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Life Span of Weapons Systems
21 April 2013
How long does a weapons system last?
Recently I had a comment on my post The End of the Age of the Aircraft Carrier which started me thinking about the life span of weapons system. This is a surprisingly interesting way to think about weapons systems, which contextualizes them within the civilizations that design and build weapons systems.
I have approached this contextualization of weapons systems previously in several posts, as in The Nature of Viking Power Projection and The Byzantine Superweapon. A great many technological innovations and ideological assumptions are built into sophisticated weapons systems, and the most sophisticated among them require an entire civilization to design, build, and field them.
Contextualization can be take diachronically of synchroncially. If we contextualize a weapons system diachronically, we understand it in terms of its historical ancestors and successors, thinking in terms of the evolution of the weapons system in parallel to the socioeconomic system that makes it possible. If we contextualize a weapons system synchronically, we understand it in terms of the infrastructure and institutions (the technological and doctrinal context) that jointly make that weapons system possible, and make it what it is when brought to bear in armed conflict.
The life span of a weapons system is thus a diachronic historical inquiry, but it is only through a synchronic understanding that we see how the elements of a contemporary weapons system stands in relation not only to military function it is supposed to serve, but also in relation to the wider society and designs, builds, and operates the weapons system in question. As in all historical inquiry, the diachronic and synchronic perspectives are bound up in each other. Moreover, there is a parallel synchronic inquiry that would concern itself with the scope of application of a weapons system. This is a crucial and often-overlooked question, which we find we must asked ourselves when a political entity possesses a weapons system that it does not use when engaged in armed conflict. This is another sense of the "lifespan" of a weapons system.
To clarify our terminology we need to indulge in a little informal philosophical logic, since in this context the generality of our assertions will make an important difference. We have to be able to distinguish not only between weapons systems but also the fine gradations in the generations of weapons systems. The F-16 block 60 fighter aircraft operated by the UAE are a more advanced fighter aircraft than the F-16 block 50/52 operated by most USAF squadrons, but we would only distinguish them in a very fine-grained account of weapons systems.
The various "block" upgrades I will count as the "same" weapons systems, even when they have different capabilities, while I will count fourth generation fighter aircraft and fifth generation fighter aircraft as distinct weapons systems. Therefore the F-16 and the F-22 will count as different weapons systems. However, at a higher level of generality, the F-16 and the F-22, as both being supersonic fighter jets are, in a sense, the "same" weapons system. At an even higher level of generality, all fighter aircraft, from the Sopwith Camel to the F-22 are essentially the same weapons system: an aircraft mounting missile weapons to be employed in air-to-air or air-to-ground combat.
All of these distinctions are useful, and we have to keep them in mind so that we avoid comparing apples to oranges and therefore avoid vitiating our point. Furthermore, we need to distinction between what I will call perennial weapons systems, sempiternal weapons systems, and properties of weapons systems.
● perennial weapons systems are weapons systems based on perennial technologies. A knife is a perennial weapons system. There will always be knives, pistols, and rifles. These are now perennial weapons systems. Similarly, there will always be missile weapons of some type, but this is already a move to a higher level of generality, since "missile weapons of some type" include pistols and rifles (and knives, too, when thrown). It is at least arguable that a perennial weapon is not really a weapons system, since perennial weapons in their stark simplicity may be found in isolation from a doctrinal or technological context, but in this case I don't think that this distinction matters all that much, so I will allow myself the leeway to call perennial weapons "perennial weapons systems." (Also note that the generalization of a the idea of a weapons system is distinct from the idea of perennial weapons systems.)
● sempiternal weapons systems are weapons systems that in their complexity transcend the simplicity and directness of perennial weapons systems. There is no clear dividing line between perennial weapons systems and sempiternal weapons systems, but I introduce the term "sempiternal" to imply that they are clearly invented at some point in time and, once invented, they are here to stay. It would be difficult to say at what time knives were invented, so knives are clearly perennial weapons systems — it is possible that a knife was the first stone tool produced by human ancestors. I count general categories of weapons systems (the highest level of generality mentioned above, that conflates the Sopwith Camel and the F-22) as sempiternal weapons systems: ships purpose-built for warfare, fixed wing fighter aircraft, helicopters, tanks, and so on. Once the idea of fighting from a flying platform was implemented, it is going to be with us as long as our civilization lasts. That makes such ideas and their implementations (which change radically over time) sempiternal.
● properties of weapons systems are distinct from general kinds of weapons systems, as in sempiternal weapons systems. Under a sufficiently general conception of a weapons system, Hittite chariot archers, Mongol horse archers, main battle tanks, aircraft carriers, and helicopter gunships all count as mobile fire weapons systems. Yet mobile fire is not itself a weapons system, but a property of some weapons system, a property that might be possessed to a greater or a lesser degree. An aircraft carrier is a mobile fire weapons system, but is much less mobile and much less maneuverable than a helicopter gunship. An arrow, a spear, and a knife when thrown are all examples of missile weapons; any of these missile weapons when employed from a mobile platform constitute mobile fire weapons systems, just as an Apache helicopter gunship constitutes a mobile fire weapons system, but all of these weapons systems are profoundly different each from the other.
Given these distinctions, it should be obvious that perennial weapons systems, sempiternal weapons systems, and properties of weapons systems have no life span: once they are introduced, they are with us forever. If some treaty establishes their abolition, we will still have the idea that such a thing is possible, and if it becomes seen as militarily necessary, they will be built regardless of treaties or abolition.
This is not true, however, at lower levels of generality than that contemplated by the bare idea of sempiternal weapons systems. There will always be missile weapons, but this is a highly general concept of a weapons system. In the same way that there will always be missile weapons, there will always be ships and submersibles, and there will always be aircraft. While there will always be fighter aircraft, particular generations of fighter aircraft become obsolete. No one would build a Sopwith Camel today for combat, although they might build one as a project of historical reconstruction (i.e., as an exercise in experimental archaeology).
What applies to generations of fighter aircraft also applies to generations of naval technologies. To take one example, no more ships of the line are built for contemporary navies (except to train cadets). In other words, the ship of the line, with multiple decks and multiple masts, optimized to fire the greatest number of cannon as broadsides against other ships of the line, is obsolete, were it was once the state of the art in naval architecture. The ship of the line had a definite life span, and that life span came to an end more than a century ago.
This post began as a response to my post on The End of the Age of the Aircraft Carrier, in which I speculated on the lifespan of fixed wing aircraft carriers and explicitly stated that no weapons systems will last forever; the aircraft carrier will eventually go the way of the ship of the line, but not until something better comes along. A comment was recently made that aircraft carriers may last another hundred years on the earth's oceans, and I do not dispute this. Nevertheless, it is still a matter of time.
With the above distinctions in mind, I will revise this a bit, and assert instead that the aircraft carrier simpliciter is a sempiternal weapons system, and I acknowledged this implicitly in my earlier post when I stated that there will be helicopter carriers in the future, which are a kind of aircraft carrier, but once fixed wing hypersonic aircraft become a reality, and it is cheaper and more effective to base fighter aircraft deep within the home territory of a nation-state, given that hypersonic aircraft could show up anywhere in the world in less than an hour, then fixed wing aircraft carriers will become obsolete. But helicopters will continued to be needed on the battlefield, and they cannot be made hypersonic, so there will be a need for helicopter carriers beyond the time when fixed wing aircraft carriers have become obsolete. Also, since I have predicted that helicopter gunships have not yet been fully exploited on the battlefield, the future of helicopter carriers is bright; helicopters will be needed more than ever on the future battlefield.
The fixed wing aircraft carrier is not the only high technology weapons system the obsolescence of which can be projected. It could be argued that the life span of the land-based ICBM is essentially expired, given that precision weapons system and guidance systems have effectively rendered ICBM silos vulnerable. Even if no nation-state has chosen to build nuclear-tipped hypersonic precision-guided cruise missiles with the intent of neutralizing a ground-based ICBM threat, this is nevertheless clearly a weapons system that is within the capability of the advanced industrialized nation-states to build at the present time. (We have the idea of such a weapons system, and the idea cannot be banned or "unthought.") Effective obsolescence, then, may be distinguished from obsolescence in fact.
On a level of greater generality — greater even than the generalization of all weapons systems — and therefore of even greater potential theoretical interest, it may be that in our own time that symmetrical conflict between peer or near-peer military powers has become obsolete. I don't assert this with any dogmatic degree of confidence, and the coming century may yet see a peer-to-peer conflict in the Pacific if China is able to tool its industrial plant to the point of producing a rival carrier fleet to that of the US. Nevertheless, it is at least possible that peer-to-peer conflict has disappeared from the world, to be replaced by chronic, low-level insurgency and asymmetrical operations.
If we rigorously limited ourselves to a single level of generality (again, avoiding the comparison and apples and oranges) we could probably calculate for a given weapons system an average lifespan. If we could do this (i.e., if someone took the time to do this in a rigorous way) I will make a prediction about the lifespan of weapons systems:
Prediction: even as perennial weapons systems endure in their usefulness, the lifespan of large, technologically sophisticated weapons systems will gradually shrink in length unless industrial-technological civilization reaches a (near-)permanent plateau of development, spelling the end of the technological innovation that drives weapons systems development.
