systems are armed with submunitions. However, it is less demanding than the attack on the target 100 m in diameter with a unitary warhead. Three Fateh-110 systems are adequate to have an 80 percent chance of cutting the runway whereas 10 of those missiles were required to have the same chance of hitting a target 100 m in diameter. The Shahab-class systems, though, still cannot break a 70 percent chance of cutting the runway with a salvo of 10 TBMs.

In fact, as table 3 indicates, a salvo of 13 Shahab 1s would be necessary to have a 75 percent chance of making a single runway cut. By way of contrast, the Chinese would have to use only a single reliable conventional TBM to have the same confidence in making such a cut. The story gets even worse for the Iranians because multiple cut points are generally needed to deny all MOSs at an air base.

Al Dhafra in the UAE, for example, has two runways, each approximately 12,000 feet long.

Therefore, missiles would have to make two cuts on each runway in order to deny a nominal fighter MOS of 5,000 feet, as illustrated in figure 3. This requirement im- plies a salvo of 52 Shahab 1s, roughly one-third of the Iranian Shahab 1 inventory.33 Perhaps if US Air Force aircraft were massed in Al Dhafra, however, it would still be an attractive target. Nevertheless, Iran would have trouble making this attack because it lacks a sufficient number of launchers. The International Institute for Strategic Studies assesses that Iran has only 12–18 launchers for its Shahab 1 and 2 force (i.e., it does not have enough launchers to mount a raid on more than one runway cut point at a time).34 Because these calculations do not include any active defenses (such as Patriot batteries, operated by both the UAE and US militaries) or missile reliability factors (a fraction of all weapons systems fail—sometimes large fractions), the real challenge is even greater for the Iranians to overcome than these already pessimistic results imply.

After runways, another major target set on an air base consists of parked aircraft. If not located in hardened shelters, then these aircraft are vulnerable to small submunitions.35 Armed with one-pound submunitions, a TBM can blanket hundreds of square feet densely enough that every fighter-sized aircraft in the open will likely sustain damage. Arming the Iranian TBM force with this sort of payload produces the salvo sizes in the final column of table 3.36 Because of the larger footprint of these submunition payloads, feasible salvos can cover 75 percent of a single parking apron of 770,000 square feet. An air base will generally have multiple parking aprons, so all of those would have to be targeted.

Still, this analysis indicates that within Shahab 2 range (500 km), Iran could carry out an effective submunition attack on aircraft parked in the open on a single parking apron. Consequently, planners would be wise not to park large numbers of unsheltered aircraft within 500 km of Iranian launch sites in the event of a major combat operation involving Iran. Fortunately, as discussed in greater detail below, many potential basing options inside 500 km have hardened aircraft shelters; moreover, options exist outside 500 km, which is within range of relevant targets in Iran. Thus, the United States could base its aircraft outside the reach of this threat.

Since Iran’s TBMs seem so poorly suited for striking military targets, what are they good for? Specifically, their accuracy is sufficient to hit large targets like cities. The downtown area of Dubai, for example, is at least 5 km in diameter—greater than or equal to the CEP of all of Iran’s missiles. A TBM falling inside this area would create a great deal of fear, regardless of how many people died directly as a result of the TBM strike.37 Shahab 1 and 2 TBMs would have near certainty of hit- ting this target (ignoring, as before, missile reliability and missile defenses), and three Shahab 3 missiles would have a cumulative probability in excess of 80 percent of striking a target of this size. Thus, the capabilities of Iran’s TBMs align well with a conventional psychological deterrent mission and poorly with a direct military war-fighting mission against adversary air bases.

Flexibility. In addition to their greater accuracy, Chinese TBMs are more flexible than Iran’s arsenal because China’s entire force is solid fueled, possessing satellite navigation capabilities and a high degree of mobility. The following discussion briefly considers each of these three factors in turn.

Solid-fueled systems enjoy multiple advantages over liquid-fueled systems, which must be fueled before they can fire, therefore complicating the launch process and requiring more support vehicles than those needed by solid-fueled missiles.

This additional time can give an adversary a greater opportunity to find and attack the missiles before they fire. The fact that liquid-fueled missile batteries must have propellant vehicles can increase the signature of a unit, making it easier for an adversary to find. Solid-propellant missiles are also safer (highly energetic liquid rocket fuels can be extremely toxic) and easier to maintain in the field, producing a more effective force. Further, solid-fueled missiles can be fired more quickly than liquid systems, helping them strike fleeting targets (assuming adequate accuracy and targeting). Solid systems also accelerate more quickly during their boost phase, making them harder to hit with boost-phase intercept systems and thus more survivable. Clearly, China’s all-solid-fueled force is more responsive, flexible, and survivable than Iran’s largely liquid-fueled force.

Satellite navigation updates enable a missile to know its position precisely, based upon an external frame of reference. Therefore, missile accuracy is less dependent upon presurveyed sites and precise azimuth alignment before firing, leading to more potential launch sites, harder-to-find sites, faster launches, and more accurate missiles.

All of China’s conventionally armed TBMs are fired from transporter erector launchers, but some of Iran’s Shahab 3 MRBMs launch from fixed sites and others from mobile erector launchers. An adversary can presurvey fixed sites and attack at the onset of hostilities. Because mobile missiles are harder to find, they are more difficult to attack, but all mobile missiles are not equal. Mobile erector launchers can have less off-road capability than transporter erector launchers, shrinking their potential operating area and possibly making it easier for an adversary to find them.38

A Comparison of Ballistic Missile Doctrine

Iranian Ballistic Missile Doctrine

The threat posed by ballistic missiles depends at least partially upon how a country plans to employ these weapons. Iran’s ballistic missile program dates back to the mid-1980s. Spurred by Iraqi attacks on Iranian cities, Iran obtained Scud B SRBMs from Libya and North Korea, ultimately launching approximately 100 TBMs at Iraqi cities over the course of the war.39 This experience shaped Iranian thinking on the role of ballistic missiles, viewing them as part of a multifaceted deterrence strategy.40 Iran “seeks to deter aggression against it by using exaggeration, ambiguity, and obfuscation about its ability to exact a prohibitive cost from potential aggressors, especially the United States,” with ballistic missiles playing a key role.41 Although Iran logically would want to hinder the flow of US forces into the region in the event of conflict and disrupt operations once forces arrived in-theater, analysts assess that its leaders believe that ballistic missile strikes “have psychological effects disproportionate to their destructive power.”42 This leads to an emphasis on deterring Gulf Cooperation Council states from providing access to US forces through the threat of cost imposition rather than denial. Overall, Iran’s defense doctrine concentrates more on countering invasion and occupation than on projecting power. The TBM force is one of the few power-projection capabilities that Iran does possess, but its current role is to threaten and “mete out punishment” (in conjunction with unconventional attacks) rather than militarily deny air operations from an air base.43 When Iran has used violence to influence the region, it has relied upon its considerable irregular capabilities such as the Quds Force (an elite branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps that specializes in providing military assistance to nonstate partners), ties to terrorist actors, and regional allies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon. For example, when Iran was displeased about the US military involvement in the Lebanese civil war in the early 1980s, it relied upon its partner Hezbollah to carry out the 1983 Beirut truck bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks instead of staging a conventional military attack. More recently, Iran provided weapons, training, and financing to Shiite militias in Iraq as a means of curtailing US influence in SWA.44

Another factor that could hurt Iran’s ability to employ TBMs as part of an integrated military strike is its command and control structure. Iran’s ballistic missiles are under the control of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The fact that the vast majority of Iran’s aircraft, however, are operated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force could complicate the planning and execution of a coordinated air and TBM attack.45

Chinese Ballistic Missile Doctrine

In contrast to Iran, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has developed a doctrine for employing conventional TBMs as part of integrated military campaigns. The Second Artillery Corps was established in 1958, and until the early 1990s it was primarily concerned with nuclear-armed ballistic missiles.46

With the fall of the Soviet Union and the development of precision-guided weapons, however, the Second Artillery added a conventional role that has expanded dramatically over the past two decades. 47 During this period, the PLA expended a great deal of effort on studying the American way of war and searching for ways to counter it. Chinese military writings identified command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance as well as logistics in general—and forward air bases in particular—as key US vulnerabilities.48 PLA writers cite conventional ballistic missiles as especially effective for attacking air bases and discuss hitting them with ballistic and cruise missiles in addition to special operations forces and aircraft armed with precision-guided munitions.49 Much of this writing has addressed Taiwanese air bases, but Second Artillery officers have suggested there “would be opportunities to launch missile strikes against the air force of an ‘intervening superpower’ in a Taiwan conflict.”50

These types of attacks likely would come as part of a broader campaign. Two examples of campaigns from PLA doctrine with prominent roles for TBMs are the Joint Anti–Air Raid Campaign and the Joint Firepower Campaign.51 The former envisions using attacks on adversary air bases as part of a broad effort including fighters, land- and sea-based surface-to-air missiles, and airborne early warning to prevent air strikes on the Chinese mainland.52 The Joint Firepower Campaign envisions integrating precision strikes from air and missile forces to support anti-air-raid operations or other campaigns.

The Second Artillery serves as a critical enabler for many PLA operations. For example, in a Taiwan scenario, it could use its SRBMs to make a massed and simultaneous strike on all Taiwanese air force bases at the outset of the conflict.53 The result of such a leading-edge attack could greatly simplify the air superiority mission of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) by pinning or destroying a large portion of the Taiwanese air force at the outset of the conflict. The US Air Force could face a similar fate were it to posture itself forward during a crisis, inviting preemption by parking large numbers of highly capable aircraft in the open within TBM and cruise missile range from China.54

Conventional ballistic missiles serve as an enabling force for the PLAAF, filling a role similar to that of US Air Force stealth assets that can penetrate enemy air defenses early in a conflict and strike key points to enable follow-on attacks by more conventional aircraft.

Comparing Iranian and Chinese Doctrine

Realist international-relations theorists focus on capabilities rather than intentions since the latter are inherently uncertain, difficult to discern, and more quickly changeable than capabilities. On the one hand, in theory a cataclysmic event or sudden shift in threat perception could cause intentions to change overnight. On the other hand, developing, testing, and fielding a new military capability can take years. Concentrating on the capabilities of a potential adversary and ignoring intentions constitute a conservative, risk-averse approach that errs on the side of overestimating vulnerability. Given the stakes involved in potential wars, this approach is prudent. For this reason, this article first considered capabilities.

