#2
I like the idea of an LCS that costs under $10M a copy. And that is a "mother ship". Its subordinate craft should be under $1M each. Anything more than that is cost prohibitive.
We need to accept the idea that in a shooting naval war, sailors are going to die, and any ship the size or smaller than a destroyer always has been, and always will be, expendable.
For this reason, they must trade armor for speed, high tech gizmos for firepower, and survivability for sheer numbers.
A tramp cargo ship that can launch several dozen cheap, expendable attack aircraft may be the next generation aircraft carrier. It is not meant to force project for decades, but to wipe out an enemy fleet all at once, before it is sunk.
The LCS mission, for all intents and purposes, is to patrol the coastlines of the South China Sea, almost 9000 miles worth. Assuming half of those are friendly, that still means you need a heck of a lot of LCS to do that work.
Quality is trumped by quantity in such a situation, as we learned in the Pacific War in WWII.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/23/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Above and beyond the details, the plan revealed in Al-Quds al-Arabi fails to acknowledge the salient fact of current Middle East strategy: namely, the division of the region into an Islamist "resistance" bloc led by Iran, and a loose coalition of all those states opposed to this bloc.
There is a conspiracy theory according to which Obama, with Machiavellian cunning, knows that his plan is unworkable, and intends to use its failure to cast blame and accusation on Israel. Who knows? Perhaps evidence will yet emerge in support for this thesis.
It seems more likely, however, that the president remains enthralled by the sunny illusions of the peace process of the 1990s, and is about to give them another run around the block. He has four years to follow the well-trodden path from innocence to experience. The problem is that further afield, there are other, more urgent clocks ticking.
#2
There is no question that Obama would throw Israel to the lions if he thought it would further his career. He did it in Illinois to two of his political benefactors as he was coming up. But that is not the crux of the problem here.
As a community organizer, he is used to negotiations with each side arguing over how much of the pie they get. In game theory terms, Win-Win is the desired outcome. You want to minimize how much your opponent gets, but you know they will get something.
In this situation, I think he is simply out of his depth, not because he is intellectually stupid but because he cannot conceive of a negotiaton where one side is fundamentally determined to destroy the other - even if it means they, too, go down in flames. The Paleos would prefer Win-Lose against Israel, but their second choice is Lose-Lose, just so long as Israel gets the short end of the deal. I don't think Obama can grasp this unfamiliar idea.
#3
As a lefty, Obama's persumably got a hardwired zero-sum mentality. The notion of either win:win or lose:lose outcomes are probably too abstract for hom to comprehend. Israel's gotta keep giving until both sides are equal.,,
Few believed him when Sri Lanka's powerful defence secretary said he required three years to defeat the once invincible Tamil Tiger rebels.
When Gotabaya Rajapaksa made the assertion, the Tamil Tigers, or Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam [LTTE], controlled nearly one third of the country, had a well-organised, ruthless fighting unit, sufficient stocks of heavy weapons, a small navy and a rudimentary air force. They had no problems of fresh supplies as they had enough resources pouring in from their supporters abroad and through their commercial ventures.
Only a handful of military analysts believed that the rebels could be wiped out completely.
Today, Sri Lanka is among the few nations that can say it has successfully quelled a nearly three-decade insurgency by military means. The entire rebel-held territory has been captured, huge caches of weapons have been recovered and destroyed, and the entire Tamil Tiger leadership is thought to have been wiped out.
So what led to the military success of a force that had been at the receiving end for many years?
'"So many factors have contributed to the success of the Sri Lankan forces. There was a clear aim and mandate from the political level to the official level and to the military level to destroy the LTTE at any cost. There was no ambiguity in that," Gotabaya Rajapaksa told the BBC.
When the current president, his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa, came to power in 2005, he made it clear that he would go all out against the rebels if they were not sincere in peace talks. Once the peace process failed, he gave the go ahead for the war to his brother and the hard line army commander Gen Sarath Fonseka.
A massive recruitment drive for the armed forces was launched (it increased from about 80,000 to more than 160,000). New weapons, including fighter jets, artillery guns and multi-barrel rocket launchers were bought from countries like China, Pakistan and Russia and new military strategies and tactics were evolved.
"That was the time when the international community was totally disappointed with the rebels because of their insincerity in peace talks. So countries like India and the US gave their tacit support for the all-out offensive against the LTTE," says Sri Lankan analyst DBS Jeyaraj.