The ship of the line arguably endured for centuries as a viable weapons system. The ICBM seems to have lasted only about 50 years as a viable weapons system. Some high technology weapons system seem to be obsolete as soon as they are designed and being prepared for actual use. The most notorious examples of this would include the XM2001 Crusader self-propelled howitzer and the M247 Sergeant York self-propelled anti-aircraft gun.
The same forces that drive industrial-technological civilization forward — science creating technology engineered into industries creating new tools for science — also drive industrialized warfare forward, and as technology improves exponentially, weapons systems must also improve exponentially. This means shorter lifespans for the most advanced technological weapons systems, even as perennial weapons systems retain their efficacy in ongoing asymmetrical conflicts in which the full force of industrialized warfare cannot be brought to bear in any meaningful way.
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The Byzantine Superweapon
9 January 2013
In many quarters "Byzantine" and "Byzantium" are ciphers for stagnation, decadence and civilizational decline. Hegel certainly thought so. I have elsewhere quoted Hegel on his opinion of the Byzantine Weltanschauung: "…a disgusting picture of imbecility." Yet, as many authors have pointed out, the Byzantine portion of the Roman Empire outlasted the Western portion of the Roman Empire by a thousand years, which is no mean accomplishment. Here is a contemporary scholarly perspective on the apparent hostility of Byzantine civilization to innovation:
"The widespread modern evaluation of Byzantium as anti-innovative could be proven wrong by the study of various innovations in Byzantine architecture (one should need no more than studying the pendentives of Hagia Sophia), military techniques and practices (the Greek fire being a very good example, even if not the only), technology (see for example the fifth century mechanical sundial treasured today at the British Museum of Science, or the famous tenth-century hydraulic systems of the imperial palace described by Liutprand of Cremona), painting (the narrative icon), theology (see above, on Iconoclasm and Hesychasm), or music."
"Was Innovation unwanted in Byzantium?" Apostolos Spanos, University of Agder, working paper, to be published in: Ingela Nilsson & Paul Stephenson (eds.), Byzantium Wanted: The Desire and Rejection of an Empire, Uppsala, 2013, Studia Byzantina Upsaliensia, vol. 15
Spanos mentions as an example of Byzantine technological innovation "Greek fire," said to have been invented by the Syrian military engineer Callinicus of Heliopolis (himself a refugee from conflict), and which was famous throughout late antiquity as a fearsome weapon. I have been listening to Professor Jeffrey Burds' Modern Scholar lectures, The Second Oldest Profession, Part 1: A World History of Espionage, and in the last part of the second lecture, "Espionage Among the Ancients," Professor Burds goes into some detail concerning Greek fire. Interested as he is in espionage, Professor Burds focuses on the legendary secrecy which surrounded Greek fire — which secrecy, it should be pointed out, contributed to its aura as a mystery to be feared. So secret was Greek fire that the exact nature of it has not survived into modern times. We have a pretty good idea of the chemical composition and delivery system, but we don't have the exact ingredients or a surviving Greek fire device (one cannot help but wonder if a Greek fire delivery system will be dug up some day).
The Byzantine use of "Greek Fire" must be understood as a "weapons system" in the modern sense of the term, with several integrated technologies employed together according to an established military doctrine. The Byzantines left several famous military manuals to posterity, but unfortunately there is not surviving manual on the use of Greek fire in combat. Yet I strongly suspect, given its employment over a period of several hundred years, that Byzantine admirals had a Greek fire doctrine.
It should be kept in mind that any technology sufficiently robust to employ as a weapons system in combat operations has reached an impressive level of sophistication, and with this in mind we should grant the sophistication of the Greek fire weapons system in Byzantium, which involved several different components — ships, kettles for heating the chemical mixture, pumps, pipes, the delivery nozzle — which were separately constructed and only later assembled (Professor Burds credits this compartmentalization of the production and operation of Byzantine Greek fire for it being successfully kept secret), trained crews in the operation of the weapons system stationed on the ships, and, last of all, the secret chemical ingredients of the flammable mixture combined and loaded on to the ships by a representative of the Byzantine royal family.
This Byzantine superweapon exploited the technological capabilities of classical antiquity, engineering them into an effective weapons system that served state interests for hundreds of years before the secret was lost to posterity. In a sense, then, Greek fire represented the science, technology, and engineering of an entire civilization. Classical antiquity was capable of producing machinery of a high degree of precision when so desired — I have in particular cited a Roman water pump I saw in a museum in Madrid, and of course there is the famous Antikythera mechanism and the clock in the Tower of the Winds in Athens, inter alia — but given the overwhelmingly agrarian character of ancient civilization there was little motivation to systematically exploit mechanical and industrial technologies.
In classical antiquity, technology was pervasively present, but not systematically exploited for the purpose of improving the human condition. Under the circumstances of immediate military threat, when regime survivability was put into question, we do find the systematic exploitation of science, technology, and engineering — not only the Byzantine superweapon, but also there is the famous story of Archimedes producing war machines for the defense of Syracuse, and there are ancient books on the construction of siege engines, e.g., Siegecraft by Heron of Byzantium, which suggests a level of system brought to this military knowledge. Once the military threat was removed or neutralized, however, the motivation to exploit technology for practical purposes seems to vanish. With an economy based on slave labor, there was little motivation to produce labor-saving devices.
In my post on anonymization I observed that industrial production in classical antiquity rose to the level of routine, and employed economies of scale, but it never rose to the level of anonymous mass production. So too all the high technology of the ancient world was hand crafted. And not only did the production remain unsystematic, but the knowledge itself remained unsystematized for the most part. Since the context of knowledge was not made systematic, knowledge was more easily lost. In contemporary industrial-technological civilization — in which such technological devices are not merely peripheral to the civilization, but which are rather constitutive of the civilization — the context of knowledge is made as systematic as the escalating cycle of science, technology, and engineering.
We can see, in retrospect, countless ways in which the ancient world failed to "connect the dots" of technology in terms of fully exploiting innovations, scaling up, and engineering a technology into an industry. Time and again there are missed opportunities to substantially improve the material context of life by even a modest extrapolation of existing techniques and technologies. For example, Hero of Alexandria — the same Alexandria famous for its library, which Carl Sagan characterized as a research institute of classical antiquity — invented a steam turbine, the Aeolipile, among many other devices. But rather than being harnessed for work, Hero's steam engine was treated as a curiosity. In Historical Disruption I noted how Tamim Ansary mentioned that Taqi al-Din's steam turbine failed to be more than a novelty in its social context. Exactly the same thing was true of Hero's steam turbine.
It was clearly within the technological competency of ancient engineering to harness Hero's steam turbine to do mechanical work — it could have been used to operate a water pump for mining or agricultural irrigation, to power an air pump for bellows, to turn a potter's wheel or the spindle of a lathe, or to actuate a reciprocating saw. None of these things happened — or, if any of these applications were attempted, none were adopted on a scale that would have made a difference to way people lived.
Throughout his Cosmos television series, Carl Sagan refers back to Greek science and technology, and at one point imagines what the world would be like today if science and technology had progressed steadily from that time to the present day. It is an enjoyable exercise in counter-factual history, but it doesn't really reflect what was going on in the ancient world. There was no social infrastructure in place to exploit technological innovations. Sagan was closer to the truth when he mentioned in the last episode of Cosmos that ancient scientists never questioned the social institutions of their time, and Sagan particularly singles out slavery.
Slavery almost certainly retards the advancement of civilization, and for this reason if for no other must be considered a retrograde institution. It is all-too-easy for the empowered and privileged classes to sit back and let the slaves to the work, even when everyone's life could be improved through the most basic technological innovations and their exploitation in labor-saving devices. It was a lack of interest, and not a lack of ability, that nipped an ancient industrial revolution in the bud. Perhaps slavery also retards the moral progress of civilization, and there is a systematic relationship between moral progress and technological progress. This would be a highly controversial thesis to maintain, but one can at least see the glimmer of an argument here.
With this in mind, it is possible, then, that the collapse of the Roman Empire ultimately laid the foundations for the growth of industrial-technological civilization, because the historical discontinuity between antiquity and medievalism assured that ancient institutions were abandoned and new institutions were established in place of them. Slavery went the way of the Homeric gods, sacred prostitution at temples, and — unfortunately — bathing. For all its faults, one of the great achievements of medieval European civilization was its abolition of slavery, even if the condition of peasants was little different from that of slaves. This makes it all the most puzzling how, once Western civilization eliminated slavery once, it made a comeback in the early modern period, only to be eliminated again in the nineteenth century. it would be a worthwhile topic for historical research to attempt to understand why Western civilization had to twice rid itself of slavery.
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Addendum on Jet Propulsion Technology
10 July 2012
In yesterday's post on China's Military Aviation Ambitions I discussed some of the early difficulties in jet propulsion, and how the most advanced jet engines of our time continue to be a technical and engineering challenge. China, as I mentioned, buys its most advanced jet engines from Russia and the Ukraine, who apparently possess industrial plant tooling and technical expertise superior to what the Chinese are currently capable of matching.
I expect that this technological hurdle will continue for some time, since despite the fact that jet propulsion technology is older that the technology of nuclear weapons (which I have elsewhere called a mature technology), there is still a great deal of technological and engineering work to go on jet propulsion.
In the past few decades jet propulsion technological research has focused on higher efficiencies, and this research has resulted in passenger jet service that uses significantly less fuel than the first Jet Age when, in the 1960s, passengers jets first began to routinely offer international travel. But I have also noted that the then-expected transition to supersonic jet travel didn't happen; supersonic jets were loud and expensive and used a lot of fuel. The time saved by supersonic travel was not at that time, and has not up to this time, been enough to offset the disproportionate costs of supersonic passenger travel (although supersonic military jets are now entirely routine, with the newest fighter jets possessing supercruise ability).
But that isn't the only thing that slowed down the advent of the age of supersonic jet travel. Supersonic jets are a difficult technology to master, and require substantial engineering and technological resources. We still have a long way to go (and therefore many opportunities yet in the future — even the near future) in terms of routine and cost-effective supersonic travel. Since supersonic jet travel has been stalled for some time, it is beginning to feel like fusion power — an engineering challenge just beyond our current reach — always another thirty years in the future.
On my other blog I wrote about tests this past spring on the essential systems of the REL SABRE engine (Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine — an illustration of which is pictured above), which is of the greatest interest for future jet propulsion technologies. This is an engine that can take us into space, and is therefore the future and an important technological milestone. The SABRE engine (you can see an animation of its operation both on the REL website and at Vimeo) is designed for SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit) and HOTOL (HOrizontal Take Off and Landing) operation — in other words, this is the engine for the kind of spaceships that you see in the movies, that take off from the ground under their own power, like an airplane, and are able to keep accelerating all the way through the atmosphere and then into space.
Maybe I sound like a booster for REL — their website calls the SABRE engine, "a major breakthrough in propulsion worldwide" — but it would be difficult to underestimate the importance of this propulsion technology, not just for the business of space launch, and not just for any particular industry, but for the human species. If we stay on the earth, we are doomed; we will only propagate our civilization if we become a spacefaring civilization, and an SSTO spacecraft is an essential element in becoming a spacefaring civilization.
When I was reading about the SABRE engine I was surprised that the crucial technology was simply a cooling system. Air traveling at hypersonic speeds gets very hot, and it needs to be cooled down to very low temperatures even while continuing to flow at very high speeds. Also, the moisture has to be extracted from the air, since ice coming into a hypersonic jet could cause serious problems. These are the problems that REL has so far been tackling successfully.
The REL SABRE engine is one solution for an engine that runs as a jet through the atmosphere and then turns itself into a rocket for extra-atmospheric flight. I assume that there are other possible solutions to this technological and engineering challenge, but as far as I know, REL is the only enterprise at present engaged in this kind of research and development. Of course their are always rumors that such things are being developed for the military in "black" programs of which the public knows nothing. It seems to me that if the Skunk Works could build the SR-71 Blackbird in the 1960s, by now they certainly ought to be able to build an air cooler that can aspirate a jet engine to the edge of the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds. Certainly I hope that such research is taking place, since the future of civilization is at stake.
There would be very obvious military advantages to a SSTO fighter, which would also be the first space fighter. Because of the ascendancy of the drone industry in recent years, several military hardware commentators have ventured that the current crop of fifth generation fighters (and 5.5 generation fighters) will be the last of the manned combat jets. I think it is much more likely the the F-22, and F-35, the Sukhoi PAK-FA and the J-20 will be the last generation of atmospheric-only military fighter craft, as the next obvious step is a fighter that takes off from the runway on the ground and flies directly into space, there to defend space-based military assets and to attack and disable the space-based assets of rival military powers.
It is hard to imagine that such developments are not taking place far from the eyes of the public. Hopefully my friends over at Open Source GEOINT will spot something like this soon.
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Chinese Military Aviation Ambitions
9 July 2012
The first jet-powered fighters and bombers became operational before the end of the Second World War. Under the pressure of war, the Germans developed the ME-262 fighter jet and the Arado Ar 234 bomber, while the British developed the Gloster Meteor fighter. The Germans adopted a more elegant and efficient engine design (an axial flow turbojet, in contrast to a centrifugal compressor), but the design required components that were at the very limits of the materials and manufacturing technology of the time. Some of these early jet engines had a service life of only 25-50 hours. The early British jet engines with a centrifugal compressor had a longer service life as the engine components were not subject to operating temperatures as high as that of axial flow engines.
The technology to design and produce cutting-edge fighter jet engines continues to this day to limit the ambitions of air forces and the industrial concerns that produce their jets. In a special Aerospace supplement to today's Financial Times, a detailed article by Kathrin Hille, China: Doing it all yourself has its drawbacks, discusses China's military aviation ambitions, which include not only the now well-known J-20 stealth fighter in development, but also a lighter weight stealth fighter, the J-60. Experts cited in the article emphasize that at least ten years of trials and testing were required for the F-22 to be put in the service, and still today the F-22 has problems. The less experienced Chinese air force will experience at least comparable development horizons for its fifth generation fighter.
Despite China's obvious military aviation ambitions, which now must include carrier aviation as well, and despite all the accounts in the popular press of Chinese engineering prowess (presumably as revealed by new buildings and high speed trains), the Chinese cannot yet build the engines that power their most advanced fighter aircraft. According to the FT article cited above, the Chinese rely on Russian and Ukrainian sources for their engines. The Chinese J-10 and J-11 use the Russian-designed Salyut AL-31 FN engine. According to AIN Online, in Ukraine Wins Engine Contract for Chinese L-15 Jet Trainer Production, "China has ordered 250 AI-222-25F turbofans from the Ukraine to power production versions of the Hongdu L-15 advanced jet trainer."
When one thinks of the public perception of the relative industrial plant of China and the Ukraine, one would not think that China needs to go to the Ukraine to purchase its most advanced jet engines, but this is the case in fact. The whole of China's industrial plant is not yet capable of producing the materials and manufacturing technology necessary to the production of the kind of engine needed for the fifth generation stealth fighter (or even its training aircraft), and without the engine the jet is an empty shell.
In the long term I don't think that there is any question that China will be able to tool its industrial plant up to the quality necessary to produce the engines that its jets require, but the fact that it is not yet at that level points both to the achievement of Soviet bloc manufacturing centers during the Cold War, as well as the extent to which China was more or less completely left out of the Cold War competition that drove military technological advances in the second half of the twentieth century. Russian-based industrial concerns are continuing to refine and improve the capacities they acquired during the Cold War, even if they lack the funds and the ambition to participate on the same level as China in global military arms procurement.
Of course, the Russians are developing the Sukhoi PAK-FA in cooperation with India, and this is certainly a global player in the fifth generation fighter competition, but I think that there is an accurate sense that Russia simply does not possess a sufficiently robust economy to follow up on its technological skills. It can produce the PAK-FA, but its ability to afford several squadrons seems questionable at best, whereas there isn't much question that China can afford several fifth generation squadrons, but it doesn't quite yet have the expertise to produce them on an exclusively domestic basis. This gives the Russians a certain power over China in the short term, even if the Russians choose not to use this lever. In fact, the Russians might well like the idea of a fifth generation fighter arms race between the US and China, because this occupies the US and leaves less strategic attention left over to focus on Russia's near abroad. In the short term, again, the Russians may see it in their interest to facilitate Chinese military aviation ambitions, though it is unlikely that the Russians will see this as a long term strategic interest.
The Russians and the Chinese share a fairly long border, and even during the Cold War when the East was supposedly monolithically Red, they went to war over that border (cf. Sino-Soviet border conflict). This happened during my lifetime, and I am sure that it has not been forgotten either in China or Russia. That being said, former rivals sometimes become the best of allies, as was the case with NATO. While I do not think that this is at all likely, it is possible that the SCO could come to play a role in uniting former rivals and enemies in the face of the perception of a greater threat (presumptive US dominance over East Asian affairs).
Again, I do not think that this is at all likely, but it would certainly be strategically interesting if the SCO replaced NATO as the central strategic entity in the coming century. Since NATO no longer has a mission after the end of the Cold War, and the Western powers are essentially casting about either for a replacement role for NATO or for some alternative institution to give strategic focus and direction to Western interests, there is a kind of strategic void in the world today (and consequent strategic drift). In the West, we assume that this void will eventually be filled with a Western institution, but this is not necessarily the case. The SCO is an non-Western institution that could, in theory, fill this void.
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Weapons Systems in an Age of High Technology: Nothing is Hidden.
10 January 2012
Recently I have become fascinated by the development of early bombers during the First World War. Driven by the exigencies of the world's first large-scale industrialized war (the Russo-Japanese War was an industrialized war, but not on the scale of the First World War), aircraft developed rapidly. I have focused on the same rapidity of technological development previously emphasizing the modernity of weapons systems during the Second World War. In The Dialectic of Stalemate I wrote:
"When the Second World War ended, there were operable jet fighters, ballistic missiles, electronic computers, and atomic weapons. None of these existed when the war began."
True enough, but the essential ideas behind these weapons systems were already in play. An idea can be implemented in any number of ways (admittedly some more efficacious than others), and exactly how an idea is implemented is a matter of technology and engineering — in other words, implementation is an accident of history. As soon as the idea has its initial implementation, we are clever enough to usually see the implications of that idea rather quickly, and thus technology is driven to keep up with the intrinsic potentiality of the idea.
Once the proof of concept of heavier-than-air flight was realized, the rest fell into place like pieces of a puzzle. Aircraft would be armed; they would seek to destroy other aircraft, and prevent themselves from being destroyed; and they would seek to destroy targets on the ground. Hence the idea of aircraft in warfare rapidly moves to fighters and bombers. The pictures above are of the Zeppelin-Staaken r.vi — not the first enclosed bomber, but among the first (the Russians, I believe, made the first enclosed bomber, the Sikorsky Ilya Muromets).
The Zeppelin-Staaken r.vi was an enormous craft with a wingspan almost equal to that of a B-29 and a crew of many men. In fact, these early German bombers were called Riesenflugzeug (or R-planes) — gigantic aircraft. An early testimonial from a Zeppelin-Staaken r.vi crew member vividly conveys the sense of flying the R-planes:
"Inside the fuselage the pale glow of dim lights outlined the chart table, the wireless equipment, and the instrument panel. Under us, the black abyss."
Trenches: Battleground WWI, episode 5, "Fight On, Fly On"
The technology and engineering of flight during the First World War was not sufficiently advanced to make a decisive strategic difference, but they had the idea of what was possible, and they attempted to put it into practice. The idea of bombers, coordinated by radio, executing a strategic precision airstrike was already present during the First World War.
During the Second World War, the technology had advanced to the point that strategic bombing was decisive, and, in fact, it was at one point the only possible war that the UK could wage against Germany. The evolutionary development continues to the present day. Contemporary precision munitions are finally beginning to converge on true precision air strikes that were first imagined (and attempted) during the First World War.
The point here is that, once the idea is in place, the rest is mere technology and engineering — in other words, implementation. The corollary of the essential idea coupled with with contingent implementation is the fact that the wars of industrial-technological civilization, there are no secrets.
William Langewiesche in his book Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor emphasized that the early atomic scientists knew that there were no "secrets" per se, because the atomic bomb was the result of science, and anyone who would engage in science, technology, and engineering on a sufficiently large scale can build a nuclear weapon.
This thesis should be generalized and extrapolated beyond the science of nuclear weapons. Precision munitions, aviation, targeting, and all the familiar line items of a current military budget are refined and perfected by science and technology. For all practical purposes, all war has become science, and science is no secret. Any sufficiently diligent and well-funded people can produce a body of scientific knowledge that could be put into practice building weapons systems.
One might suppose, from the regimes of state security that have become so prevalent, that secrecy is of the essence of technological warfare. While this impression is encouraged, it is false. Secrecy is no more central to competition in technological warfare than it is central to industrial competition. That is to say, secrecy has a role to play, but the role that secrecy plays is not quite the role that official secrecy claims might lead one to believe.
Wittgenstein in his later work — no less pregnantly aphoristic than the Tractatus — said that nothing is hidden. And so it is in the age of industrial-technological civilization: Nothing is hidden. Everything is, in principle, out in the open and available for public inspection. This is the very essence of science, for science progresses through the repeatability of its results. That is to say, science is essentially an iterative enterprise.
Wittgenstein also said in his later period that philosophy leaves the world as it is. That is to say, philosophy is is no sense revolutionary. And so too with the philosophy of war, which in its practical application is strategic doctrine: strategic doctrine leaves the world as it is.
The perennial verities of war remain. These are largely untouched by technology, because all parties to modern, scientific war have essentially the same technology, so that they fight on the same level. Military powers contending for victory seek technological advantages when and where they can get them, but these advantages are always marginal and temporary. Soon the adversary has the same science, and soon after that the same technology.
The true struggle is the struggle of ideas — the struggle of mind against mind, contending to formulate the decisive idea first. As I said above, once the idea is in place, everything else follows from the idea. But it is the idea that is the necessary condition of all that follows.
War, then, is simply the war of ideas.
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Revisiting Exercise Anatolian Eagle
7 January 2012
In the discussion that resulted from my post Air Superiority in South Asia, one comment posted brought my attention to rumors that Pakistani F-16s had humbled Eurofighter Typhoons at the Anatolian Eagle Exercises. After receiving the comment I did some reading about this, and in my response to the comment tried to sum up what I had discovered. At that time, I regarded the issues raised by the comment and what has been written about the episode as an open question, and to a certain degree matters like this will always remain an open question. However, I have learned a few things since I last wrote about this, and what I have learned reveals a pattern. While a single incident can always be an outlier, a pattern reveals reveals something more than this. One expects a pattern to repeat. If a pattern repeats, measures can be taken ameliorate the repetition if desired. On the other hand, if we discern a pattern and fail to take action, we are culpable for the consequences of such repetition if it is unwelcome.
The incident in question was at Exercise Anatolian Eagle 2008. Anatolian Eagle exercises have been taking place for ten years now, several times per year, at Konya, Turkey. The website for the exercises bills them as the "#1 Tactical Training Center of the World." After the 2008 exercises a PAF (Pakistani Air Force) pilot was quoted as follows:
"NATO pilots are not that proficient in close-in air-to-air combat. They are trained for BVR (Beyond Visual Range) engagements and their tactics are based on BVR engagements. These were close-in air combat exercises and we had the upper hand because close-in air combat is drilled into every PAF pilot and this is something we are very good at."
Much has been written about this since, and there has been no definite identification of whose Eurofighter Typhoons the Pakistanis engaged. Originally they were reported to be RAF jets, then Italian jets, and then others. And it has been claimed that there were no times when the Pakistanis engaged any of these Eurofighter Typhoons. I am not in a position to settle the various accounts that are to be found on the internet, but other matters can shed some light on the reported incident.
I previously cited The DEW Line blog, which included a comment that sought to place the Pakistani claim in context:
"The PAF and RAF aircraft were conducting DACT – Dissimilar air combat training. PAF were the Blue force. RAF were the Red force. Red force was meant to die and was representing a particular threat for the purposes of the exercise, this threat was not the RAF and the Eurofighter's full capability or even their tactics."
And another comment reiterated some of the points of the earlier comment:
"Just to build on Aussie Digger's comments, a well-placed source has told me the following: 'None of the RAF Typhoon pilots involved in Ex Anatolian Eagle recalls undertaking Basic Fighter Maneuvers with Turkish air force F-16s flown by Pakistan exchange pilots.' So if a 'kill' is claimed, it took place under exercise conditions where it was supposed to happen, and from distance but within visual range; not dogfighting!"
These seemed like reasonable claims to me, but there is a larger context that I mentioned above, which suggests a pattern. That pattern is a tension between technology and training. Although in historical terms, jet fighters are very young, with only about sixty years of operational experience, the design and operation of fighters has already gone through several cycles. At one point in the cycle, technology is emphasized, and at another point in the cycle real-world experience in training is emphasized.
The USAF has long emphasized technological solutions to combat problems, and this is to be expected because US technology gives the USAF an advantage over other forces. However, this advantage admits of exceptions. USAF desire to push the technological envelope led to the F-4 being fitted with missiles (the Sparrow and the Sidewinder) and no gun at all when air-to-air missile technology was still rather new and not yet robust or entirely dependable, especially when you are depending upon it for your life. These F-4s fought against Soviet MiGs of the North Vietnamese air force and often found themselves at a disadvantage in dogfighting as a result of their lack of guns. Part of the problem were rules of engagement that required visual identification of targets, which defeats the purpose (and advantage) of non-line of sight missile technology.
There is a detailed monograph on this by Steven A. Fino, formerly available on the internet, but now unaccountably unavailable. Fortunately, I downloaded it while it was available (I don't always remember to do so). I will only quote a few sentences, but the whole document is a revelation:
As MiG activity increased during the remainder of April and May 1966, several American pilots continued to follow the Feather Duster advice and tried to avoid entering a turning engagement with the MiGs. Sometimes, though, they could not; during the course of an engagement, multiple MiGs could often force the F-4 to turn to defend itself, forcing the Phantom crews to discard their approved combat solution. Despite this emerging combat reality, many pilots let their faith in missile technology and published tactics unduly influence their opinions of air-to-air armament. Most continued to categorically dismiss the potential value of a gun on the F-4.
And a page later:
Because the F-4C did not have a gun, nor were there any plans to add a gun to the platform, the Air Force focused its efforts on improving the "poor" performance of the F-4's missile armament. The substandard results were difficult to ignore. From April 1965 through April 1966, the primary armament of the F-4, the AIM-7 Sparrow—the weapon that had guided the aircraft's design and development—had accounted for only one kill, downing a MiG-17 on 23 April 1966. To address the problem, the Air Force appointed a special team of USAF and F-4/Sparrow specialists to travel to Southeast Asia to personally review the weapon system's combat performance and "recommend the required actions necessary to enhance success of future Sparrow/Sidewinder firings."
"ALL THE MISSILES WORK" TECHNOLOGICAL DISLOCATIONS AND MILITARY INNOVATION: A CASE STUDY IN US AIR FORCE AIR-TO-AIR ARMAMENT, POST-WORLD WAR II THROUGH OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER by Steven A. Fino (p. 85 and following)
Fino isn't the only one to cover this ground. Fino cites Clashes: Air Combat over North Vietnam 1965-1972 by Marshall L. Michell III. I first learned of this indirectly from Chasing Shadows: A Special Agent's Lifelong Hunt to Bring a Cold War Assassin to Justice by Fred Burton and John Bruning. This book also cites Marshall L. Michel's book.
Burton and Bruning also tell the fascinating story of lack of US success against Soviet MiGs, and the skullduggery involved in transporting a captured MiG-21 from Israel to the US for study. The disproportion in kill ratios was so great that there was very real fear that the NATO-Warsaw Pact confrontation in Europe would be lost by NATO because of the apparent impunity with which Soviet MiGs defeated the best technology of the US. While both the USAF and USN did rather poorly against MiGs initially, USN aviation opened their Top Gun school, made changes to pilot training and began to score significantly better kill ratios against Soviet MiGs than the USAF. A mission by the USN to "help" the USAF failed miserably due to inter-service rivalry.
At about the same time as the USAF was doing miserably against Soviet MiGs in southeast Asia, the Israelis were doing quite well against Soviet MiGs operated by Egypt, Iraq, and Syria — Soviet client states in the region armed with the latest and greatest MiG-21s. The same MiGs that were disproportionately killing USAF jets in SE Asia were in turn being disproportionately killed by the Israeli Air Force (IAF) mostly operating French Mirage III fighters.
I can't do justice to this interesting story here — the reader is encouraged to follow my references and get the details for yourself — and we can't narrow the complexity of these diverse situation to a single cause, but there is a common thread that distinguishes the successful forces in air combat, and this is (not surprisingly) doctrine that emphasizes air-to-air combat and pilot training that puts this doctrine into practice. This may sound too obvious to even to say, but at this crucial time (late 1960s to early 1970s) in the development of the supersonic fighter jet, US pilots were being taught and trained to depend on missiles, and their jets didn't even have guns to engage enemy fighters in close air-to-air combat.
Disproportionate fighter kills, moreover, are not historically unprecedented. In fact, fighter kill ratios can be so one-sided that it is shocking to see the numbers. If you look at the list of fighting aces from the Second World War, it would be rather understating the obvious to note that it is dominated by Germans. The number one fighting ace of all time, Erich "Bubi" Hartmann, had 352 recorded kills to his credit. The highest scoring US Ace of the war, Richard I. Bong, had 40 kills.
While part of the German dominance of fighter aces in the Second World War may be due to engagements on the Eastern Front, where it could not be expected that what remained of Soviet industrial plant could produce anything close to the technical mastery of German fighter planes, but this cannot be the entire explanation. German fighters were also engaged on the Western Front. it would be an interesting project to break down kills ratios on the Eastern and Western Fronts. Probably someone has already done so.
An interesting footnote to Erich "Bubi" Hartmann's career, after he spent ten years in Soviet gulags after he refused to fly for newly communist GDR, coincides with the period discussed above. Hartmann opposed the adoption of the US F-104 Starfighter by the Bundesluftwaffe and was forced into retirement in 1970. His warnings about the F-104 technology proved to be well-founded, as it killed 115 German pilots in non-combat missions. Again we see a pattern: US hubris over its technological advantage turns to tragedy with the same sad inevitability that upotian dreams result in dystopian nightmares when put into practice.
With these lessons and examples in mind, I have a completely different perspective on the statements made by the unnamed Pakistani pilots. Western air forces, with the money for new jets and their technological advantage, continue to rely disproportionately on this advantage, while other air forces invest in their human capital, not least because that is their advantage, and that is what they can do given their financial limitations.
Much has been made of the on-board technology of the F-35, which promises to be the most technologically advanced fighter ever built. It is especially proficient in delivering precision weapons to a distant target beyond line of sight. But we have seen this before. The USAF does not have a good record in preparing close in air-to-air combat doctrine and training its pilots to engage in such combat, and US pilots have not distinguished themselves in the disproportionate ways that some peoples have distinguished themselves in close air-to-air dogfighting. One suspects that the familiar pattern is being repeated.
It now seems to be entirely creditable to me that the Pakistani pilots, drilled in close air-to-air fighting were entirely capable of humbling western fighter pilots whose training and equipment has diverged from the nitty-gritty of air combat. Of course, none of this would matter if you could engage and destroy your target when it is still over the horizon and you never have occasion to engage in close air-to-air combat. But can this be done so reliably that air-to-air combat can be consigned to history, like chariot races?
The question now becomes precisely parallel to the question I asked when considering the vulnerability of carriers given the developments in carrier technology and doctrine since the great carrier engagements of the Pacific Theater during the Second World War. In that case I answered that developments in carrier technology have been evolutionary rather than revolutionary, so that while the accidents (and I use this term in the sense of Aristotelian metaphysics) of combat engagement between carrier strike groups will change over time, the essence of such conflict nevertheless has remained invariant over time. Since carriers were vulnerable then, if the essence of the combat situation is invariant over time, carriers are vulnerable today. Q.E.D.
I make the same judgment here: the changes in fighter technology from the introduction of fighter aircraft in the First World War to their current iteration today has been a gradual and evolutionary development without revolutionary breaks in technology, despite the naming of fighters in "generations" which contributes to an image of revolutionary technological change with each new generation of fighter aircraft. Because of the evolutionary development of fighter technology, tactics, and doctrine, accidental features of air combat (like air speed) will change, but the essential features of air-to-air combat will be retained despite accidental change.
For the record, I do not deny the possibility of a game-changing technology that would result in revolutionary change and an essential change in air combat, and I will go so far as to say that precision weapons systems are close to attaining this status, but they are not there yet. Any air force that relies on technology to the detriment of drilling in close air combat will find itself at a disadvantage despite its technology.
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A Paradox of Humanitarianism
6 January 2012
Kenneth Clark, in his Civilisation: A Personal View, concludes his multi-hour documentary with a reflection on moral psychology, although he does not call it that. He particularly mentions the rise of humanitarianism. This sort of thing would not go over well today, some forty years later, as it would be seen as rather too credulous, and smacking of progressivism (which, we are given to understand, is a terrible thing). But listening to Clark it is obvious that it is already in his time becoming dangerous to say such things — dangerous, because one is liable to be thought a simpleton. Clark himself calls himself a "stick-in-the-mud."
I do not disagree with Clark, and I am not so dismissive of progress as has become common today, but this is a point I will not argue here. I simply tell you my prejudices so you know that I agree with Clark on this point. This is significant because, even if we recognize the emergence of a humanitarian consciousness in the nineteenth century, we must recognize at the same time the earlier wisdom of Hamlet, viz. that we often discover that we must be cruel to be kind.
One might consider it a kindness that the First World War was ended by agreement with an armistice, and that this spared lives and property by not necessitating an invasion of Germany itself, but the very fact that the defeat of Germany was not made absolutely manifest on the home front in an age of popular sovereignty meant that the armistice did not settle the war. As Foch said, and was proved right, "it is not peace, but an armistice for twenty years."
Would it have been a "kindness" to push on an defeat the Germans on German soil, taking the lives of more soldiers and destroying the infrastructure of Germany in the teens? This would possibly have changed subsequent history, and it might not have been necessary to level Germany twenty years later with a strategic bombing campaign. And it would have been primarily soldiers who were put at risk of life and limb. During the First World War, more soldiers died than civilians. During the Second World War, more civilians died than soldiers. This is a portent that says something truly horrific about our time.
Such horrific choices have faced us repeatedly throughout our history, and still face us today. Because these choices are hideous, the way that each of us comes down on one side of the question or the other is often used against us, when the most unflattering construction is placed on our preference. This is disingenuous, because either side can smear the other side with the unsavory and unavoidable corollaries of a forced choice. And history forces us to make such forced choices — or forces us to avoid making a choice and, as we say today, kicking the can further down the road — time and again. We should not conceal this from ourselves.
Here is a semi-contemporary example. I have read interviews with one of the scientists who was involved in the design of the neutron bomb. He had served as a solder in Korea, and he had seen the devastation wrought in Korea by conventional weapons. Many cities were annihilated, not unlike the German cities subject to strategic bombing during the Second World War. This vision of destruction on an apocalyptic scale was an inspiration to this scientist, and was part of his experience that contributed to the design of the neutron bomb. For this man, the neutron bomb was a more humanitarian weapon — not unlike the guillotine, which when first invented by a doctor, was conceived as a humane form of execution.
After it become possible to build a neutron bomb, and some nation-states considered adding it to their arsenals, the very idea of the neutron bomb was held up as something ghastly and ghoulish, as though it had been designed with the intent to killing people while "saving" their property, which latter might be expropriated by others who would simply move in to a depopulated urban area. Anti-neutron bomb activists put the worst possible construction on the intention of the neutron bomb. For them, it was apparently more "humanitarian" to keep war so horrible that it would remain unthinkable. From this point of view, mutually assured destruction is a good thing. And I certainly understand this argument, but at the same time as I understand the argument, I know that, for some people, mutually assured destruction is one of the great moral obscenities of our time, and our civilization should be ashamed of itself for having made such a conception possible, not to mention the very foundation of the international order during the Cold War.
What is more "humanitarian": the threat of a nuclear genocide of a significant proportion of our species, or the threat of a lesser degree of destruction that might settle a war at a lower cost? I think that if you are honest with yourself, you will acknowledge that each alternative is a moral horror. That does not mean that I regard the argument between the two as indifferent. On the contrary, I believe that rational arguments can be made on both sides of the question. All I am saying here is that the irrational thing is to believe that moral horror is exclusively on one side or the other.
This is certainly not the only paradox of humanitarianism, but it is certainly one of them.
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A Review of Iranian Capabilities
28 December 2011
Recently there has been a debate at the Foreign Policy website about the possibility of a US-led preventative war against Iran, to prevent the latter from becoming a nuclear weapons power. Matthew Kroenig wrote an article for Foreign Affairs advocating a preventative war; Stephen M. Walt wrote a response against Kroenig in Foreign Policy; Kroenig responded to Walt, and Walt wrote another rejoinder. You can read all about it in Why attacking Iran is still a bad idea. I rarely say this, but I agree with almost everything that Stephen M. Walt wrote.
With all this talk of war and Iran, here's a quick review of what I've written about some of Iran's more interesting capabilities revealed over the last three years:
This was my first post about the much-discussed acquisition by Iran of the Bradstone Challenger, a specialty high speed small sport boat with obvious military implications for building a fast patrol boat.
After discussing the possibility of a fast patrol boat, the question emerges of the possibility of "swarm warfare" involving a large number of small, fast patrol boats going up against a large, lumbering blue water navy in the confines of the Persian Gulf, and most especially the Strait of Hormuz (the latter very much in the news again; cf. US warns Iran over threat to block oil route)
● The Political Context of Striking a Carrier
I left a lot of questions unanswered in my post on small boat swarm warfare, so I revisited the topic in this little-read post that attempts to place a US-Iran confrontation in a political context. The Iranians don't need to sink a carrier in order to score a political victory, and they don't need to stop all traffic in order to do real economic damage merely by slowing the sixty percent of the world's oil that transits the Strait of Hormuz.
● Small Boat Swarms: Strategic or Tactical?
This post was a further elaboration of the problems of swarm warfare, specially asking whether we should regard such weapons systems as tactical (like a tank or a helicopter) or strategic (like a nuclear bomb).
This post followed the announcement by Iran of the indigenous development of a drone UCAV bomber, the Karrar.
This post followed the announcement by Iran of the indigenous development of a flying boat, the Bavar, which I suggested might also be used in swarm warfare, like fast patrol boats.
● Political Constraints on Weapons Systems
The central argument of this post concerned the political imperatives that drove the design of the F-35, but I have also observed here that political imperatives have similarly driven Iran's innovative weapons systems.
In this relatively recent post I discussed the Iranians taking possession (possibly by hacking and hijacking) a Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel drone, which may well have things to teach them about their own drone program under development.
I hope that these posts have given the reader an adequate understanding that Iran is well aware of its pariah status vis-à-vis the Western powers, and that it has sought to address its vulnerable position in the world by pursuing innovative weapons systems and developing innovative doctrines for the battlespace deployment of these weapons systems. Iran's innovations don't guarantee military success or the efficacy of their weapons systems in combat, but it does suggest surprises in any military engagement that cannot be predicted prior to combat. I have no doubt that every conceivable scenario has been and is being war-gamed by military professionals around the world, but none of this will accurately predict the real thing.
One of the few things upon which I would disagree with Stephen Walt in the arguments he made (as referenced above) is his cautious attitude on whether or not Iran is seeking to become a nuclear power. I not only believe this to be the case, but I believe that it is more or less inevitable, and that the other powers in the world need to get used to the idea of a nuclear-armed Iran. It won't be the end of the world. Of course, perhaps you will be saying to yourself that the Israelis won't let it go that far, and will intervene as they intervened with Iraq's nuclear program under Saddam Hussein. The obvious rejoinder to this is that the Iranians will have learned the lessons of the vulnerability of the Osirak reactor. I am sure that Iran's nuclear facilities are both hardened and geographically distributed.
Some time ago I mentioned how much I unexpectedly enjoyed William Langewiesche's book Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor. Langewiesche concludes his book by mentioning the importance of, "…finding the courage in parallel to accept the equalities of a maturing world in which many countries have acquired atomic bombs, and some may use them." I can imagine someone calling this pessimistic or fatalistic, but it is so sober and so realistic that I admire Mr. Langewiesche for ending on this note. It is precisely this spirit that ought to inform all our endeavors (and adventures). There are some things that can be addressed by the military power of the advanced industrialized nation-states of the West, but there are other things that are beyond the possibility of intervention. Physics and technology must be counted among those things that cannot be stopped by intervention, and physics and technology are what it takes to build a bomb. Deal with it.
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Another Iranian Coup
11 December 2011
More than a year ago, in An Iranian Coup written in August 2010, I discussed the Iranian production of a drone UCAV (unmanned combat air vehicle) bomber, the Karrar. One of the consequences of developing an innovative weapons systems, in addition to the obvious effort to push technologies as far as they can be pushed, is the development of expertise in design, construction, maintenance, and operations of the weapons system in question. Thus even if Iran's UCAV Karrar is not terribly sophisticated, simply engaging in production and operation of the drone is fostering a team of experienced UCAV experts.
Iran has now put this expertise to good use, having apparently taken control of a Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel, also called "The Beast of Kandahar," brought it down to the ground in one piece, and now have put it on display. There is no agreement on exactly how Iran obtained possession of the RQ-170 Sentinel. Many news stories only suggested scenarios of the drone coming down of its own accord on Iranian territory, the result of a "falling leaf" descent, or "flat spin." I judge this scenario to be unlikely, though I am apparently in the minority on this. I think that the Iranians viewed US drones over their territory as a potential gold mine, like the US trying the recover Soviet submarines from the bottom of the ocean during the Cold War. It is there for the taking, if only you can get your hands on it.
It seems to me by far the most likely story that the Iranians managed to take over the controls of the RC-170 — albeit imperfectly — and guide it down in a less than perfect landing that caused some damage but which left the craft mostly intact. Why should this be more likely that the US losing control of the craft and it coming down of its own accord within Iran? Because of the nature of the technology. I will try to explain what I mean by this using an analogy with a classic situation in which technology changed the battlefield.
One of the most perfect examples in history of changing the classic equation of a battlefield favoring the initiative was the introduction of machine guns and barbed wire during the First World War. Machine guns and barbed wire overwhelmingly favored the defense, and as a result the First World War turned into a standoff in which major operations taking the initiative came at such a great cost for such a small result that any victory was a Pyrrhic victory. This situation was not changed until another technology came along — actually a combination of hardware technologies and social technologies of military doctrine — during the Second World War, when massed mechanized armor was employed according to infiltration tactics and Blitzkrieg was born. The initiative shifted back from the defense to the offense, and the Second World War as in consequence a very different war than the First World War.
The introduction of computer technology to the battlefield is one of those technological innovations that rapidly changes the battlefield equation. Here, it is not that the initiative has shifted from the attack to the defense, but rather that battlefield exploitation of computer technologies has shifted the initiative from regular to irregular forces, or, if you prefer, the overwhelming superiority of conventional military forces can be nullified under certain circumstances so that unconventional forces and unconventional methods of offense can be disproportionately effective.
What are these circumstances in which the initiative goes to irregular forces? Particular individuals with a special genius for programming. That's all it takes: a clever sixteen year old with a good idea and reasonably current equipment — maybe not cutting edge technology, but pretty good technology, such that is within the grasp of second- and even third-tier nation-states today, as well as within the realm of possibility for well-funded non-state actors — could be sufficient to defeat the institutionalized hardware and software systems of conventional forces.
In the C4ISR networked battlespace of the near future, the weapons systems will be awe-inspiring in their complexity and precision, but all of them, however impressive, with have an Achilles heel, and that Achilles heel will be the network itself and wireless communication within the network. The wireless network is available for all to eavesdrop, and the only thing keeping you out of another's network is their encryption.
This situation is not new; we have been here before. After the explosion of the first atomic bombs, several of the scientists who worked on the project, and especially Oppenheimer, emphasized that there was no "secret" of atomic weapons. His point was that the bombs were the results of science, physics, and technology. In principle, any determined agent could master the science, the physics, and the technology, producing an atomic bomb for themselves. The same is true of most of our high technology weapons systems: there are no secrets per se, only an incremental advantage of one side having slightly more advanced technology than the other side, and this advantage will be nullified in time. And so it is today with the networked battlespace: the possibilities of radio-frequency transmission are known to all, as are the basic ideas behind remote operation of drones. In this context, the only skill that matters is hacking, and hackers of genius are as likely to emerge in Iran, China, or Russia as in the US, the UK, or Canada.
The technology onboard the RQ-170 is likely to be greatly in advance of Iran's own Karrar, but thanks to the growing expertise the Iranians are cultivating, they have a good chance of exploiting this captured technology and improving their own future UCAV iterations. It would be interesting to know if US UCAVs have some kind of device that destroys their inner mechanisms if they fail to remain in contact with their proper handlers. If they do not as yet have this feature, I suspect that they will have something like it in the near future.
In the meantime, the Iranians can be expected to exploit the captured RQ-170 to the limit, as Russia exploited the B-29 that fell into its possession at the end of the Second World War, and as the US exploited its captured MiGs during the Cold War, studying them (and, in the case of the Russians, copying them) in painstaking detail. And the Americans will be working on counter-measures to having their drones hijacked. Encryption will be the key technology in this battle of technologies, with cleverness and innovation figuring more significantly than institutional and organizational rationality.
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text:
WhyJust recently I had my husband removed from the house for a domestic disbute he now has a restraining order on him. We have known each other for 16 years and married for 11 of those years living seperated lives under the same roof for 3.5 years which now looking back is crazy I actually can't believe it's been that long!
Anyway all I wanted is for him to go into rehab or get some sort of help for his presc
4whatpurpose 46-50, F 1 Jul 6, 2012

subset: commoncrawl


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What does bab mean?
Definitions for babbɑb
Here are all the possible meanings and translations of the word bab.
Siyyid `Alí Muḥammad Shírází was the founder of Bábism, and one of three central figures of the Bahá'í Faith. He was a merchant from Shíráz, Persia who, at the age of twenty-four, symbolically claimed to be the promised Qá'im. After his declaration he took the title of Báb meaning "Gate". He composed hundreds of letters and books in which he stated his messianic claims and defined his teachings, which constituted a new sharí'ah or religious law. His movement eventually acquired tens of thousands of supporters, was opposed by Iran's Shi'a clergy, and was suppressed by the Iranian government, leading to the persecution and killing of thousands of his followers, called Bábís. In 1850, at the age of thirty, the Báb was shot by a firing squad in Tabriz. Bahá'ís claim that the Báb was also the spiritual return of Elijah and John the Baptist, that he was the saoshyant referred to in the Zoroastrian scriptures, and that he was the forerunner of their own religion. Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, was a follower of the Báb and claimed to be the fulfillment of his promise that God would send another messenger.
Suggested Resources
What does BAB stand for? -- Explore the various meanings for the BAB acronym on the Abbreviations.com website.
Chaldean Numerology
The numerical value of bab in Chaldean Numerology is: 5
Pythagorean Numerology
The numerical value of bab in Pythagorean Numerology is: 5
Sample Sentences & Example Usage
This region provides a strong training opportunity for nations worldwide as three of the six major maritime chokepoints in the world are here: the Suez Canal, the Strait of Bab Al Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz.
We consider the complete control taken by coalition and popular resistance forces over the Bab al-Mandab (strait) and the defeat of the Houthis as the beginning of the end of this renegade group and those backing them.
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Translations for bab
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text:
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We've grown by
the last 3 years
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This fact should come as no surprise because we have a franchise model that's easy to repeat. And we recently rolled out a new Staymobile store prototype that offers a sleek new look. Its simple and straightforward design improves efficiency and reduces costs.
We make safety
and security a top priority.
Our certified technicians are all highly-trained and undergo extensive background checks.
Here's Our #1 FAQ
How does Staymobile differ from the competition?
Staymobile's comprehensive "mobile device solutions" business model is unique in this category. Numerous "cell phone repair" businesses focus singularly on the "break/fix" opportunities of the market. Staymobile, on the other hand, provides a comprehensive suite of services for consumers, educators, municipalities, healthcare practitioners and business owners. Our solutions focus on enhancing and sustaining the mobile lifestyle and operating environments of all mobile devices users.


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The recreational pilot permit (RPP) allows you to fly, a single engine, non-high performance aeroplane designed for a maximum of four seats. You may fly in Canada during day visual flight rules only, carrying no more than one passenger. This permit is suitable for a recreational flyer or a young pilot who does not yet meet the age requirement for a private pilot licence.
The holder of a recreational pilot permit shall be a minimum of sixteen years of age and hold a category 4 medical certificate. A candidate may begin flight training prior to the age requirement of the permit.
It is highly recommended, though not mandatory, to complete the Private Pilot Ground school in order to prepare for the written exam at Transport Canada. The exam has 80 multiple choice questions. You must obtain a minimum of 60% on the overall exam, as well as each of the four sections of the exam listed below.
1. Air law- Regulations, rules and orders, air traffic services, practices and procedures, and licensing requirements relevant to the permit.
2. Navigation- navigation, radio aids and electronic theory;
3. Meteorology
4. Aeronautics- general knowledge- airframes, engines and systems, theory of flight, flight instruments, flight operations and human factors.
You must complete a minimum of 25 hours of flight training under the direct supervision of a certified flight instructor. The flight training shall include a minimum of:
a) 15 hours dual instruction flight time, including 2 hours cross-country time b) 5 hours solo flight time
You are also required to successfully complete a flight test for the recreational pilot permit. This can conducted by the Designated Flight Test Examiner on staff at the St. Catharines Flying Club.


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The Windows 7 taskbar is one of the most fundamental changes from Windows Vista. The Windows 7 taskbar -- that strip across the bottom of the desktop screen with all the icons and other stuff -- is an important tool to understand; knowing how to use it will help you get the most out of Windows 7. Here's what you need to know.

What is the Taskbar? The Windows 7 Taskbar is essentially a shortcut to frequently used programs and a navigation aide to your desktop. On the left side of the Taskbar is the Start button, which is similar to the button in all Windows operating systems (OS) going back to Windows 95: it has links and menus to everything else on your computer.

To the right of the Start button is space for icons you can "pin", for easy access to frequently-used programs. To learn how to pin, go through this step-by-step tutorial on pinning.

But that's not all you can do with those program shortcuts; we're going to dig a little deeper here. First, notice from the image above that three of the icons have a box around them, while the two on the right do not. The box means that those programs are active; that is, they are currently open on your desktop. An icon without a box means that program hasn't been opened yet; it's available with a single left-click, however.

Those icons are simple to move around; just left-click on the icon, keep holding the mouse button down, move the icon to where you want it, and release.

In addition, each of these programs, whether open or not, has a "Jump List" available. Click on the link for more information about Jump Lists and how to use them.

Another neat aspect of the Windows 7 Taskbar icons is the ability to group multiple running instances of a program under one icon, eliminating clutter. For example, look at the blue Internet Explorer (IE) icon shown above.

If you look closely, you can see what look like a number of open windows hiding behind the icon. That's an indication that there are multiple IE windows open.

By hovering your mouse button over the icon (in this case, the blue Internet Explorer icon from the previous page), you'll get a thumbnail view of each open window.

Hover over each thumbnail to get a full-size preview of the open window; to go to that window, simply left-click on it, and the window will be ready for you to work on. This is another time-saver.

If you're the adventurous type, you can customize the Taskbar by hiding it, making it bigger or smaller, or doing other things to it. To get to the customization window, right-click an open area of the Taskbar and left-click the "Properties" title. This will bring up the menu shown above. Here are some of the most-common customizations you can do:

Lock it. When "Lock the taskbar" is checked, no one can make changes to its size or placement on the desktop. Most people leave it like this, but you won't be endangering your computer if you uncheck it.

Auto-hide. If you check this box, it will hide the Taskbar, so that you can't see it. This will create more room on your desktop, but at the expense of the convenience of having quick access to programs.

Use small icons. Again, a space-saving option. This will shrink the Taskbar and icons, freeing up more space but still allowing you Taskbar functionality. This is a good option on small screens like laptops or netbooks where space is at a premium.

Move the Taskbar. The drop-down menu "Taskbar location on screen:" allows you to move the Taskbar to the top, or either side, of your desktop. Again, most people are used to seeing it at the bottom and leave it there, but you may have your own reasons for wanting to move it. Remember that if you've locked the Taskbar, you won't be able to move it.

Taskbar buttons. Here you can change the appearance of the icons in the Taskbar. You can turn off "combining" of icons, meaning that if you have three Microsoft Word documents open, for example, each document will appear as its own icon in the Taskbar, rather than two "hiding" behind a single Word icon. This makes it easier to see everything, but the tradeoff is often a long string of icons strewn across your Taskbar. Labels also describe icons -- it will identify each open program, rather than just showing the icon picture. I prefer the "Always combine, hide labels" option here, because I like a clean desktop, but it's totally up to you how you want it.

Take your time and get to know the Taskbar. You'll find your computing time being a lot more productive if you do.


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Click image to see slideshow and photo credits.
Current Work
Francis Kéré
"Bridging the Gap"
Introduced and moderated by David Turnbull
Thursday, February 9, 2012
7:00 p.m.
The Great Hall, The Cooper Union
7 East 7th Street
1.5 AIA and New York State CEUs
This program is co-sponsored by The Cooper Union Institute for Sustainable Design.
Architect Francis Kéré will present a lecture entitled "Bridging the Gap." Kéré is increasingly known for his philosophy of "self-building," in which he works with communities to develop capacity to monitor climactic circumstances and use local materials. In a discussion of his recent and current projects, which have won both Aga Khan and Holcim Awards, Kéré will consider new ways architects can exchange knowledge with communities and propose new models for practice. In Kéré's words, "only people who take part in the building process can maintain and spread the word about these architectural projects."
Diébédo Francis Kéré, from Burkina Faso, studied architecture at the Technische Universität Berlin, where he is now based. As an architect he defines himself as "a bridge between cultures, between the technically and economically developed countries of 'the north' and the less developed African countries (of the south)" His projects have focused on education as "the developing concept for his country." While a student, he founded the association Schulbausteine für Gando e. V, for the funding of his first project, a Primary School in his native village. The building, completed in 2001, received the Aga Khan Award. The school's construction is "the result of a vision, initially verbalized by the architect and realized by the community."
Subsequently, Kéré has built teachers' housing for the school in Gando, as well as another school building and a library, enabling 900 children to go to school in the village. He has also completed work on Mali's National Park in Bamako and the Museum for Earth Architecture in Mopti. In all of his projects, Kéré notes that workers trained through the construction have found work far beyond the region.
Since 2005, Kéré has worked internationally, with projects completed or under construction in Spain, China, Switzerland, and Yemen, among others. Kéré has lectured or taught at a variety of institutions, including the Berlin University of Technology, the Harvard GSD, the Oslo National Academy of Arts, and the University of Venice. Recognized internationally, Kéré has most recently received the 2011 Regional Holcim Award for Africa and Middle East, for his work in Morocco.
Tickets are free for League members; $15 for non-members. Members may reserve a ticket by e-mailing: email@example.com . Member tickets will be held at the check-in desk; unclaimed tickets will be released fifteen minutes after the start of the program. Non-members may purchase tickets here, beginning February 2nd.
The Architectural League is pleased to acknowledge the support of TRESPA for the Current Work series. This program is additionally supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.


text: Patch day rolled around and to my less than considerable surprise blizzard rushed the patch before it was truly done . All of the BS and Tailoring epics had sockets with adjusted itemization, so did my leatherworking intellect epics, but all of the agility gear remained untouched. So, I vented slightly in a ticket. I actually recieved a LIVE Gm ressponse who was very eager to re-assure me that they were working on it, and to keep my eye out for blue posts.


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Sometimes in life, you end up in places that truly have the power to surprise. Several years ago, Rich and Kevin Gates – twin brothers with a small money management firm in Pennsylvania – never thought they would some day be hiring some of the country's leading experts in power markets to defend their professional reputations against the Federal Government.
They certainly never thought they would be taking on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC's) Office Of Enforcement (OE) in a public and proactive way. Especially since they had worked to expose the abuses in high frequency trading that were profiled in Michael Lewis's recent publication Flash Boys.
The Gates twins are now embroiled in a case with the FERC that they are bitterly and publicly contesting. They are so convinced of their cause that they have taken the extreme case of hiring some of the architects and former enforcers of both energy and securities markets to write statements and –in some cases – to sit for depositions supporting their cause. They even hired Susan J. Court, the former head of the FERC's OE. And then, when all else failed, they finally went public with the whole issue, posting all of the relevant documentation for the public to see on a website specifically devoted to the issue: http://ferclitigation.com
The story will get some additional prominence this week, as the current head of the OE, Norman Bay, is in Senate confirmation hearings to succeed John Wellinghoff as the head of the FERC. The story of how the Gates brothers got there raises some serious issues concerning electricity markets, abuses, and enforcement. (It should be noted that the author was deposed by the FERC OE in a case against a client that was decided in 2013.)
Clearly, there is an undisputed need for enforcement in electricity and other markets. Bad behavior can lead to abuses, market manipulation, and market failure. At a minimum, it can lead to less trust in markets, and higher transactional costs that are borne by all of society.
And in relatively new, regionalized, and highly volatile markets, such as electricity exchanges, there can indeed exist potential for malfeasance. Nobody would question that. But what can perhaps be questioned is the role of the regulator, the transparency and fairness of its approach in this case, the justness of the process followed, and its overall role in protecting and facilitating the marketplace.
In recent years, the FERC OE under Director Bay has dramatically increased its staff, and the number and amount of the fines levied. In just the past three years, it has handed out over one billion dollars in fines (penalties and disgorgement of profits), including some enormous amounts:
If you go to the FERC website for the Office of Enforcement (OE), you will find the OE's mission: "The Office of Enforcement serves the public interest by protecting consumers through market oversight and surveillance; assuring compliance with tariffs, rules, regulations, and orders; detecting, auditing, and investigating potential violations; and crafting appropriate remedies, including civil penalties and other measures."
Nobody can argue with that. The rub, in some cases, is exactly what those 'tariffs, rules, regulations, and orders' mean, how they are interpreted, and how transparent the enforcement process is.
It's a long story, but the Gates have been more than willing to tell it to those who will listen, including the Wall Street Journal. In a conversation over dinner a few weeks ago, Rich filled me in on the general details. I followed this up with a more recent interview with his brother Kevin.
The Gates twins have run a money management firm for the past 18 years, with 25 employees and about one to one-and-a-half billion dollars under management. They've been around the block. Kevin Gates commented,
We are pretty sophisticated investors and know how to collaborate and work with regulators. We have a pretty close relationship with the SEC.
In 2007, they met a quant analyst who explained to them that one could trade in electricity markets and take advantage of different prices in different regions owing to 'congestion' constraints (where there is limited capability to move the power between regions, and different supply and demand profiles, price differentials often exist. Those incentivize movement or generation of power so that the market responds to demands). The brothers were intrigued by these markets, and began working with traders in various electricity markets.
We would set up an account…and have our account traded along with the trader's. If they would put on a one megawatt trade, we would put on a four megawatt trade, so we knew they had their own assets at risk and skin in the game.
At some point, they came into contact with Alan Chen, who lived in Houston, had a Ph.D. and had been trading his personal money in energy markets, including PJM (the mid-Atlantic power pool, which stretches from New Jersey down to Maryland and over to Chicago). They set up a PJM account, which he began trading.
According to Gates, something unexpected and (initially) beneficial happened.
In 2009, PJM came to us and said 'FERC told us we messed up and should have been paying you transmission loss credits for last couple of years. We will pay you retroactively and we will pay these rebates to you prospectively.' Over the course of several months, they paid us about $900K… our expected profitability and risk-adjusted returns increased because (Alan) was getting his tailwind of rebates.
These transmission loss credits are called marginal loss surplus allocations, and they represent surplus payments from transmission line loss charges that are paid to traders of energy.
Based in good part on this tailwind and these rebates, which (according to experts cited below) had been explicitly discussed and approved by FERC, they opted to commit more resources. They decided to increase investment exposure and risk, and created a new fund called Powhatan. Powhatan would engage in high volume, low risk trades, and hopefully yield some solid returns. But things didn't work out well right away.
We originally put in two million dollars, and in the first couple days, Alan lost about $450,000. So he changed the strategy a little bit, and over the span of the next nine weeks, Alan made about $5 million, which triggered an investigation. Joseph Bowring, the (PJM) Independent Market Monitor, asked Alan to stop doing high volume trades.
The irony was that, just about this same time, the Gates were working to figure out whether there was malfeasance in the securities markets. They were noticing that somebody appeared to be front-running their stock trades, so that when they put an offer in to buy, they ended up paying just a bit more than the price they had originally seen for the security they wanted. So Rich decided to trade stock with himself, creating an offsetting trade, not to move the market, but simply to see if anybody else was front-running his transaction (this was highlighted in Michael Lewis's book "Flash Boys.)"
The Gates brothers contacted securities attorneys about the planned trades to ensure that they were above board, and received guidance that they would not be seen as manipulative.
We were trying to learn about structural issues and expose them in the stock market...we collaborated with the SEC to help them improve their market structure.
So they thought they knew a thing or two about what constituted a legitimate trade. Meanwhile, over in energy markets, the PJM Market Monitor had requested that they discontinue their trading practice. They promptly ceased. Over the next month, the FERC initiated an investigation into potential market manipulation and wash trades, focusing on Chen's low-risk trades that were profitable largely as a consequence of the transmission loss credits.
The investigation lasted for years – it's still ongoing. The Gates's insisted that they had committed no wrongdoing, and they were determined to prove it, and clear their name. And they had the resources to make that happen. In late 2010, Alan Chen's attorney filed an affidavit with a position paper from Craig Pirrong – a leading expert in the functioning of power markets and market manipulation.
The Gates brothers were deposed in 2010, and again in 2011, where the focus was largely on wash trades.
In a day-long deposition, I was being asked questions about wash trading, wash transactions, and tax consequences of wash transactions. They already had an affidavit from Craig Pirrong telling them they were not wash trades. I believe they had disregarded Craig's affidavit…
Kevin Gates indicated that it was after the second deposition that the gloves came off.
At the end of the deposition, FERC said to our lawyer 'He's a businessman. He should know its cheaper to settle than to fight this.' After that, I came back and engaged a Philadelphia-based attorney, Bill McSwain, from the law firm Drinker Biddle.
McSwain then filed a paper with two affidavits further outlining why the Powhatan transactions could not be characterized as wash trades. One concerned a failed FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) wash sale case a decade ago, written by the attorney who had brought the case and lost it – since the FERC has to look at the SEC and FINRA for precedent.
All told, we sent a 120-page document, including a 35 page position paper and two affidavits. The very next business day – it was a Monday - the FERC investigators called our lawyer saying that they had read the entire position paper and were not at all convinced. I realized at this point that it was not about the facts or about the law, but whether we could stay strong and weather the storm. This was 2011. They told us a charging decision was imminent.