Addressing capabilities exclusively, however, can ignore the importance of organizational culture. How militaries talk and think about using force shapes their actual employment of capabilities. In the case of Iran and China, a stark contrast exists between how they have talked about the utility of conventional TBMs. Iran discusses them as a psychological deterrent with effects in excess of their physically destructive power while China’s doctrine views them as a war-fighting capability expected to destroy military targets and thus attain objectives as part of an inte- grated military campaign. Both forces could be seen as deterrents, but the Iranian approach seeks to deter through cost imposition while the Chinese approach seeks to deter through denial. This difference implies that, without a major discontinuity (examined by the worst-case analysis in the following section), one would expect Iran to continue to develop a threat-in-being while China will continue to develop a war-fighting capability.55

Potential Basing Locations

Although the capabilities and inventories of TBMs can change, geography is largely immutable. The geography of SWA makes it more difficult for Iran to plan a TBM campaign against US air bases in SWA than for China to do so in the Western Pacific. SWA offers a host of possible basing locations. A total of 422 airfields with runways longer than 7,500 feet lie within 2,800 km of Iran.56 Of these 422 runways, 331 remain outside Shahab 2 SRBM range (i.e., they face no effective military threat). As figure 4 illustrates, SWA offers not only a large number of airfields but also a great diversity in potential partners—in turn increasing the probability that at least one country would provide access to the United States.

This article has demonstrated the limited capability of Iran’s existing missile inventory, but that country could significantly improve its TBM capabilities, either through indigenous development or increased outside assistance.

Therefore, it is important to understand how enhanced Iranian TBM capabilities would affect the vulnerability of US air bases and the ranges at which Iran could threaten air operations. To examine this situation, the following discussion first compares the capability of Iran’s current TBM arsenal with the total number of runway and parking aim points on air bases within a given range from Iran.57

Then, given the accuracies and inventories of each class of TBM, it calculates how many salvos could be fired against those aim points. Finally, the examination increases Iran’s TBM arsenal to one comparable to that of China today and conducts the same analysis.

The results for Iran’s current TBM arsenal are shown in figure 5. The light-shaded bars show the potential number of runway and parking-area aim points in a given range bin while the dark-shaded bars represent the fraction of those aim points that can be attacked.58 Outside 500 km, Iran’s current TBM capabilities do not pose a serious military threat because the Shahab 3 lacks the accuracy and inventory to compose even a single salvo against one runway aim point or parking area. Inside 500 km, Iran’s existing capabilities can muster only a small number of salvos. A combination of missile defenses, hardened aircraft shelters, and combat engineering could further degrade the effectiveness of these salvos, enabling the US Air Force to weather them and then operate unimpeded.

In short, Iran’s current TBM capabilities represent a manageable threat to air bases within 500 km and effectively no threat to those outside that range.

Iran’s TBM capabilities could expand in many ways. Given that China has the most capable conventional TBM program in the world, equipping Iran with China’s TBM force provides an extreme upper bound on the capabilities that Iran could plausibly possess in the next decade. If Iran had China’s entire 2010 conventional TBM inventory, the threat to air bases would certainly grow but would still remain significantly less than the current missile threat in East Asia.

As figure 6 shows, in this excursion, Iran could fire a salvo at every runway and parking aim point within 600 km of its border. Outside that range, however, the number of aim points increases dramatically while Iran’s ability to attack them decreases because it has significantly fewer missiles able to range longer than 600 km. In short, inside 600 km, air bases would face a heavy threat, but those beyond that range would face a more limited number of potent salvos. If US Air Force aircraft were concentrated at a small number of bases outside 600 km but within 2,500 km, then Iran could mass multiple salvos against those bases. If, however, US forces could disperse across a number of bases outside 600 km and augment the resilience of these bases with active defenses and combat engineering capabilities, then it might still be possible to weather the limited number of salvos of Iran’s expanded TBM arsenal. Although political access is always a contingent decision and difficult to predict, it is noteworthy that 314 airfields with runways of 7,500 feet or longer exist outside the most dangerous 600 km threat zone, representing a wide set of bases to which aircraft could disperse and thus dilute this threat. East Asian geography offers significantly fewer such dispersal air bases. The interaction between geography and TBM capability creates far more potential operating areas in SWA than in East Asia.

Potential basing options are much more constrained in East Asia, where China’s highly capable TBM force can hold airfields at risk out to roughly 2,000 km.59 As table 3 indicates, one needs only one reliable CSS-5 MRBM to attack a single runway or parking apron aim point with high confidence. That is, China could strike a single large air base (such as Kadena) or multiple small air bases with its estimated 2010 arsenal of 36 CSS-5s. In a Taiwan contingency, US airpower would play an important role.60 Within 2,800 km of the center of the Taiwan Strait lie 112 airfields that have runways longer than 7,500 feet. As depicted in figure 7, only 4 of these 112 airfields are outside CSS-5 MRBM range.61

Conclusion

A detailed analysis of the capabilities of Iran’s existing ballistic missile force clearly indicates the size of the gulf between Iran’s threat to US bases in SWA and China’s in East Asia. Iranian claims to be able to “obliterate all . . . (US) bases” in SWA are bluster and bluff.62 It would be prudent to avoid basing unsheltered aircraft within 500 km of Iran in the event of a conflict, but numerous US bases exist outside the 500 km range, beyond which Iran cannot mount an effective attack to shut down air operations. Consequently, military planners still have numerous options for basing fighters outside the effective TBM threat ring in SWA—an option that they do not have in East Asia. This fact also has implications for US force structure because the basing options in SWA mean that legacy short-range fighters can still contribute a great deal of combat power from comparative sanctuary. If every possible scenario were as contested as the one in East Asia in a US-China contingency, then the ability of short-range land-based fighters to contribute becomes more questionable.

Iran has previously made false claims about its military capabilities, but those concerning the ability of its TBMs to destroy regional air bases are particularly important to counter.63 Pointing out the severe war-fighting limitations of its force undermines some of the coercive benefits that Iran seeks to reap from its investments in TBMs. If American partners believed Iran’s bluff, then they could be intimidated into denying US access. Iran can still threaten TBM strikes on major cities as punishment for any country that does so, but it currently lacks a credible capability to deny US air operations. If Iran developed a nuclear warhead and integrated it onto an SRBM or MRBM, then this new capability would hold at risk unsheltered aircraft much further afield and would constitute a more potent punishment threat.64

Understanding the limited ability of Iran’s TBMs to deny US air operations in SWA provides important context for the Department of Defense’s investment decisions. Since the majority of SWA basing options exist outside the Iranian TBM threat ring, scarce funds to harden air bases should be allocated first to the Western Pacific, where China’s growing TBM force presents a much greater concern.

Recognizing the limits of Iran’s TBM force also illustrates a broader point about the variability of A2/AD threats around the world. Numerous studies and American defense policy documents list a host of countries developing A2/AD capabilities that challenge the ability of US military forces to operate.65 Although there are serious concerns about the proliferation of precision to both nation-states and terrorists, significant differences remain between the capabilities that each challenger to American power could bring to bear.66 The proliferation of advanced weaponry has broad consequences—such as increasing the number of scenarios during which the US Navy could expect to confront some form of antiship cruise missiles—but defense analysts should be careful to not overgeneralize. Overly broad definitions of the A2/AD issue can impede diagnosis. For example, without the quantitative analysis presented here, it would be difficult to recognize that the United States has far better prospects for simply operating outside the threat of TBMs in SWA than it does in East Asia.67

Recognizing the regional variation in A2/AD can also counter an exaggerated sense of American decline. Although the United States confronts impediments to its projection of force in East Asia, this article’s analysis illustrates that the prospects for safely basing fighters in SWA are much better than in East Asia.
To clearly understand the broader military challenge posed by Iran, American national security planners must recognize that Iranian claims about its TBM force’s current ability to deny US air operations are a bluff. Prudence demands that defense analysts continue to closely monitor Iran’s ongoing efforts to modernize its TBM force, but neither the American public nor the Iranian leadership should mistake this attention for intimidation.

About the author:
*Mr. Heim (BA, Amherst College; MA, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University) is an associate policy analyst at the RAND Corporation. He has conducted strategic assessments and defense analyses for a range of sponsors, including Pacific Air Forces, Headquarters US Air Force, and the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. His research interests include the military balance in the Western Pacific, US Air Force overseas force posture, war gaming, and the challenge posed by antiaccess/area-denial capabilities. He previously served as a senior operations research analyst with the MITRE Corporation.

Source:
This article was appeared in Air and Space Power Journal (PDF) published by the Air Force Research Institute.

The views and opinions expressed or implied in the Journal are those of the authors and should not be construed as carrying the official sanction of the Department of Defense, Air Force, Air Education and Training Command, Air University, or other agencies or departments of the US government.

