07/01/2011: KODIAK, Alaska – The crew of a Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter from Air Station Kodiak locate the 60-foot vessel Nordic Mistress as it sinks beneath the waves of the Gulf of Alaska and the five-member crew of the vessel in a liferaft 80 miles north of Kodiak May 22, 2011. All five crewmembers were rescued and brought to Kodiak.
Video Credit: USCG Atlantic Area: 05/22/2011
Eliminate the Mesothelioma Survival Rate Mystery and Learn What You Can Do to Beat this Disease. Fight Back Against Peritoneal Mesothelioma with the Comprehensive Facts and Figures that Make Treatment a Reality.
07/01/2011 – To all of our readers, and especially to active, reserve, and retired military personnel affected by asbestos-related diseases:
Please see our new link in our Resources section from the Mesothelioma Cancer Network, a site that supports those who have been diagnosed with mesothelioma and their loved ones.
The Mesothelioma Cancer Network has a special resource section devoted to support for those in all branches of the military who may have been exposed to asbestos.
Please visit their link at http://www.mesotheliomasymptoms.com/military-branches/asbestos-air-force, where you will find the resource for the Air Force; the other branches are listed on the right side-bar.
We are always looking for new resources that can help and are useful for our readers, and we are encouraged by this wonderful site.
06/29/2011 – While attending the Paris air show in June, Second Line of Defense sat down with a senior Eurofighter executive to discuss Eurofighter in the Indian fighter competition. A special focus of our efforts has been upon the intersection between the future evolution of the Eurofighter and the Indian role in that future. https://www.sldinfo.com/?p=20472
Rob Wells is the Export Future Business Manager for Eurofighter and is based in Germany. Wells has a strong background within the program (from his time at BAE Systems) in avionics and flight control. His current role is to work with customers on shaping future capabilities for the aircraft.
[slidepress gallery=’eurofighter’]
Photo Credits: First Photo (Wells) SLD;
Remaining Photos Eurofighter
SLD: In analyzing the Indian decision with regard to which fighter aircraft to downselect, we have written that the Indians are focusing on selecting an aircraft, which forms the basis for a 30-year franchise. From this point of view, they are interested not just in buying a platform, but an engagement in the evolution of that aircraft. Is this your view as well?
Wells: Absolutely.
SLD: Could you describe the current approach to upgrading the aircraft?
Wells: With the four partner nations – UK, Germany, Italy, and Spain – it’s all managed on the customer side through a management agency called NETMA, or the NATO Eurofighter and Tornado Management Agency. And they act on behalf of the Four Nations to harmonize their four sets of operational requirements. We then act on behalf of the four partner companies on the industry side: BAE Systems in the UK, Alenia in Italy and Cassidian in Germany and Spain, to get a harmonized view from industry side.It’s really a four-into-one approach on each side of the fence – the industry side and the customer side. The agencies on both sides are responsible for the upgrade path.
SLD: NETMA provides a forum then within which harmonization of the requirements is sorted out so that the contributions of upgrades generated by any of the member nations can shape an upgrade path?
Wells: That’s right. We get the customer agency’s future requirements and then we act on behalf of the partners on the industry side through the various contracts. The content of those requirements can come from one, two, three or four nations, depending on the funding routes, who’s in custody of the upgrade and what and when they require it, we will then propose packages of upgrades that will accommodate all of those requirements as far into the future as is required. We don’t develop single products individually across the four nations, but shape a common approach. And now we’ve got five and six nations with Austria and Saudi Arabia. The approach is to try to have a common approach for Eurofighter upgrades regardless of customer. We focus on generating high-tech solutions, help to develop new technologies across the Eurofighter partners and suppliers and develop an important economic impact to the partner nations.
SLD: India would then come in as a new partner, with a new assembly line, and their requirements would shape new funding and new opportunities for upgrading the aircraft, and adding new industrial possibilities?
Wells: Exactly. If they’ve got money on the table to say we need this capability and this number of aircraft in this time frame, then those requirements would be dealt with, together with those of the existing partner nations.
SLD: Could you describe the immediate impact from Indian participation as a Eurofighter nation on the upgrade approach?
Wells: The immediate impact is that we will have a large set of operational requirements that we would need to fulfill in a pretty short time span. Currently, the only official future upgrade that is currently being funded is Meteor. There are indications that there will be additional new weapons, but funding is a problem. The list of requirements on the Indian RFP is considerable. And they would need to be worked through to this upgrade program. I think it’s fair to say that the proposal that we’ve made into India in terms of providing a Typhoon with the required capabilities is arguably 80 percent Indian requirements, 20 percent European requirements. So they would influence considerably the future direction of the Eurofighter program.
SLD: So it is in Eurofighter’s interest to bring Indian industry up to speed on the program as rapidly as possible so that they can participate effectively in the overall upgrade process moving forward with the evolution of the aircraft?
Wells: We would see it from both sides, both from the customer side with extended operations on the ground and also from the industry side with fulfilling our obligations in a timely manner. Part of the technology transfer options that we’ve made into India are just that to bring the Indian industry up to speed, if you like, with the European industry as far as developing the aircraft is concerned.
SLD: If Eurofighter succeeds in the downselect, and India becomes a full participant, India could drive the evolution of the Eurofighter for Europe itself. It becomes a two way street for the future of the aircraft.
Wells: I agree. If you look at Eurofighter as having a potential life of 40-50 years, it is still in development and only in service from end 2003.The overall ergonomics of the flight control system, the hydraulics, the electrics, all of the general systems are now mature, and relatively fixed. Meeting the requirement of building an aircraft with an unstable aerodynamic configuration has been a challenging learning curve for us. But that is the sort of technology transfer we could hand over to the Indians so that they can learn how to, if they wish, develop a son of Typhoon or a future combat aircraft with unstable ergonomic capabilities.
They can as well help in the ongoing enhancements where the aircraft is undergoing continuous evolution. This includes areas such as sensors, range extension, new weapons, etc. Those are the kinds of enhancements that we’re now building into Eurofighter where it will physically look the same and it will physically fly the same. But it will always have new technology as far as detection, tracking and exploitation of weapons is concerned. And again, that’s something that the Indian industry could get into relatively quickly. So, we would see them as key participants in the process of enhancing the sensors, the weapons and so on over the short to medium term.
And then in the longer term, they could start to evaluate what it is that we need to do to build the next batch of fighters – perhaps enhancing the agility whilst maintaining carefree handling, etc. We can be doing real term development over the next decade or so. But we can also learn from what we’ve already done and learned the hard way in the past. And a combination of the two should give them a pretty good platform to develop their own aircraft from whenever they’re looking for over the next 20 to 30 years onwards.