Hostilities between the two sides broke out first in Eastern Province in August 2006. After months of intense battles, the government declared it had completely dislodged the rebels from the east.
One of the main reasons for the rebels' eastern debacle was the split in 2004 - when the Tigers' influential eastern commander, Col Karuna, broke away because of differences with the leadership.
"The LTTE could never recover from that. Thousands of fighters went away with Karuna and the LTTE could not recruit fresh cadres from the east, dealing a severe blow to their manpower. They struggled hard to replace fallen cadres in the subsequent northern battle," says Col R Hariharan, former chief of military intelligence of the Indian Peacekeeping Force in Sri Lanka from 1987 to 1990.
It was only a matter of time before the Sri Lankan military launched the second phase of its offensive to recapture the rebel strongholds in the north.
In the meantime, the Sri Lankan navy had also hunted and destroyed many Tamil Tiger supply ships in deep seas, dealing a crucial blow to the rebels.
The army also changed its tactics and became better able to cope with the kind of warfare waged by the guerrillas. Small teams of commandoes were sent behind enemy lines to carry out attacks against rebel leaders and key defence lines. The military also started to stretch them thin by opening up a number of fronts in the north.
The Tamil Tigers had no answer to the bombing missions by air force jets.
"The rebels never knew about the battlefield plans. We surprised them in many areas. For example, they didn't expect me to capture the strategically important town of Paranthan, near Kilinochchi, by outflanking them," Brig Shavendra Silva, commander of the Sri Lankan army's 58th division, told the BBC in a recent interview from the frontline.
The capture of Paranthan forced the rebels to withdraw from the strategically important Elephant Pass, a small land bridge that connects northern Jaffna peninsula with the rest of the country.
From Paranthan, Sri Lankan security forces battled their way into the Tamil Tiger de-facto capital of Kilinochchi.
The 58th division, which is credited with a series of military successes against the rebels, battled hard to forge ahead from Mannar up to Matalan beach on the eastern coast in Mullaitivu district. "It was not an easy walk. But we went ahead with a huge momentum and kept our pace and there were clear-cut instructions and leadership from our superiors," Brig Silva said.
But many argue that the military's success has come at an enormous humanitarian cost. The UN believes that nearly 7,000 civilians may have been killed and 13,000 injured in the conflict since January. Aid agencies say around 275,000 people have been displaced.
A number of villages and towns have either been damaged or destroyed.
Both the military and the rebels are being accused of gross violations of international humanitarian law. The two sides deny the charges.
"The Sri Lankan military juggernaut cruised ahead despite mounting civilian casualties. The rebels thought the international community, especially neighbouring India, would intervene looking at the civilian suffering and bring about a ceasefire in the final stages. When that did not happen, they ran out of options," says Mr Jeyaraj.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/23/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
ION WORLD MIL FORUM > IIUC INDIA LAUGHING: CHINA'S PLA DOESN'T REALIZE THE USA IS USING INDIA'S NAVY, MILITARY AS ITS PROXY IN THE INDIAN OCEAN AGZ CHINA. INDIA'S NAVY AS SUPPOR BY THE USA IS BECOM MORE POWERFUL AND CAPABLE THAN EVEN JAPAN'S JMSDF. USA RECOGNIZES THAT ALLY INDIA WILL NOT TOLERATE A POTENT US MIL PRESENCE IN THE INDIAN OCEAN. INDIA'S NAVAL AMBITION, LIKE CHINA'S, IS ALSO TO GAIN INFLUENCE AND MILECON ACCESS INTO THE CHINA SEAS AND WESTERN PACIFIC.
Also from WMF > IIUC CHINA WILL SEND FOUR F23T FRIGATES TO ASSIST "SURVEYING" OF THE DISPUTED DAOYUS ISLANDS. AND ADD 120 TACTICAL MISSLE TROOPS TO TARGET JAPAN NEAR ITS CAPITAL TOKYO???
+ DESPITE BANDIT RUSSIA'S HISTORICAL THEFT OF OVER 4.OMILYUHN SQUARE KMS OF ANCIENT CHINESE TERRITORIES, BOTH CHINA AND RUSSIA MUST IGNORE AND WORK TOGETHER TO DEFEAT US ASIAN AND GLOBAL IMPERIALISM, US PROXY-LED BREAKUP OF MAINLAND ASIA???