Notes:
1. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, “Reagan National Defense Forum Keynote,” US Department of Defense, 15 November 2014, http://www.defense.gov/Speeches/Speech.aspx?SpeechID=1903.
2. Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report (Washington, DC: Department of De- fense, February 2010), 9, http://www.defense.gov/QDR/QDR%20as%20of%2029JAN10%201600.pdf. The term antiaccess emerged in American defense circles in the early 1990s to describe a manner in which weaker adversaries might seek to blunt the advantage of US forces. See Roger Cliff et al., Entering the Dragon’s Lair: Chinese Antiaccess Strategies and Their Implications for the United States (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2007), 3–6, http://www.rand.org/content/dam /rand/pubs/monographs/2007/RAND_MG524.pdf. By 2001 the broader category of antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities had gained currency within the Department of Defense. See Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 30 September 2001), 30–32, 43–44, http://www.defense.gov/pubs/qdr2001.pdf. The A2/AD concept helped to focus research into potential future challenges for US forces. See, for example, Christopher J. Bowie, The Anti-access Threat and Theater Air Bases (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2002); Andrew Krepinevich, Barry Watts, and Robert Work, Meeting the Anti-access and Area-Denial Challenge (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2003). See also Air-Sea Battle Office, Air-Sea Battle: Service Collaboration to Address Anti-access and Area Denial Challenges (Washington, DC: Air-Sea Battle Office, May 2013), 2, http://www.defense.gov/pubs/ASB-Concept Implementation-Summary-May-2013.pdf.
3. Air-Sea Battle Office, Air-Sea Battle: Service Collaboration, 2.
4. Department of Defense, Joint Operational Access Concept, version 1.0 (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 17 January 2012), 9–10, http://www.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/JOAC_Jan%202012 _Signed.pdf; Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report (2010), 31–32; and Air-Sea Bat- tle Office, Air-Sea Battle: Service Collaboration, 2.
5. See, for example, Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report (2010), 31; Andrew F. Krepinevich, Why AirSea Battle? (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, February 2010); Nathan Freier, “The Emerging Anti-access/Area-Denial Challenge,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, 17 May 2012, http://csis.org/publication/emerging-anti-accessarea -denial-challenge; and John A. Tirpak, “Fighting for Access,” Air Force Magazine 96, no. 7 (July 2013): 22–27. For a rare discussion that cited only Iran and not China, see Adm Jonathan W. Greenert and Gen Norton A. Schwartz, “Air-Sea Battle: Promoting Stability in an Era of Uncertainty,” American Interest, 20 February 2012, http://www.the-american-interest.com/2012/02/20/air-sea-battle/.
6. A similar comparative methodology could be used to assess the cross-theater variation in other A2/AD threats, including surface-to-air missile capabilities, submarines, and mining capabilities.
7. Of course, this conclusion depends upon the open-source assessments used to evaluate the capabilities of Iranian missiles.
8. This conclusion follows directly from the limited accuracy, payloads, and ranges of Iran’s missiles and does not factor in any American active missile defenses such as Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) batteries, Patriot batteries, or sea-based SM-3 interceptors. Given that the United States and its partners possess these capabilities, it implies that air operations in the face of Iranian missile attack would be even more feasible than the analysis presented here would imply. Regarding US partners bolstering missile defenses, see David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt, “U.S. Speeding Up Missile Defenses in Persian Gulf,” New York Times, 30 January 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31 /world/middleeast/31missile.html.
9. This analysis does not explore the potential coercive effect that Iran’s threatened or actual attacks on Gulf Cooperation Council members or Israeli cities would have on whether regional states decide to grant the United States access to air bases.
10. Some investments that improve air base resilience, such as rapid runway repair kits, could be deployed to different regions. Others, such as permanent hardened aircraft shelters, are tied to specific locations.
11. “DoD News Briefing with Secretary Gates and Gen. Cartwright from the Pentagon,” US Department of Defense, 17 September 2009, http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=4479.
12. Media coverage of tensions in SWA frequently cite the Iranian ballistic missile threat. See, for example, “Iran Missiles Can Hit All US Bases in Region: Cmdr.,” Press TV, 4 July 2012, http://www .presstv.ir/detail/2012/07/04/249305/iran-missiles-can-easily-hit-us-bases/; Oren Dorell, “Experts Say Iran’s Missile Arsenal Poses Threat to U.S.,” USA Today, 25 September 2012, 8; and Anthony Capaccio, “Iran’s Ballistic Missiles Improving, Pentagon Finds,” Bloomberg, 10 July 2012, http://www.bloomberg .com/news/2012-07-10/iran-improves-ballistics-missiles-to-target-ships.html.
13. Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report (2010), 31.
14. In its 2012 report to Congress on Iranian military power, the Department of Defense assessed that “Iran has boosted the lethality and effectiveness of existing [ballistic missile] systems” and concluded that “short-range ballistic missiles provide Tehran with an effective mobile capability to strike partner forces in the region.” Department of Defense, “Annual Report on Military Power of Iran” (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, April 2012), 1, 4, https://fas.org/man/eprint/dod-iran.pdf.
15. See Alan Vick, “Challenges to the American Way of War” (presentation at Global Warfare Symposium, Los Angeles, CA, 17 November 2011).
16. For example, in July 2012, Iran conducted a military drill that included ballistic missile strikes on a mock air base target. The commander of its Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Aerospace Force detailed contingency plans for Iran to strike US bases in the opening minutes of a conflict, going so far as to claim that Iran could “obliterate” all US bases in SWA. See “Iran Missiles Can Hit”; and Jeremy Binnie, “Iran Demonstrates Accuracy of Ballistic Missiles,” Jane’s Defense Weekly, 4 July 2012.
17. Qualitative discussions of the Iranian TBM threat to air bases generally conclude that although Iranian missiles cannot hit point targets due to their poor accuracies, they do threaten soft targets such as unsheltered aircraft and area targets. See, for example, William D. O’Malley, Evaluating Possible Airfield Deployment Options: Middle East Contingencies (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2001), 27–29; Jeffrey White, “What Would War with Iran Look Like?,” American Interest, July/August 2011, http://www.the-american-interest.com/article-bd.cfm?piece=982; Anthony H. Cordesman and Alexan- der Wilner, “Iran and the Gulf Military Balance—II: The Missile and Nuclear Dimensions,” working draft (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies working draft, 16 July 2012); Krepinevich, Why AirSea Battle?, 34; and Mark Gunzinger with Chris Dougherty, Outside-In: Operating from Range to Defeat Iran’s Anti-access and Area Denial Threats (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2011), 38. There have been few operational tests of the claim that US bases are vulnerable to Iranian TBM attack, the major exception being an International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) net assessment which concluded that Iran’s TBMs would probably not be capable of shutting down critical military activities at large military targets like airfields and seaports. See IISS, Iran’s Ballistic Missile Capabilities: A Net Assessment (London: IISS, 10 May 2010), 139. However, even this highly technical analysis did not explicitly calculate how much damage Iran could do to key elements of an air base (such as runways and parking ramps) at varying distances from Iran. Furthermore, quantitative studies have focused on the TBM threat to energy infrastructure. See, for example, Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson and Miranda Priebe, “A Crude Threat: The Limits of an Iranian Missile Campaign against Saudi Arabian Oil,” International Security 36, no. 1 (Summer 2011): 167–201. Moreover, some analyses have narrowly examined the threat that generic TBMs could pose to unsheltered aircraft. See John Stillion and David T. Orletsky, Airbase Vulnerability to Conventional Cruise-Missile and Ballistic-Missile Attacks: Technology, Scenarios, and U.S. Air Force Reponses (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1999).
18. A common measure of accuracy is circle error probable (CEP). A weapon’s CEP describes a radius within which a weapon lands 50 percent of the time. For example, on average, a missile with a CEP of 100 m will land within 100 m of its aim point 50 percent of the time. Iran’s Scuds have CEPs in the hundreds of meters. See Jane’s Defense International, “Shahab 1 (R-17 (SS-1C ‘Scud B’) Variant),” Jane’s Strategic Weapons Systems, 11 December 2013.
19. Standard nomenclature categorizes missiles with a range of less than 1,000 km as SRBMs, 1,000–3,000 km as MRBMs, 3,000–5,500 km as IRBMs, and in excess of 5,500 km as ICBMs.
20. The Shahab design shares essential characteristics with the North Korean No Dong and the Pakistani Ghauri. See Jane’s Defense International, “Hatf 5 (Ghauri),” Jane’s Strategic Weapons Systems, 24 August 2011; and Jane’s Defense International, “Shahab 3/4 (Ghadr-1),” Jane’s Strategic Weapons Systems, 12 February 2012.
21. See note 18 for an explanation of CEP.
22. Scud/Shahab designs use kerosene as a propellant and inhibited red fuming nitric acid (IRFNA) as an oxidizer, but the BM-25 reportedly uses unsymmetrical dimethalhydrazine (UDMH) as a propel- lant and hydrogen oxide (H2O4) as an oxidizer. Although hydrazine is more energetic than kerosene (a fuel tank full of UDMH can propel a missile further than one full of kerosene), it is extremely toxic and requires extensive safety precautions during fueling. For this reason, it has been used for applications (such as space launch) where launch sites are fixed and timelines can accommodate appropriate safety precautions or in cases in which the missile can be fueled and then stored (e.g., in a sealed launch tube on a submarine). For more on the strengths and weaknesses of various rocket propellants, see John Clark, Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1972). Ballistic missile analysts actively debate whether the BM-25 is an actual missile or some form of deception. See Markus Schiller, Characterizing the North Korean Nuclear Missile Threat (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2012).
23. For forecasts of increased accuracy for Iran’s TBMs, see Frederic Wehrey et al., Dangerous but Not Omnipotent: Exploring the Reach and Limitations of Iranian Power in the Middle East (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2009), 66; Krepinevich, Why AirSea Battle?, 35; and Gunzinger and Dougherty, Outside-In, 94.
24. Another conventional variant, the DF-21D, has an antiship mission. See Andrew S. Erickson and David D. Yang, “Using the Land to Control the Sea? Chinese Analysts Consider the Antiship Ballistic Missile,” Naval War College Review 62, no. 4 (Autumn 2009): 53–86.
25. Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China, 2010 (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2010), 44, http://www .defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/2010_CMPR_Final.pdf.
26. China does currently possess the nuclear-armed, liquid fueled DF-3/CSS-2 IRBM. See Jane’s Defense International, “DF-3 (CSS-2),” Jane’s Strategic Weapons Systems, 26 June 2009. Regarding planned IRBMs, see Doug Richardson, “China Plans 4,000 km-Range Conventional Ballistic Missile,” Jane’s Missiles & Rockets, 1 March 2011.
27. Office of the Secretary of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military Power of the People’s Republic of China, 2009 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2009), http://www.defense .gov/pubs/pdfs/China_Military_Power_Report_2009.pdf; and Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress (see note 25).
28. These calculations assume perfect missile reliability, no target location error, and equal vari- ance in x and y error. In short, only the missile’s inaccuracy would cause it to miss the target. These assumptions are biased in Iran’s favor. The single-shot probability of hit (SSPh) is calculated using a standard formula: SSPh = 1- 0.5^(R^2/CEP^2) where R is the radius of the target and CEP is the mis- sile accuracy. Cumulative probability Ph = 1-(1-SSPh)^N where N is the number of missiles fired. See J. S. Przemieniecki, Mathematical Methods in Defense Analyses (Reston, VA: American Institute of Aero- nautics and Astronautics, 2000), 38.
29. If the Iranians were to adopt a concept of operations (CONOPS) for air base attack similar to that of the PLA, they might focus on first damaging runways to prevent aircraft from taking off and then stage a follow-on attack to destroy the aircraft that have been pinned at the base. For details on Chinese air base attack CONOPS, see Cliff et al., Entering the Dragon’s Lair, 81.
30. The precise MOS for an aircraft depends upon a host of factors, including its munitions and fuel loads, the weather, and the altitude of the air base. See Air Force Pamphlet 10-219, vol. 4, Rapid Runway Repair Operations, 28 May 2008, http://static.e-publishing.af.mil/production/1/af_a4_7 /publication/afpam10-219v4/afpam10-219v4.pdf.
31. This is based upon the US Air Force’s BLU-67 antirunway bomb, a 4.5 kilogram (kg) penetrating submunition carrying 2.75 kg of high explosives. See Jane’s Defense International, “Penetrating and Area Denial Bombs,” Jane’s Air-Launched Weapons, 18 March 2005.
32. This analysis assumes only a single runway at the airfield—one that it is short enough (say, 7,000 feet) that if a single section is damaged in its center (i.e., 3,500 feet from each end of the run- way), then there will be no 5,000-feet-long fighter MOS left. In other words, the attacker has only a single aim point. Later we discuss the case involving multiple runway aim points at a base.
33. In fact, the challenge is even greater because the cumulative probability of all four attacks succeeding is 0.75^4 = 0.32. In order for the probability of shutting down all of the MOSs on Al Dhafra to be 75 percent, the salvo fired at each of the four cut points would have to have an individual probability of success of 0.93. This would require firing a salvo of 25 Shahab 1s at each cut point, for a total raid size of 100 TBMs.
34. To have more than a 75 percent chance of successfully damaging a runway aim point, Iran must fire 13 Shahab 1 SRBMs at once. If it wished to attack two runway aim points simultaneously, then it would have to launch 26 Shahab 1s simultaneously, requiring 26 launchers. Since it has only 12–18 launchers, it could not attack two runway aim points simultaneously.
35. See Stillion and Orletsky, Airbase Vulnerability.
36. This assumes that 75 percent of missile payload is given to submunitions, that each submunition weighs 1 pound, and that they are spaced so that every fighter-sized aircraft, on average, will be within 15 feet of 3 submunitions. For a nominal missile payload of 1,760 pounds (800 kg), this means that the TBM will carry 1,320 1-pound submunitions. If we wish to space these submunitions so that every point inside the submunition dispersal pattern is no more than 15 feet away from a submuni- tion, then we can calculate the TBM’s submunition dispersal radius with the following formula: Rd = R*((3*(3^0.5)*N)/(2*pi))^0.5 where Rd is the TBM’s submunition dispersal radius, R is the maximum distance between two submunitions, and N is the number of submunitions. In this case, Rd is about 495 feet—that is, each arriving TBM covers 771,629 square feet with submunitions. Paul Dreyer de- rived this equation at RAND in 2010.
37. Even firing Iran’s entire ballistic missile arsenal at regional cities would probably create less than a few hundred casualties. See IISS, Iran’s Ballistic Missile Capabilities, 133.
38. Operating procedures and terrain play a large role in the actual difficulty of finding a mobile erector launcher or transporter erector launcher once it is in the field.
39. Anthony Cordesman and Abraham Wagner, The Lessons of Modern War, vol. 2, The Iran-Iraq War (London: Mansell Publishing, 1990) 499–502.
40. Wehrey et al., Dangerous but Not Omnipotent, 65.
41. Ibid., 41.
42. See ibid., 51. Some Gulf Cooperation Council officials have expressed concern over the threat that ballistic missiles pose to their economies and stability. See ibid., 147–48.
43. Ibid., 70.
44. Lionel Beehner and Greg Bruno, “Iran’s Involvement in Iraq,” Council on Foreign Relations, 3 March 2008, http://www.cfr.org/iran/irans-involvement-iraq/p12521.
45. Fariborz Haghshenass, “Iran’s Air Forces: Struggling to Maintain Readiness,” policy no. 1066, Washington Institute, 22 December 2005, http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view /irans-air-forces-struggling-to-maintain-readiness.
46. Kenneth Allen and Maryanne Kivlehan-Wise, “Implementing PLA Second Artillery Doctrinal Reforms,” in China’s Revolution in Doctrinal Affairs: Emerging Trends in the Operational Art of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, ed. James Mulvenon and David Finkelstein (Alexandria, VA: CNA Corporation, 2005), 159–200.
47. Michael Chase, Andrew Erickson, and Christopher Yeaw, “Chinese Theater and Strategic Missile Force Modernization and Its Implications for the United States,” Journal of Strategic Studies 32, no. 1 (February 2009): 67–144.
48. Thomas Mahnken, “China’s Anti-access Strategy in Historical and Theoretical Perspective,” Journal of Strategic Studies 34, no. 3 (June 2011): 299–323.
49. Cliff et al., Entering the Dragon’s Lair, 62–64.
50. Ibid., 64.
51. Cortez A. Cooper, Testimony: Joint Anti-access Operations; China’s ‘Systems-of-Systems’ Approach (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2011), http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs /testimonies/2011/RAND_CT356.pdf.
52. Michael Chase and Andrew Erickson, “The Conventional Missile Capabilities of China’s Second Artillery Force: Cornerstone of Deterrence and Warfighting,” Asian Security 8, no. 2 (July 2012): 120, 122.
53. David A. Shalapk et al., A Question of Balance: Political Context and Military Aspects of the China-Taiwan Dispute (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2009), http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand /pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_MG888.pdf.
54. Credit for this point goes to my colleague Alan Vick who generously shared his insight on crisis stability in this context.
55. Iranians’ public statements that they plan to attack US air bases do not necessarily invalidate this perspective. A plausible Iranian strategy would be to bluff regarding the capabilities of their missiles in the hopes that doing so might deter the United States from resorting to force or might deter regional states from providing access to the United States for fear of becoming a target.
56. The figure 2,800 km represents a nominal outer boundary at which single-seat fighters could conduct operations. Supported by aerial refueling, fighters can operate at significant distances. Daily flight-duty limits for single-seat aircraft are 12 hours, which include preflight time. Assuming two hours of preflight, a block speed of 500 knots, and 4 hours on station leads to a total time of 12 hours at a radius of 1,500 nautical miles or about 2,800 km. The length of an airfield’s runway is only one factor in determining its suitability. Many other factors affect the usefulness of an airfield for military operations, including fuel storage, munitions storage, parking area, and runway strength. The United States also possesses expeditionary capabilities that enable it to rapidly expand the infrastructure of an airfield to enable operations from it. To simplify this illustration, however, this article uses runway length as a filter to estimate the number of useful airfields.
57. Calculation of the number of runway aim points is based upon a simple formula: Ap = Rounddown(RW/5,000) where Ap is number of aim points per runway, RW is the length of the runway in feet, and 5,000 is the length of a nominal fighter MOS in feet. Because of the difficulty of getting high-resolution parking-area data for all of these airfields, we assume that each airfield has only two parking-apron aim points. This underestimate is very conservative because many airfields in the region would require more than two submunition-armed TBMs to cover all of their aircraft parking areas.
58. Of course, it is implausible that the US Air Force would be based at all of the air bases within a given range bin, but it is also implausible that Iran would fire only a single salvo at an air base. For example, runways must be reattacked because combat engineers can repair damaged sections of runway to reopen an MOS.
59. Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress, 32 (see note 25).
60. Shlapak et al., Question of Balance.
61. All of these bases in East Asia are within range of Chinese air-launched cruise missiles delivered by medium-range H-6 bombers. See Office of the Secretary of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2013), 81.
62. “Iran Missiles Can Hit.”
63. For example, Iran unveiled a purported stealth fighter in early 2013 that was widely debunked as a fake. See, for example, Jeremy Binnie, “Iran Unveils ‘Stealth Fighter’,” Jane’s Defense Weekly, 4 February 2013. It is also important to temper concerns voiced by American defense analysts regarding the potential threat to air bases from Iranian TBMs.
64. If Iran developed a nuclear warhead and integrated it onto an SRBM or MRBM, then this new capability would threaten unsheltered aircraft much further afield, representing a more credible punishment threat. Nuclear-armed ballistic missiles would be less dependent upon precision to destroy their targets, but Iranian leaders would likely have a higher threshold for their use; consequently, threats to use them in minor crises would be less credible.
65. Examples include the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Report, which cites China, North Korea, Iran, and Hezbollah as A2/AD challenges (pages 31–32); the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance, which states that China and Iran “will continue to pursue asymmetric means to counter [American] power projection capabilities” (Department of Defense, Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense [Washington, DC: Department of Defense, January 2012], 4); and a 2012 article coauthored by the chief of naval operations and the Air Force chief of staff that cites China, Iran, and Hez- bollah as A2/AD challenges (Greenert and Schwartz, “Air-Sea Battle”).
66. Randy Huiss, Proliferation of Precision Strike: Issues for Congress, CRS Report R42539 (Washing- ton, DC: Congressional Research Service, 14 May 2012), http://fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/R42539.pdf; and James Bonomo et al., Stealing the Sword: Limiting Terrorist Use of Advanced Conventional Weapons (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2007).
67. For example, a recent study of the Iranian A2/AD issue concluded that in the future, US forces would need to be able to “fight from extended ranges.” Gunzinger and Dougherty, Outside-In, 94. As this article has shown, however, air bases more than 500 km away from Iran currently enjoy effective sanctuary from Iranian TBM attack. Therefore, many basing options exist, and although they are further away than some other locations, they remain well within the effective combat radius of US fighters.

