Promoting Economic Integration within the former Soviet Union

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02/14/2012
Dr. Richard Weitz (Credit: The Hudson Institute)

By Dr. Richard Weitz

02/14/2012 – In support of greater integration within the former Soviet Union, Kazakhstan has supported several initiatives: the Eurasian Economic Community, the Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan Customs Union, and most recently a Eurasian Union, which would expand the Customs Union geographically and functionally, which was proposed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last year when he announced his presidential campaign plan.

Many indications make evident the failure of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) to make much progress in promoting economic integration within the former Soviet space.

Not only are transportation networks lagging between CIS countries, but the members do not consistently coordinate their transportation development initiatives with one another, which prevents them from recreating the integrated transportation network that existed during the Soviet era.

One reason for the limited reciprocal investment between CIS members is that the citizens or companies of one member country have limited and unreliable means to protect their property rights or investment in another. CIS-wide legislation is underdeveloped, technical regulations are inconsistent, and authoritative dispute-resolution mechanisms that are both effective and efficient are rare. The members do not have a CIS-wide currency, but many of their national currencies are not readily convertible with one another. National legislation and regulations use different terms and procedures, leading to confusion over which country’s definitions prevails.

Kazakhstan has been a leading advocate of strengthening the EurAsEC. (Credit image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Economic_Community)
Kazakhstan has been a leading advocate of strengthening the EurAsEC. (Credit image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Economic_Community)

The member governments still resort to domestic and export subsidies, domestic preferences for government procurements, as well as export and import restrictions (e.g., camouflaged as sanitary measures) that violate free trade principles. As a result, the members’ economic relations are often governed by dozens of separate bilateral arrangements rather than a more efficient single integrated agreement.

At Nazarbayev’s initiative, some of the former Soviet republics established a Eurasian Economic Community (EAEC or EurAsEC) on October 10, 2000 in an attempt to overcome some of these problems. Nazarbayev made his proposal after the CIS proved unable to make adequate progress in the pursuit of economic integration and the customs union then existing between Kazakhstan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan seemed equally ineffective. (The economic crisis experienced by Russia and Kazakhstan in the late 1990s led them to levy heavy tariffs on each other’s imports.).

In 2005, EurAsEC absorbed the Organization of Central Asian Cooperation, whose members included Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Besides Kazakhstan, the EurAsEC’s membership roster originally included Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan. Uzbekistan joined somewhat later, while Armenia, Moldova, and Ukraine had observer status. The full members accounted for approximately three-fourths of all foreign commercial transactions occurring among the CIS members.

Uzbekistan only became a full member of the EurAsEC in 2006. Uzbekistan had been deepening with the pro-Moscow bloc of former Soviet republics for several years before then.

This process accelerated after the May 2005 military crackdown at Andijan led to a rupture of relations between Uzbekistan and many Western governments. Whereas Western countries criticized and subsequently sanctioned the Uzbek government for employing excessive force against the demonstrators, Russian officials endorsed the Uzbekistan crackdown as a justifiable response to a foreign-inspired terrorist attack. Tashkent accused the United States and certain European governments of encouraging anti-incumbent “colored” revolutions in the former Soviet republics and required almost all NATO forces to stop using its military facilities.

The EurAsEC has sought to promote economic and trade ties among the core countries that formed a unified economic system during the Soviet period by reducing custom tariffs, taxes, duties, and other factors impeding economic exchanges among them. Its stated objectives include creating a free trade zone, a common system of external tariffs, coordinating members’ relations with the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other international economic organizations, promoting uniform transportation networks and a common energy market, harmonizing national education and legal systems, and advancing members’ social, economic, cultural, and scientific development and cooperation.

The participants have discussed more specific projects concerning hydropower, reducing transportation barriers among members, harmonizing their regulations for finances and services, and promoting social ties between members. As with CIS meetings, the most important dialogues at EurAsEC sessions typically occur on the sidelines during bilateral discussions between national leaders.

With its smaller number of members, all favorably disposed toward Moscow’s leadership, EurAsEC represented a logical alternative to the more unwieldy and contentious CIS. By proceeding independently of the other member countries, the member governments aimed to circumvent several of the major impediments to deeper economic integration among the former Soviet republics that had degraded CIS efforts.

The EurAsEC also strengthened ties with another Moscow-dominated regional institution, the Collective Security Treaty Organization CSTO, an intergovernmental military alliance between Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Since the CSTO contains the same members as EurAsEC, plus Armenia, their leaders often hold sessions of both organizations when they assemble at regional summits. Proposals to unify the two organizations periodically arose but were never acted on.

Kazakhstan has been a leading advocate of strengthening the EurAsEC.

At the EurAsEC summit of August 2006, Nazarbayev said he “was always ready to discuss questions concerning integration within the EEC framework.”  In January 2006, Russia and Kazakhstan created a Eurasian Development Bank, with a subscribed capital base of $1.5 billion. Its purpose was to help finance infrastructure and development and private sector activities in Central Asia. Analysts believed it could become an important instrument in enhancing EurAsEC’s effectiveness.

In late 2007, Tair Mansurov, previously governor of North Kazakhstan region and a former Kazakh ambassador to Russia, replaced Grigory Rapota, from Belarus, who had served as as EurAsEC Secretary General since October 2001, almost for the entire history of the organziation. At a EurAsEC meeting in January 2008, Kazakhstani Prime Minister Karim Masimov proposed convening a major business forum in Astana to consider creating a Eurasian Economic Union as well as establishing a Eurasian scientific club and a Eurasian bank devoted to promoting new technologies.

One clear Kazakhstani priority has been to promote cooperative initiatives within EurAsEC to assess how to regulate Central Asia’s unevenly distributed water resources and exploit the region’s potential to generate hydroelectric power. During the Soviet period, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan would store excess water in winter and then release it in summer to the downstream countries of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. According to the Soviet economic plan, these latter countries would use the water to support agriculture and cotton harvesting, receiving fossil fuels in return for winter heating. The break-up of the USSR has made it easier for Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, despite complaints by the other three countries, to use more water for hydropower to generate electricity for their own uses.

The International Crisis Group (ICG) and other institutions have long warned that the continued lack of an effective region-wide mechanism for managing water supplies could engender further conflicts among Central Asian countries. For example, a May 2002 ICG report warns that, “Tensions over water and energy have contributed to a generally uneasy political climate in Central Asia. Not only do they tend to provoke hostile rhetoric, but they have also prompted suggestions that the countries are willing to defend their interests by force if necessary.”

Kazakhstani analysts worked with others within the EurAsEC framework proposed a general set of principles for regulating Eurasian water supplies for members’ consideration. These include determining a suitable fuel and energy balance for the countries, restoring Soviet principles of irrigation for downstream states, promoting joint investment in building power stations, removing barriers for electricity companies in a common market for member states, and establishing multinational regulatory bodies.

But the EurAsEC’s integration efforts soon also lost steam and failed to create effective multinational regulatory bodies. The members’ diverging status with respect to the World Trade Organization (WTO) was a major factor complicating integration initiatives. For example, Kyrgyzstan had entered the WTO as a full member in 1998, the Russian government negotiated half-heartedly for entry, and while Belarus showed little interest in joining. Given the difficulties that Belarus and Russia alone have had in negotiating a possible currency union, its members have lost enthusiasm for creating a EurAsEC currency union.

Although relations between Russia and Kazakhstan are traditionally close, Nazarbayev has made clear that he does not want to rely exclusively on the CIS, EurAsEC, or other Russian-dominated institutions to promote Eurasian regional integration. Within the EurAsEC, Russia enjoys a 40% share in the voting and financial rights, whereas Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Uzbekistan only have 15% each, while Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan control merely 7.5% each.

Differences between Putin and Nazarbayev were evident at the October 2007 session of the EurAsEC Intergovernmental Council in Dushanbe. At the summit, Nazarbayev expressed dissatisfaction with Moscow’s domination dominant role within the EurAsEC and other former Soviet institutions, which he argued should function very differently than during the Moscow-dominated Soviet period: “Of course Russia is the biggest economy and we cooperate smoothly. But although the special role of France and Germany is taken into account in the European Union, they cannot make decisions without smaller member states.”  At this Dushanbe summit, Nazarbayev repeated his longstanding call for the creation of a union of Central Asian countries that would “allow the region of 50 million people to create a self-sufficient market using both economic and political means.”

Nonetheless, it was precisely at this summit that Nazarbayev, Putin, and President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus signed the documents establishing the legal foundation for the EurAsEC’s long-delayed trilateral customs and trade union.

In the end, only Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Russia decided to form the current Customs Union.

The official reason given for proceeding without the other three EurAsEC members–Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan—was that they had yet to establish a legal basis for participating. The Russian media, however, cited a source in the Kremlin as acknowledging that the other three EurAsEC members were excluded due to their low levels of economic development.

But the Customs Union has also not achieved as much as its founders hoped. Russia tried to use the success of the Customs Union as a magnet to attract more members. At  its founding, Putin stated that the Customs Union would gradually accept new members. Tajikistan President Emomali Rakhmonov announced his government’s intention to join the Customs Union in the future.

But until now the Customs Union has remained a trilateral enterprise. The few countries involved made the Customs Union less useful in terms of realizing economic efficiencies. Furthermore, the relationship between Russia and Kazakhstan was always the strongest, while Russia-Belarus economic ties has marked by considerable conflict. For example, the governments of Belarus and Russia disagreed over energy prices and tariff policy. Other differences over taxation and currency issues have blocked decade-long plans to establish a Russia-Belarus Union State.

Featured Image: Credit Bigstock

Transatlantic Defense and the New US-UK Partnership

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02/13/2012
Dr. Richard Weitz (Credit: The Hudson Institute)

By Dr. Richard Weitz

02/13/2012 – One of the results of the Pentagon’s recent global posture review has been to authorize further reductions in the number of U.S. troops based in Europe. NATO and European officials profess unconcern about the decision, but the reduction requires NATO, especially its European contingents, to make more progress in improving defense integration within the Alliance.

In rolling out the Pentagon’s new Defense Strategic Guidance earlier this month, Secretary of Defense Leo Panetta explicitly stated that Europe has become a lower defense priority compared with Asia and the Middle East: “U.S. military’s force posture in Europe will, of necessity, continue to adapt and evolve to meet new challenges and opportunities, particularly in light of the security needs of the continent relative to the emerging strategic priorities that we face elsewhere.”