Whether it is manned or unmanned, that’s another discussion, I guess. But, the way we see it is we’ve spent a considerable sum baselining the aircraft to give it maximum potential for the future. Now it’s a case of enhancing it with new sensor technology and new weapons technology – new roles in some cases, whether strike or reconnaissance. Again, it’s usually through sensor enhancement via RF or optic upgrades where the pilot’s receiving more information, better information, to enhance his decision-making ability. We’ve got a mature baseline system. We’re willing to hand over the lessons learned from that development program,. But we’re also continuing to develop the aircraft today for another 20 or more years. For the Indian industry to come in at this stage is good for India and good for the future evolution of Eurofighter. We have resolved the initial challenges experienced in the development and operation of the aircraft. It’s now a combat proven aircraft. But it’s still got a lot of growth left in it.
News Brief
By Kirsten Ashbaugh
06/27/2011 – Russia has signed a long-expected agreement with France to buy two Mistral-class warships in a US$1.7 billion (€1.2 billion) contract. Anatoly Isaikin, director of the state-controlled arms exporter Rosoboronexport, and Patrick Boissier, president and CEO of the shipbuilder DCNS that will construct the warships, sealed the deal June 17th in St. Petersburg. Two additional warships will be constructed on Russia soil, adding up to four new warships for Russia.
The deal comes as no surprise, but it worries many of France’s partners as well as Russia’s neighbors, particularly Georgia. According to a Russian admiral, an amphibious vessel such as this class of warship would have allowed the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia to take place in a matter of hours. Russia’s immediate Eastern European neighbors undoubtedly fear greater Russian power so close to their doorstep, even as it involves an EU ally. In the United States, House Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL 18), chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, condemned the deal as a breach of security, stating that the deal would transfer sensitive military technology to Russia. The deal had originally stalled over price as well as technology transfer issues; France showed some reluctance to equip Russia with a Western data system and fleet command system.
The deal may be a signal on France’s part that it is willing to have closer relations with Russia, at least for the sake of security. Russia controls most of the natural gas flows into Europe, and the January 2009 cut-off of supplies through Ukraine (as well as numerous other disputes over gas between Russia and Ukraine) left many Europeans fearful of Russia’s power over its neighbors. Controlling over 50 percent of the natural gas supplies, Russia is also constructing the Nord Stream pipeline through the Baltic Sea, leaving many countries in Eastern Europe fearful of being bypassed in the case of another spat. The promise of future warships also signifies possible control over the Caspian Sea, the strategic transit route for the Nabucco pipeline that would flow from Central Asian countries such as Azerbaijan while also bypassing Russia.
***
Sources:
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=6845311&c=SEA&s=TOP
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=6854538&c=SEA&s=TOP
http://www.france24.com/en/20110617-us-lawmaker-slams-france-russia-warship-deal#
http://www.defencetalk.com/france-transfers-sensitive-warship-technology-to-russia-35105/
***
06/28/2011 – Amir Oren is a senior correspondent and columnist for Haaretz and a member of the newspaper’s editorial board. He writes about defense and military affairs, the government and international relations.
Robbin Laird and Franck Znaty of Second Line of Defense began a conversation with Oren in November about strategic developments in the region. This interview is a continuation of that conversation. Oren is one of the most respected Israeli analysts and journalists on the Middle East.
SLD: How would you characterize what’s happened in the Middle East?
Oren: Israel’s chief problem is internal. You know the old problem of who’s a Jew? This is a theological, but also a practical problem. There is, however, a much more pressing question. What’s Israel? Up to now, for the last 44 years, Israel has failed to define itself to itself. And besides, what is the core territory it is fighting for? What are the ends and therefore, what should be the means? And right after the 1967 war, it seemed so simple. Israel has taken over territories which the world was sure to make it return to the Arab owners.
SLD: Prior to ’67?
Oren: Yes, the lands beyond the armistice lines of 1949, which by 1967 had become the June 4th, 1967 lines. But this would be in return for peace agreements and security measures, which were to reflect the fact that Israel has been from day one been challenged by all of its neighbors for its existence. The Palestinians were forced to live in all of the neighboring countries, mostly with refugee status because the Arab countries wouldn’t settle them and what happened? Much to Israel’s surprise, as 1967 wore on was the pressure did not come about.
In 1949, Israel has raided Northern Sinai, reached El-Arish, was pushed back by the U.S. for fear of having a confrontation with Great Britain, which was in essence ruling Egypt. In 1956, of course, Eisenhower forced Israel to go back from the Sinai and the Gaza Strip.
Israelis believed in 1967 that it was going to have that experience the third time running. Lo and behold, it didn’t materialize because there was no Arab party, and as long as there was no Arab party for peace, there was no American, and therefore world, pressure for Israel to withdraw back to the 1967 lines.
Thus began the confusion present for most Israeli. What is Israel? Is it Israel within the so-called Green (armistice) Line of 1949-67? Is it Israel’s plus the occupied territories?
And this is, first of all, an internal debate, which Israel should resolve.
And Israel has missed several opportunities for settling with Jordan. Had Israel been willing to give King Hussein 40, 35 years ago what it is now being forced to give the Palestinians, it would have been better off ever since even though, as a footnote one should say, that perhaps by now with the Arab spring which we will talk about a bit later, there would also have been a revolution in Jordan with the Palestinians taking over.
It wasn’t an ironclad insurance policy, but Palestinian nationalism wouldn’t have taken root to the extent it did from 1974 on.
But this is water under the bridge or in the Jordan River, and we are at a situation where Israel in its almost 45th year of occupying the territories, and has to contend with new realities.
SLD: So the point is the ’67 situation has been set in concrete, which creates dilemmas for Israel as well as for the Arab states. And now this situation is occurring in an evolving and strategic different context with upheaval in the Arab world.
Oren: The occupied territories could and should have served as buffer zones between Israel proper and the neighboring Arab countries, which kept challenging its existence.
The Arab countries downgraded their expectations from destroying Israel, taking over all of Israel to taking back the territories occupied in 1967. This brought about a significant change in the buildup of their militaries and change in their war plans, which Israel failed to understand prior to the Yom Kippur War.
It kept clinging to the line of scrimmage rather than holding back, letting the Egyptians cross the canal, and then sending mobile forces to hit the invading forces while avoiding casualties itself.
And it fell into a trap, which was both practical as well as psychological, of losing casualties to such as extent – 2,600 Israelis killed, which is a lot in Israeli terms – that Israeli’s self-confidence was shattered. Of course, it was also dependent on U.S. assistance in the 1973 war.