The border-industrial complex has not been content to just count the money and gloat after receiving millions upon millions in “border security” dollars from the United States government. There is more easy money to be had if states can be convinced to take a bigger role aiding the US in building a police state along American borders.

Indeed, it appears that the border-industrial complex has hit the jackpot with the Texas state government.

John Burnett reported Saturday on the National Public Radio (NPR) show Weekend Edition that the Texas government “launched Operation Strong Safety 14 months ago to crack down on border crime.” Focusing on Starr County along the Mexico border, Burnett relates that state police have increased by 233 percent their issuance of tickets in the county between 2012 and 2014.

But the roadside stops are not carried out for traffic tickets alone; incarceration and asset seizures are also objectives. “State troopers are stopping vehicles to see if they’re carrying marijuana, cocaine, or unauthorized immigrants, and to see if the car is stolen,” explains Burnett. The greatly increased police presence is predictably making many people in Starr County, some of whom comment in the Weekend Edition report, distressed and upset. It is also resulting in harassment, fines, and incarceration for plenty of people who are not violating anyone’s rights.

Burnett’s report suggests that, once “border security” is ramped up, the new status quo can quickly pick up additional special interests support. New support may come, for example, from businesses such as restaurants and hotels making meal and room sales to the new police, as well as from politicians and government employees and contractors who have dollar signs in their eyes at the prospect of increased tax revenues because of the state’s new “border security”-related spending.

And the spending and police state buildup continue. Notes Burnett:

In June, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law a sweeping $800 million border security package that includes the hiring of as many as 250 troopers to be permanently stationed in the Rio Grande Valley.

Listen to the complete Weekend Edition report here:

Read a transcript of the report here.

This article was published by the RonPaul Institute.

At a time where global energy insecurity is high, an energy rich country such as Turkmenistan would be expected to be in near turmoil.

The reality is the opposite for the Central Asian nation, however, as its gas sector continues to be the source of growing relations between Turkmenistan and a variety of other states.

Since August, Turkmenistan’s Government has engaged in high level meetings with representatives from countries including Japan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan.
Further, its Government has also held talks with influential US business figures and have undertaken initiatives that are set to strengthen its relations with India.

The Regional Level

Turkmenistan was been profoundly isolationist under the post-Soviet dictatorial regime of the late Sapamurat Niyazov, something which has continued under his successor, Gurbanguly Berdimuhammadov.

However, the country’s recent diplomatic efforts suggest that may changing, albeit to a small degree.

In August, President Berdimuhammadov hosted Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon in Turkmenistan’s capital Ashgabat, which signalled the growing relations between the two Central Asian nations.

Both countries, along with Afghanistan, are currently overseeing the construction of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Tajikistan railway line, which could yield major potential economic benefits for Turkmenistan.

Turkmenistan and Tajikistan also continue to oversee the construction of a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to China which passes through Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. This is a highly important project for Turkmenistan given that China is set to import 40 billion cubic metres of gas from the country this year alone, an amount that is set to rise in the near future.

Berdimuhammadov also met Iran’s Industry, Mines, and Trade, Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh in Ashgabat in August just months after an official visit by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

Turkmenistan also played host to the Turkmen-Kazakh business forum in late-August. The forum, which was attended by high level business and government figures from both countries, sought to provide both nations with an avenue to explore further bilateral trade and economic opportunities.