* CHINESE MIL FORUM > VIETNAMESE-CHINA TERRITORY DISPUTE ENTERS CYBERSPACE.
#5
"The army also changed its tactics and became better able to cope with the kind of warfare waged by the guerrillas. Small teams of commandoes were sent behind enemy lines to carry out attacks against rebel leaders and key defence lines. The military also started to stretch them thin by opening up a number of fronts in the north.
The Tamil Tigers had no answer to the bombing missions by air force jets."
Isn't it now time for NATO to employ some Sri Lankan military advisors in Afghanistan?!
#7
The Mumbai attacks evaporated any support of terrorist movements from India. In a way, Islamic terrorism brought down the Tamil Tigers.
The Indian support to Sri Lanka predated the Mumbai attacks. Details of this support are only now trickling out... all the Indian intelligence agents spying on the LTTE etc.
The Tamil Tigers were brought down by an act they committed 18 years ago - the assassination of Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi.
Posted by: john frum ||
05/23/2009 10:35 Comments ||
Top||
#8
And of course their own stupidity and greed.
Former Tiger commander Karuna is a minister in Rajapaksa's cabinet. The LTTE could have been part of a national unity government but they wanted Eelam instead.
So they gambled and lost everything
Posted by: john frum ||
05/23/2009 10:39 Comments ||
Top||
#9
There was a clear aim and mandate from the political level to the official level and to the military level to destroy the LTTE at any cost.
#10
SU3970, it's too bad we don't have that in the US.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
05/23/2009 21:05 Comments ||
Top||
#11
Mario was a megalomaniac and would not accept anything less than total control of all Sri Lanka. Without him, there would have been a political solution long ago. Of course, without him, the Tamils wouldn't have been nearly as strong, so go figure.
Opinion piece by the BBC mistakenly labeled as 'news' ...
The last time a US vice-president came to Beirut was in 1983, when George Bush Senior flew hurriedly in following a suicide truck bomb attack which blew up a US marine barracks, killing more than 240 soldiers. That, and a similar demolition of the US embassy in Beirut, persuaded President Ronald Reagan to pull the marines out of Lebanon, a humiliating retreat in the face of local forces backed by Syria and Iran.
You know, I get really tired of reading that "humiliating defeat" stuff. We were in Leb at the time under UN auspices, something we should be bringing up every time somebody suggests we try it again. We and the Frenchies were the bulk of the Multinational Force positioned between the Israelis, who'd just chased the PLO out of the country, and the Leb militias. As our guys were being blown up, it turned out that there was no "mandate" to hunt down and kill the bastards who'd killed them. We were "peacekeepers," not there for military operations. Reagan quite sensibly said to hell with it and pulled our guys out. The "humiliating defeat" was the UN's, since the rules were jiggered sufficiently to make sure the "Multinational Force" was an ineffectual group of targets in uniform, not a fighting force. Subsequent "Multinational Forces" in which the U.S. has participated have been put together and led by the U.S. Nor were we Israeli puppets: one of my friends related a story -- backed up by a couple of his NCOs who'd been there -- about having to pull a rod on an Israeli officer to get his point across at a bridge. That was before the kaboom.
More than 25 years on, was Vice-President Joseph Biden visiting Lebanon in the hope of averting another big setback to US influence at the same hands - but this time at the polling booths?
Did he open his mouth?
After talks with President Michel Suleiman - who is regarded as neutral in the sharply-polarised Lebanese arena - Mr Biden insisted he had not come to back any Lebanese party or person, but rather to support the country's independence and sovereignty. But at the same time, he urged "those who think about standing with the spoilers of peace not to miss this opportunity to walk away from the spoilers" - a remark clearly aimed at Hezbollah and its allies.
Who in turn snickered at the buffoon ...
Although the outcome hinges on voting results in a few hard-to-predict constituencies, the Hezbollah-led opposition stands a good chance of coming out narrowly ahead of the Western-backed coalition that the Americans would clearly like to see win.
It's their country. They can vote for whom they please. It's our money. We can spend it on whom we please -- and we've got enough financial problems right now.
Mr Biden also warned of likely consequences if Hezbollah and its allies were to prevail in the 7 June poll and form the kind of government Washington would frown on. The administration, he said, "will evaluate the shape of our assistance programmes based on the composition of the new government and the policies it advocates."