After 1974, the Israeli military braced for a repeat of 1973, which never came.
SLD: Israel was preparing to fight the last war?
Oren: Yes, of course. In 1972-73, up to October, they prepared for 1967. From 1974 on, they prepared for 1973. They knew, of course, that this is the lesson of history, but they couldn’t avoid it, and they couldn’t avoid it, not because they didn’t have good planners, good strategists, good theoreticians, but because the Commission of Inquiry of 1973 – the Commission of Inquiry appointed by the government – managed to find only military men culpable and found pretext to ignore the responsibility and culpability of the government, the prime minister, the defense minister.
The whole context of 1973 of the war was that the ruling party of the time, Labor was having an election campaign in which its main claim to fame was that for three years, ever since the War of Attrition ended in the summer of 1970 and after Black September, it has managed to keep Israel’s borders quiet, in a state of no war/ no peace.
It was like eating our cake and having it too. Now all of a sudden, having issued an emergency preparedness, which would have belied your claim that you have pacified the Arabs. If all of a sudden on the eve of the Yom Kippur War, it would have said, “Hey, Sadat is reinforcing the canal and the Syrians are also doing it.” That would mean that each time there is such a problem, you do have to mobilize and on the eve of Yom Kippur, so your claim to having pacified the Middle East is undercut.
SLD: How did the Israeli military react to this political situation?
Oren: Successive chiefs of the general staff didn’t want to play this game and be the fall guy after the next war, so they said, “We need more tanks. We need more fighter planes. We need more everything. We need fortifications of the Sinai each time we move from one line to the next in a series of disengagement agreements.”
And billions of dollars were being poured into the sand just to cover themselves, and each time there is some war indication, they would recommend full mobilization so the government can decide not to accept their recommendations, but they would have been held responsible.
SLD: Therefore, they have got to recommend it. They’ll say, “We told you.”
Oren: We told you and, of course, it’s your privilege, yes, to overrule us, but we have done our share.
SLD: And the political situation between Israel and Egypt changed dramatically after the war.
Oren: Even after Sadat came to Jerusalem and we had this peace agreement with Egypt, which emanated from Sadat’s decision to change his orientation towards the United States. This was his main decision for economic reasons because he hated the Soviet Union and for many other reasons, and he decided that war with Israel War with Israel was no longer feasible for him.
In fact, Egypt’s peace dividend for Israel was a two-for-the-price-of one. Israel did not change its military buildup accordingly. Strategically, what happened was, peace was achieved with one stroke. With one stroke, Israel took out of commission the two fronts it was facing at the time because without an Egyptian front, there was also no point in an Eastern front. Syria could not wage war against Israel without the Egyptian front.
The Syrians, of course, did not sign a peace agreement with Israel, but in effect, they were left alone facing Israel.
SLD: These conditions changed fundamentally the strategic dynamic in the Middle East.
Oren: The conditions changed fundamentally. Israel lost an opportunity because it went to war in Lebanon, not against Lebanon, but in Lebanon in 1982. At that time, it performed brilliantly from the air. This was the only service, which performed not only well, but also in many ways in an excellent fashion.
IDF tanks on the Lebanese border, June 1982 (Credit Photo: GPO)
There was a problem which emerged around an Air Force plane, an F-4, which killed 35 of our own guys in a Blue-on-Blue incident, and then the systems officer – the navigator- was Yohanan Locker, a young weapon system officer, or navigator, now a Major-General, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s military secretary.
It’s an interesting way of looking at how the Air Force tried to change. The pilot was a lieutenant colonel. This guy, in 1973, along with a fellow pilot, was stationed at a small base where there were no planes and pilots permanently stationed there. Only when the Air Force went on special alert did they deploy, and this guy and the other one did not know on Yom Kippur Day 1973 that war is about to break. It’s very much reminiscent of Pearl Harbor in more than one way. Now all of a sudden, they were alerted by a siren. They had a few hours of sleep because the night before they watched a film, and the film was “Tora! Tora! Tora!”
SLD: Ironic.
Oren: And they were amazed at how foolish those Americans were, not expecting a Japanese attack, and here they are undergoing the same experience. So these two fighter pilots took off and killed seven Egyptian MIGs. They were heroes, aces. Now nine years later, one of these guys is again gung-ho, trigger happy, and his navigator tells him, “Listen, I’m not sure this is the right target, that the data we received could be faulty. We have to double check.” But he went ahead and attacked the ground target, which turned out to be an Israeli infantry battalion ”
This was a very traumatic event and has led the Israeli Air Force to work very hard on their ability to support ground operations. Unfortunately, there is a perception that this is now the main Israeli Air Force task.
We are almost 26 years after the very last air-to-air battle between Israel and Arab air forces in November of 1985, two F-15s shooting down two MIGS, I believe 23s, over Damascus. We only had 30 years of jet-to-jet combat. Between 1955 and 1985 there were aerial duels between fighter jets, which means that today you have Israeli fighter pilots in their mid-20s who were born after the last air-to-air battle, and while they of course train for air battles their main mission is air-to-ground.
Now this may change. The region is changing and they may face Arab air forces, this time of course using Western equipment and sometimes similar or even identical systems and this is something, which, of course, worries Israel and especially the Air Force very much regarding quantity as well as quality.
SLD: You are talking about Saudi Arabia, which is supposed to receive more advanced F-15s than Israel has as well as the UAE, which already has more advanced F-16s as well?
Oren: Egypt as well has F-16s. Pakistan has them and perhaps Iraq will have them as well.
SLD: This creates a serious objective problem of whether Israel has air superiority in the region?
Oren: Yes and there are trends in the region, which create concerns as well. During the drawdown from Iraq, the U. S. military is leaving a lot of material. Now Iraq may turn radical again, Iran can take over, at least southern Iraq around Basra. There are huge depots there and of course, Egypt could turn hostile again.
Now this would mean that Israel would have to revert to the old school but with new systems.
Credit: http://themostfeared.blogspot.com/2010/09/israel-seals-deal-for-20-lockheed-f-35s.html
SLD: Pre-’67? Is that what you’re saying? (See “Listening to the Israeli Air Chief”)
Oren: Pre-mid-’80s. This obviously rests on air systems, but the Air Force modernization is challenged from two directions.
The first is from the Navy, which wants to expand the ability of Israel to operate from the Sea. They argue that the air force infrastructure is too vulnerable in a missile age.