The Guidance itself argues that the demand for U.S. forces in Europe has declined given ongoing and anticipated improvements in NATO’s non-U.S. capabilities: “Most European countries are now producers of security rather than consumers of it. Combined with the drawdown in Iraq and Afghanistan, this has created a strategic opportunity to rebalance the U.S. military investment in Europe, moving from a focus on current conflicts toward a focus on future capabilities. In keeping with this evolving strategic landscape, our posture in Europe must also evolve.”

One week later, a senior U.S. defense policy maker confirmed to the media that the Obama administration had decided to withdraw two of the four U.S. Army brigades from Europe.

Secretary Panetta later said that DoD representatives have reassured Europeans that additional soldiers would continue to rotate into and through Europe on training and other missions. “As a matter of fact, they will probably see more of the Americans under the new strategy because the brigades that were there were actually fighting in Afghanistan and weren’t even there. . . . What you are going to have is two [brigades] plus this large rotational presence that is going to be there.”

The UK-US relationship will be an important part of restructuring forces to deal with European and Mediterranean contingencies. Libya and Bold Alligator 2012 are providing inputs to that rethink. (Credit: Bigstock)
The UK-US relationship will be an important part of restructuring forces to deal with European and Mediterranean contingencies. Libya and Bold Alligator 2012 are providing inputs to that rethink. (Credit: Bigstock)

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has joined other European officials in praising the U.S. strategy, calling it consistent with the alliance’s vision for collective defense. ”The announcement follows consultation with allies,” he said. “As President Obama said, the U.S. will continue investing in NATO because the alliance has demonstrated time and time again – most recently in Libya – that it is a force multiplier.”

Somewhat less than 40,000 U.S. Army soldiers, and about 100,000 American citizen dependents, are currently stationed in Europe.  The other three U.S. Military Services keep another 40,000 U.S. troops in Europe.  The Army units include four brigade combat teams (BCT), three of which are in Germany and the fourth is in Vicenza, Italy. Until recently, the Pentagon was expected to withdraw only one of the brigades, which includes about 3,500 soldiers as well as additional support staff.

Yet, reductions have been taking place since the end of the Cold War.

Even before then, U.S. views of the transatlantic partnership have evolved from what the United States should do for Europe to what Europe and the United States should do together, in Europe and elsewhere. The U.S. Sixth Fleet has not had an aircraft carrier battle group in the Mediterranean for many years. The base realignment and closure plan of 2005 called for having only two brigades based in Europe. The Army was in the process of reducing the number of soldiers in Europe from 62,000 to 28,000.

Then in 2007 the planned reductions were halted due to concerns about deteriorating NATO-Russia relations and the need for more troops to train and work with new NATO allies.

Concerns about Russian foreign policy have since declined, but the Libyan War has reminded everyone of the value of another EUCOM contribution: its supporting role of other U.S. geographic commands, especially in Africa and the Middle East. These regions lie closer to Europe than the United States, but adverse security developments there can affect all NATO allies.

Even so, the proposed two-BCT force reduction is less radical than it sounds: two of the EUCOM-assigned BCTs have regularly been deployed in war zones such as Afghanistan without any noticeable degradation of European security.

The U.S. Army in Europe has transformed tremendously since the Cold War, when it was largely a fixed garrison force designed to defeat a massive Warsaw Pact conventional attack through Germany. Since Operation Enduring Freedom began in late 2001, 20-40 percent of the forces assigned to European Command have been deployed in another theater at any given time. Currently some 11,000 EUCOM-based troops are serving on out-of-theater missions.

“This is not a separation in any way from NATO,” General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, insisted at the briefing presenting the new Defense Strategic Guidance. “And we’re in dialogue and will be in dialogue with them about what it means.”  One inevitable result will be further efforts to promote so-called “Smart Defense” initiatives among NATO allies.

Operation Unified Protector over Libya against demonstrated NATO’s continued reliance on the United States for essential capabilities such as logistics, air-breathing assets, and intelligence analysis. NATO countries do not have enough modern air-breathing assets, aerial refueling tankers, and airlift capacity to deploy forces outside Europe.

Even so, NATO governments now acknowledge that European countries will be lucky to maintain let alone increase their defense spending. There seems an enduring military capabilities supply-demand imbalance: countries demand for collective defense assets is typically greater than their willingness to supply them.

The focus now will be on eliminating redundancies among NATO forces.

In addition, the allies will employ more sub-alliance defense agreements between several countries. For example, a recent UK-French agreement even provided for joint deployments. There will also be more pooled NATO military assets, AWACS aircraft, for instance, are based in Germany, are crewed by 14 nations, and can use forward bases in Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Norway.

Phillip Hammond, the British Secretary of State for Defense, visited the United States earlier this month to consult with the Pentagon. He delivered a speech at the Atlantic Council on January 5, 2012 that emphasized Britain’s commitment to NATO despite the planned cuts in the UK defense budget. The British government has authorized a reduction in their $59 billion annual defense budget—the fourth highest in the world–by eight percent over the next four years.

“The successful response of the alliance to the crisis in Libya has reconfirmed the utility of NATO in delivering military force in a coalition and serving the needs of international security,” Hammond said in his speech. “When the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1973, who did they think would implement it? When sustained multinational action was required, NATO was the only realistic coordinating mechanism.”

Hammond particularly praised NATO for providing “a ready structure for joint and combined operations which it is impossible to replicate quickly elsewhere.” He noted that Libya and Afghanistan both show how NATO’s protocols and structures make it easy for existing members and new partners to conduct integrated operations even on an ad-hoc basis.

But Hammond cautioned that, “Afghanistan and Libya have shown that the alliance as a whole, and the contributions of some of its members, fall short of what our collective defense requires – in terms of capability, in terms of the balance of contribution and in terms of the will to deploy.” Political and economic realities means that European countries will not soon increase their defense spending. Instead, “fixing these problems will mean finding smarter ways of working together to get greater capability from the resources that exist.”

Hammond laid out a three-step process for helping NATO grapple with its current budget problems.

  • The Allies should first conduct a comprehensive assessment of the Alliance’s collective capabilities. “This needs to take account of what we know of reductions that are already planned, how these impact on current capabilities and how well these capabilities are supported and able to be sustained.”
  • Comparing the results with NATO’s stated requirements would reveal what gaps exist.
  • Then the Allies could “collectively direct the drive towards a number of capacity enhancing actions: greater pooling and sharing of capabilities; mission, role and geographic specialization; greater sharing of technology; co-operation on logistics; alignment of research and development programs; and more collaborative training.”

Hammond’s visit provides some indication of how the United States might support the new sub-alliance defense agreements.

When they met at the Pentagon on January 6, Panetta and Hammond signed a “Statement of Intent on Carrier Cooperation and Maritime Power Projection” that will provide a framework for increased U.S.-UK cooperation and interoperability in the use and development of aircraft carriers.

DoD Pentagon spokesman George Little described this agreement as “a cutting-edge example of close allies working together in a time of fiscal austerity to deliver a capability needed to maintain our global military edge.”

The intent is to help mitigate the adverse effects on allied naval capabilities due to the major cutbacks in British naval shipbuilding capabilities in recent years. By encouraging U.S. sharing of insights and technologies, the British should be able to save time and money building their future carriers.

The two Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers now under construction, which is scheduled to enter service in 2016 and 2018, will see the Royal Navy adopt expensive but necessary changes to maintain their power projection viability. For example, the British Navy is installing catapults and arrestor gear on the vessels and replacing the VSTOL capable Harriers on current carriers in favor of the catapult-launched F-35Cs used by U.S. Navy carriers.

But it is certainly conceivable the UK could reverse this decision and go back to the F-35B and avoid the costs of transforming their carrier.  This would also assist the UK special forces in being able to make more effective use of carrier deck space. (See also, https://www.sldinfo.com/an-update-on-the-future-uk-aircraft-carriers/ and http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=defense&id=news/awst/2011/08/08/AW_08_08_2011_p47-352385.xml.)

At the Atlantic Council, Hammond reaffirmed the United Kingdom’s commitment to acquiring the F-35: “We are committed to purchasing the carrier variant, and the regeneration of carrier strike force is at the heart of our defense strategy, and we believe will be – bring a big gain for NATO, and potentially a big relief to U.S. effort in the European sphere.”

Ideally, the U.S.-UK carrier construction cooperation arrangement will extend some sharing to France through the existing British-French carrier cooperation agreement so that the United States, Britain, and France can share insights, technologies, and costs. And the current Bold Alligator 2012 exercise certainly supports such an approach, as the French are heavily engaged in the exercise, and indeed are leading the initial insertion of ground forces.

Editor’s Note: Ironically, this confluence of US-UK-French con-ops rethink and recalibration is occurring off of the Virginia-North Carolina close not far from the famous Battle of Chesapeake where the French navy provided a very significant input to the US victory at Yorktown.

Kazakhstan and the Commonwealth of Independent States

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Dr. Richard Weitz (Credit: The Hudson Institute)

By Dr. Richard Weitz

02/13/2012 – The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), consisting of all the former Soviet republics except for the Baltic countries, initially represented Kazakhstan’s most important regional institution after the USSR’s disintegration. On December 16, 1991, Kazakhstan became the last of the 15 former Soviet republics to declare the country’s independence. Five days later, Kazakhstan joined the new CIS, which effectively marked the end of the Soviet Union.

At its founding in 1991, President Nursultan Nazarbayev backed the creation of the CIS on the grounds that the “future relations of independent states will be underpinned by a spiritual unity of nations, fostered by many generations of our ancestors.”  Kazakhstan proposed adoption of the CIS Development Concept and an associated action plan to outline priority areas for long-term cooperation among CIS members.

The CIS itself initially played a useful role in facilitating a “civilized divorce” among its members. Compared with the chaos that arose in the former Yugoslavia, another communist-dominated multinational state that had failed to resolve its underlying ethnic divisions, the disintegration of the Soviet Union occurred with less violence. For the most part, the leaders of Kazakhstan and the other newly independent former Soviet republics accepted the USSR’s administrative boundaries as their new national borders. Russian President Vladimir Putin praised the CIS for “clearly help[ing] us to get through the period of putting in place partnership relations between the newly formed young states without any great losses and play[ing] a positive part in containing regional conflicts in the post-Soviet area.”