He then went off to see the Speaker of the Lebanese parliament, Nabih Berri, who is an ally of Hezbollah, and the Prime Minister, Fuad Siniora, who belongs to the Western-backed coalition.
If that implied balance, the impression was swiftly undermined by a later, unpublicised meeting behind closed doors in a private home with leaders of the pro-Western coalition who hold no official posts.
But Mr Biden insisted that Washington's commitment was to Lebanon, its sovereignty and independence. To back that up, he appeared with the Defence Minister, Elias al-Murr, at a display of some of the military hardware the US has supplied to the Lebanese Army in recent years.
Mr al-Murr said that, in a visit to Washington last month, he had been given a written commitment by Defence Secretary Robert Gates to provide the Lebanese Army with hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of arms and training over a five-year period, including helicopters and drones. Although that commitment might be reviewed in the light of the election results, Washington seems confident that the Lebanese Army can hold together and be built on as a neutral national institution despite the strain of coexistence with Hezbollah, whose military strength is greater.
Despite Mr Biden's protestations of neutrality, Hezbollah itself lost no time in dubbing his visit "a clear and detailed interference in Lebanese affairs" which raised "strong doubts about its real motivations."
As Mr Biden was showing off US military hardware in Beirut, Hezbollah was staging its own show of strength in Nabatieh, a provincial centre south-east of the capital. Thousands of supporters gathered to watch a relayed speech from their leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, to mark the anniversary of Israel's ignominious withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 under the pressure of Hezbollah attacks.
But US leaders may already have concluded that a narrow win by the Hezbollah-led coalition would not be the end of the world.
Hezbollah itself is only putting forward 11 candidates in the contest for 128 parliamentary seats. The other elements in the opposition coalition come from allies such as the mainstream Shia Amal movement, headed by parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri, and the Free Patriotic Movement of the Christian leader Michel Aoun, once a fierce opponent of Syria but now reconciled with Damascus and likely to do well in many Christian areas.
So, while generally unwelcome to the West, a narrow victory by the opposition would produce a picture very different from, for example, the Hamas takeover in Gaza, which was violent and absolute. The lines could be further blurred if Washington's diplomatic overtures to the Lebanese opposition's backers, Iran and Syria, were to produce results.
The Americans' closest ally, Britain, is already allowing its diplomats to hold official contacts with Hezbollah's "political wing", although the movement is still shunned by Washington as a "terrorist" group.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/23/2009 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Hezbollah
While his own Democrats are overwhelmingly balking at closing Guantanamo Bay for fear that any of the 240 detainees would end up in their states, the President held firm on shutting the camp. So he had promised over and again during the presidential campaign, helping to elevate Gitmo into a symbol of disgrace.
It never was and isn't now. By all accounts, the accommodations are well above average for a penal institution. The U.S. should keep the place open - not because a SuperMax facility wouldn't safely hold Al Qaeda types, but because they don't belong on American soil with whatever rights attach to that privileged status.
Similarly wrong is Obama's resolution to try some Guantanamo detainees in civilian criminal courts. He has already done so, with troubling results in the case of a now-confessed Osama Bin Laden henchman who had plotted to stage a "second wave" attack on the U.S. after 9/11.
Ali Saleh Keahlah Al-Marri was arrested in Illinois in December 2001 and held as an enemy combatant in a Navy brig. He plea-bargained with the Justice Department this month for a term of no more than 15 years - the same stretch former New York assemblyman and labor leader Brian McLaughlin faced for stealing from a Little League, unions and taxpayers.
Next up for trial, right here in New York, is Ahmed Ghailani, accused in the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Captured in Pakistan in 2004, Ghailani was brought to Guantanamo in 2006.
There is at least an argument that Ghailani should be tried in Manhattan Federal Court because he was indicted here in 1998. There is also some comfort in believing Ghailani would not walk free, should he be acquitted.
In 2004, Justice described him as one of seven Al Qaeda members who were planning a terrorist action that year. For which he could be tried before a military tribunal, where he belongs, or hit with indefinite detention, which would likely be even more apt.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
After talks with President Michel Suleiman - who is regarded as neutral in the sharply-polarised Lebanese arena - Mr Biden insisted he had not come to back any Lebanese party or person, but rather to support the country's independence and sovereignty. But at the same time, he urged "those who think about standing with the spoilers of peace not to miss this opportunity to walk away from the spoilers" - a remark clearly aimed at Hezbollah and its allies.