The second is the normal bias of the General Staff, which is the Army in other terms. The Chief of the IDF will be for new air systems, if he does not have to pay for it with other forces. But when he has to consider it, vis-à-vis, another F-35 or another missile boat, then it’s a conflict of interest for him. And the question, of course, always becomes the marginal plane or the marginal squadron or the marginal battalion.
So the challenge is how many squadrons, how many planes, how many air bases? Are the air bases so vulnerable, so as to need, let’s say the F-35Bs, in order to deploy out of base. How many UAVs? What mix?
What it comes down to is that boys will be boys. The Air Force is still led by fighter pilots, not weapons systems officers, not transport pilots or airlift pilots or, in the Israeli case, helicopter pilots, because we have no army aviation.
Here it is obvious that no matter how we start, it is really irrelevant whether war starts because Hezbollah kidnaps Israeli soldiers because Israel attacks Iran and Iran strikes back. From day two, if not earlier, Israeli population everywhere, including in this very cafe, is going to feel the brunt of the war.
So this means that there will be a lot of popular pressure on the government to get it over with quickly. Now that means that the government and the general staff will put pressure on the Air Force, not to execute its carefully planned operational orders, which means if we take the example of previous wars, not enough to disclose potential future ones.
If you plan a militarily optimal plan to deal with missile attacks you will launch a systematic rather than haphazard campaign. This is not possible when you need to deal with the concerns of the population. The reason is outcry from the public. Why is it taking so long? You will quickly divert the Air Force from its original missions and planned approach.
The way it was approved before when it was only a contingency plan, simulated, annotated, what have you. But in practice, when television shows the shell holes and the shell shock in Tel Aviv, a woman crying as her apartment building is being ruined by salvos of missiles from Iran or from Gaza…
SLD: The operational tempo changes.
Oren: Well, the political tempo changes, which means that the civilian leadership, the political leadership takes charge and order the Air Force to strike quickly.
The political leadership would have to be very resilient. We have to prepare the population here, shelters and air raid sirens, and American assistance via the Air Force and Aegis and political assistance, and in order to give the Air Force the time and space it needs to be able to go about its business, because in 1973, it didn’t do it.
It diverted missions from the Suez Canal to the Golan Heights, lost six planes and crews in one sortie and the Air Force lost its equilibrium, and this is a lesson learned and relearned time and time again. And I’m not sure that the civil-military relationship would be fine-tuned. I think this is more important than the military preparation itself.
SLD: You are talking about the intersection of force structure and political management of military operations, which frankly I think is the core analytical task in preparing for conflict. In the U.S., we focus primarily in political considerations on single platforms or occupation management, but are not so good at understanding the intersection between the tools, which forces provide, and options for political management for challenging operations. Could you give us a sense of your views of the challenge of moving forward in dealing with this intersection of tools or capabilities?
Oren: A key element is for the government to think through in advance its approach to termination of operations or exit plans. Does it “finish” the war even with less than perfect results, or does it work to act quickly because of political pressure.
And it has to do with the narrative, which can be shaped in today’s context.
It has to do with the way the government depicts to itself to the population here and abroad about what is happening and has happened.
For instance, in the second Lebanese war, in late July, there was the Kfar Qana
incident where an aerial attack allegedly – later it turns out that it wasn’t true – but allegedly caused damage in the Lebanese village of Kfar Qana in south Lebanon with many civilians killed and there was an outcry and Condoleezza Rice was here and demanded at least a bombing pause
By that time, Israel has gotten most of what it wanted from the campaign.
It could have used this point to terminate operations and provide some magnanimous way of saying, “Okay, enough is enough.”
Instead, it chose to say, “Hey, don’t dictate to us how and when to exit. We’ll go on.”
And the next couple of weeks were worse than what had happened up to that point.
It is always an equation of achievement versus cost. It’s not cost effectiveness.
The cost is immediate. The achievement is long term.
The judgment isn’t immediate. The popular demands for top officials to resign are immediate. You don’t have the luxury of waiting five years, then looking back and saying, “But we had five years of quiet along the border. In retrospect, it was a victory. It wasn’t even a tie, let alone a defeat.”
You have the time factor on two levels. First of all, the campaign has to be very short and, second, the jury is out for only minutes. The jury is not deliberating. It’s text messaging.
SLD: Would you characterize what Israel has been focusing on militarily over the past five years as largely COIN or counter insurgency?
Oren: In Israeli terms, what happened in Lebanon five years ago was not counter insurgency warfare. It was low-intensity conflict.
The six years between 2000 and 2006 were spent on counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations in the West Bank of Gaza. And that, because of the scarcity of manpower resources, both conscripts and reserves, this degraded the ability of the same units, because you don’t have another military to prepare or refresh their preparedness for the other sort of operations. So that by the time they were deployed in Lebanon…
SLD: They lost their combat skills?
Oren: They lost their skills and it took them two, three, five precious days to regain them, by which time casualties were such that the critics of the campaign were clamoring for some answers, and the government felt pressure to justify the campaign.
SLD: How do you see the change going forward?
Oren: This is, of course, a very frustrating business because the Israeli military has spent the last five years or so regaining skills for low-intensity conflict as well as counter-insurgency.
Now the Arabs who are, of course, preparing for missile and rocket attacks too, as they did at least since 1991 when Saddam showed them that it was feasible, they are also attempting some nonviolent demonstrations and Israel again faces a dilemma because it can’t prepare the police force, riot police, non-lethal measures, but this will take away from the infantry which it needs for the other operations. The pool here is limited.
We don’t have the ability that the U.S. always had also because of its political culture to have only a skeletal military between wars absorb the first strike, and then have two, three, four years to build from an industrial base and from a manpower pool of millions to build an army, whether it’s for attrition or for strategic strike so it all has to be done simultaneously.
SLD: And going forward you have to consider the objective capabilities in the region, not just intentions.
Oren: You said that countries should act regarding deeds, not intentions, or facts on the ground. If you have a build up in the UAE, Israel should not be complacent and think that it will always be neutral. But you do have to work on the intention side of the equation as well. You do have to lower the motives for the other side and that goes back to the political settlement. It’s an entirely different discussion, whether a political agreement with the Palestinians is possible. The chances are remote. That does not mean that Israel shouldn’t go out of its way to show maximum flexibility and to go back to its core interests, which is what I talked about earlier regarding the definition of Israel. When the Israeli Prime Minister Eshkol visited President Johnson at the LBJ Ranch at the turn of the year 1967/68, Johnson asked him, “What kind of Israel do you want?”
It goes back that question.