The problems of achieving consensus among twelve combined with the organization’s weak, opaque, and inefficient institutions for making and implementing decisions make it difficult for the CIS to be an effective multi-national institution. (Credit image: Bigstock)The problems of achieving consensus among twelve combined with the organization’s weak, opaque, and inefficient institutions for making and implementing decisions make it difficult for the CIS to be an effective multi-national institution. (Credit image: Bigstock)

The CIS achievements came at a time of deep difficulty for most of the Soviet republics, which were making the difficult triple transitions from an integrated socialist economic and political system to one characterized by newly independent states with varying degrees of free market economic systems and pluralistic political systems.

The first decade of the CIS was market by political disputes within the new countries; economic chaos within and among them; the rise of transnational criminal organizations, mass population movements, and extremist political and religious ideologies; as well as several vicious military conflicts involving various ethnic and paramilitary groups drawing out elements of the previous integrated Soviet armed forces. The most serious conflicts occurred in Tajikistan, Georgia, Moldova and between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.

These conflicts soon froze under CIS-mediated truces. Often the peacekeepers were mainly Russian troops under Moscow’s control but cloaked under a multilateral cover. Unfortunately, neither the CIS nor anyone else has been able to resolve the conflicts between Armenia-Azerbaijan, Georgia-Russia, and Moldova-Transniester. The Georgia conflict thawed in August 2008 and the other two are vulnerable to the same outcome.

The CIS did enjoy some favorable conditions in its rudimentary stage, Its leaders, almost all of whom had been educated during the Soviet period, had a similar world outlook and a ready fluency in the Russian language. Many agreements are reached and disagreements circumvented thanks to the informal coordination that regularly occurs between the leaders and their ministers.

The CIS did initially help generate some security collaboration among its members. The leaders of Kazakhstan and Belarus, Russia, the three South Caucasus countries, and the other Central Asian states except Turkmenistan) signed a CIS Collective Security Treaty (CST) at their May 15, 1992, summit in Tashkent. It called for military cooperation and joint consultations in the event of security threats to any member. At the time to renew the treaty in 1999, Uzbekistan, Georgia, and Azerbaijan formally withdrew.

The CST signatories pledged to refrain from joining other alliances directed against any other signatory. The CST signatories also agreed to cooperate to resolve conflicts between members and cooperate in cases of external aggression against them. The main effect of the Tashkent Treaty was to help Russia legitimize its continued military presence in many CIS members.

After its first few years, however, the CIS ceased having a great impact on its members’ most important security policies. For instance, the agreement establishing a collective air defense network, which began to operate in 1995, had to be supplemented by separate bilateral agreements between Russia and several important participants such as Ukraine. Georgia and Turkmenistan withdrew from the system in 1997.

The influence of the CIS reached nadir in 1999, when Russia withdrew its border guards from Kyrgyzstan and its military advisers from Turkmenistan, while three members (Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Uzbekistan) declined to renew their membership in the CST.

Despite the CST, CIS governments proved unable to collaborate sufficiently to end the civil war in Tajikistan or establish a common front regarding the Taliban and related terrorist threats emanating from Afghanistan, exposing the weakness of the Tashkent Treaty at the time it was most needed. It was only in March 2000 that Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan finally announced the establishment of the long-discussed CIS antiterrorist center.

Some military activities still occur within the CIS framework. For example, Kyrgyzstan has hosted several CIS anti-terrorist exercises, beginning with “South-Antiterror-200.” It rehearsed resisting another Islamist terrorist incursion through Kyrgyzstan, which had occurred in 1999-2000.

More recently, the CIS Anti-Terrorism Center sponsored exercises in Kyrgyzstan last year. The “Berkut-Antiterror-2011” and “Yug [South]-Antiterror-2011” exercises occurred May 3-4 in Osh. The drills included law enforcement and special service personnel from Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Tajikistan. The troops rehearsed combating hypothetical terrorists that had attacked buildings and seized vehicles. The heads of various CIS security agencies, special forces and law enforcement agencies observed the drills.

During the drill, Osh Mayor Melis Myrzakmatov said that, “The past decade has shown that the initiative of the CIS Council of Heads of State in creating the Anti-Terrorist Centre was timely and correct.” He noted that the past decade since its establishment has seen a number of terrorist groups active in the CIS region, including the al-Qaeda, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Islamic Movement of Eastern Turkestan, and Hizb ut-Tahrir, which many Western governments do not consider a terrorist group.

Myrzakmatov still considered such exercises valuable since “[s]uch command-staff exercises and training sessions are needed on a constant basis because they clearly demonstrate to the public that the authorities are taking steps in the fight against extremists and terrorists.”

In addition, Myrzakmatov added that, “We have to recognise that the elimination of Osama bin Laden could rally his supporters even more strongly,” he told Central Asia Online. “They could pool their strength to destabilise the Fergana Valley. This means we have to be ready for anything and the danger from the Afghan-Tajik border remains considerable.”

In October 2007, the member governments did agree to establish a special CIS body to supervise migration among their countries. Migration has been a recurring source of tension between the labor exporting countries of Central Asia and the recipient countries, above all Russia. Not only are the Central Asian migrants badly treated in Russia, but they are often the first to lose their jobs during a Russian economic downturn, as occurred in 2008.

The CIS has also established a corps of election observers that, by almost always certifying its members’ elections as free and fair, help dilute the typically more critical assessments of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), whose evaluation is nonetheless considered authoritative. For example, while the OSCE found the April 2010 presidential and January 2011 parliamentary elections in Kazakhstan flawed, the CIS monitors determined that it met all their requirements for a legitimate ballot.

A more recent preoccupation of some CIS governments has been exerting additional control over the Internet, still one of the freest communications media in teh former Soviet republics–under the rubric of combating cyber crime and cyber terrorism. In October 14, 2011, the CIS interior ministers adopted a draft strategy for CIS cooperation on this issue. Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said that, “These sorts of crimes tend to be international, which is why we should work together to fight them.”

Another official in the Russian Interior Ministry, Alexei Moshkov, observed that, “We think it should contain some practical measures for keeping the national information space from being used for destructive political and social means.”  The CIS governments have been trying to promote such Internet controls at a global level. Moshkov explained that securing multinational agreement within the CIS framework helps their members advance this wider objective, observing that, “The high level at which it is being discussed will provide a strong impetus for the development of a global model for fighting cyber crime.”

One problem that became increasingly evident over time was that the CIS historically has had difficulties securing implementation of many of the economic, political, and security agreements its member governments have signed.

Although the institution does provide opportunities for dialogue among its members, especially among government ministries and agencies dealing with common problems such as customs and migration, and legislatures through the CIS Parliamentary Assembly, the lack of effective enforcement or oversight mechanisms severely limits effective cooperation. According to President Nazarbayev, of the 1,600 agreements formally adopted by the CIS, its members had signed and implemented fewer than 30% of them. Even Russian lawmakers ratify only a small percentage of CIS accords, making it hard to reconcile members’ conflicting legislation and policies.

The CIS did not fulfill Kazakhstan’s objective of establishing a system of collective security in the former Soviet Union.

The organization also failed to achieve the extensive degree of regional economic integration sought by the Kazakhstani government. By 2009, Kazakhstan was second in the CIS, after Russia, in terms of GDP per capita. But the CIS did not really help Kazakhstani businesses reach the potentially vast market of almost 280 million consumers.

Thus, as a collective institution, the CIS punches far below the aggregate weight of its individual members.

The members cover approximately one-sixth of the earth’s surface, possess large shares of important natural resources such as oil and gas, and have some five percent of the world’s population. Yet, they account for only three percent of international trade. Putin said trade volume within the CIS rose 48 percent in the first half of 2011 to 134 billion U.S. dollars.  But many members conduct more trade and investment with non-CIS members than with their CIS partners. This dependence on external financing and commodity exports punished many CIS countries heavily during the recent global economic downturn. The current economic rebound rests on fragile foundations since they are highly vulnerable to negative spillover from the financial crisis in the European Union, a leading importer of many of their products.

Besides its structural weaknesses, policy differences among CIS members also have called into question the institution’s viability. Major frictions between Russia and other members have arisen over a number of issues. For instance, the CIS members have diverged over the appropriate prices for Russian energy and Russia’s restrictions on labor mobility. Plans to establish a CIS free trade zone have been repeatedly postponed due to the disparities among its members in terms of economic policies and attributes.

Similar divergences have been evident in the desire of some but not all CIS members to move closer to seemingly rival Western institutions like the European Union and NATO. The wave of color revolutions a few years ago widened divergences among the members’ political systems, with certain countries seeking to establish European-style liberal democracies and other regimes committed to preserving their authoritarian status quo. Some member governments see the organization primarily as a mechanism for consultations with fellow CIS leaders, a concept derisively referred to as a “presidential club” by its critics. Even such close CIS allies as Russia and Belarus are divided over key issues like whether to adopt a common currency and over the price other CIS members should pay for Russia’s oil and gas.

Ironically, a core weakness of the CIS—its limited means to enforce harmony regarding goals, policies, and values of its members—also probably will prevent its complete disintegration. Much more than the EU, the CIS encourages its members to pursue “multi-speed integration” arrangements in which the pace of integration varies by issue and the participants. Since it exercises so few limits on their freedom of action, these governments lack a strong reason to break with inertia and formally leave the organization. Instead, the CIS likely will persist, but as a decreasingly influential institution as its members redirect their attention and resources elsewhere.

President Nazarbayev has been pushing for years for a major restructuring and strengthening of the organization. At the July 2006 informal summit of CIS leaders in Moscow, he offered a comprehensive program for reforming the CIS that proposed concentrating reform efforts in five main areas: migration, transportation, communications, transnational crime, and scientific, educational, and cultural cooperation. Nazarbayev also suggested several cost-cutting measures that would have allowed for the more efficient use of the organization’s resources.

At the November 2007 meeting of CIS Prime Ministers in Ashgabat, Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Masimov called for the establishment of a common CIS food marketing and pricing policy. Masimov stated that “food prices have been growing lately so … our governments should draft specific measures and take specific steps for lifting administrative and other non-market barriers in food deliveries.” The CIS leaders decided to create a group of CIS agricultural ministers to develop a food market development strategy.”

Russian leaders have also supported Nazarbayev’s reform proposals. “It is our duty to pay close attention to cooperation with countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States,” Russia President Dmitry Medvedev observed during a May 2008 joint news conference with Nazarbayev. “The time has come for ties to be intensified.”  Medvedev also endorsed the Kazakh government’s proposal to make energy cooperation the priority issue of the CIS agenda in 2009.