Both countries share a common bond in the fact that they are both large-scale gas exporters, while also having different smaller industries which could lead to new markets in both nations.

The motivation for Turkmenistan seeking closer regional cooperation is not only limited to economics.

While economics is a primary factor, another key reason lies behind Turkmenistan’s desire to further develop relations with its neighbours – growing instability near the country.

Hostilities in Syria and Iraq continue unabated, which in turn continues to lead to an exodus of refugees along with constant global attention and instability.

Russia, on the other hand, has become somewhat of a global pariah over the last two years following actions it has carried out in the Ukraine.

Domestic actions the Russian Government has taken, such as a clampdown on homosexual rights and the implementation of the Undesirable Organisations Law, have also cast Russia in a highly negative light internationally.

Both Russia and the effected Middle Eastern areas are far away enough from Turkmenistan that the government does not need to go in a ‘crisis mode’.

However, they are close enough to Turkmenistan to worry its government and motivate it into taking action to safeguard the country and its lucrative natural gas sector.

Close cooperation between Turkmenistan and its immediate neighbours can help give the country’s government some degree of confidence that its gas industry and primary export markets are safe.

This is particularly the case for Iran, which acts as Turkmenistan’s geographical buffer to Iraq and Syria, and Kazakhstan, which acts as the country’s geopolitical buffer to Russia.

By maintaining positive and fruitful relations with neighbouring countries such as Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan, Turkmenistan ensures that its gas supplies to two of its largest and most significant customers, India and China, will continue without interruption.

The Global Level

In May, President Berdimuhammadov undertook a European diplomatic tour in which he held meetings with the Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Austrian President Heinz Fischer and Slovenian President Borut Pahor.

In August, the Chinese Vice Foreign Minister and Turkmenistan’s Deputy Foreign Minister presided over the fifth session of the Security Cooperation Subcommittee of the China-Turkmenistan Cooperation Committee.

Both countries agreed to strengthen their security initiatives, which included joint cooperation in combating drug trafficking and other organised crime. Such bilateral actions complement both China and Turkmenistan’s growing economic and trade relationships, which is largely centred on natural gas.

China is not the only Asian nation that Turkmenistan has sought to strengthen relations with in recent times. One of Turkmenistan’s primary gas bodies, Turkmengas State Concern, held meetings with high level representatives from some of Japan’s largest corporations, including Mitsubishi, Sojits and JGC at the beginning of September.

These talks centred on Turkmenistan’s gas industry, namely gas purification and how the aforementioned Japanese companies could play a role in purifying the country’s gas.

The US has also been proactive in enhancing its bilateral relations with Turkmenistan as of late. Turkmenistan-US Business Council Executive Director Eric Stewart visited President Berdimuhammadov in Ashgabat to discuss potential opportunities for bilateral trade and economic cooperation.

Despite growing instability in the global energy sector, Turkmenistan remains favoured by major nations as natural gas continues to be in relatively high demand. While oil is in a current global state of oversupply, this is not the case for gas, and as such Turkmenistan remains firmly at the forefront of global energy security needs.

The stability of an energy supplier is a high priority for nations seeking large-scale and long-term supplies. Turkmenistan satisfies this criterion given that it has had just two leaders in the nearly 24 years it has been independent from the former Soviet Union.

Former President Niyazov became Turkmenistan’s head of state in the aftermath of the Union’s fall and passed away in 2006 while in power. He was then replaced by Berdimuhammadov, who had ruled the country in the same, albeit far less eccentric, style as his predecessor.

Although both leaders are widely seen as being autocratic, they have made Turkmenistan a stable nation in a region with a reputation for instability. This has helped made the country appealing to gas importers, and Turkmenistan is set to play a prominent role in addressing nations’ needs for gas as a result.

When one hears the phrase ‘Afghan Conflict”; the first question that comes to their mind is ‘what Afghan conflict’? And that is right, for this piece of land has been pervaded by countless conflicts that even the natives are at their worst to name them. Given the presence of numerous conflicts, a new addition to this long list of conflicts is the protracted unaddressed “Identity Conflict” among the ethnic groups in the country. The identity conflict pushed the country into a more fragile state in particular after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, but recently it is getting worse as the government has announced it will  launch the electronic Tazkiras (National Identity Cards) to its citizens.

The government of Afghanistan with the assistance of the International Community has initiated the process of providing the residents with the e-ID cards for the first time after years of preparation. It is believed that the new “National ID system will enable the government to establish a very accurate, up to date and effective database of the census of the country’s population, their movement, addresses, age categories and many more.”

The computerized ID cards were supposed to be distributed in 2013, however, due to technical and political problems, the citizens are yet to receive ones. The current government (the National Unity Government) is unresolved about the launch of e-ID cards.

What has stopped the distribution of national identity cards is the long disputed word “Afghan” used as a nationality for all the citizens of Afghanistan. The word Afghan historically has been used in reference to the Pashthun tribe by the Arabs, Iranians, British and many others, but with the passage of time, the term adopted its meaning, referring to all the citizens of the country including non-Muslims (Sikhs and Hindus of Afghanistan). In fact, the Afghan Constitution, Article Four reads “the nation of Afghanistan shall be comprised of Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Turkman, Baluch, Pachaie, Nuristani, Aymaq, Arab, Qirghiz, Qizilbash, Gujur, Brahwui and other tribes. The word Afghan shall apply to every citizen of Afghanistan.”

However, the members of other ethnic groups including some major ones namely Tajik, Uzbek and Hazaras are troubled by the meaning and application of the word. They regard the term Afghan as an imposed identity rather than an identity by choice. This was evidently noticed because after the delays in the launch of the e-ID cards due to this very problem, large protests were held mainly in provinces where Pashthuns are a majority. Even in Kabul, the demonstrations involved people associated with Pashthun ethnicity and very few people from other ethnic groups except for Pashthuns on social media such as Facebook have shown their solidarity with the demonstrators to include the word Afghan as a nationality in the e-ID cards.

Like any other identity conflict, the roots of the identity conflict in Afghanistan are embedded in the psychological and historical factors of these ethnic groups. Throughout the history of Afghanistan, all the ethnic groups had co-existed very peacefully. In fact, during any foreign invasion, the citizens of the country have defended their country shoulder to shoulder. For instance, during the invasion by the British, the Soviet Union and by any other foreign invaders, all the ethnic groups have fought as a nation to protect the sovereignty and integrity of the country. They had always given priority to the broader national identity rather than the narrow identity limited only to their own ethnic group.

This sense of collective identity continued until the withdrawal of the Soviet forces, however, the Soviet forces departed from the country, the civil war erupted in Afghanistan. And like in any other society, the power hungry leaders and warlords had manipulated the masses in Afghanistan too. These warlords used them for their self-interests. During the civil war, the once united Afghan nation fighting the mighty Soviet forces broke into factions and groups.

Pashthuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras were following the orders of their avaricious leaders and committing heinous crimes not only in Kabul but in their respective provinces. The people who suffered most were ethnic minorities who were living with the majorities in their provinces. So the Pashthuns who were minorities in the north and Tajik, Uzbek and Hazaras who were minorities in other parts of the country had harmed each other throughout the civil war. This created more hatred and animosity among the ethnic groups. Additionally, the emergence of the Taliban to power inflicted more harms on minorities.

After the fall of the Taliban, all the ethnic groups were given equal status and rights in the Afghan constitution. However, the grievances of the people were not addressed at all. The reemergence of the warlords and other racist personalities of different ethnic groups resulted in the manipulation of their ethnic groups with political rhetoric to further fragment the already weak collective identity.

Added to that was entitlement of the formation of political parties and groups to these warlords through the new democratic system in Afghanistan. Now, this entitlement and reorganization of the bigoted leaders institutionalized racism and prejudice either through their political activities or serving as high governmental officials. They ran and are still running their propaganda through a well-organized strategy to further their interests and keep the nation divided.

To resolve this conflict, there is a dire need of a proper strategy reuniting all the ethnic groups, who can coexist as they did before and have an identity that all the ethnic groups agree upon and feel comfortable with. However, before finding any solution to either manage, resolve or transform this conflict, it is important to understand at what stage is the conflict now and what are the new dynamics that further deteriorate the situation because putting any resources in place without realizing the root causes of the conflict and recognizing the phase of the conflict will be useless and can have adverse effects. Hence, the emergence stage of the conflict is over; the preventative measures might not be that fruitful.

The conflict right now is at its second stage, escalation. On a daily basis, the ethnic groups are attacking each other on social media web-sites. Also, the media channels that are biased to one or the other group are running programs which further segregate the nation. The politicians, on the other hand, whether parliamentary or others aiming to run for election to secure power use this identity conflict as a tool to get there. Most importantly, some of the currently prejudiced high level governmental officials have institutionalized the conflict through their presence in the government and the power and resources they have. These officials in order to gain the future support of the people leave the conflict unaddressed and even try to prevent any efforts undertaken to resolve this conflict.

Way Forward from Destructive to Constructive Identity

Identities are created by the past interactions, ideologies and cultural or religious patterns. Unfortunately, all of the mentioned three factors have contributed to the current identity conflict in Afghanistan. Though the previous government had ordered to preclude the word Afghan in the identity cards, it did not resolve the conflict. In order to resolve or transform this conflict, one single solution or mechanism will suffice. A number of approaches and strategies are needed to permanently resolve or transform this conflict and bring all the ethnic groups as a one united nation.

First of all, there is a need of dialogue and discussion at national level over the term Afghan. Unless there is a general consensus by all the ethnic groups over what word should be used to identify them as one nation, the conflict will continue to emerge time and again. It is equally important, that the dialogue is people-led and by no way manipulated by the prejudiced and racist personalities or self-imposed ethnic leaders. Instead, the leadership of this national level dialogue should be given to the community leaders, civil society organizations, Ulema(Islamic Scholars), university professors and school teachers, who are free of biases and self interest. A pure, transparent and people-led national level dialogue can bring all the citizens of this country under an umbrella of single united nation.

The above mentioned four groups of people are of great importance for such a significant national dialogue because unlike the politicians, these people are in regular contact with their ethnic groups. Among them, Ulema are the ones who can play the major role in transforming this conflict, for the religious leaders are against the ethnocentrism. They can use the Quranic verses and the tradition of the Prophet Muhammad to alter them from the narrow identity to a broader identity, which is not being Pashthun, Tajik, Hazara but Muslims and humans.

Similarly, the teachers and professors who are the foundation builders of youth can play a vital role in deescalating the conflict by giving the students examples of the neighboring and regional countries such as Pakistan and India. In Pakistan, Pashthun, Baloch, Punjabi, Sindi, and Siraiki as well as Sikhs and Christians are living not by their ethnicity but as a nation, Pakistani. The same is true for India. All religions, races, ethnicities, classes, cultures are called Indians.
Added to the above, it is also very important to start a nationwide reconciliation process. After the civil war, the fall of the Taliban regime and the UN-mandated U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, almost no transitional justice mechanism has been implemented. The warlords are still free. The crimes they had committed still have a huge influence on the opposite ethnic groups. Still, the presence of hatred towards “the other” is prevalent. The grievances have still not been addressed. The warlords never happened to have apologized or repented.