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Complementary source:
For a discussion of the Saudi F-15 deal see: https://www.sldinfo.com/?p=12421
By Franck Znaty
06/27/2011 – “There are currently no doubts about the stability of the regime in Egypt.” It was in these words that the newly-installed Military Intelligence Director of the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF), Major General Aviv Kochavi, presented his assessment of the political situation in Egypt to the Knesset Foreign Affairs Defense Committee, the day masses of Egyptians made their way to Tahrir square to demand the removal of Husni Mubarak.
The swift removal of power of Mubarak caught many off guard in Israel. While the Tunisian revolution, a mere couple weeks before, showed that this could be the template duplicated by disgruntled Egyptians to extricate themselves from the yoke of Mubarak, analysts assessed that Mubarak’s place as president was assured for some time thanks to the loyalty of the country’s security services as well as that of the army’s. In case the pressure on the regime became too high, the IDF was steadfast in its assessment that power would be transferred to a clique of security officials, whose head would be Omar Suleiman, the country’s former Intelligence chief.
The New Middle East was the title of a book written by the current Israeli President, Shimon Peres in 1994 in the aftermath of the Oslo accords. In this book, Peres outlined his vision for a Middle East whose template should be, he argued, post-World War II Europe in which economic integration was used as a starting point to reconcile and unite European nations on the way to further political integration.
Eighteen years later, as masses of Egyptians made their way to Tahrir Square celebrating the ousting of Hosni Mubarak, several Israeli newspapers borrowed the “New Middle East” idiom to describe the new threat environment that Israel will have to deal with in the future.
This new threat environment is far away from Shimon Peres’ idea of a ‘New Middle East’ will require a remodeling of its strategic thinking. This remodeling was reported earlier by SLD’s Robbin Laird who quoted the Israeli Air Chief calling for a “return to basics” echoing the context of the early days of the State’s existence in which Israel was surrounded by hostile countries bent on its destruction.
What follows is a general survey of the regional threats being directed at Israel as seen from Israel. In this article shall look at the situation Egypt and Syria and the implications vis-à-vis Israel. We shall look at in the next article on the challenges posed by Iran and the borders crossing that Israel had to face in recent weeks.
Egypt
Israel is faced with many challenges in its future relationship with its neighbor across the Sinai.
The first challenge has to do with the possible coming to power of the Muslim Brotherhood and the possible prospect of the repealing of the 1979 peace accords.
While there was no real fear that the Muslim Brotherhood would immediately take the reins of power, there is no doubt that they are the best organized political organization in the country and will be called on to play an important role in the country’s future. As confirmed in statements made to the Wall Street Journal, Amr Moussa, the front runner of this year’s presidential election, the Islamic bloc, led by the MB, is expected to put in an excellent showing in September’s elections which could well translate into an Islamist majority in Parliament. With this majority in hand, the MB will be in a great position to apply pressure to the new President in order to repeal, or at least review the terms of the 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
And Amr Mussa might just be the man for the job. He declared in that same article to the WSJ that Egyptians efforts to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had “led nowhere” and that there might be a reorientation of the policies towards Israel that will aim to “reflect the consensus of the people”.
(Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/56458828@N02/5415859486/)
Popular pressure for the hardening of relations with Israel could very well influence the next Egyptian President. While a repeal of the peace treaty is not expected to take place in the short run, Israel needs to prepare for the reopening of the Southern front as the MB and other nationalist leaders have made it clear what their goals are.
From an Israeli perspective, the rebuilding of the Southern front is where the problem lies as this aspect has not occupied the minds of Israeli military strategists for the past 30 years. A large organizational shake-up is required since no operational planning has yet taken place in order to face an encounter against the Egyptian army in the Sinai.
As Amos Harel, an Israeli defense correspondent, opined in a column in The Guardian, the IDF “is trained for clashes with Hezbollah and Hamas, at the most in combination with Syria. No one has seriously planned for a scenario in which, for example, Egypt identifies with Hamas in the event of an Israeli attack in Gaza.”
Alex Fishman, a senior defense correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Aharonoth, says that the prevailing view in the IDF was that “[a]s long as there’s peace with Egypt there’s no problem, yet if this peace ends, we certainly have a problem. Moreover, this problem will grow if Egypt is not our only front.”
Fishman continues and explains that as things stand today, the Egyptian army has not adopted an offensive posture and that there are no operational plans for a confrontation with Israel in the Sinai. Moreover, he argues that because of the nature of the battlefield in the Sinai, the IDF would have a clear advantage in that it would have the “ability to quickly spot targets and eliminate them”.
However, despite today’s confidence that Egypt will not rush into a confrontation, Israel needs to incorporate into its operational planning the readiness to confront a modern and well-equipped army. As Brigadier General (res.) Shlomo Brom and Yiftah Shapir wrote in a 2005 research paper discussing the military balance of power in the Middle East, the Egyptian army has equipped itself with platforms that would act as a deterrent against the IDF and that the qualitative gap between the two armies in terms of ground and aerial platforms have significantly narrowed. To highlight this point, consider the following: the Egyptian Air Force has 518 fighter planes and the ground forces have just under 4,000 tanks, including 920 Abrams M1A1 with an additional 125 being delivered.[1]
The Egyptians are armed with U.S. equipment with the potential to face the Israelis similarly armed.
Another area of concern in its dealings with the new Egypt is the decrease or the total effacement of the cooperation between Jerusalem and Cairo in the fight against the prospect of a nuclear Iran.
The last few years have seen a greater level of cooperation between the two countries on this issue. It was reported that in March 2009, an Israeli Dolphin-class submarine was granted passage from the Suez Canal to the Red Sea on the way to naval exercises in the Persian Gulf. This was quite significant news as an Israeli defense official declared that “this was definitely a departure from policy” for the Egyptian authorities since this was the first Israeli warship passing through the Canal since 2005.
This “departure from policy” was clearly a message addressed to Iran as Egypt made clear to the Iranians that it would let the Israelis have easier access to the Iranian coast lines in case of an attack to thwart Teheran’s nuclear ambitions.
However, the scope of possible cooperation regarding Iran might be greatly reduced as recent news reports about a possible warming of relations between Cairo and Teheran suggest. A spokeswoman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry recently declared to the New York Times that the Mubarak era in foreign policy was over and Egypt is ready to open a new chapter in its relationship with Iran. She added: “All the world has diplomatic relations with Iran with the exception of the United States and Israel. We look at Iran as a neighbor in the region that we should have normal relations with”. While Egypt’s rapprochement with Iran is still far off from the relationship Syria entertains with Iran, this warming of relation is worrying from an Israeli perspective as Teheran’s net of influence in the region is now reaching Israel’s southern borders.