In 2008 the CIS heads of government endorsed “The Strategy of CIS Economic Development until 2020.” The following year, they approved an action plan for implementing its first phase. After more than a decade of difficult negotiations, the CIS governments unexpectedly agreed in October 2011 to establish a free trade area among themselves. Presumably reflecting concerns about the global financial crisis and other threats to their economic welfare, it provides for the gradual reduction in import and export duties and other impediments to free trade.  But three of the CIS presidents declined to sign the agreement. And the CIS has had a perennial problem securing implementation of any agreement that is reached by its members.

The problems of achieving consensus among twelve governments with divergent political, economic, and security agendas–combined with the organization’s weak, opaque, and inefficient institutions for making and implementing decisions–have led to the stagnation and steady decline of the CIS relative to the other major multinational institutions present in Central Asia.

Perennial plans to reform its ineffective decision making structures have failed to achieve much progress. For the most part, the CIS members have ignored or failed to implement these reform proposals. Several CIS presidents have repeatedly not even bothered to attend the CIS heads-of-state summit. Other international organizations have therefore assumed the lead role in promoting multinational integration among the former Soviet republics regarding most other issues.

Credit Featured Image: Bigstock

Obama’s Defense Budget Priorities and Choices Partially Revealed

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02/08/2012

By Dr. Richard Weitz

2/01/2012 – On January 26, the Pentagon released its “Defense Budget Priorities and Choices” document. This 15-page brochure, along with the budget briefings provided by Senior DoD officials that day and subsequently, provided some information on how the new Defense Strategic Guidance will affect the Department’s future military programs.
The choices in budget priorities, designed to meet the White House’s mandate to cut $37 billion from its previously planned Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 defense spending, generally conform with the new directions contained in the Guidance but leave several key questions unanswered.

The Department’s topline request for FY13 is $525 billion, down from an original $531 billion. The Pentagon requests an additional $88.4 billion for overseas contingency operations (OCO), mostly in Afghanistan, a major cut from the originally proposed $115 billion. The request aims to begin the process of reducing the defense budget by $259 billion during the next five years and $487 billion during the next decade.

Will the DOD budget cuts be strategy driven? (Credit Image: Bigstock)
Will the DOD budget cuts be strategy driven? (Credit Image: Bigstock)

The Department of Defense (DoD) will release more detailed budget information when President Barack Obama formally submits his proposed FY13 budget to Congress, which is scheduled to occur on February 13. SLD readers will hopefully find answers to some key questions when they appear:

•    Do the Military Services retain their traditionally roughly equal proportion of the DoD budget—or do the shares of the Air Force and the Navy rise while that of the Army declines, as one would expect from the proposed Asia-Pacific pivot, where air and maritime power is most applicable given the large distances involved and the limited patience of Asian countries to host large numbers of U.S. ground troops.

•    What is the proposed mix of the Active and Reserve Components—by Service and in the aggregate? In general, one would expect the Reserve Components to be spared major cuts since the Department describes them as essential for mitigating the risk of the large Active Components reductions by hedging against unanticipated threats. And the Air Force and the Navy, for the reasons described above, would likely keep essential activities in  the more readily available Active Components.

•    Which core category will receive the most severe cuts? Personnel costs makes up 1/3rd of the Pentagon’s budget, but the Department states that they will only take 1/9th of the total cuts, notwithstanding that the Army and Marines will decrease in size to 490,000 and 182,000 people, respectively.

•    If personnel costs are shielded, than procurement will probably be cut most heavily since the Department briefers insist they will avoid a return to the “hollow” military of the 1970s by preserving readiness.  But how does this square with the Pentagon’s general vision of substituting sophisticated military capabilities for military personnel?

•    Which programs are best protected from the defense cuts or even given greater funding?  The “Defense Budget Priorities and Choices” document states that, ”Meeting the requirements of the new strategic guidance entailed increasing funding for a few key capabilities while protecting others at existing levels or making comparatively modest reductions.” The document lists the following priorities:

o    Counter-terrorism (which would include SOF, ISR, and UAV systems)

o    Cyber operations (“cyber is one of the few areas in which we actually increased our investments, including in both defensive and offensive capabilities)

o    Power projection (bombers and aircraft carriers)

o    Space systems

o    Counter WMD (increased funding against biological threats)

o    Science and technology

We have learned that detailed military strategies are highly sensitive to even small changes in the defense budget as well as large transformations in the international security environment. The Defense Department has regularly had to discard a strategy within a year of issuing it.

This month’s strategy and budget briefers have stressed the connection between the Pentagon’s new strategy and the proposed resources and projects. They also insist that their force proposals constitute an integrated package and that changes in one element could cause the whole package to unravel.

But Congress is unlikely to simply adopt the proposed budget without changes. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon released a statement on January 26 that  criticized the Obama Administration’s new defensive strategy and military posture and warning that his committee “will continue and intensify our rigorous oversight, keeping in mind that while the President proposes, Congress disposes.” The Congress should probe the following issues during such hearings:

•    What kinds of trade-offs will the Congress consider along the above lines (among the categories, Military Services, and AC/RC components)?

•    The proposed budget does not offer any high-profile reductions, such as discarding an aircraft carrier. Is their absence because the Department is hording some bargaining chips to offer to Congress to avert deeper cuts or sequestration? What are these?

•    The Obama administration has prided itself on its whole-of-government approach, as manifested among other things by its use of an integrated multi-agency national security budget. How do the proposed changes in the DoD budget relate to corresponding changes in the budgets of the State Department and the rest of the national security departments and agencies. For example, in Iraq, the State Department is supposed to receive a budget boost to compensate for the U.S. military withdrawal. Are such trade-offs evident elsewhere and will Congress honor them or cut all capabilities with equally destructive vigor?

•    The Department’s funded programs aim primarily to help the Pentagon fight a high-technology war. These include the commitments to maintain the current bomber, aircraft carrier, and amphibious fleets. In addition, the Department will increase the cruise missile capacity of future Virginia-class submarines, design a conventional prompt strike option from submarines, and field improved air-to-air missiles. Finally, it will develop a new long-range strategic stealth bomber.

•    Congress needs to probe whether this may be wishful thinking—an understandable desire to deemphasize counterinsurgencies and counterterrorism to refight the beloved Desert Storm Campaign. The Guidance explicitly says that the Department is not anticipating a large-scale long-term counterinsurgency, but how confident is the Pentagon of this assessment, and how well can the Department respond should one or two such contingencies arise: Two such conflicts occurred quiet recently in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the current strategic environment is ripe with failed states, civil wars, and other internal conflicts? Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates strove during his tenure to institutionalize irregular capabilities within the regular military to avert the post-Vietnam experience, when the Army readily unlearned how to fight guerrillas.

•    More generally, the Department places great faith in its ability to “structure major adjustments in a way that best allows for their reversal or for regeneration of capabilities in the future if circumstances change.” How does the Department measure “reversibility” when it comes to recovering discarded or reduced capabilities? Has the Department actually assessed how long it would require to resume or accelerate key defense production lines or recall retired personnel to military service? What will happen over time as the weapons systems and veterans from the post-9/11 conflicts now leaving active service decline in number and effectiveness.

•    The Department acknowledges that it will need to rely more on allies and partners to compensate for some of the proposed DoD cuts. Have U.S. government representatives engaged in extensive consultations to ensure that allies will retain or develop essential capabilities that will be reduced by the United States? Does the Department propose to increase funding for Global Train and Equip and other foreign military training programs so that allies and partners can compensate for reduced U.S. COIN and counterterrorist capabilities.

•    In “Defense Budget Priorities and Choices” the Department confirms it has cut back on some ballistic missile defense (BMD) programs. DoD adds that, “Despite its importance, we were not able to protect all of the funding in this area. We protected investments in homeland defense and the Phased Adaptive Approach for missile defense in Europe aimed at protecting our allies. We reduced spending and accepted some risk in deployable regional missile defense and will increase reliance on allies and partners in the future.” But how convinced is the Department that U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf and especially the Pacific will compensate through their own redoubled BMD efforts (either by purchasing their own BMD systems or by developing their own) and will use their capabilities to defend U.S. forces even when they have not been directly threatened.

There are also several longer-term questions whose answers will only become clear several years from now:

•    The Department seems to place excessive faith in their ability to save money through “efficiencies.” Notwithstanding having already identified more than $150 billion in savings over the FY 13-17 period, the Pentagon now claims to have discovered another $60 billion “efficiencies and overhead savings” during those five years. Examples include:

o    More skillful contracting practices

o    Better use of information technology

o    Better use of business and enterprise systems

o    Streamlined staff

o    Limitations on official travel

o    Better inventory management

o    Reductions in contract services

o    Deferral of some military construction

o    Reductions in planned civilian pay raises

•    Given that the previous practice of pledging to eliminate “waste, fraud, and abuse” never worked out, are these alleged savings credible, realizable, and wise?

•    Is the Defense Department serious about launching a new round of base closures? First, this is an election year, so Congress will likely resist any base closures in their districts. Second, the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process normally entails some up-front costs before realizing any savings. The proposed BRAC might simply be just part of the bargaining process.

•    The Department clearly does not want to undergo a sequestration. The briefers repeatedly warn about the enormous damage such large and arbitrary cuts will make to the DoD budget. But someone in the Department has to (or should) be preparing for such a possibility. What would a sequestered budget really look like?

•    The Department proposes creating a commission with “BRAC-like” authority to consider cuts in military retirement benefits and propose a package of changes that Congress must accept or reject in their entirety. But the Congress should press the Department to conduct a more extensive review of all the military benefits that might influence military recruiting and retention. It is possible that service members do not value some expensive benefits that highly; these should be discarded since, according to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the Department’s personnel costs have almost doubled during the last decade.

The Pentagon plans to maintain strong funding support for unmanned assets and Special Forces in coming years even while spending on more conventional forces will grow slower and in some cases even fall. The Obama administration has invested heavily in unmanned vehicles—air, land, and sea—and has conducted many more drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere than its predecessors. More visibly, the administration has sent the Special Operations Forces (SOF) to free hostages, kill terrorists, and perform other important missions. Rather than Colin Powell-type overwhelming force missions, the Obama team is partial to the deft and swift surgical strikes conducted by missile-armed drones and helicopter-transported commandos.