Instead, the ordinary people and the community leaders should come forward apologize and forgive each other for the crimes their leaders have committed. This will bring the different ethnic groups even closer and the sense of superiority and inferiority will diminish at a large scale. In addition, the reconciliation processes like the ones in South Africa and Rwanda will address the grievances of the victims. These actions may be initiatives to reduce grievances felt by adversaries or reciprocations of peaceful gestures by the other side.

More importantly, there is an urgent need to closely monitor and control the media outlets, which spread the message of antagonism. It is the responsibility of the ordinary people not to allow the media outlets which under the label of one ethnicity are working for other countries, promote disunity and cultivate a culture of enmity. In addition to the ordinary people, the government is equally responsible to give such media channels the mandate to promote harmony through producing different dramas, plays as well feature and documentary films that bring unity among all the citizens of this country. In case, they do not comply with the government orders, such media outlets should be closed down.

It is true that the identity conflicts require more time and are hard to resolve or transform than material conflicts, but it is not impossible to manage or transform them. There are strengths, shared values and culture, common enemies and friends that if utilized properly can bring an end to this conflict. Consequently, a nation-wide reconciliation process, a national level dialogue and discussion on the term Afghan as a nationality, reforms in institutions, public awareness, education, and prevention of racist media outlets from spreading the message of hatred will help deescalate and transform the identity conflict in Afghanistan.

*Khalid Momand is a Fulbright Scholar, has a Master’s in Conflict and Co-existence, has also taught at various universities in Afghanistan and has worked as co-editor at Afghanistan Times.

Other people’s problems often hit a nerve, a nerve that invokes passion, anger and the need for justice.  Such were my emotions when I read a blog by Ali Shah titled “Our lives-KSA.”  Ali Shah, the CEO of Ali Shah Consulting Services (ASCS) runs several blogs.  He proudly traces his roots to Makkah, directly through the lineage of Ali Bin Abu Talib.  He is the great grandson of Syed Siddique Hasan Al-Qanauji, the ruler of Bhopal state in colonial India.

Ali was an infant, barely 60 days old, when he arrived in this country several decades ago.  He knows of no other home and has become a successful and enterprising entrepreneur, one who has given back to Saudi society in the form of helping Saudi youth find gainful employment.  His other services include providing consulting services to expatriate companies and individuals considering opening businesses in this country.  He also runs several blogs.

The blog piece in question deals with the dilemma of the visa trade.  It reads: “A family man. A man with a wife and three kids. An educated man. He was at my office last night. He had a ‘small’ issue according to someone going through his file.

“He is listed as ‘huroub’ (an expatriate worker who has run away from his sponsor). He has had this status for the past two years. For the past two years, his kids have not gone to school. For the past two years, he has been working illegally as a private driver to make ends meet and running from checkpoints. For the past two years, his life has been hell. His wife has lost hope and become depressed. His kids simply watch TV all day.

“Why does he have huroub status?  His sponsor reported this and gave him this status. And then immediately called him and said: ‘Give me SR10,000, and I will remove this status’. The man sent his sponsor the money and then the sponsor disappeared for a year.

“Suddenly, last week a man appeared from nowhere and told this man that he would fix the status and get him transferred to a new sponsor. This gave great hope to the family. But then, the man called him and said: ‘Oh! You are wanted by the police because your sponsor reported that you borrowed SR50,000 from him and did not pay it back!’

“He never borrowed this money and there was no paper to prove he did.

“The family panicked and begged for a solution. The man said that he would discuss the matter with the sponsor and get a solution. The sponsor, according to him, asked for SR5,000 and promised he would take back his complaint from the police and release him as well. The victim paid this money.

“When I heard this, I went straight to the police station and by luck found a senior officer whom I knew. I asked him about the policy when it comes to reporting money issues. He said they did not get involved unless it’s a ‘bounced check’ case.

“Such claims go to court and he doubted very much that a sponsor would go to court without documentary evidence and even if he did, the judge would summon both parties.

“The huroub victim was tricked again. So far, his expenses have reached SR25,000. And he is ‘illegal’. This means if the authorities catch him with this status, he will be deported and blacklisted with his family. This also means he cannot work anywhere. This means the family is barely surviving. What did he do to deserve this?  What did his wife and kids do to deserve this?

“I told him to leave Saudi Arabia. Be blacklisted. Do not return. He looked at me with a wry smile and asked: after 30 years and penniless? Is this what I get for coming to live and work in the land of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him)?
“I had no words in response. Ali Shah.”

While Ali Shah may have been stumped for words, I am angry enough to ask: Why is such a situation allowed to exist?  Why have the authorities neglected the crimes perpetrated against expatriates through visa trading and extortion?  Who are these sponsors selling their visas in the open market and getting rich off hapless workers?  Holding workers in bondage and playing with their lives is no different than slavery.

Why are these Saudis allowed to violate the norms of humanity through loopholes in the Ministry of Labor?  Would somebody answer please!

This article appeared at Saudi Gazette.

Russia supplies Syrian government forces with firearms, grenade launchers and armored personnel carriers as the country is struggling with radical ISIL militants, the Russian Kommersant daily reports citing military-technical sources.

The supplies “are in accordance with international law and in line with all formalities and existing contracts [between the Russian and Syrian government],” the source told the newspaper on Thursday.

The weaponry and military hardware are needed to help the Syrian army counter the advances of ISIL radicals, who have ceased vast areas in the country, the source explained, expressing confidence that the aid will significantly contribute to anti-ISIL efforts.

According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia provides “considerable” support to Syria in terms of equipment, training and weaponry.

On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stressed that Russian military specialists deployed in Syria are not participating in military operations in the conflict-torn country and are limited to an “advisory role.”

Syria has been mired in civil war since 2011. Government forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad are fighting against several opposition and radical Islamist militant groups, including the al-Nusra Front (Jabhat al-Nusra) and ISIL radicals.

Russia has been engaged in international efforts to find a political solution to the ongoing conflict in Syria and has been providing humanitarian aid to the conflict-torn country.

Last week Putin said that Moscow and Washington were discussing the creation of an international anti-terrorism coalition, but cautioned that it was too early to discuss Russia getting involved in direct military action against ISIL militants.

The United States is leading an international coalition that has been conducting airstrikes against ISIL positions in Iraq and Syria since 2014.

Russia has repeatedly criticized the US-led coalition for not seeking approval from the UN Security Council and the Syrian government before launching the airstrikes.

The United States has also been supporting the so-called Syrian opposition which includes various terrorist groups by providing them with training and equipment.

Less than 24 hours from his kidnapping there have has been no news or claims for the abduction of Iraq’s acting deputy Justice minister Abdel Karim Fares, taken yesterday from his car in the outskirts of Baghdad by masked gunmen. A ministry spokesman, Haider Saadi, confirmed the kidnapping, but denied reports that also one of the deputy minister’s body guards was also taken.

Without making direct accusations, the Iraqi media reports a proliferation in recent years of Shiite militias, who, on the frontline in the battle against the Islamic State (IS), have also been accused of kidnapping people for political or criminal purposes.

The minister’s kidnapping comes four days after that of 18 Turkish construction workers abducted from a stadium they were building in Sadr City, south of the Binook district. Despite ongoing investigations and searches, the workers are still missing.

By Lt Col Thomas R. McCabe, USAFR, Retired*

For generations, the American military—and the US Air Force in particular— has relied on the technological superiority of its systems to dominate any battlefield. Against conventional enemies, this paradigm has been so successful for so long that it is often taken for granted. Unfortunately, the question of how much longer we can expect that to be the case is very much open to debate. Many people observe that, in terms of technology, we have fallen into something of a lull, especially regarding tactical aviation platforms. This article suggests two actions we can take to start changing that status.

The Present Situation

Our current aviation superiority is largely based on technologies developed and deployed during the last decades of the Cold War.1 Since the end of that ideological conflict, however, our aviation technology for combat aircraft has reached a plateau. The only major new capabilities have been (1) a limited deployment of F-22s with more advanced stealth airframes capable of supersonic cruise and (2) the beleaguered F-35.2 Otherwise, much of our effort has concentrated on limited up- grades of existing capabilities as well as the development and deployment of remotely piloted air systems.3

The geopolitical environment of the last two decades has made this situation acceptable. During the 1980s, we largely recapitalized our aircraft force with new equipment and have lacked a peer competitor after the collapse of the Soviet Union. We have focused since then on improved command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, as well as remotely piloted systems that supplanted the development of manned tactical aircraft technology. Unfortunately, this somewhat permissive geopolitical and operational environment is not likely to continue.

At present, we confront a chaotic and increasingly dangerous threat environment around the globe. China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and radical Islam/terrorism in all its manifestations, along with a host of others, present challenges to our national security. In particular, China’s antiaccess/area-denial strategy, intended to defeat our ability to project power in the Western Pacific, has made great strides in building the technical base necessary for such a strategy. Furthermore, the Chinese are pursuing what amounts to a staggering list of revolutions in their air and space technology.4

When the (potential) opposition is catching up, the obvious counter is—and historically has been—a technological leap forward. Unfortunately, as previously mentioned, manned military aviation technology, especially for manned tactical aircraft, may be reaching a period of little change. Only a small portion of the most recent (2010) Air Force long-range research concept, Technology Horizons, dealt with actual aircraft technology. Instead, it concentrated primarily on advanced (and, admittedly, potentially revolutionary) computer applications intended to do what we are already doing—only faster, cheaper, and with less manpower.5 Most current research on manned tactical aircraft concentrates on what amounts to incremental improvements for and sustainment of existing systems while research on a possible successor generation of such aircraft is only in the preliminary stages. Procurement of manned tactical aircraft for at least the next 20 years effectively will consist of what is presently on the assembly line.6

The Navy faces a similar situation.7 Moreover, although we are evidently putting extensive effort into future remotely piloted systems, their ultimate capabilities—especially their survivability on a dynamic, high-threat battlefield—remain to be seen despite the enthusiasm of those systems’ proponents.

We must recognize that a central reason for the plateau in manned tactical aviation technology is that we are approaching—if we have not already reached—the limits of what is immediately and affordably available for tactical combat aircraft. Further, it is at least possible that we have reached or nearly reached the limits of what is technically feasible for air-breathing manned combat aircraft. None of the possible upgrades to existing systems are really a breakthrough or a game changer.8 Beyond these upgrades, there are no readily apparent or available breakthroughs to pursue. At this point, the only evident exceptions are the possibility that active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars can provide us with high-power microwave weapon capability; other exceptions include electromagnetic pulse weapons such as the Counterelectronics High-Powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP) warhead and whatever computer network attack capability we have developed or will develop.9

Unfortunately, we are not the only ones with access to such technologies. The rest of the world, especially our rivals, is catching up and is expected to master and deploy these technologies in the near future. In some cases, those rivals are already doing so. Even more ominously, several potential game-changing technologies of the near future, such as very long-range air-to-air missiles (AAM), precision-guided antisurface ballistic missiles, cyber weapons, stealthy cruise missiles, and advanced warheads (such as cluster, electromagnetic pulse, and fuel-air explosive) are as likely, if not more likely, to work against us as for us.