A third area of concern has to do with Egyptian policy vis-à-vis the Gaza Strip and Hamas. As the MB will gain more and more clout in the Egyptian political scene, a growing rapprochement could well be envisaged with the MB’s offshoot in the Gaza Strip, Hamas, the local branch of the MB. While under Mubarak’s Egypt, the policy in place was the breaking of relations with Hamas, the new Egyptian transitional government played the role of broker in the recent reconciliation deal between Fatah-Hamas.
In another departure from policy, it should also be noted that Egypt allowed the reopening of the Rafah crossing, which marks the entry point to Egypt territory from the Gaza Strip. Egypt decided to close the crossing in 2007, out of concern that it would be used as weapon smuggling passage that could bring instability to the Sinai and also in a move that was meant to penalize Hamas.
In short, Israel can expect in the next few months a sliding of its relationship with Egypt as Cairo experiences a reorientation of its foreign policy that contradicts Israel’s regional objectives. This year’s Presidential and Parliament elections in Egypt will be a good determinant and indicator of how far this relationship will slide in the near future.
Syria
The instability in Syria and the possible removal of power of current President Bashar al-Assad has caused great concerns and questioning in Israel. For Israel, in the words of Eyal Zisser, dean of Humanities at Tel-Aviv University and an expert on Syria and Lebanon, Assad is “the Satan that we know”. Zisser develops that Assad provided stability in the Golan but at the same time he sought and succeeded to reinforce its strategic partnership with Iran and Hezbollah. Indeed, Assad had on several occasions the occasion to stir things up in the Golan and open a new front for Israel such as during the 2006 Lebanon war, or the 2009 operation Cast Lead in Gaza and after the 2007 raid against Syria’s nuclear facility, which was attributed to the Israeli Air Force.
A question that is getting greater attention in Israel is whether Assad will use the old tactics of distracting the international pressure from what is happening within its borders by engaging in a provocation with Israel. While he has already done this by letting Palestinian refugees in Syrian crossing the border with Israel on May 15th (an issue we shall discuss in a future article), Assad could well decide to unleash some of its military arsenal onto Israel.
Yaakov Katz, the defense correspondent to the Jerusalem Post, suggests that Assad could make use of “the thousands of ballistic missiles Syria has manufactured over the years, as well as an extensive chemical arsenal, bolstered as a replacement for the nuclear reactor Israel destroyed in 2007.” This explains, he continues, that the Israeli defense establishment would see with a very bad eye the specter of a foreign military intervention in Syria.
This does not mean that Israel would not welcome the fall of Assad as some benefits could be yielded from it, as we shall see below. However, the suicide strategy consisting of striking Israel would be used at the very last resort in case of near collapse of the regime. This scenario, would make it very hard for Israel to counter, “for there will be no one to deter and punish”[2], warns Mordechai Kedar, an expert on Syria at the Bar Ilan University’s Besa Center.
Syria is composed of many different ethnic group and if the regime were to fall a situation similar to what happened in post-war Iraq could be envisaged because of the ethnic makeup of the country, continues Zisser. Fourty percent of the country’s population, he adds, is formed by different minority groups.
The post-Assad civil war scenario analysis is shared by Mordechai Kedar, who argues that as a result we could see Syria split into six states according to the country’s ethnic lines:
“The Kurds in the North will declare independence as did their brethren in Iraq; the Druze in Jabal al-Druze in the South will restore the autonomy stolen from them by France in 1925; the Bedouins in the East will establish a state with Dir a-Zur as its capital; the Aleppans will exploit the opportunity to throw off the yoke of the hated Damascenes.”[3]
The break-up of Syrian into several states could actually provide great opportunities for Israel as it could mean the break-up the Syrian alliance with Iran and Hezbollah. Kedar says brandishing Israel as an enemy would no longer be used as a factor uniting Syria. However, this analysis only holds if the new Syrian is indeed divided into different parts. Were the Sunni Muslim, making up almost 75% of the population take power in Damascus the cards of restraint vis-à-vis Israel could be redistributed.
Prof. John Myhill in an interesting article on the relationship between the Alawites and Israel argues that a Sunni-ruled Syria would not stand idly in case of a confrontation between Israel and Palestinians because of a share ethnicity with the Palestinians: “These Muslims are particularly dangerous to Israel because they are of the same ethnicity as the Palestinians — this is not just a matter of modern pan-Arab ideology, he writes. ” If a Sunni regime were to rule Syria, any wide-scale
Israeli-Palestinian clash, such as Operation Cast Lead, would likely trigger an emotional response, pulling Syria into an international war with Israel, regardless of the consequences. This represents a much more serious danger to Israel than the fall of the Mubarak regime in Egypt, where popular attachment to the Palestinians is much more superficial”.
[1] Middle East Military Balance files of the Institute for National Security Studies available at http://www.inss.org.il/upload/(FILE)1280140768.pdf
[2] http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=52137
[3] Ibíd.
06/27/2011 – In early June 2011, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) released a comprehensive report on European countries’ defense industrial policies. Thus far, European governments have devoted sufficient resources to keep their deployed forces in a state of high readiness.
Often this has required special funding mechanisms such as supplementary appropriations kept separate from their countries’ regular defense budgets. Furthermore, since the size of most European national armed forces has decreased more rapidly than their governments have cut defense spending, the result has been that spending on the remaining military personnel has increased for the average individual soldier.
The combined effect of these two trends—a general per capita increase in spending and extra resources flowing to select deployable units—has been that some of their forces, particularly those regularly sent to Afghanistan, have received adequate training and equipment to develop the expeditionary capabilities needed by NATO and the EU for sustained post-conflict stabilization operations.
Unfortunately, these few military units represent the exception.
The Franco-German Tiger helicopter is being used in both Libyan and Afghan missions. (Credit: Eurocopter)
For the most part, European governments have kept their other non-deployed forces at lower readiness levels. In addition, they have deferred many of their defense procurement and modernization programs. These funding and capability shortfalls have created major problems in unit readiness levels.
In the current Libyan campaign, many European militaries have experienced major shortages in precision-guided munitions and other essential equipment, ordnance, and other capabilities. The United States, which had been eager to limit its resource allocations to the Libyan War to prioritize the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts, has been forced to fill these gaps.
Furthermore, whatever the per capita effects, Europe’s aggregate defense capacity has probably already declined due to decreased defense budgets and force levels. For example, the number of active duty military personnel in the 37 European countries studied (not all were NATO members) declined from 3.5 million in 2001 to about 2.3 million in 2009.