Kazakhstan’s Nuclear Bank: Achieving Benefits at Acceptable Risk

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02/01/2012
Dr. Richard Weitz (Credit: The Hudson Institute)

By Dr. Richard Weitz

01/25/2012 – The world needs a multinational nuclear fuel bank and Kazakhstan is eager to host it. Kazakhstan has certain attributes that make it a welcome candidate to house one of perhaps several nuclear fuel banks.

But Kazakhstan needs to reduce certain problems that render its suitability as a host suspect in the eyes of many domestic and foreign observers.

A well-known problem with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is that parties are legally allowed to acquire sensitive nuclear capabilities that can quickly be transformed from producing fuel for nuclear power plants to fissile material for manufacturing nuclear bombs.

In particular, a state can develop extensive uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing capabilities while a member in good standing with the NPT and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It can then legally withdraw from the treaty by giving 90-days’ notice as specified in NPT Article 10, which permits a States Party to renounce the Treaty if “decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country.”

Can Kazakhstan become a global nuclear fuel bank? (Credit Image: Bigstock)
Can Kazakhstan become a global nuclear fuel bank? (Credit Image: Bigstock)

North Korea has already exploited this loophole, and Iran may soon follow.

Although many countries pursue uranium enrichment and plutonium separation technologies with no intentions of seeking nuclear weapons, their intentions can rapidly change for many reasons. 
To avert a world of dozens of de facto nuclear weapons capable states, the IAEA, its member governments, and various arms control advocates have sought to create mechanisms to discourage the spread of proliferation-sensitive technologies.

Proposals to establish one or more nuclear fuel banks clearly fit within this framework. Under this arrangement, countries can “borrow” any fuel they need for their nuclear power reactors from a repository under IAEA control. A nuclear fuel bank relies on market incentives, rather than coercive methods, to encourage countries to lease nuclear fuel from designated provider states and then repatriate the resulting spent uranium fuel to the original supplier for reprocessing and disposal.

The assumption underpinning proposals to establish a bank is that guaranteeing countries the right to purchase and store fuel internationally, at modest cost providing they met their nonproliferation obligations, would reduce incentives for states to develop expensive and proliferation-problematic national uranium enrichment and reprocessing capabilities that can be misused to make nuclear weapons.

Enter Kazakhstan

The government of Kazakhstan had offered to establish an international nuclear fuel bank on its territory. President Nursultan Nazarbaev made public his interest in possibly hosting such a bank during an April 2009 joint press conference in Astana with visiting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Kazakhstan has certain attributes that could make it a good candidate for such a fuel bank. Since gaining independence in 1991, the government of Kazakhstan has established a strong nonproliferation record, beginning with its decision to renounce its Soviet nuclear inheritance and continuing with its support for various international nonproliferation endeavors.

Kazakhstan has established a good nonproliferation record, joining all relevant treaties and institutions. It acceded to the NPT as a non-nuclear weapons state and has placed all Kazakhstan nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards, subjecting them to IAEA monitoring and inspections. The Kazakh government has negotiated both a standard safeguards agreement with the IAEA (1994) and acceded to the agency’s more stringent Additional Protocol (2007), which grants IAEA staff additional inspection and monitoring rights. It has worked with the IAEA and the U.S. government to strengthen the safety and security of its nuclear plants.

Kazakhstan also carries considerable weight in international nuclear markets.

It has enormous stocks of natural uranium (approximately one-fifth of the world’s proven reserves), is becoming the largest national producer of uranium, and exports natural uranium to many countries. Kazatomprom, the national nuclear monopoly, plans to increase its role in several international nuclear energy markets. The conglomerate wants to mine 30,000 tons of uranium annually by 2018. It also has set the goal of supplying 12% of the global uranium conversion market, 6% of the market for enriched uranium, and 30% of the fuel fabrication market by 2015.

Kazakh ambitions in the international market for nuclear services extend further. The government and nuclear industry would like to establish a full-fledged “nuclear fuel service center” that, in addition to serving as a uranium fuel bank, could reprocess the spent fuel from nuclear reactors to recycle it as plutonium while storing the residual nuclear waste. The center could also provide nuclear reactors and other nuclear energy technologies.

In general, Kazakhstan has pursued a “multi-vector” foreign policy aiming to achieve good relations with many countries rather than align too closely with any one bloc.
Many countries justify their decision to develop indigenous nuclear enrichment capabilities on the grounds that they do not want to become vulnerable to foreign suppliers for nuclear fuel, citing especially the risk of politically motivated supply cut-offs unrelated to non-fulfillment of their nonproliferation obligations. The Kazakh government’s desire not to antagonize foreign governments or align too closely with Western countries should allow foreign governments to feel more comfortable depending on nuclear fuel provided from Kazakhstan. Kazakh officials have always supported the right of other countries to pursue nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

Kazakhstan analysts also believe their country could obtain several distinct benefits from hosting such a facility—including strengthening the country’s nonproliferation reputation, securing millions of dollars in foreign investment, and helping to develop the country’s domestic nuclear infrastructure.  The lure of these benefits provides the authorities with incentives to run the fuel bank efficiently and effectively.

But Kazakhstan still needs to address certain problems before the international community can support establishing a multinational uranium fuel bank on its territory.

Despite constraints on freedom of expression and mass protests, it is evident that many Kazakhstan citizens are anxious about their country’s increasing nuclear activities due to how Kazakhstan was exploited during the Soviet period as a testbed for hundreds of nuclear explosions. Parts of eastern Kazakhstan around the former Soviet test site of Semipalatinsk remain heavily polluted and environmental contamination has polluted much of the surrounding environment and left thousands of people suffering adverse medical consequences. Kazakhstan’s citizens worry that their nuclear industry will again downplay environmental and ecological risks in order to expand the country’s dangerous nuclear activities.

Analysts are also uncertain whether Kazakhstan can train an adequate number of scientists, engineers, and technicians to manage the rapid expansion of the national nuclear industry envisaged by current government plans.  The government has had difficulty in training managers and workers to help diversify the national economy and reduce Kazakhstan’s reliance on energy exports.
Conversely, fears exist that the growing number of Kazakh nuclear specialists might sell or rent their expertise to criminals, terrorists, or foreign governments seeking nuclear knowledge for illicit purposes.

Regarding the latter, some commentators are uneasy about the Kazakhstan’s proximity and friendly relations with Iran. Kazakhstan’s desire to remain on good terms with all governments means they have avoided confronting Iran over its suspect nuclear activities. Kazakhstan’s leaders have denounced North Korea for its nuclear weapons tests, but have refrained from criticizing Tehran for pursuing nuclear enrichment and other activities that the UN Security Council has termed illegal and the IAEA has now assessed as possibly aiming to develop nuclear weapons.

One benefit an international fuel bank cannot bring is to reign in Iran’s nuclear program. Iranian leaders have shown that at least some states would likely still seek to acquire a compete portfolio of nuclear fuel cycle technologies, even if some of its elements could be converted to making nuclear weapons, regardless of international calls for restraint and multiple multinational sanctions. Iranian leaders cite considerations of national sovereignty and status as well as economic justifications for their pursuit of indigenous nuclear technologies.

For this reason, even ardent supporters of creating an international fuel bank see it as one more supporting layer—along with strengthened IAEA safeguards, more proliferation-resistant nuclear technologies, improved export controls, an end to the production of fissile materials, and other initiatives—in the newly fortified nonproliferation architecture under construction.

New Defense Guidance: Needs Resources To Travel

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01/31/2012
Dr. Richard Weitz (Credit: The Hudson Institute)

By Dr. Richard Weitz

01/31/2012 – The authors of the Pentagon’s new Strategic Guidance must have been reading Second Line of Defense since they affirm many of the arguments made by SLD team. The only problem with the Guidance, which may prove fatal, is that the Pentagon will not receive adequate resources to execute it.

(See the Defense News op ed by Robbin Laird and Ed Timperlake on building agile forces.)

In his recent “2012: Swans Take Flight,” Robbin Laird writes: “U.S. forces need to become more agile, flexible, and global in order to work with allies and partners to deal with evolving global realities. Protecting access points, the global conveyer of goods and services, ensuring an ability to work with global partners in having access to commodities, shaping insertion forces which can pursue terrorist elements wherever necessary, and partnering support with global players all require a re-enforced maritime and air capability. This means a priority for the USCG, USN, USMC and the US Air Force in the re-configuring effort. Balanced force structure reduction makes no sense because the force structure was re-designed for land wars that the US will not engage in the decade ahead.” (See also, http://defense.aol.com/2012/01/03/whack-old-weapons-rebuild-the-army-or-fade-from-view/.)

According to the new U.S. Defense Strategic Guidance, dramatically released on January 5 at a Pentagon news conference opened by President Obama, the international order has reached a strategic inflection or turning point.

Bold Alligator 2012, which is a major focus for the SLD team in the first quarter of 2012, is just such a testing of new approaches and new capabilities. (Credit Image: USN-USMC)
Bold Alligator 2012, which is a major focus for the SLD team in the first quarter of 2012, is just such a testing of new approaches and new capabilities. (Credit Image: USN-USMC)

With the end of the wars in Iraq and Libya, and the impending U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, the United States can now adjust its force posture and other resources to better address new geographic (China rather than Iraq) and functional (anti-access rather than transnational terrorism) challenges.

The United States will therefore realign military resources to address these concerns. This shift in geographic focus will also require the U.S. military to strengthen capabilities for missions other than counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, especially global deployment and insertion capabilities.

The new strategic environment offers the Pentagon an opportunity to rebalance its portfolio of missions and capabilities as well as their geographic concentration. The Department is wise to get ahead of the budget cutting process now, using the Guidance as justification to cancel some legacy programs and scale back others, before outsiders impose more arbitrary cuts—as will occur in January 2013 if congressional sequestration occurs.

According to Panetta, the Guidance was written in conformity with four over-arching principles:

1)”we must maintain the world’s finest military”

2) “we must avoid hollowing out the force — a smaller, ready, and well-equipped military is much more preferable to a larger, ill-prepared force that has been arbitrarily cut across the board” (as threatened for January 2013 by congressional sequestration)

3) “savings must be achieved in a balanced manner, with everything on the table, including politically sensitive areas”; and

4) “we must preserve the quality of the all-volunteer force and not break faith with our men and women in uniform or their families.”

Panetta further explained at the news conference rolling out the new strategy posits several major changes in the Defense Department’s direction:

1) The joint force envisaged for 2020 will be smaller and leaner but also “more agile, more flexible, ready to deploy quickly, innovative, and technologically advanced.”