This array of technologies obviously has profound implications for the strategic and tactical situations we will encounter around the world. Specifically, we and our allies will not necessarily be able to rely on superior technology and capabilities that served as a force multiplier since the end of the Cold War and compensated for inferior numbers. Meanwhile, our ongoing fiscal and economic situation will make both recapitalizing our aging equipment and pursuing new technology enormously difficult. We should not rely on a cost breakthrough with remotely piloted systems to avoid this situation. Most of those vehicles deployed so far have been relatively inexpensive because their airframes are comparatively simple and cheap. However, costs go up rapidly as air- frames and their sensor packages increase in sophistication. So what can we do?

The Way Forward

First, we must water the tree of future research and development and keep it watered—but we can expect results only in the long term. For example, at the moment, the Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) appear to have a reasonably coherent program for hypersonics (flight at or above Mach 5). However, the immediate focus is on tactical missiles, with a larger, reusable remotely piloted hypersonic vehicle expected in the 2030 time frame and a potentially manned hypersonic vehicle for 2040.10 If we cannot make an immediate or rapid leap ahead in airframes or engines, do other alternatives exist? Might we harvest any low-hanging fruit in the near or intermediate future that could offer new capabilities or at least extend the viability of existing systems, preferably without breaking the bank?

Two areas potentially worth exploring might, if pushed, have an impact as early as the turn of the next decade. Moreover, they would prove especially useful in an environment where we will need to operate at longer ranges against more sophisticated enemies deploying antiaccess/area-denial systems. They include longer-range AAMs and—more ambiguously and much less noticed—improved fuels.

Longer-Range Air-to-Air Missiles

As previously mentioned, we are facing the likely or inevitable proliferation of increasingly long-range AAMs. The Chinese are reportedly deploying these weapons with ranges that at least rival those of currently deployed US AAMs.11 Consequently, until the widespread deployment of the F-35, the fourth-generation aircraft that the US fighter force and our allies depend on will no longer have a missile-range advantage. The Russians are starting to deploy the R-37/AA-X-13 (reported by some credible sources to have a range in excess of 150 nautical miles [nm]) on their upgraded MiG-31BM.12 Additionally, the Russians say that variants can also be mounted on other aircraft such as the Su-35 and their T-50 fifth-generation fighter.13 Even more ominous would be the Russian R-172/K-100, with a reported range of up to 200 or more nm.14 If produced, it could be mounted on the widely deployed Su-27 family of aircraft.15 At the very least, such very-long-range systems are likely to pose a major threat to the more vulnerable support aircraft such as tankers and Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft, on which our air operations critically depend.

Aside from the latest version of the advanced medium-range air-to-air missile (AMRAAM), the AIM-120D, which reportedly has a range 50 percent greater than that of earlier AMRAAMs (increasing its range up to a reported 97 nm), the United States has no longer-range AAMs in its inventory or in prospect.16 The Navy’s Phoenix missiles and the F-14s that carried them are long gone. The Next Generation Missile/Joint Dual Role Air Dominance Missile, intended as a replacement for the AMRAAM (and the AGM-88 high-speed antiradiation missiles), reportedly was cancelled in 2012 for affordability reasons although some sources speculate that classified work has possibly continued.17 Since one of this missile’s major intended characteristics was substantially improved range, its development should be restored as a major priority.18 At one time, we considered putting a ramjet engine on the AMRAAM to boost its range and capabilities, as is being done on several next-generation missiles such as the British Meteor, reportedly on the Chinese PL-21, and possibly a version of the Russian R-77/AA-12.19 If doing so will further improve the range and capability of the AIM-120D, we should give serious thought to reviving this development.

Finally, Raytheon is developing an extended-range version of the AMRAAM for surface launchers (the AMRAAM-ER) that we should consider modifying for very- long-range air-to-air use.20 We should also contemplate reviving a version of the Network Centric Airborne Defense Element (NCADE) missile as an alternative very-long-range AAM. The NCADE was intended for boost-phase intercept of ballistic missiles, using an AMRAAM missile frame with an advanced rocket motor and an infrared seeker from an AIM-9X.21 Early testing was evidently successful, but it does not appear to have been included in the budgets for fiscal year 2013 or later.22

An additional feature that we should think about for improving the capability of future missiles involves putting an AESA radar on the AMRAAM, as the Japanese have done with their AAM-4B and as the British may do with the Meteor, if this addition is technically possible. (The AAM-4 is somewhat larger than the AIM-120, al- lowing it to carry a bigger antenna.)23 An AESA radar increases the range at which the active radar on the missile can autonomously track a target, reportedly by as much as 40 percent.24 We may further increase the range of the radar by upgrading it with gallium nitride component technology.25

Improved Fuels

An obvious, although little-considered, way of extending the range of aircraft is through fuels with higher energy density per volume, which will yield greater range as long as they do not weigh much more than the fuels they replace. Fragmentary reports indicate that during the Cold War, the Soviets’ development and use of a fuel with higher energy density per volume than commonly used Western fuel gave their aircraft considerably longer range than expected, but such reports remain publicly unconfirmed.26 Recently, the United States has been researching a fuel called JP-900 for two main reasons: as an alternative to fuels produced from petroleum (it comes primarily from coal) and as a fuel having higher heat tolerance than those presently used. (It is called JP-900 for its stability for some specified period at 900 degrees Fahrenheit.) Research has confirmed that JP-900 also has a somewhat higher energy density than present jet fuels but only by several percent.27 However, higher energy density appears to have been only a secondary consideration in the research. The Department of Defense should make such energy density a primary consideration for such research along with cost considerations (new fuels need to be no more expensive than the current ones) and the ability to immediately substitute for present fuels without modifying aircraft systems.28

Conclusions

The days when the United States could take for granted its status as the world’s premier air and space technology superpower may not be over, but complacency is clearly not an option. Above all, we need to recognize that we are facing long-term competition and that we must keep our own tree of air and space innovation well watered, especially for tactical systems at a time when, as this analysis has noted, little low-hanging fruit will be harvested in the near future. We should change that prospect for combat aircraft and systems—and soon. It is time to start thinking out- side the box.

Aside from applying emerging techniques such as rapid prototyping, we should consider turning to the private sector.29 Numerous companies are now leading in such fields as cyber and space launch vehicles. For one, SpaceX seems well on the way to revolutionizing the field by providing space-launch-vehicle capability at a cost well under historic norms.30 Further, the company evidently intends to undertake a further revolution by making such vehicles fully reusable.31 Of more relevance, civilian companies may be pursuing a similar revolution with high-speed flight. For instance, the Hypermach company is designing the SonicStar, an advanced business jet intended to cruise at over Mach 4.32 I suggest that DARPA and the Air Force closely monitor its development, and if it actually works, we should explore the feasibility of converting its technology to war-fighting use.33

About the author:
Lieutenant Colonel McCabe (BA, West Chester State College; MA, Georgetown University; MS in Strategic Intelligence, Defense Intelligence College) retired from the US Air Force Reserve and from a career as an analyst for the US Department of Defense, where he last worked as a Russian military aviation analyst. His writings have appeared in Air and Space Power Journal (his article “The Limits of Deep Attack” in the Fall 1993 issue won the Ira C. Eaker Award), Orbis, Strategic Review, Parameters, Air Chronicles, and the RAF Air Power Review. His monograph China’s Air and Space Revolutions, Mitchell Paper 10, was published by the Mitchell Institute of the Air Force Association in 2013. Lieutenant Colonel McCabe is a graduate of Squadron Officer School and Air Command and Staff College.

Source:
This article was originally published in the Air and Space Power Journal Volume 29, Issue 5, Sept – Oct 2015.

Notes

1. These technologies include the following:

• Fourth-generation aircraft that were increasingly integrated systems rather than a collection of discrete subsystems: F-15s, F-16s, and F-18s.
• Stealth aircraft.
• All-aspect infrared air-to-air missiles (AAM) starting with the AIM-9L Sidewinder.
• Active radar-guided AAMs: the AIM-120 advanced medium-range air-to-air missile (AMRAAM).
• Precision-guided air-to-surface munitions.
• Look-down-shoot-down radars.
• Precision navigation systems, especially the Global Positioning System.
• Command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems necessary to fight an integrated battle and war.
2. Aside from stealth, many people argue that the F-35A does not provide major improvements over the F-16 and that in some important aspects (maximum speed and maneuverability), it is actually less capable.
3. These upgrades have included improved weapons; more advanced electronics and engines; fur- ther integration of sensors both on and between aircraft; improvements of command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence; and maintaining an increasingly aged aircraft fleet while fighting in multiple conflicts simultaneously.
4. The list of revolutions is as follows:
• In advanced military combat aircraft, including stealth aircraft.
• In support aircraft.
• In remotely piloted air systems.
• In precision-guided long-range missiles, including antiship ballistic missiles.
• In air defense.
• In antisatellite systems.
• In aircraft carriers.
• In manned space systems.