Finally, although the CSIS Defense Industrial Initiatives Group found that many European have protected their defense budgets during the last few years from the most severe cuts—often because of commitments to NATO, industrial policy considerations, or contractual obligations—they anticipate that this shielding will end as European countries experience major structural economic problems in the next decade. These macroeconomic challenges will include slow growth, high unemployment, enormous fiscal deficits, and an increase in the ratio of retired pensioners to taxpaying workers.
At some point, defense budgets could be squeezed further. Presuming military personnel levels stabilize, the result will be declining per capita spending on soldiers and a decrease in their ability to contribute to the most likely NATO missions, which will involve expeditionary rather than territorial defense operations.
The deep defense budget cuts adopted by many NATO members recently, which came on top of years of insufficient military spending, call into question whether NATO can maintain and develop the expanding defense capabilities called for by the 2010 Strategic Concept, which lists a growing range of security challenges requiring an Allied response.
The November 2010 Summit in Lisbon that adopted the Concept also adopted a so-called Lisbon package of priority capability needs—ranging from missile and cyber defenses to enhanced protection against improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan—aim to bolster the Alliance’s ability to address global threats.
For example, NATO’s newly expanded cyber mission will require significant, accelerated, and efficient modernization among alliance members to guarantee security across communications, military, and energy networks. In addition, the cost of developing and deploying the NATO-wide system to protect their populations from missile attacks from Iran and other neighboring regions may prove uncertain given that equally important projects are already encountering funding difficulties.
Furthermore, sustaining NATO’s nuclear capabilities will require the Alliance to maintain a means to deliver those nuclear weapons it does decide to retain. Europeans’ fleet of expensive dual-capable aircraft capable of dropping U.S. nuclear bombs has reached the end of their operational life and must now be replaced with new delivery systems.
Europeans are adding new power projection capabilities such as the A330MRTT. Credit: Airbus Military)
The best hope for keeping transatlantic capabilities somewhat in harmony would be for there to be greater defense specialization on select military acquisitions by country, increased multinational cooperation in procuring and using military capabilities, and a commitment by NATO governments to concentrate their remaining resources on developing smaller, more expeditionary-capable forces. These steps would best ensure that NATO’s collective capabilities more closely match the sum of its individual members’ contributions.
Optimists hope that the downward pressure on military spending will force European governments to take long-needed measures to reduce procurement duplication and pursue greater military specialization and interoperability. NATO and EU leaders have cited the cost pressure as giving them an opportunity as well as an imperative to secure more military value for defense spending through such measures as reducing unwanted defense duplication, reallocating resources based on collective rather than national priorities, encouraging more national military specialization on niche capabilities, as well as pursuing more collaborative research, development and procurement based on common funding mechanisms.
In some cases, NATO can act as a force multiplier, allowing members to contribute to expensive projects that they could not have afforded to pursue on their own. NATO has achieved some success in such collective defense capability initiatives, such as in the case of the Strategic Airlift Initiative and the Allied Ground Surveillance System. NATO Secretary-General Rasmussen and others have cited the timeshare operations for C-17 transport aircraft based in Hungary as a worthy example of emulation.
Unfortunately, pessimists can point to enduring obstacles to enhanced European defense industrial coherence, and wonder if progress will come soon, or prove sufficiently widespread, to have much of an impact on their military capabilities. Industrial policy concerns such as sustaining domestic employment as well as a natural national reluctance to rely on other countries for military important capabilities typically exert much more influence on NATO or EU spending than collective security considerations.
For this reason, proposals to extend NATO- or EU-wide defense procurement have never made much progress. NATO defense investment continues to be diluted across an excessive number of projects, with the most important military powers seeking to sustain national aviation, shipbuilding, and information technology sectors despite the resulting duplication, inefficiencies, and insufficient economies of scale.
The key question is whether Europe’s most important military powers pursue similar policies. The United Kingdom, France, and Germany represent about 65 percent of all defense expenditure in Europe and 88 percent of all military research and development in Europe.
Most other allies can only make small or niche contributions to expeditionary missions, while still requires that they keep defense spending sufficiently high to permit their military personnel of valuable potential training opportunities.
Despite budgetary strains, their governments are still planning to retain major expeditionary military capabilities—having the ability to deploy some 10,000 to 30,000 troops within a few months on a multi-month mission—for the next few years.
But the end of the Afghanistan mission around 2014 combined with probable future demographic trends such as expected rises in welfare spending and other fiscal pressures will likely result in further reductions over time in force levels, military readiness, and defense procurements.
Even in European countries with large aggregate defense budgets such as Germany, spending is not optimized to NATO’s expanding international security obligations since money flows predominately to manpower and maintenance rather than researching, developing or procuring new weapons systems.
Most European militaries still spend excessively on capabilities related to territorial defense rather than for meeting global challenges through expeditionary forces. Of the two million European active duty forces, only 3-5% of them are readily deployable and sustainable at strategic distances from Europe in complex contingencies such as on stabilization or counter-piracy or peacekeeping missions. These deployments address emerging threats that directly affect Europeans’ interests if not necessarily their national frontiers.
There are several examples of how NATO countries have been able to develop the dynamic and flexible forces the Alliance needs to address these threats rather than legacy forces that suck up funds but provide relatively little defense capability. Belgium, Canada, Denmark, and Norway have all been able to make important contributions to the NATO operation in Libya despite their limited defense spending because they have concentrated their resources on developing expeditionary capabilities such as strike aircraft.
Furthermore, NATO can save money collectively by reducing the size and rationalizing the management of the Alliance’s numerous commands, defense agencies, and other support structures and processes. The November 2010 Lisbon Summit endorsed proposals to make NATO’s new command structure more effective and flexible—specifically by making these structures more easily deployable outside the Euro-Atlantic area. At the summit, NATO committed to adopting a new, streamlined Command Structure, which should reduce costs by around 35%. Such a move will reduce the number of high-end headquarters from eleven to seven, and reduce military personnel by about a third. The number of NATO agencies is set to fall from fourteen to three in an effort to achieve greater efficiency.
But NATO leaders deferred for further discussion and decision the question of which specific cuts to make—the individual Allies can be expected to bargain hard to retain their share of these dwindling assets. How much integration can be achieved in NATO’s administration and logistics support functions, and with what effects, is also uncertain. Even if these changes in NATO’s support structures and processes are extensive, the history of almost all modern defense organizational reforms suggests that realizing massive financial savings or huge efficiency gains is improbable. The appropriate capabilities—and even strategy and tactics—required to fulfill the new NATO missions, such as ensuring members’ cyber and energy security, has only begun to be studied.