2) The Department is also “rebalancing our global posture and presence” with a new “institutional weight and focus on enhanced presence, power projection, and deterrence” in the Asia-Pacific region while “maintaining our military presence and capabilities in the broader Middle East.

3) “the United States will continue to strengthen its key alliances, to build partnerships and to develop innovative ways to sustain U.S. presence elsewhere in the world,” with a special emphasis on developing innovative ways to maintain a security presence with fewer resources in the other world’s other regions.

4) The Pentagon will maintain “the capability to fight several conflicts at the same time” in partnership with other countries, which will have greater responsibility for defending their national territories.”

5) The Department will reduce the size of the Army and Marine Corps while preserving and sometimes increasing “investments in special operations forces, in new technologies like ISR and unmanned systems, in space — and, in particular, in cyberspace –capabilities, and also our capacity to quickly mobilize if necessary.”

6) Even while making reductions the Department will “ensure the capacity to surge, regenerate and mobilize capabilities needed for any contingency” by, among other measures, “re-examining the mix of elements in the active and reserve components…and preserving the health and viability of the nation’s defense industrial base.”

PATUXENT RIVER, Md. (Jan. 20, 2012) Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta is shown the Joint Strike Fighter Manned Flight Simulator by Lieutenant Colonel (USMC) Fed "Tinman" Schenk at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter insisted at the roll out that the Department would not “simply revert to yesterday’s pre-9/11 force structure under the pressure of budget cuts.”  Adm. James A. Winnefeld Jr., Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argued that the administration avoided the standard practice of simply applying proportional reductions across the board. Instead, the administration sought to determine what strategy it would need to address the emerging global security environment and then resourced the capabilities required to execute the strategy.

The authors’ explicit intellectual modesty, manifested in the “hedging” underpinning the Strategic Guidance, should also be applauded. The Guidance presumes a general continuity of contemporary global security trends, but the Pentagon understands that a Black Swan could easily arise that would leave the United States vulnerable if the Pentagon could not rapidly recover and respond. “Given that we cannot predict how the strategic environment will evolve with absolute certainty, we will maintain a broad portfolio of military capabilities that, in the aggregate, offer versatility across the range of missions described above.”

In terms of preserving old and developing new capabilities, Pentagon leaders made clear that they want a responsive capability for rapid regeneration and reversibility. The Guidance directs that, “ DoD will manage the force in ways that protect its ability to regenerate capabilities that might be needed to meet future, unforeseen demands, maintaining intellectual capital and rank structure that could be called upon to expand key elements of the force.”  Furthermore, the Guidance adds that,” the concept of .“reversibility.” .– including the vectors on which we place our industrial base, our people, our active-reserve component balance, our posture, and our partnership emphasis .– is a key part of our decision calculus.”

In his Pentagon briefing, Carter affirmed that, as it made the $487 billion worth in mandated cuts in force size and capabilities, “we want to, to the extent we can do so, preserve the ability to change course.”  Carter cited the need to preserve the skills and knowledge the Department gained in waging the unexpected counterinsurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq, to retain a sufficiently large cadre of mid-grade and skilled noncommissioned officers to have the middle management available to support a larger force structure, such as mobilized Reserve Components, if one proved necessary. “We can’t afford to do that comprehensively,” Carter acknowledged, “but we can afford to do some of that.”

The United States has long sought to reduce military personnel while compensating through endowing the remaining forces with more advanced technologies to make them more effective. Indeed, the current Strategic Guidance reads very much like something former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld would have issued before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq distracted him from his planned transformation of the Department into Defense 2.0 through “networked warfare” capabilities, which would create a seamless linkage among omniscient U.S. units who would rely on superior knowledge and integration to overcome more numerous opponents.

The anti-access and area-denial capabilities and strategies increasingly available to potential adversaries discussed in the Guidance have already been driving the U.S. interest in stealth, speed, and stand-off launching power projection capabilities.

In addition to current Iranian threats to close the Strait of Hormuz, a major Pentagon worry is China’s development of the Dong Feng 21D anti-ship ballistic missile, anti-satellite weapons, cyber strike capabilities, emerging long-range precision strike systems, and other technologies. The Guidance therefore directs that “the U.S. military will invest as required to ensure its ability to operate effectively in anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) environments.

(For a look at how the integration of the F-35 and Aegis systems will shape such capabilities see “Winning the Air-Sea battle” or “The Long Reach of Aegis”.)

This will include implementing the Joint Operational Access Concept, sustaining our undersea capabilities, developing a new stealth bomber, improving missile defenses, and continuing efforts to enhance the resiliency and effectiveness of critical space-based capabilities.

The Joint Operational Access Concept and the planned capability enhancements to U.,S. forces seek to ensure that military that U.S. commanders can overcome sophisticated A2/AD strategies that employ both technical and nontechnical capabilities and methods.  The Concept roughly distinguishes between the two by their distance. Adversaries employ “anti-access” (A2) strategies aim to impede U.S. use of global commons and U.S. international power projection by using such capabilities as satellites, cruise and ballistic missiles, cyber weapons, counter-space systems, and even well-placed terrorists and paramilitaries. “Area denial” (AD) capabilities such as air defenses; precision guided weapons, mines, weapons of mass destruction, and innovative irregular tactics seek to prevent or disrupt U.S. efforts from establishing an operating presence in or near an adversary.

Panetta and other officials acknowledge certain risks with the Guidance. Its success could depend on the timely mobilization of the Reserve Components, the timely development and application of advanced technologies, and the increased U.S. reliance on foreign partners.  Above all, there is risk in making reductions now in DoD strength and spending when, unlike in the past, the major threats to the United States that originally caused the U.S. defense buildup have not going away.

Yet, critics are incorrect when they charge that, “The administration’s focus on Asia-Pacific and reduction of ground forces in favor of air and naval forces are both manifestations of what the late political scientist Samuel P. Huntington called ‘strategic monism’, the domination of defense policy by a single strategic concept  or regional focus.”  Both the Guidance and the statements of the key members of the administration call for with retaining a variety of forces and weapons in being to counter diverse potential threats or at least the capacity to regenerate the needed forces rapidly when needed.

The problem is rather that the Pentagon might not fight hard enough in Congress to provide all the forces needed to respond across the entire spectrum of conflict to counter major threats to the United States wherever they might arise. According to Carter’s calculations, the White House has already told the Department that it must chop $489 billion from its base budget during the next ten years, of which $263 billion must be cut in the next five years. The Department’s supplementary budgets are also shrinking due to its decreased overseas contingency operations. The combined effect of these two processes is that “you have over the next four years a reduction in total defense spending as rapid as any we experienced after Vietnam or after the Cold War.”

Certain measures could reduce these risks, beginning with ensuring support for needed capabilities in the FY 2013 budget, which the administration will send to Congress in the next week or two.

First, the Guidance focuses too much on developing a new stealth bomber and underestimates the way in which the existing and growing USAF F-35 fleet can negate Chinese and Iranian anti-access and area-denial capabilities and strategies. The vastness of the Asia Pacific theater makes having robust military air and naval assets especially important. The F-35, along with the F-22, will prove essential for allowing the U.S. Air Force to counter the new Chinese J-20 stealth fighter and other PLA Air Force warplanes.

The administration needs to make a stronger effort to reach out to allies.

At the international level, working with foreign governments is essential since the United States lacks the means to address all challenges by itself. Maybe the United States cannot purchase all the F-35s the Pentagon needs, but the damage can be limited if U.S. allies make up any shortfalls through their own purchases. The Australian and Japanese air forces and other U.S. Asian allies also plan to acquire the F-35, which will enhance interoperability between the U.S. military and its regional allies. (See http://defense.aol.com/2011/12/22/f-35-will-revolutionize-air-combat-power-in-the-pacific/ and http://defense.aol.com/2011/11/16/a-new-strategic-moment-for-darwin-and-australia/.)

In the Gulf, the Pentagon will need to rely more on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council members to purchase missile defenses, sophisticated warplanes, and other means to help the Pentagon counter Iran.

In addition, enhancing U.S. capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region will require increases in the resources flowing to the Navy and Air Force since they are best capable of managing the large distances in that theater. Having Marines in Australia is nice, but they still need to be able to move rapidly to where their deterring or combat presence is needed, which will most likely be closer to the Asian mainland. As Panetta acknowledged to PBS Newshour, “you’re not going to have that large a presence throughout the world. And so we are going to have to be much more agile, much more flexible in moving forces around.”  Most Asian-Pacific countries would not welcome a large U.S. troop presence on their soil, even on a rotational basis.

The Pentagon plans to rely heavily on the National Guard and Reserves as ready mobilization forces should a manpower surge become necessary. As Panetta acknowledged in an interview on National Public Radio, “If we are dealing with a leaner and meaner force, if we have to mobilize, there’s only one place to go — and that’s to the National Guard and to our Reserve units.”  But then these Reserve Components need to be adequately resourced and its members need to understand they are joining an operational rather than a strategic  reserve, even if they no longer need to rotate to Afghanistan and Iraq every few years.

In his forward to the Guidance, President Obama rightly notes the importance of adopting a whole-of-government approach that treats diplomacy, development, intelligence, and other non-military instruments as national security tools. DoD leaders understand that, due to the weakness of these non-military tools, the White House will often turn to the military to the Pentagon address an issue since, while military power might not be the most appropriate means to solve a problem, it is better resourced and often more easy to use overseas than the other instruments of national power. But then the administration and especially Congress needs to fund them accordingly.

The State Department in particular will need to fill the gap resulting from a smaller U.S. military presence in many regions. In welcoming the new Guidance, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton observed that, “As the new strategy notes, meeting our challenges cannot be the work of our military alone. Diplomacy and development are equal partners with defense in our smart power approach to promoting American interests and values abroad, building up our economic prosperity, and protecting our national security.”

Maintaining a healthy U.S. defense industrial base is also important for assuring U.S. technological superiority in future military conflicts. The Defense Department must continue to modernize the force selectively in line with emerging threats, technologies, and resources. Experimentation, simulation, and exercises can help determine the most promising upgrades. In addition to fielding better weapons platforms, DoD should also strive to make U.S. command, control, and other information processes less vulnerable and more effective.

For our approach to building scalable forces see our Special Report on the Pacific.

The featured image: PATUXENT RIVER, Md. (Jan. 20, 2012) Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta is shown the Joint Strike Fighter Manned Flight Simulator by Lieutenant Colonel (USMC) Fed “Tinman” Schenk at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland. Secretary Panetta toured several facilities related to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The F-35B has moved from a test to training phase at Eglin AFB.

http://www.navy.mil/management/photodb/photos/120120-D-BW835-003.jpg

 

 

 

 


An Update on F-35 Manufacturability

Posted on | by SysAdmin | Leave a Comment on An Update on F-35 Manufacturability
01/30/2012
Frank Dougherty During the SLD Interview (Credit: SLD)
Frank Dougherty During the SLD Interview (Credit: SLD)

01/30/2012 – During Second Line of Defense’s annual visit to the F-35 manufacturing facility, Frank Dougherty, Vice President, F-35 Production Operations provided an update on F-35 manufacturability.  Dougherty has extensive experience with both the F-22 and the F-16, and has significant domain competence in what it takes to build a combat aircraft.

SLD: We went to the factory where it was clear the focus was on ramping or making sure that you would be producing four aircraft a month.  That, that’s the target goal under the current funding and planning.

Dougherty: Correct.

SLD: And basically, by July you are putting out Air Force 20, which would be the first plane in the four per month cycle?

Dougherty: Right.

SLD: How are you going about organizing the four per month, and what is the status to get to the four per month?

Dougherty: AF20 is actually about half way through final assembly at this stage. Production along the line is adjusting as we ramp up to the four per month.  The various parts of production are positing themselves for where they need to be to support the four per month delivery starting July of next year.

And then after that we actually drop back down to two per month for the next couple of months.

SLD: Could you explain the concept of a software upgradeable aircraft and how this affects production?

Dougherty: Obviously, you’ve got the aircraft structure of the aircraft, but then the electronics will be upgradeable throughout the full life cycle of the aircraft. From a manufacturing perspective, the physical elements that give you the stealth of the aircraft will be good for the life of the aircraft.

The electronic upgradable portions of the aircraft, and the way it was designed to be able to be upgradable over time to your very point either through minor hardware changes that are just basically cards which can be slipped in and out, and then downloading a new program.  So we’re already forecasting over time the software upgrades that will provide enhanced capabilities ongoing through the life cycle of the aircraft.

SLD: What has been the impact of the Japanese buy on the esprit de corps on the assembly line?

Dougherty: Last week with the announcement of the Japanese buy, that was a big impact for us because I think everybody recognizes that Japanese as a pretty sophisticated customer.  And if they’ve done an analysis of understanding where we are, and what this aircraft’s capable of, and how actually mature it is at this stage of the game and to be able to commit to that buy, it gives confidence to the other potential customers out there.

But it also gives confidence to our workforce that the work we’re doing has been recognized by folks out there who really know how to evaluate what this kind of aircraft can do.

SLD: How can workflow be managed to surge production?

Dougherty: Actually, at this stage of the game, we’re probably too late to stay at four, but we have the capability, and we have the capacity, and we can flex back up as quickly as they would make a decision to allow us to do that.

But we’ve actually, at the very beginning of line, we’ve actually dropped back down to two per month already, and loading the front of the line because that’s what the current quantity demands currently.

But we’ve laid out the factory to be at the ultimate footprint that we’re going to operate at.  So we’ve got the capacity, and the footprint for the stations, and we’ve made our line flexible enough that we can both add positions with the tooling for the number positions, for the number of aircraft we’re going to build a month, and also adjust for the mixture of the variance that we will build.

Obviously, with the three different variants going down the line, they have unique characteristics.  But we’ve made the line flexible enough, so just by loading a different hard tooling into the line that we’ve got out there; we can build at whatever variation that they want.

And then also whatever actual physical rate that we need to deliver at, and ten, at the next stage, fits very nice in the format we’ve got laid out here because of the stations we’ve got, and the position we are to your point lead time away, order the hard tooling that we need, and then just load the line in the configuration, and the sequence that they want to buy the aircraft.

SLD: Steady demand at 10-20 per month will certainly lead to increased efficiencies and lower costs per unit.

Dougherty: It does.  If we’re out here building two per month, a worker out there has got to do ten days worth of work before they go repeat the work that they’ve done.  They work in a station, and they perform an amount of work every ten manufacturing days.  There’s 20 manufacturing days in a month, so they will do ten days worth of work before they repeat that, and they’ll repeat that ten days worth of work twice in a month.
If we get to go to ten a month, they’ll do two days worth work before they go repeat what they’ll do in that station, and they’ll do that ten times a month.  Imagine how much more efficient they can be doing a smaller scope of work repeated much more often, consistently in that station.

And if you have a new variant move in there, we’ve built the tools so they load very similar, little bit different materials, and little bit different in terms of the size and sequencing of the wings and such.

But that work is easily remembered if I’ve just done it two days or four days ago, whereas if I had to do ten days worth of work, and then do a different variant with little bit different sequencing of that, you know I’ve got to refer to my work instructions more, I got to refer to my engineering more.  It takes more time.

SLD: Another aspect of the production approach which is not widely understood outside the program is what the SDD phase really was all about for the manufacturing phases.  Manufacturing technologies and approaches have been a central focus in SDD and in a certain sense much of the advanced manufacturing capability has already been paid for;  And this radically different than the legacy aircraft manufacturing approach.

Dougherty: When we built the SDD aircraft, we did it in the production tooling, and the production methods.  That way we’d use as we went forth into the actual low-rate production phase of the program.  And so we’re just growing right out of that build into the what we’re calling production phase of the program, but continuing to mature the same process, the same tooling, the same methods that we would use during the SDD phase.

SLD: There is as well a significant misunderstanding outside of the program of the very different approach to designing, testing and building the F-35 versus earlier aircraft. This program was set up is radically different from the beginning to essentially have a surge production capacity.  Is that a fair statement of kind of a disconnect from a certain template of understanding what this is all about?  It’s a very different template than a Legacy Aircraft.

Doughterty: I think with the way entering development tools have developed over the years, we’ve gone from having to do hard mock-ups, hard tooling, put together a aircraft.  Stretch out actually mock-up harnesses, and then develop which way you’re going to build those, and build physical prototype models that came through.

Now with the new electronic way you design an aircraft in a scope, and proven out over F-22 and moving into F-35, all of that hard mock-up, and hard physical build up that you had to do just to verify links, and runs of all the different tubes and harnesses, and such that go through the aircraft, has been eliminated that you can essentially design that in electronically, and the very first units you build, you build the way you build the production aircraft.
You actually design it, and route it, and everything else electronically, so when we translate that to installing it in an aircraft, we’re doing it on the very first model is the way we’ll do it in production.

SLD: The digital thread production model?

Dougherty: Yes.

SLD: And also not widely understood is how so much of this approach has come from innovation in the commercial aerospace sector. Builders of the 787 and A350 certainly have pioneered a lot of this.  And even the 330 tankers are an example.  To develop the tanker, Airbus had to redo the entire 330 as a digital aircraft in order to actually come up with an effective name of building a tanker.  And that’s kind of a footnote to how wider the difference is from when the A330 was originally designed 30 years ago.

Dougherty: I think so. And in fact, I was responsible for building F 22s, prior to coming here.  And of course, that was the first Fifth Gen Fighter, but it was really designed around performance, not around manufacturability.

But we learned a lot from that period, and learned a lot from what we do on F 22, and were able to design in, into that digital thread, design in manufacturability, and be able to set up tooling, and methods and sequences.

From the very beginning, we knew how the aircraft would go together.  We knew where the issues would be, and we were able to proof that out on the very first SDD Jets.  So as we transformed into delivery production, we were ready to build a aircraft the way it needed to be, and that’s very different from the experience I had back in the old days when I built F-16s in the line out here, and at even the very beginning of the F-22.

We had some dramatic changes we had to make early in that because we were really just learning how to use those digital tools to translate those, but we’ve taken all those lessons learned now, incorporated them into our design, and built an F-35, and had dramatically different results right out of the chute.

SLD: How important is manufacturability for risk of being successful global program export, and ability to build a global fleet aircraft?

Dougherty: It’s really the key to affordability.  From the very beginning, it was designed with the intent that we would be able to build one a day, and deliver one a day.  And so it was designed, so it would go together, so it would be compartmentalized, so the work could be broken down into those segments, and so the aircraft could progress through, and quickly come together, and when it came off the end there wasn’t a lot of tweaks, and adjustment changes to make.

The aircraft was ready to go put gas in it, load software in it, and fly it, and that is different from with the more handcrafted F-22s that we knew we weren’t going to build, but a few hundreds of those.  That was really designed for performance, and optimized for the performance of the aircraft after it was delivered.  This one obviously has the performance characteristics in there, but we were really leaned towards the manufacturability, and affordability available to put out one a day.

Featured Image: F-35B arriving at Eglin AFB January 2012 Credit: 33rd Fighter Wing

Accompanying Videos From the Interview

In this video, Frank Dougherty discusses the key differences between making the F-35 and modern commercial aircraft and legacy aircraft, whether military or commercial.

In this video, Frank Dougherty discusses a key point about the F-35 compared to the F-22 being that is both a high performance aircraft as well as designed to produced in quantity. Manufacturability is central to the impact of the F-35 on global fleets.

What much of the F-35 debate misses is that the System Development and Demonstration Phase of the Program front-loaded a significant manufacturing capability. The US taxpayer and foreign partners have already paid for the F-35 manufacturing capability, which will be leveraged in a surge production.

In this video Franck Doughtery, Vice President for F-35 Production Operations, explains to Second Line of Defense what the impact of SDD is upon production in 2012.

The F-35 is currently being produced at 4 per month; with the anticipated budget this will be reduced to 2 per month; the line can move to 10 a month in a few months of lead time. The plane is designed to be mass-produced, and with foreign orders coming in surge is a clear option. Frank Dougherty, Vice President for F-35 Production Operations explains in this video to Second Line of Defense the approach.

The F-35 is a unique aircraft as Ed Timperlake explained earlier the plane is in constant evolution as the software is upgraded. But with the F-35 this does not drive hardware upgrades, but is shape by the chip and integration structure ABOARD the aircraft. In this video, Frank Dougherty of Lockheed Martin, the VP in charge of F-35 Production Operations, explains how this works.

The global nature of the F-35 program is crucial to its viability and impact on 21st century combat operations. Here Frank Dougherty, Vice President of F-35 Production Operations, talks to Second Line of Defense about the impact of the foreign partners seen from Fort Worth.

 


Shaping the Strike Force for Bold Alligator 2012: The Perspective of 2nd MAW

Posted on | by SysAdmin
01/26/2012

01/26/2012 – During interviews conducted in Norfolk, VA and in Cherry Point, Second Line of Defense discussed with various combat elements involved in the forthcoming Bold Alligator 2012 exercise.  In this piece, we discussed the preparations for the strike force off of the USS Kearsarge for the operation of 16 Harriers to provide for a significant part of the strike force.

The interview was conducted with Colonel Andrew “Shorty” Shorter, Commanding Officer, Marine Aircraft Group 14, MCAS Cherry point, Lieutenant Colonel “Uber” Williams, OIC Marine Aviation Training System Site – MCAS Cherry Point, and Lieutenant Colonel Shawn Hermley, Commanding Officer, Marine Attack Squadron 231, MCAS Cherry Point.

Col. Shorter During the SLD Interview (Credit: SLD)
Col. Shorter During the SLD Interview (Credit: SLD)

Col. Shorter explained the paradigm shift in using the Harriers off of the large deck amphibious ships involved in the exercise.

Col. Shorter: The use of the Harriers in the exercise is completely different from what we normally do, a different paradigm, if you will.  Normally, a Harrier squadron breaks down as a squadron (minus) and  detachment or Det that it chops out.  After it chops the squad or after it chops the Det, it becomes squadron (minus).  So within every Harrier squadron, there are by design two entities built into that.

Normally, we chop the Det out to the MEU/ACE as six planes and nine pilots.  Normally, the base of that is the VMM squadron.  Now here on East Coast, VMM squadrons are all V-22s.  So those six Harriers become part of a VMM squadron along with Cobras and 53s as well.  The squadron (minus) remains behind to continue to train pilots for the future and also as a deployable unit.

For the last going 10 years, we have deployed the squadron (minus) as what we like to call a MEF forward asset.  In this case, they’ve been going to OIF or OEF for the same period.  This means that, in effect, two operations have been going while the MEUs had been on these or the Dets have been also going on these MEU deployments.

In other words, the general construct is that the Harrier squadron breaks down Det squadron (minus).  Where it’s different in Bold Alligator is that we’re going to take two squadron (minus) that already have their Dets out dedicated to MEUs.

We’re going to deploy them on a large deck amphib carrier to work as a single integrated strike force.

Obviously, it is a broader capability and deeper capability than what any MEU has at any one time.  Instead of the normal six-Harrier Det, the strike force will nominally have 16 Harriers from the two squadrons (minus).

SLD: So you’re testing here something greater than the two MEUs trying to aggregate the assets into a single support element, single combat element.  You’re experimenting with basically a much larger sea base support structure led by the amphibious fleet rather than led by the strike carrier.

Col. Shorter: Exactly. I guess you’d say that we like to have scalable capabilities, so we’re using a different scale on this case, and then we’re putting those two together to be ultimately flexible.  We have the deck available so we put the two squadrons (minus) together at sea, which is normally something that we don’t do – squadrons (minus) at sea.

Usually it’s the MEU Dets at sea, although all the pilots are cross-trained to be able to do either.  That’s one of our core mission tasks, it’s the expeditionary operations and operations from a sea base.

But we’re able to take these two entities that normally don’t deploy on the sea base, put them on the sea base in order to be agile in reaction to the requirement.  In this case, the scenario that’s being played out in Bold Alligator demands such a capability.

SLD: In effect, this is bringing together with today’s assets a template for more strike capability, which is a template well, designed for the arrival of the F-35Bs.

***

Lt. Col. Williams During the SLD Interview (Credit: SLD)
Lt. Col. Williams During the SLD Interview (Credit: SLD)

Lt. Colonel Williams further discusses the paradigm shift involving the plus up of the Harrier strike force. We earlier talked with “Uber” at an exercise North Carolina at the end of August 2011. (Please see https://sldinfo.com/the-harrier-and-expeditionary-basing/ and https://sldinfo.com/harrier-exercise-at-marine-corps-air-station-beaufort/.)

In Bold Alligator 2012, the entire large deck Amphib will support the 16 fixed wing Harrier aircraft. As the Lt. Col. underscored, the flexibility demonstrated by the Harriers on the large deck Amphib will be exercised.

In Bold Alligator 2012, the entire large deck Amphib will support the 16 fixed-wing Harrier aircraft. As the Lt. Col. underscored, the flexibility demonstrated by the Harriers on the large deck Amphib will be exercised.  .

SLD: What is your role in the exercise?

Lt. Col. Williams: I’m serving as Col. Shorter’s deputy from MAG-14 headquarters. While he’s back in Cherry Point running the rest of his MAG, I will be out aboard the Kearsarge basically as his deputy or the higher headquarters specifically to assist the Harrier squadrons connected to the ACE Command Element.

SLD: The USMC has a lot of experience with ARGs and MEUs.  Now you’re aggregating capabilities to support a larger battle space or providing a larger configuration force.  Talk a little bit about how it will get exercised and how it allows the USN-USMC team to rethink how you use these assets?

Lt. Col. Williams: The MEUs that we put out every year have actually a somewhat small sampling of AV-8Bs – six Harriers, nine pilots, 74 Marines.  That amount of capability is somewhat limited compared to what we’re going to put out for Bold Alligator, which is an entire deck dedicated to Harrier operations with 16 airplanes.

That provides a lot of flexibility, and I think that what you see when you go out and put nothing but fixed wing on the amphib, you can do a lot of different things. The missions that we’re going to do and the deck cycle we’ll run is varied from day to day.

The first couple of days that we go out, we’ll be shaping with integration with the  F-18s from down at Beaufort and prepping battlefields so to speak.  And then we will transition from that phase into a sortie of generation phase where we will demonstrate and practice the flexibility and responsiveness that STOVL brings.

If we’re close to the beach, we can get there and support that maneuver force going ashore and get back, not only to refuel but re-arm and get right back out the battle space.

Immediately after that, we transition.  Again, this is training, but we will then do long-range strikes again partnering up with shore-based F-18s, and at the same time, we’re partnering up with our V-22s that are coming off of the Wasp to do a long-range raid all the way up to Virginia.

The flexibility demonstrated by having 16 AV-8s on a carrier dedicated to them is that we’re sweeping the breadth of the East Coast, and we’re sweeping the breadth of missions almost on a daily basis.

And I think one of the really exciting things is that we are going back to the vision of a VSTOL or a STOVL force, and we’re seeing the execution of that with STOVL fixed-wing aircraft, squadrons of STOVL fixed-wing aircraft to float and embark, and squadrons of V-22s afloat.

The proximity to the battle space and the capability that is demonstrated there is phenomenal because in terms of speed, responsiveness, range, depth, and capabilities it’s really exciting to see as we go into this exercise.

SLD: In effect, this is bringing together with today’s assets a template for more strike capability, which is a template well, designed for the arrival of the F-35Bs. Besides providing the deck off of which the Harrier strike force of 16 aircraft will operate, the USS Kearsarge will be managing a large part of the air battle management in support of the insertion of force during the Bold Alligator exercise.

***

Lt. Col. Hermley During the SLD Interview (Credit: SLD)
Lt. Col. Hermley During the SLD Interview (Credit: SLD)

In this part of the interview, Lt. Colonel Shawn Hermley, discusses the role of the air traffic control function aboard the USS Kearsarge. Hermley was recently involved with the 26th MEU in operations off of Libya as a Harrier pilot and speaks from experience.

The USS Kearsarge will be handling the various air assets of the force insertion. It will be sharing the C2 role with the Aegis and the large deck carrier. The USS Kearsarge in Libya they were the only ship providing radar; now the challenge will be part of the sector.

SLD: How was the Kearsarge used in Operation Odyssey Dawn?

Lt. Col. Hermley: We had 6 Harriers aboard the Kersarge at the start of Operation Odyssey Dawn.  But at the start of the operation, there were limited radars or air control assets available to operate a strike force.  The USS Kersarge ended up playing a key role in this regard for the first 7 days of the operation.

The tactical air command center aboard the Kersarge basically does all the command and control aboard the ship.  So they’re identifying primary foes as ship or as aircraft approaches the ship.

It is small and about the size of this room.  They have a small handful of people. They have a watch captain that’s usually an O3, so a Navy lieutenant or a Navy lieutenant commander; a few of those with them, and then sailors that are working the scopes.

They’re looking at the air picture piece while when you go in the combat information center or combat intelligence center or CIC. They’re looking at the air and surface piece.

With the Kearsarge being the closest U.S. asset and the only asset that had the air control capability equipment on board, the radios and the rest of it and the links into the big air picture and the tie in with the CAOC, whenever there was not an airborne C2 on station, the Kearsarge was controlling all of the air into and out of Libya or the airspace in Libya.

So for the first seven days, The TACRON Det on the Kearsarge was controlling all the air traffic.  At that point, it was just mostly intelligence platforms. But the Kearsarge was the only airborne radar that was even close to Libya at that time.

SLD: How will it be different in Bold Alligator 2012?

Lt. Col. Hermley: I think the biggest difference is going to be the responsibilities and the division responsibilities in that air control piece with a big deck carrier out there or an H class cruiser. That bigger umbrella is going to be controlled by them and the Kearsarge is going to fit into a certain portion of that.

The difference in Libya was they were it.  They had it; it was a direct link.  The only ship with a radar to be able to provide any kind of air control was coming from the Kearsarge and they were it.

And I think in Bold Alligator, their challenge they’re going to have there is fitting in to all the sectors and then becoming part of that whole big picture.

SLD: Presumably, they’re handling the 165-mile insertion piece, so to speak or somewhat like Libya where they were managing this grid however will be supporting insurgent forces and the air assets; carrying those forces and supporting those forces.  Is that a fair statement?

Lt. Col. Hermley: It is fair and they will certainly face be a bigger challenge for them in that respect as far as forces ashore and then facing control ashore.  That was an aspect they didn’t have to deal with during Libya since we didn’t put any forces ashore.

They’re not going to be the top dog or the only game in town like they were in Libya when it comes to the air control piece. Now they will have to fit into a bigger air control piece as well as dealing with the forces ashore.  So that would be a bigger challenge for them and will require meeting the challenge of fitting into a larger structure.