See Lt Col Thomas R. McCabe, China’s Air and Space Revolutions, Mitchell Paper 10 (Arlington, VA: Mitchell Institute Press, 2013), http://higherlogicdownload.s3.amazonaws.com/AFA/6379b747-7730 -4f82-9b45-a1c80d6c8fdb/UploadedImages/Mitchell%20Publications/MP10_China.pdf.
5. Office of the United States Air Force Chief Scientist, Technology Horizons: A Vision for Air Force Science and Technology, 2010–30, vol. 1, AF/ST-TR-10-01-PR (Washington, DC: Office of the United States Air Force Chief Scientist, September 2011), http://www.defenseinnovationmarketplace.mil/resources /AF_TechnologyHorizons2010-2030.pdf. More recent studies, such as Global Horizons, also show a lack of concentration on aeronautics. See Office of the United States Air Force Chief Scientist, Global Horizons Final Report: United States Air Force Global Science and Technology Vision, AF/ST TR 13-01 (Washington, DC: Office of the United States Air Force Chief Scientist, 21 June 2013), http://www.defense innovationmarketplace.mil/resources/GlobalHorizonsFINALREPORT6-26-13.pdf. Intriguingly, a briefing on the subject by Dr. Mark Maybury mentioned modularity and speed (not mentioned in the text) as air game changers but gave no specifics regarding efforts to pursue them. Briefing, Dr. Mark Maybury, subject: Air Force Global Horizons, 24 April 2013, http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2013ST/Maybury.pdf. See also House, Dr. David E. Walker, Fiscal Year 2014 Air Force Science and Technology, Presentation to the House Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities, 113th Cong., 1st sess., 16 April 2013, http://www.defenseinnovationmarketplace.mil/resources/FY14_AF _ST-Testimony.pdf. In 2014 America’s Air Force: A Call to the Future did not mention superior aircraft as a priority. See Deborah Lee James [secretary of the Air Force], America’s Air Force: A Call to the Future (Washington, DC: Headquarters US Air Force, July 2014), http://airman.dodlive.mil/files/2014/07 /AF_30_Year_Strategy_2.pdf. Finally, in early 2015, the Air Force’s Scientific Advisory Board was con- centrating on studies on quantum systems, cyber vulnerabilities, and remotely piloted systems. See Aaron Mehta, “US Air Force Launches Trio of Tech Studies,” DefenseNews, 31 January 2015, http:// www.defensenews.com/story/defense/air-space/air-force/2015/01/31/usaf-launches-study-trio -sab/22524543/. Analysis of future air warfare, both by the Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), also evidently does not expect much in the way of improved aircraft performance and capability. See Marc Schanz, “Rethinking Air Dominance,” Air Force Magazine 96, no. 7 (July 2013): 36–39; and Graham Warwick, “No Silver Bullet,” Aviation Week 175, no. 16 (20 May 2013): 52.
6. With the possible (but unlikely) exception of the Long-Range Strike Bomber, none of the Air Force’s top modernization priorities (the F-35, KC-46 tanker, Long-Range Strike Bomber, E-8 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System replacement, and the T-X trainer) extend the envelope on aircraft performance. See June L. Kim, “The Top Modernization Priorities Developing Airmen,” Air Force Magazine 97, no. 11 (November 2014): 39–40.
7. The Navy claims to have three times as many airplane projects in production or on the drawing boards as the Air Force. However, an examination of the actual programs (three variants of the F/A-18, two variants of the F-35, the P-8 patrol aircraft [a redesigned Boeing 737], the V-22 tilt-rotor in production, a new-start advanced fighter, and a stealthy unmanned combat air vehicle in design) shows that the same pattern applies. See John A. Tirpak, “Navy Offers Airplane-Building Advice,” Air Force Magazine 96, no. 8 (August 2013): 14.
8. These include active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars, which provide improved radar range, greater reliability and survivability, and some degree of detection capability against small tar- gets like stealth platforms and cruise missiles; improved engines that might give aircraft somewhat longer operating ranges and somewhat better speed; improvements to stealth that are likely to concentrate on increasing the range of radar frequencies protected against and improving the ease of production and maintainability; and more capable, better integrated sensors and better computers that may, to a degree, help cope with the fog of battle, data overload, jamming, and hostile stealth.
9. James Drew, “USAF Nominates JASSM Missile to Host New Computer-Killing Weapon,” Flight- global, 14 May 2015, http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/usaf-nominates-jassm-missile-to-host -new-computer-killing-412348/. Note the “Suter” airborne network attack system reportedly used by the Israelis in their raid on the Syrian reactor site in the October 2007 CHAMP. See John Antal, “Ray Guns and War,” Military Technology 36, no. 8 (2012): 43; and David A. Fulghum and Douglas Barrie, “Israel Used Electronic Attack in Air Strike against Syrian Mystery Target,” Aviation Week.com, 8 October 2007, http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=3702807&page=1.
10. John A. Tirpak, “Getting All Hyper,” Air Force Magazine 98, no. 3 (March 2015): 18. For details on the tactical missiles, see Kris Osborn, “AF Chief Scientist: Air Force Working on New Hypersonic Air Vehicle,” Defensetech, 1 June 2015, http://defensetech.org/2015/06/01/af-chief-scientist-air-force -working-on-new-hypersonic-air-vehicle/.
11. Wendell Minnick, “China Reveals New AMRAAM,” DefenseNews, 23 May 2011, http://minnickarticles .blogspot.com/2011/05/china-reveals-new-amraam.html; and Richard Fisher Jr., “China’s Emerging 5th Generation Air-to-Air Missiles,” International Assessment and Strategy Center, 2 February 2008, http://www.strategycenter.net/research/pubID.181/pub_detail.asp.
12. Dr. Carlo Kopp, The Russian Philosophy of Beyond Visual Range Air Combat, Technical Report APA-TR-2008-0301, Air Power Australia, updated April 2012, http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-Rus-BVR -AAM.html; and “Russian Air Force Tests New Air-to-Air Missile,” Sputnik International, 24 January 2012, http://en.rian.ru/russia/20120124/170929008.html.
13. “In the News: Missiles and Radars,” Beyond Defence (blog), 11 September 2013, https:// beyonddefence.wordpress.com/tag/rvv-bd/; and Bill Sweetman, “Cloak and Dagger,” Aviation Week 175, no. 30 (2 September 2103): 29.
14. Kopp, Russian Philosophy.
15. Ibid.
16. Mike Hoffman, “Lockheed Test Pilot Calls for Longer Range AIM-120,” Defensetech, 18 February 2014, http://defensetech.org/2014/02/18/test-pilot-calls-for-longer-range-aim-120/. It must be noted that the reported range for the AIM-120 varies widely and may depend on a variety of factors such as altitude of launch and speed of the launch aircraft.
17. Zach Rosenberg, “USAF Cancels AMRAAM Replacement,” Flightglobal, 14 February 2012, http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/usaf-cancels-amraam-replacement-368249; Dave Majumdar, “AF Looks to Trim Procurement, R&D in 2013,” Air Force Times, 13 February 2012, http://www .airforcetimes.com/article/20120213/NEWS/202130341/; and Amy Butler, “Next-Generation Fighter, Directed Energy Weapons May Converge,” Aviation Week, 5 August 2014, http://aviationweek.com /defense/next-generation-fighter-directed-energy-weapons-may-converge.
18. Stephen Trimble, “In Focus: USAF Committed to Replace AMRAAM and HARM with New Mis- sile,” Flightglobal, 6 December 2011, http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/in-focus-usaf -committed-to-replace-amraam-and-harm-with-new-365333.
19. Douglas Barrie, “British Court Germany and France on FMRAAM Project,” Flightglobal, 14 June 1995, http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/british-court-germany-and-france-on-fmraam -project-25672/; Dr. Gareth Evans, “Air-to-Air Missiles—Expanding the No-Escape Zone,” airforce -technology.com, 11 April 2012, http://www.airforce-technology.com/features/featureair-to-air-missiles -expanding-the-no-escape-zone/; Wendell Minnick, “China Developing Counterstealth Weapons,” Defense- News, 31 January 2011, http://www.defensenews.com/article/20110131/DEFFEAT04/101310315 /China-Developing-Counterstealth-Weapons; and Douglas Barrie, “Vympel Launches R-77 Ramjet from Su-27,” Flightglobal, 5 July 1995, http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/vympel-launches -r-77-ramjet-from-su-27-21749/.
20. Richard Tomkins, “Raytheon Developing Extended Range AMRAAM,” UPI, 24 February 2015, http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2015/02/24/Raytheon-developing-extended- range-AMRAAM/5641424782276/.
21. See “NCADE: An ABM AMRAAM—Or Something More?,” Defense Industry Daily, 20 November 2008, http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/ncade-an-abm-amraam-03305/. See also “Exhibit R-2, RDT&E Budget Item Justification: PB 2013 Air Force” (U), February 2012, http://www.globalsecurity .org/military/library/budget/fy2013/usaf-peds/0604330f.pdf.
22. Baker Spring, “President Obama’s Missile Defense Program Falls behind the Threat,” Back- grounder no. 2686, Heritage Foundation, 3 May 2012, http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2012/pdf /bg2686.pdf; and Spring, “Congress Must Stop Obama’s Downward Spiral of Missile Defense,” Issue Brief, Heritage Foundation, 20 May 2013, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/05 /congress-must-stop-obamas-downward-spiral-of-missile-defense. Neither have I been able to find any references to testing in the budget for fiscal year 2015.
23. Bradley Perrett, “Japanese Guidance,” Aviation Week 176, no. 26 (28 July 2014): 27; and Perrett, “Japan Upgrading 60 F-2s with AAM-4, J/APG-2,” Aviation Week, 27 February 2012, http://www .aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/AW_02_27_2012_p27-428848.xml.
24. Perrett, “Japan Upgrading.”
25. See Amy Butler and Graham Warwick, “Power Circuit,” Aviation Week 176, no. 5 (17 February 2014): 45; and Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., “The Biggest Thing since Silicon: Raytheon’s Gallium Nitride Breakthrough,” Breaking Defense, 20 February 2015, http://breakingdefense.com/2015/02 /the-biggest-thing-since-silicon-raytheons-gallium-nitride-breakthrough/.
26. George C. Larson, “Cool Fuel,” Air and Space 19, no. 3 (August/September 2004): 12. Some sources refer to a Russian T-6 fuel that is heavier than Russia’s usual jet fuels, but no specifics are available as to its performance. Lori M. Balster et al, “Development of an Advanced, Thermally Stable, Coal-Based Jet Fuel,” Fuel Processing Technology 89, no. 4 (April 2008): 366, http://www.sciencedirect .com/science/article/pii/S037838200700238X.
27. The author’s estimate, confirmed by a pilot coworker, is that JP-900 has an improved energy density of about 6 percent. However, this improvement comes at the cost of slightly lower fuel perfor- mance and somewhat higher weight. Based on Balster, “Development,” fig. 1.
28. Some sources report that JP-900 is too dense to be used in unmodified fuel systems. See ibid., 366.
29. Aaron Mehta, “Rapid Prototyping the New Model: Sikorsky’s New Norm Saves Money, Time,” DefenseNews, 31 October 2013, http://www.defensenews.com/article/20131031 /DEFREG02/310310025/Rapid-Prototyping-New-Model.
30. See Andrew Chaikin, “Is SpaceX Changing the Rocket Equation?,” Air & Space, January 2012, http://www.airspacemag.com/space/is-spacex-changing-the-rocket-equation-132285884/.
31. Ibid. Meanwhile, the British are attempting to leapfrog this development with their Skylon single -stage-to-orbit vehicle.
32. Chad Trautvetter, “HyperMach Reconfigures SSBJ Design, Aiming for Mach 4.5,” AIN Online, 6 December 2012, http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/2012-12-06/hypermach-reconfigures-ssbj -design-aiming-mach-45.
33. Admittedly, this is a big “if.” Ambitious plans from a decade ago for supersonic business jets have so far come to nothing. See Stuart F. Brown, “Mine’s Faster Than Yours,” Fortune, 28 June 2004, http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/06/28/374394/index.htm. Evidently, such supersonic aircraft are not expected to reach the market until at least 2021. See Grant Martin, “The World’s First Supersonic Business Jet Will Reach the Market in 2021,” Forbes, 31 October 2013, http://www.forbes.com/sites/grantmartin/2013/10/31/the-worlds-first-supersonic-business-jet-will-fly-in-2021/.