The NATO organization could still assist the defense cooperation initiatives of its individual members by improving its long-term force planning processes to ensure better coherence and integration among Allies’ future defense programs, especially for the less visible so-called out-year forces whose procurement will occur at least six years beyond the current budgetary cycle. This could also allow NATO members, including the United States, to develop complementary future capabilities that avoid gaps and exploit synergies.
Some of this is already occurring through existing alliance-wide processes as well as initiatives among a few NATO members. For example, the 2010 British-French treaties has led both countries to consider how to ensure that their various naval capabilities are complementary. The Visegrad Group, the Weimar Group, and the Nordic countries are also engaging in more pooling, sharing, and integrated defense planning. But the procedure needs to be extended to cover more capabilities and countries, including the United States, which has many defense programs that proceed largely independent of NATO.
The NATO Group of Experts that helped write the Strategic Concept cautioned in their May 2010 report that the transatlantic capabilities gap “could undermine Alliance cohesion.” The United States spends almost five percent on its GDP on defense when one includes the supplemental expenditures relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even after the latest round of budget cuts, Britain will still spend more than two per cent of its GDP on defense, and retain the ability to surge forces into distant theaters of war. But many other European governments have been keeping military expenditures to minimum levels well before their recent austerity reductions. In 2009, only five out of 28 NATO members met NATO’s requirement that they spend at least two percent of national GDP on defense.
Achieving a global capability, and sustaining domestic political support for the transatlantic alliance in Washington, requires that the European Allies have some capabilities that they can commit to non-European missions.
By Richard McCormack
Manufacturing News, May 31, 2011
06/06/2011 – China has embarked on a goal of becoming the world’s leader in science, technology, invention, innovation and commercialization through a wide range of “techno-nationalistic” policies, spending programs and incentives.
It is receiving help achieving its goal from U.S. multinational corporations and American universities training many of China’s top scientists. It is also acquiring Western know-how through “espionage and theft of foreign technologies that are often crucial pieces in the United States’ high-tech industrial and military dominance,” according to a report from Centra Technology for the U.S. – China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC).
“U.S. companies have been the leading source of foreign technology for China since the early 1980s.”But China risks not achieving its goal of world technology dominance due to issues associated with central planning that are “often at odds with best practices for innovation,” according to the assessment.
The analysis notes that U.S. multinational companies setting up shop in China are transferring technologies that are being applied in China’s military weapons systems. “Despite arms embargoes and export restrictions, technology collaborations between Western and Chinese firms have significant spillover benefits for Chinese military technology,” says the study.
“In terms of military technology, in just the last few years Chinese entities have been implicated in attempts to acquire protected space shuttle technology, missile technology, radar and electronic warfare technology, navel warship data, unmanned aerial vehicle technology, thermal imaging systems and military night vision systems.”
China’s communist government has substantially increased funding for science and technology “mega projects. “It has boosted research into commercial firms and research institutes and has established technology development and commercialization zones. It has adopted a formal program to “Accelerate the Development of Strategic Emerging Industries” that “intensifies the government’s focus on promoting high-technology enterprises more than ever before,” according to Centra Technology.
From China’s Program for Science and Technology Modernization, 2011
But in many of these well-funded efforts, China “has a mixed record,” says the study. “Industrial policy measures could potentially stifle innovation since they involve ‘picking winners’ and diverting investment to firms and projects that may not have the technological wherewithal to compete effectively.”
Nevertheless, China is benefiting from the investment it is making along with the investment from Western companies establishing operations there. “The PRC has positioned itself to reap the benefits of global commercial and scientific networks,” says Centra Technology.
China has started the process of incremental innovation based on the transfer of Western technology in the areas of rail transport, civilian nuclear and alternative energy. The United States is also helping China become a technological and scientific powerhouse. It has trained China’s top scientists and engineers at American universities and corporations.
“This corps of talent plays an outsized role in China’s technological development,” says the study.
“A shared American and Chinese interest in challenges related to climate change, energy and health has also propelled government-facilitated cooperative science projects and growing academic collaborations.”
Despite all of the good intentions and money being spent, Centra repeatedly states that China may not achieve its potential. “Caught between a tradition of state planning and the need for markets — and between an interest in foreign technology assimilation and the lure of domestically-developed technology — China’s innovation system faces an ambiguous future.
From China’s Program for Science and Technology Modernization, 2011
China has demonstrated a formidable capacity for technological modernization, but its current system of innovation ultimately imposes limits on China’s potential. [T]he Chinese model of science in its present form is unlikely to deliver the types of creative research on which future high-technology leadership will depend.
Bureaucratically driven institutions and programs for science are wasteful. China has yet to show that it can meaningfully use the tools of the state to drive the commercialization of discoveries in research labs in a competitive manner.
And the nation’s drive in a techno-nationalist direction could compromise China’s enabling international scientific links.”
Here’s how Centra Technology describes the failure of China’s innovation policies: “China’s industrial policies, for their part, have succeeded in aiding the growth and expansion of China’s corporations, but often fail to incentivize risk-taking to develop and deploy advanced technologies. Central bureaucracies and local governments have long spent heavily to encourage the development of high-tech industries, but lacking scientific support and protected from competition, they often ended up inundating the market with companies that competed at the low ends of the technological value chain. Other policies have protected high-tech industries from competition, reducing their incentives to innovate.
”To support its thesis that China’s innovation machine is not working well, the study cites Charles Lindblom who says that China’s policies are ”all thumbs, no fingers. Lindblom made those comments in 1977, according to a footnote.
From China’s Program for Science and Technology Modernization, 2011
The study concludes on this note: “There is a clear sense of vision about the importance of science and technology for China’s future, a clear commitment by the political elite to that vision and a willingness to make resources available for the facilities and people needed to realize it.
It is this vision and commitment that capture the imagination of the foreign observer as China enters the second decade of the 21st century. The China that emerges from the pursuit of the vision in spite of the manifest obstacles to its realization will be a formidable presence in the realms of economy and security.”
The study, “China’s Program for Science and Technology Modernization: Implications for American Competitiveness is located at http://www.uscc.gov/researchpapers/2011/USCC_REPORT_China’s_Program_forScience_and_Technology_Modernization.pdf.
It does not provide any “implications” for American competitiveness but over 142 pages does a commendable job describing China’s R&D enterprise with case studies on nuclear power and nanotechnology.
Here is a list of the 16 Chinese “Megaprojects” announced in the “National Medium to Long-Term Plan for the Development of Science and Technology”: