Quotes of the Day:

"War is a game played by maniacs who kill each other. Locate the man who profits by war and strip him of his profits – war will end."

- Woody Guthrie

American singer–songwriter, social critic and anti-fascist, 1912 - 1967

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”  

– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

"I have heard of patriotism in the United States, and it is a virtue which may be found among the people, but never among the leaders of the people."

– Alexis de Tocqueville

1. “Morality and ethics should play no part”: Leaks reveal how Russia's foreign intelligence agency runs disinformation campaigns in the West

2. Director Plans Policy Strategy Concepts & Doctrine

3. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, July 12, 2024

4. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, July 12, 2024

5. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, July 12, 2024.

6. Ends+Ways+Means=(Bad) Strategy

7. No Laughing Matter: Chief of Staff of the Army Changes His Professional Reading List to a Series of Memes

8. The U.S. Needs to Rebuild Its Military Might

9. Ukrainian Men Desperate to Escape War Are Drowning as They Flee

10. China Freaked: The U.S. Air Force 'Elephant Walked' A Fleet of F-35 Fighters as a Warning

11. Why Build AbramsX When the Ukraine War Shows Thousands of Tanks Destroyed?

12. Israel Says It Targeted Hamas Military Chief in Gaza Strike

13. The US held off sanctioning this Israeli army unit despite evidence of abuses. Now its forces are shaping the fight in Gaza

14. Completely unbelievable: US pilots say traumatized by intensity of Yemen retaliatory operations

15. An argument against establishing a U.S. Cyber Force

16. General Officer Announcements

17. U.S. military to award $3 billion contract for AI-driven intelligence

18. What AT&T Customers Need to Know About the Massive Hack, Data Breach

19. U.S. Navy's 'Triple Submarine Surfacing' Sent Shivers Down China's Military Spine

20. How Hamas Is Fighting in Gaza: Tunnels, Traps and Ambushes

1. “Morality and ethics should play no part”: Leaks reveal how Russia's foreign intelligence agency runs disinformation campaigns in the West

Excerpts:

The architect of Kylo was Mikhail Kolesov, a pudgy, bald, 45 year-old SVR officer who was previously stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan. On May 23, 2022, Kolesov emailed himself a Word document titled simply, “Propaganda.” It appeared to be the outline of a presentation Kolesov was set to give three days later at a private roundtable discussion in the Russian Senate concerning “information warfare with the West.” That forum, headed by former Soviet diplomat turned hawkishly anti-Western senator Alexei Pushkov, featured recognizable mouthpieces of Vladimir Putin’s regime including Maria Zakharova, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, psychological warfare specialists from the Ministry of Defense, and loyalist journalists. Pushkov was gravely worried about how pro-Ukrainian sentiments were dominating on Western internet platforms, just six months into Russia’s faltering war of conquest, which was meant to take no more than three days.

The Kremlin was losing on two battlefields: physical and informational. Using “old” state-controlled media organs such as RT and Sputnik “have demonstrated near-zero effectiveness for decades, not years;” and attempts to cultivate friendly social media platforms, such as Telegram channels, “does not live up to the expectations placed on performers and demiurges. Lack of creativity, hypocrisy and moralizing aggravate the current situation.”

​And to keep beating the dead horse we should always keep this in mind from Trump's 2017 NSS:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Access NSS HERE

“Morality and ethics should play no part”: Leaks reveal how Russia's foreign intelligence agency runs disinformation campaigns in the West

Michael Weiss,Roman Dobrokhotov,Christo Grozev

4 July 2024

https://theins.ru/en/politics/272870

The Insider has obtained hacked correspondence from officers of Russia's foreign intelligence agency (SVR) responsible for “information warfare” with the West. The leaked documents, intended for various government agencies, reveal the Kremlin's strategy: spreading disinformation on sensitive Western topics, posting falsehoods while posing as radical Ukrainian and European political forces (both real and specially created), appealing to emotions — primarily fear — over rationality, and utilizing new internet platforms instead of outdated ones like RT and Sputnik. The documents also detail localized campaigns against Russian émigrés, including efforts to discredit a fundraiser for Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation who had moved to the United States.

RU

This is a joint investigation with Der Spiegel.

The secret operation was codenamed “Project Kylo,” perhaps in reference to the antiquated Russian word for “pick-axe,” or an allusion to the Dark Side warrior from the Star Wars sequels determined to rule the galaxy. Or maybe both. The operation was also intended to be “perfectly traceless — with no links ever connecting it to Russian intelligence services,” but that didn’t stop The Insider and its investigative partner Der Spiegel from tracing it back to the Russian intelligence services, specifically the SVR, which handles foreign espionage. The objective, as outlined in a tranche of leaked emails and documents, was to stoke anti-government sentiments in the West, particularly over liberal democracies’ support for Ukraine. And the key emotions to prey upon, the SVR planners intoned, were “fear,” “panic” and “horror” — a psychosocial manipulation campaign straight out of the Cold War playbook of the Soviet KGB’s First Chief Directorate’s Department D. The D stood for disinformation.

The architect of Kylo was Mikhail Kolesov, a pudgy, bald, 45 year-old SVR officer who was previously stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan. On May 23, 2022, Kolesov emailed himself a Word document titled simply, “Propaganda.” It appeared to be the outline of a presentation Kolesov was set to give three days later at a private roundtable discussion in the Russian Senate concerning “information warfare with the West.” That forum, headed by former Soviet diplomat turned hawkishly anti-Western senator Alexei Pushkov, featured recognizable mouthpieces of Vladimir Putin’s regime including Maria Zakharova, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, psychological warfare specialists from the Ministry of Defense, and loyalist journalists. Pushkov was gravely worried about how pro-Ukrainian sentiments were dominating on Western internet platforms, just six months into Russia’s faltering war of conquest, which was meant to take no more than three days.

The Kremlin was losing on two battlefields: physical and informational. Using “old” state-controlled media organs such as RT and Sputnik “have demonstrated near-zero effectiveness for decades, not years;” and attempts to cultivate friendly social media platforms, such as Telegram channels, “does not live up to the expectations placed on performers and demiurges. Lack of creativity, hypocrisy and moralizing aggravate the current situation.”

• Mikhail Kolesov in FSB uniform
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Kolesov’s fresh proposal, crafted in a stilted language — equal parts critical theory, pseudo-science, and marketing jargon — was therefore designed to inject a new scheme into the Kremlin’s propaganda approach: “systematic, targeted and active, offensive in nature.”

Kolesov’s fresh proposal, crafted in a stilted language — equal parts critical theory, pseudo-science, and marketing jargon — was therefore designed to inject a new scheme into the Kremlin’s propaganda approach: “systematic, targeted and active, offensive in nature.”

Rather than propounding straightforward pro-Russian arguments, he suggested, the SVR should now aim to “deepen internal contradictions between the ruling elites” in the West by creating a fake NGO — in reality a cut-out funded and run by agents of the Kremlin — to whip up anti-establishment demonstrations on the territory of the glavnyi protivnik, or “main adversary,” as the United States is known among the Russian special services, and within its “satellite” nations.

Fake advertisements disguised as news headlines, all crafted by SVR recruits, would be visible on most any desktop computer screen or mobile device used by target audiences in the West, luring them to click-through and land on “internet resources controlled by us.”

Fake advertisements disguised as news headlines, all crafted by SVR recruits, would be visible on most any desktop computer screen or mobile device used by target audiences in the West, luring them to click-through and land on “internet resources controlled by us.”

One strategy Kolesov advanced was to appear more stridently pro-Ukrainian than legitimate civil society groups, making outsize demands for Ukrainian refugees so that advocacy on their behalf would come across as unreasonable or alienating to native electorates.

“Waging network wars in EU cyberspace based on the increasing demands of Ukrainian migrants and the new waves of irritation of the local population provoked by this, according to preliminary estimates, will have a very high efficiency both now and in the foreseeable future.”

This method of hijacking and then discrediting a cause from within through extremist posturing is hallowed tradecraft to the Russian special services.

The most notorious example was Operation Trust, an early and unmitigated success of Felix Dzherzinsky’s Cheka, the forerunner of the KGB, which used much the same strategy with respect to the anti-Bolshevik White Russian diaspora in Europe. Agents sent by Moscow to infiltrate the ranks of this exile movement sowed discord within it and offered false assurances of widespread support back home, leading to the leadership being lured into Chekist-constructed traps in Russia and, ultimately, the delegitimization of White Russian organizations abroad.

The SVR’s exploitation of the refugee question wasn’t merely theoretical. German authorities have identified over two dozen legitimate-seeming news websites catering to exactly these fears, with articles headlined (in fluent German), “How Ukrainians are robbing Germany of economic prosperity.” The portals are part of a vast Russian influence operation, Berlin has determined, as are hundreds of thousands of accounts on social media that post photo tiles with sensationalistic slogans straight out of the Weimar era — “Germany is sinking into homelessness,” “Even bread is a luxury” — linking back to the fake news sites.

European politicians had already been clamoring about Ukrainians fleeing the war and becoming burdens on state resources. For instance, in September 2022, Friedrich Merz, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, the country’s conservative party, had accused Ukrainian refugees of “welfare tourism,” an allegation for which Merz later apologized.

Kolesov shared his draft proposal with a fellow SVR officer, Mikhail Kulemin, whose WhatsApp avatar, in a caricature version of untraceability, is a picture of James Bond. In fact, between May 2022 and September 2023, they exchanged over 10 iterations of Project Kylo, in one instance forwarding a copy, on May 29, 2023, to Eduard Chernovoltsev, the head of the technical-scientific service of the FSB, Russia’s domestic security agency. This service supervises, among other things, the FSB’s principal hacking unit and the Institute of Forensic Science, the body that manufactures poisons such as Novichok, the military-grade nerve agent used in the attempted assassinations of Sergei Skripal and Alexey Navalny.

• Mikhail Kulemin's WhatsApp avatar is a picture of James Bond
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The most fleshed-out version of Project Kylo was dated January 9, 2023 and came branded with a bizarre-looking insignia that spelled “SVR-Project” in a combination of Cyrillic and English, where the Russian letter В (“V”) is the Bitcoin logo, and the O in “project” is a globe untraceably borrowed straight out of the SVR emblem.

According to this document, the SVR would recruit teams to work in various target countries. A website would be created and falsely labeled an “independent investigations agency” as a clearinghouse for the manipulative content, which wouldn’t just include print but also audio and video hosted by YouTube or other social media platforms.

Video would be spliced into “shorts” published once or twice a day, presumably for more digestible consumption as on TikTok. Links to the SVR-generated content would be “embedded into the target audience’s electronic communication means using a unique algorithm based on the new ‘Storm’ platform module and special software.”

In 2012, the SVR's Military Unit No. 54939 awarded tenders for private sector research whose task was the “mass dissemination of information messages in specified social networks with the aim of shaping public opinion.” One of the research programs, designed by the company Iteranet, was code-designated “Storm-12.”

According to Kolesov, the SVR would even develop metrics as to user activity: click-through rates, time spent reading SVR-generated material, and comments posted.

The “leitmotif of our cognitive campaign in the [Western] countries is proposed to be the instilling of the strongest emotion in the human psyche — fear,” the document states. “It is precisely the fear for the future, uncertainty about tomorrow, the inability to make long-term plans, the unclear fate of children and future generations. The cultivation of these triggers floods an individual's subconscious with panic and terror.”

The “leitmotif of our cognitive campaign in the [Western] countries is proposed to be the instilling of the strongest emotion in the human psyche — fear,” the document states.

The project’s aim would be cumulative, yielding initial results in as few as four to five weeks and “medium-term comprehensive goals” in about three to six months. The SVR measures the former as the rejection of the status quo in liberal democracies and the European Union, complete with popular protests — no more than 100 people, each compensated by 100 euros each — against state and supranational institutions, all of them filmed and recorded for “subsequent media dissemination.” The medium-term goals consist of the discrediting of Ukraine and “the Nazis oriented towards it in the eyes of the collective West.”

The cost of such an influence operation is listed as pretty cheap: $3 per user per month.

Curiously, 2023 saw its fair share of Russian-sponsored provocations seemingly aligned with Operation Kylo all across Europe. Research by a European media consortium revealed that a roving troupe of Russian hirelings kept turning up at protests in major cities such as Paris, Brussels, Madrid, and The Hague denouncing Western arms shipments to Ukraine. The men, the consortium concluded, had likely been hired by Russian special services. One was even found to be a student from St. Petersburg, who, as if taking literal instruction from Kolesov’s playbook, went searching online for volunteers who would be photographed for 80 to 100 euros. The images were meant to be used on social media to telegraph that anti-Ukraine protests were a mass phenomenon in Europe.

Other stunts have followed. In October, not long after Hamas’s attack on Israel, hundreds of Stars of David were spray-painted on the walls of Jewish institutions all over Paris, images of which went viral online. The culprits were actually a Russian-speaking couple from Moldova who were caught in the act and explained they had been recruited to do this false-flag operation via the Telegram messenger. This campaign is redolent of a former KGB Directorate D operation in the 1950s in which Soviet and East German agents desecrated Jewish cemeteries and synagogues in West Germany in order to exaggerate the threat of recrudescent Nazism.

More recently, three men placed coffins in front of the Eiffel Tower with French flags and the phrase “French soldiers of Ukraine'' scrawled on them — a reference to French President Emmanuel Macron’s suggestion that French troops might one day be deployed to safeguard the port city of Odesa. The men are reported to have received up to 400 euros for the campaign.

So as not to leave any doubt as to the insidious nature of the SVR project, Kolesov and Kulemin agree that morality and ethics should play no part in this covert form of psychological warfare, owing to the fact that Russia’s enemies evidently brook no such considerations in their own methods.

So as not to leave any doubt as to the insidious nature of the SVR project, Kolesov and Kulemin agree that morality and ethics should play no part in this covert form of psychological warfare, owing to the fact that Russia’s enemies evidently brook no such considerations in their own methods.

A “truly final version” of the project was sent by Kulemin to his father, General Alexander Kulemin, a retired senior officer of the 12th Main Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, which oversees nuclear weapons. This version clarifies that a core objective will be “mass protest actions in NATO countries, followed by the dissemination of content in the enemy’s media field. We have the necessary capabilities to attract a special contingent permanently residing abroad for such events,” perhaps referring to SVR “illegals,” or spies stationed in the West without diplomatic cover. Kolesov in fact works in the SVR military unit 33949 (a unit within Department S), which deals with servicing illegals.

Judging by the correspondence between Kolesov and Kulemin, their activities were coordinated with the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence arm. For example, the correspondence shows that Kulemin's father forwarded a version of the project to FSB technical-scientific service head Chernovoltsov on May 30, 2023. Chernovoltsov's billing records indicate that a series of calls with Gen. Andrey Averyanov — the leader of GRU Unit 29155, notorious for its work conducting assassination and sabotage operations abroad — began immediately after receiving the version. One of Kolesov's letters to Kulemin explaining the cognitive aspect of the project is titled “Response to AA” — possibly referring to questions about the project raised by Averyanov.

“Security issues for the proposed events have been thoroughly worked out, ensuring their near-complete untraceability and eliminating the possibility of detecting Russian involvement,” the “truly final version” continues. “Special attention is given to the funding of overseas actions. To achieve the set goals, we possess the necessary next-generation tools that allow for international covert transactions outside the operational control of foreign intelligence services.”

While there is no mention in the email exchanges between Kolesov and Kulemin as to when Operation Kylo was officially approved, by March 2023 the two SVR officers began fielding dozens of resumes from prospective candidates for all sorts of positions — all of the candidates having some prior history in intelligence work and at least one foreign language capability. “Would you like an interesting new job? :) :)?” Kolesov at one point writes to a former colleague in the SVR.

Kolesov’s own résumé is among the attachments leaked from his mailbox — or rather, résumés, as there are two, a public and private version. The public states he is the department head at Peacemaker, a Russian “security think tank and services holding” whose web address is peacemaker.ru. (The site is currently under construction). The private c.v. states that Kolesov has worked for the SVR for the last 19 years and was awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, 2nd Degree, in 2019. Among his specialties: the “development and promotion of agitation and propaganda campaigns in order to support Russia’s foreign policy in the international arena (more than 1,500 events have been carried out).”

While the authors of the project are terse about the exact technology that that Russian intelligence agencies claim to have developed that can mass-target individual residents in the West while bypassing the curation of Western media platforms, some clues to what that may be comes from a different side project that Kolesov and Kulemin appear to be working on. That project is named “Ledorub,” the contemporary Russian word for Icepick, and a none-too-subtle reference to the murder weapon used by Ramón Mercader, the NKVD assassin dispatched on Stalin’s orders to liquidate Leon Trotsky in Mexico in 1940. The “Icepick” operation of today appears to involve destroying Kremlin enemies in exile, albeit reputationally. (The SVR is said to have discontinued its assassination program in the 1990s under the leadership of its former director Evgeniy Primakov.)

The “Icepick” operation of today appears to involve destroying Kremlin enemies in exile, albeit reputationally.

The email exchange between Kulesov and Kulemin contains three “Icepick” character assassination schemes, each targeting dissidents living overseas. The most thorough case file is on an ex-banker from Russia who currently resides in Boston and is involved in fund-raising for the deceased Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. (Because this person is on a kill list, The Insider is withholding his name.)

The Icepick brief on this target involves his “utter discrediting” among his social circle such that “even the neighbors will stop greeting him.” The approach is similar to that of Project Fear in that it involves manipulating people at the psycho-emotional level and creating a pariah effect around a subject: in this case, not a country such as Ukraine, but an individual. Kolesov proposes leaking fake stories about the former banker suggesting that he had been the financier for rogue FSB officers and for Chechnya’s warlord president Ramzan Kadyrov. Moreover, the target should be accused of embezzling Kadyrov’s money.

“We would spread the rumor that Kadyrov is looking for him around the world,” Kolesov noted, “and remind the target audience that the last time Chechens came to Boston this ended up with the 2013 marathon bombing.”

In the technical implementation section of this proposal, Kolesov wrote:

“The most effective method of impact seems to be the targeted reach of the electronic communication tools, both work-related and personal, of the target audience based on geographic criteria (the neighborhood where the target lives, the school district, the prosecutor's office, the FBI, immigration services, city hall, etc.) or informational criteria (relevant search queries on the internet). Externally, this activity resembles targeted contextual advertising—a bright banner with a loud slogan in the flow of electronic pages viewed by users. At the same time, the developed algorithms allow for fully tracking the reaction of the targeted individuals to the content offered to them (click-through rates to main pages, viewing time of the material, expression of opinion about the content, quick surveys, etc.)”

A further forecast of the expected reach of the discrediting campaign provided by Kolesov is close to 600,000 people. “Wow, with a Boston population of 646,000,” Kulemin replied in March 2023, “that will mean we have reached practically everyone! We rule!”

2. Director Plans Policy Strategy Concepts & Doctrine

USSOCOM has a J5 Director position open for Plans, Policy, Strategy, Concepts and Doctrine.

Based on my limited civilian hiring experience given the short period it is likely they already have an internal candidate.

But I wonder why the J5 position is not an active duty uniformed position? I suppose the argument is for potential long term continuity.

But good for a SAMS/SAW/SAAS graduate to consider (and it is not necessary to have a SOF background as I believe the past two J5s were not SOF qualified).

https://www.usajobs.gov/job/799151200

Director Plans Policy Strategy Concepts & Doctrine

The primary purpose of this position is to serve as the Director, Plans, Policy, Strategy, Concepts and Doctrine (J5) for United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), overseeing the global planning efforts for special operations in support of all the combatant commands and associated Department of Defense (DoD) agencies.

Open & closing dates

 07/10/2024 to 07/23/2024

3. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, July 12, 2024

China-Taiwan Weekly Update, July 12, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/china-taiwan-weekly-update-july-12-2024

Key Takeaways

• The PLA significantly increased its daily incursions into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone in July to expand the PRC’s coercive pressure on the ROC as “punishment” for the election of ROC President Lai Ching-te.

• The PRC is using cross-strait events such as the Cross-Strait Youth Summit to legitimize the Kuomintang as a negotiating partner on behalf of Taiwan and promote its pro-unification message.

• The PRC framed collaboration between NATO and Indo-Pacific states as a threat to regional security.

• CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping welcomed Belarus to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and advocated for Turkey to join the organization. Xi seeks to use the SCO to legitimize PRC-led institutions and undermine Western-led security frameworks.

• The PRC’s cyber defense agency issued disinformation about the US Intelligence Community and denied that the Volt Typhoon cyber threat actor is a PRC state-sponsored group.

• The CCG anchored its largest ship in the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone as an intimidation tactic following reports of Philippine Coast Guard base construction in Sabina Shoal.

4. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, July 12, 2024

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, July 12, 2024

https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-12-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Western and US officials reportedly assess that Ukrainian forces will continue to be on the defensive for the next six months and will not be able to conduct a large-scale counteroffensive operation until 2025. Ukrainian forces are already attempting to contest the tactical initiative in limited counterattacks in select sectors of the front, however, and Ukrainian forces may be able to conduct limited counteroffensive operations even while largely on the defensive depending on the arrival of Western aid.

• The Kremlin continues to signal its unwillingness to participate in peace negotiations that do not result in complete Ukrainian and Western capitulation to the Kremlin's demands amid ongoing Ukrainian efforts to form an international consensus for future negotiations.

• Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov used a phone call with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on July 12, his second in three weeks, to reiterate standard Russian threats intended to coerce the US out of supporting Ukraine as part of an ongoing reflexive control campaign targeting Western decision-makers.

• The United Kingdom (UK) government has reportedly not permitted Ukraine to use UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles to strike military targets within Russia, despite previous Western reporting and UK official statements to the contrary.

• The US Department of Defense (DoD) announced on July 11 a military aid package for Ukraine worth $225 million.

• Indian state-run oil refineries are reportedly negotiating an oil import deal with Russia, likely as a result of the recent meetings between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin and improving Russo-Indian energy relations in recent months.

• The Kremlin continues to intensify efforts to encourage self-censorship among information space voices and consolidate physical control over internet infrastructure.

• Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Avdiivka and in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area.

• Russian infantry units are reportedly assaulting Ukrainian trench positions in single-file columns due to pervasive Ukrainian minefields and poor assault training.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Zaporizhia Oblast occupation administration head Yevgeny Balitsky on July 12 and discussed social and infrastructure projects in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast.

5. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, July 12, 2024

Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, July 12, 2024

https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-july-12-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Gaza Strip: Hamas continued to promote its postwar plan for a technocratic government to jointly rule the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Hamas is content with this plan because it expects to maintain a monopoly on violence in the Gaza Strip thereby controlling the government or evading its rule. Hamas would continue to shape, intimidate, and control a technocratic government if the group retains a monopoly on violence in the Gaza Strip.

• Iran: Iranian President-elect Masoud Pezeshkian appointed former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif as the chairman of his Steering Council to lead Pezeshkian’s transition into the presidency on July 12. This appointment is emblematic of Pezeshkian’s intent to seriously pursue negotiations with the West. Zarif’s appointment in the transition team illustrates how previously marginalized, moderate political elements are seeking to capitalize on Pezeshkian’s victory to re-enter the political conversations.

• Iran in Russia: Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf conducted bilateral meetings with his counterparts from Russia, Ethiopia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and Tajikistan on the sidelines of the BRICS parliamentary forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, on July 11 and July 12.

• Lebanon: A senior Hezbollah leader said in a speech on July 12 that Hezbollah must use military force, rather than diplomatic talks, to force Israel to end the war in the Gaza Strip. 

6. Ends+Ways+Means=(Bad) Strategy

Note that this is from 2016. But it is worth reading again. And the list of citations alone is a very useful reference for strategy.

Ends+Ways+Means=(Bad) Strategy

https://www.strategycentral.io/post/ends-ways-means-bad-strategy?postId=8dcad861-16c2-4d70-ab7d-494340fe6f81&utm

By Jeffrey Meiser, Ph.D.

This article was originally published by US Army War College Parameters vol. 46, Number 4, Winter 2016 (doi:10.55540/0031-1723.3000). It is republished here with the generous consent of the author.

Over the past two years, American military leaders have repeatedly highlighted the need to develop leaders with strong critical and creative thinking skills who will enable the United States to field a superior joint force over the next decade. These efforts imply the US defense community has failed to develop and utilize these skills over the past 15 years. General Martin E. Dempsey, the recently retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for “agile and adaptive leaders with the requisite values, strategic vision, and critical thinking skills to keep pace with the changing strategic environment.”[i] General Joseph Dunford, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently told National Defense University graduates: “There is no substitute for leadership that recognizes the implications of new ideas, new technologies and new approaches and actually anticipates and effects those adaptations.”[ii] 

These are praiseworthy goals; however, the challenge of achieving them is profound. The military leaders quoted above generally focus on the need to educate up-and-coming officers to be better strategic thinkers. They do not seem to grasp the reality of fundamental flaws in the dominant way of conceptualizing strategy in the US defense community. Far too often strategy is an exercise in means-based planning; it is inherently uncreative, noncritical, and limits new and adaptive thinking.

Our strategic problems have two main causes: a formulaic understanding of strategy and a simplistic understanding of means or resources. First, the US defense community has a literal formula for strategy: ends + ways + means = strategy. There is some value to

conceptualizing strategy in this manner; however, this model has become a crutch undermining creative and effective strategic thinking. Like any crutch, the supportive structure of the formula originally served an important purpose of avoiding an ends-means mismatch. This approach has become counterproductive because it has the effect of neutering the ways.

Second, the concept of a comprehensive or whole-of-government approach to solving strategic problems fosters an overemphasis on simplistically applying resources—the means. By this logic, whatever the problem is, simply apply all the elements of national power— diplomatic, information, military, economic, financial, intelligence, and law enforcement (DIMEFIL)—and the problem is solved. Under this approach, the strategist simply fills in each box or, better yet, creates a diagram showing each element of national power as a line of effort directed at an enemy center of gravity or critical vulnerability. This is the stuff of “PowerPoint nirvana” but encourages strategists to avoid thinking creatively and precisely about resources and power.

In sum, the ends + ways + means formula interacts with a simplistic notion of means to create a situation where strategy is reduced to a perfunctory exercise in allocating resources. This approach is an excellent way to foster policy stability, but it is not a recipe for critical and creative thinking. The remainder of this article elaborates on the main failings of the American way of strategy, suggests how a new definition of strategy can overcome those failings, and discusses US strategy in Afghanistan to illustrate these points.

THE LYKKE MODEL

In the decades following its publication in Military Review, the so-called Lykke model of military strategy has become widely influential among members of the US defense community, particularly those in the US Army. Colonel Arthur F. Lykke Jr. provides this description of his formula: “Strategy equals ends (objectives toward which one strives) plus ways (courses of action) plus means (instruments by which some end can be achieved).”[iii] This formula is deeply ingrained in the thinking of US military officers and analysts. One author notes, “It is no exaggeration to say that the simple elegance of his model...influenced generations of strategic thinkers.”

The importance of the Lykke model became legendary among graduates in senior positions in the US armed forces, as well as with the AWC’s [US Army War College] distinguished International Fellows, many of whom went on to lead their nation’s military establishments.”[iv] Another commentator pithily remarks, “This formula is as recognizable to modern strategists as Einstein’s equation E=mc2 is to physicists.”[v] While it is difficult to determine exactly how influential the Lykke model is, many similar formulations of strategy permeate the broader intellectual milieu of American strategic thinking.[vi]

In theory, the equation seems to be a simple, logical, and practical way to conceptualize strategy; however, there are several problems in practice. First, the ways part of the equation tends to be relegated to a supporting role as the undefined thing linking ends and means. Lykke’s model purposely highlights the connection between ends and means because his approach to strategy was highly influenced by the perception that Vietnam-era strategists overextended the United States by not aligning goals with resources.[vii] 

As he explains, we should imagine a three-legged stool with ends, ways, and means each represented by one of the legs. Legs with different sizes cause the stool to tilt: “If military resources are not compatible with strategic concepts, or commitments are not matched by military capabilities, we may be in trouble. The angle of tilt represents risk, further defined as the possibility of loss, or damage, or of not achieving an objective.”[viii] Thus, risk is generated primarily by a deficiency in military resources. From this perspective, Lykke’s model is useful and sensible; it keeps us from ignoring the constraint of resources, which in theory, should prevent us from implementing unrealistic strategies.

There are significant costs, however, to highlighting the means and the ends while sidelining the ways. Viewing strategy as a problem of ends-means congruence is a seductive simplification. This kind of thinking leads to infinitely repeating the question of how many boots should be on the ground. A casual observer of American strategic discourse over the past decade and a half could be excused for thinking strategy is simply a debate about how many troops should be deployed for combat operations. This approach misses the core function of strategy, which is to figure out what to do with those boots on the ground, or even better, what are the alternatives to boots on the ground. The result of this analysis is what Lykke calls ways.

In practice, the ways element of the formula is much more difficult to conceptualize than goals (the ends) and resources (the means). Most discussions of ways treat it as a synonym for plan of action. In this manner of thinking, ways are simply the actions to be taken using the resources available to achieve a goal. For military strategists, falling back on tactics and operational art is all too easy; if given an easy way out, we will take it. If we can turn strategy into planning, we will.

The second problem is the overinclusiveness of Lykke’s suggested definition of strategy—ends, ways, and means. In practice, a specific strategy will have a goal and it will use resources, but aligning resources with goals is part of the strategic planning process, not the strategy itself. Strategy is strategy, goals are goals, and resources are resources. Ends and means do not belong in a definition of strategy. By conflating ends, ways, and means with strategy, Lykke’s approach makes it more difficult to identify and understand the distinctive meaning of strategy. In terms of the Lykke model, ways comes closest to capturing the true meaning of strategy; however, defining it as a course of action minimizes the intellectual burden of strategy and puts strategists in the position of applying doctrine rather than the creative and critical thinking mind-set required for effective strategic thinking.

In sum, under Lykke’s formulation, strategy becomes simply a planning exercise whereby goals and means are aligned. Military strategists receive the political goal and are tasked to align the relevant existing resources, and combatant commanders use the resources according to established doctrine.[ix] One element of our current strategy in Iraq and Syria, for example, uses airstrikes to destroy command and control targets, supply depots, and troop concentrations in order to degrade the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). At the same time, US troops are training and supporting various Sunni Arab and Kurdish factions, hoping to get weapons in the hands of groups willing to fight ISIL.

The ways simply designates where the means should be allocated. Approaches other than directing fires at ISIL targets do not seem to receive much attention from Department of Defense strategists or policymakers. Alternatively, the United States could use a political approach to undermine the governing ability of ISIL in the territory it controls.[x] But instead of debating strategy, we debate the number of sorties, the types of targets, and who to give weapons to. These are important issues, but they miss the more fundamental issues of strategy.

THE WHOLE OF GOVERNMENT APPROACH

The concept of a comprehensive or whole-of-government approach further encourages the transformation of strategy into means-based planning. The whole-of-government concept is defined as using all the elements or instruments of national power, typically expressed as DIMEFIL for diplomatic, information, military, economic, financial, intelligence, and law enforcement, to respond to a strategic challenge.[xi] The reason for introducing the whole-of-government concept was to reflect the reality that military power alone cannot solve our national security problems. In essence, the Department of Defense is asking other government agencies for help handling complex problems like postconflict stabilization and development. The types of missions given to the US Armed Forces since 2001 have shown convincingly that military power alone is not enough to meet contemporary national security challenges.

Unfortunately, the whole-of-government approach fosters bad strategy. In practice, applying the instruments of national power works as a replacement for strategic thinking. A strategist does not have to think about what should be done to solve a national security problem, the answer is already there, no matter what the problem. The comprehensive approach is a solution waiting to be applied to every problem. Far too often strategists using the whole-of-government approach simply fill in the seven boxes corresponding to each element of national power to demonstrate their strategy is comprehensive. In truth, not every problem actually requires all elements of national power. By trying to do too much, we can end up unfocused and confused, a great recipe for bad strategy.[xii]

Ironically, specifying exactly seven types of power works against the initial justification of a whole-of-government approach, which is to broaden our understanding of the resources that can be applied to strategic problems. As part of the process of analyzing strengths and weaknesses, surveying how different elements of national power can be utilized, indeed, thinking carefully about DIMEFIL makes sense and can certainly generate insights into the types of solutions available to solve national security problems. But, starting with the notion of seven and only seven forms of national power and all of them should always be utilized to implement a whole-of-government solution is infantile. In fact, General Dempsey recently seems to have added another element of national power to the list: energy.[xiii] So now we have DIMEFILE? The point is there is no set number of tools a government can use to solve a problem, to think otherwise is foolhardy.

RETHINKING STRATEGY

How can we do better? The first step is defining strategy in a manner that captures its distinctiveness as a concept. There are a number of possible definitions to choose from, but most of them suffer from significant weaknesses. First, several prominent strategic thinkers define strategy too narrowly in military terms. Colin Gray, for example, defines strategy as “the use that is made of force and the threat of force for the ends of policy.”[xiv] This definition is insufficient even in the realm of pure military strategy. In warfighting, a broad range of tools should be considered beyond military force. Irregular conflicts, in particular, highlight the need for a broader definition of strategy. Furthermore, Gray’s definition does not give us any idea of what strategy actually is: what does it mean to say that strategy is the use that is made of force for the ends of policy?

A second common mistake is to be overly inclusive, and in so doing, lose a clear sense of what is distinctive about strategy. As noted above, this is the core problem with Lykke’s definition of strategy. Others also make this mistake. Business school professor Richard P. Rumelt defines strategy as “a coherent set of analyses, concepts, policies, arguments, and actions that respond to a high-stakes challenge.”[xv] Analyses, concepts, policies, arguments, and actions are all potentially important parts of formulating, communicating, and implementing strategy, but they are not strategy. By including too many elements in a definition of strategy, we risk obfuscating the meaning so much that the concept loses any coherent meaning.

A third major problem with definitions of strategy is the propensity to describe good strategy or to list the things that strategy should do rather than to actually define what strategy is. Lawrence Freedman defines strategy as “the art of creating power.”[xvi] This is an excellent definition of what strategy should do, but again does not help us understand what a strategy actually is beyond telling us it is an art. Another description of strategy by prominent defense community intellectuals suffers from a similar problem: “Strategy is fundamentally about identifying or creating asymmetric advantages that can be exploited to help achieve one’s ultimate objectives despite resource and other constraints, most importantly the opposing efforts of adversaries or competitors and the inherent unpredictability of strategic outcomes.”[xvii] Krepinevich and Watts tell us what strategy should do, but not what it is.

The two definitions that come closest to articulating a distinctive meaning for strategy are offered by Barry Posen and Eliot Cohen. Posen defines grand strategy as “a state’s theory about how it can best ‘cause’ security for itself.”[xviii] Cohen defines strategy as a “theory of victory.”[xix] The key insight by Posen and Cohen is the inclusion of the term theory. If we define theories as “statements predicting which actions will lead to what results—and why,” we can move toward a better definition of strategy that is general, but not too inclusive, and captures the essence of the concept.[xx]

If we use the Posen-Cohen approach with a more general definition of purpose, we arrive at a sufficient working definition: strategy is a theory of success. This creates the expectation that anything called a strategy will be a causal explanation of how a given action or set of actions will cause success. Most strategies will include multiple intervening variables and conditions.[xxi] Defining strategy as a theory of success encourages creative thinking while keeping the strategist rooted in the process of causal analysis; it brings assumptions to light and forces strategists to clarify exactly how they plan to cause the desired end state to occur.

Does the new definition of strategy improve upon the Lykke model? Does it take us away from means-based planning? Yes, in two main ways. First, defining strategy as a theory of success requires us to make a claim about how our proposed actions will actually cause success to happen. If the emphasis switches from applying means to an end, to figuring out how to cause our preferred outcome, then the conversation is less about what resources we have available and more about what actions will lead to success and how. This shift will inevitably lead to the development of several rival theories of success, which is a crucial part of the strategy-making process. This approach may seem overly scientific or intellectual, but military commanders already have experience in the area of developing and choosing from multiple proposals. The campaign planning method is based on developing and evaluating alternative courses of action.[xxii] This is also the basic logic behind the scientific method and a form of intelligence analysis called “hypothesis generation and testing.”[xxiii] The process can be applied at the levels of military strategy and national strategy to clearly articulate and evaluate alternative theories of success.

The second benefit of defining strategy as a theory of success encourages us to think more effectively about power. A key principle of the Lykke model is to work with the resources or power that you currently have; however, more nuanced thinking about power suggests power is not a set value and instead is determined by the strategy. Freedman makes this point rather emphatically: strategy “is about getting more out of a situation than the starting balance of power would suggest. It is the art of creating power.”[xxiv] Like Freedman, Rumelt argues part of the purpose of strategy is the discovery of power. The broader principle is that good strategy is “an insight that, when acted upon, provide[s] a much more effective way to compete—the discovery of hidden power in the situation.”[xxv] To think of means only as existing resources dramatically underplays the actual sources of power. Since one of the purposes of strategy is to generate power, it does not make much sense to define sources of power before developing a strategy.

IMPLICATIONS

Judging an abstract argument without an empirical example is difficult; therefore, this section applies the Posen-Cohen model to the Obama administration’s strategy-making process for Afghanistan in 2009. The process was deficient in three ways: it was almost entirely means based, there was only one real option presented, and the result was bad strategy. This brief example suggests there are high costs to our present approach and potentially significant benefits to a new approach to strategy.

What emerges from journalistic accounts of the 2009 Obama administration strategy-making process is the observation that the entire discussion by civilian officials and military officers was about the number of troops, not strategy. In August 2009, International Security and Assistance Force Commander General Stanley McChrystal presented President Barack Obama with two strategies and three levels of troop deployment: 10,000 troops for a ramped up training mission or 40,000 or 85,000 troops for counterinsurgency (COIN) operations. The appearance of choice was a facade; there was “only one genuine option,” the middle one—40,000 troops for comprehensive COIN.[xxvi] Obama quickly understood the reality and was not happy; he wanted more options. After months of discussion and debate, his refined options were: 20,000 more troops for counterterrorism plus other initiatives; 30,000–35,000 more troops for COIN; 40,000 more troops for COIN; or 85,000 more troops for COIN.[xxvii] After repeated presidential requests for at least three distinct options, all Obama ever got was slight variations of the original ones. All options were based on the amount of resources being thrown at the problem.

The only possibility of a truly distinct option arose when former Vice President Joe Biden attempted to challenge the proposed counterinsurgency approach with what he called “counterterrorism plus.”[xxviii] This approach was pitched to Obama as the 20,000-troop option, but when Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, Central Command Commander General David Petraeus, and McChrystal insisted it was unrealistic, Obama dismissed the option without question.[xxix] Thus, in reality Obama was presented two realistic options, both included COIN and at least a 30,000 troop increase. All of the leaders agreed increasing troop strength by 85,000 was unrealistic. Even if the counterterrorism plus option was considered viable, it was just as means-based as the counterinsurgency options. Biden did not start with a concept and then figure out it would require less troops, he decided less troops would be better and then developed a possible concept.

How can you determine what is the best option when you have only one option? How can you judge the strengths and weaknesses of an approach when you have nothing to compare it to? All strategies have tradeoffs; different strategies have different tradeoffs. Comparing tradeoffs is impossible with only one option. Political science research suggests people will not discard a policy idea unless there is a plausible alternative.[xxx] The point of the strategy-making process is to choose the best alternative, which means insisting on multiple plausible options that are presented equally and without bias.

What about the merits of the strategy proposed by McChrystal and vigorously supported by Mullen, Petraeus, and Gates as well as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton? From the perspective of the Posen-Cohen model, McChrystal’s strategy is deficient due to its lack of clear causal thinking.[xxxi] Instead of a clearly stated theory of success, there are pillars, principles, and priorities including “protect the people,” “understand the people’s choices and needs,” improve governance, improve the Afghan National Security Forces, change the operational culture of the International Security and Assistance Force, “improve unity of effort and command,” “gain the initiative,” “signal unwavering commitment,” address grievances, and gain the support of the Afghan people.[xxxii] The elements identify many difficult objectives but no sense of the crucial factors or likely causes and effects. These objectives are fine as ways, defined as lines of effort, but they do not provide causal linkages between actions and results.

Perhaps the most important flaw of McChrystal’s strategy is the unspecified relationship between providing security, gaining support of the population, and establishing governance good enough to earn the trust of the people. If security could be established separate from governance, as Petraeus later argued, then the capabilities of the government of Afghanistan did not matter and the surge was a sensible option.[xxxiii] If security was in any way contingent on governance, however, then the surge would be a waste of time without steep improvement in the capacity of national and local governance in Afghanistan.

Perhaps if McChrystal would have spent more time elaborating the causal linkages in his strategy, the principal decision-makers would have understood the United States cannot gain the support of the Afghan people without good governance nor provide security without the support of the population—this is COIN 101. As Stephen Biddle observes, “combat and security alone will have difficulty sustaining control if all they do is allow a predatory government to exploit the population for the benefit of unrepresentative elites.”[xxxiv] This problem materialized in the early days of McChrystal’s counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan. McChrystal found that when his “government in a box” did not show up in Marjah after Operation Moshtarak (2010), security rapidly deteriorated.[xxxv]

The above analysis raises the question, “Was the McChrystal strategy successful?” A comprehensive analysis requires more than the allotted space, but the state of Afghanistan today bears a striking resemblance to presurge Afghanistan; so one must ask, “What was gained from the additional blood and treasure?” The Taliban is again resurgent, controlling significant portions of almost every province in Afghanistan.[xxxvi] Taliban attacks continue to take a large toll on Afghan National Security Forces, local police, and Afghan civilians. ISIL is now active in eastern Afghanistan. While the government of Afghanistan seems somewhat stable, Afghan National Security Forces have barely been able to stem the tide even with ever-increasing American assistance. At the very least, the surge did not result in the durable disruption to the Taliban that it was supposed to cause.[xxxvii] If the effort opened up space for good governance to develop, we are still waiting for it to arrive.

There is no direct evidence that any of the players in the 2009 debate acted or spoke in terms of ends, ways, and means, although there was mention of a whole-of-governments approach and McChrystal later coined the term government in a box. The obsession with means to the detriment of strategy of all participants in the strategy-making process is, however, abundantly clear. There was no debate about rival theories of success. The uniformed military and Gates pushed one option and Obama failed to compel anyone to provide multiple distinct options. McChrystal provided lines of effort but not a theory of success. Biden pushed a counterterrorism plus option, but never made a convincing argument about how it would be implemented or how the goal of durably disrupting the Taliban would be achieved. This outcome can only be considered a massive failure of the strategy-making process.

CONCLUSION

The American way of strategy is the practice of means-based planning: avoid critical and creative thinking and instead focus on aligning resources with goals. Common definitions of strategy, including the ever-present Lykke model, foster this way of thinking because they do not clearly describe what makes strategy a distinct concept. Too often definitions are overly inclusive and smuggle in concepts unrelated to strategy. Other definitions tell us what good strategy should do rather than telling us what it is. These weaknesses make strategy hard to define and complicate the strategy-making process.

The problems with our current understanding of strategy are exacerbated by the whole-of-government approach encouraging us to define national power as a discrete set of instruments that form a convenient acronym. In practice, the whole-of-government approach is often used as a substitute for, rather than an enabler of, strategy. The elements of national power are presented as lines of effort directed toward a goal without any clear sense of how exactly these efforts are related or how exactly they will cause the goals to be achieved.

The US defense community needs a new definition of strategy. Strategy is a theory of success, a solution to a problem, an explanation of how obstacles can be overcome. A good strategy creates opportunities, magnifies existing resources, or creates new resources. A good strategy must have a clear goal and must be mindful of constraints, but must not allow creativity to be crushed by overemphasizing available resources and existing doctrine. True creative thinking is profoundly difficult but worth the trouble because it wins wars, saves lives, and preserves nations.

Defining strategy as a theory of success gives a clear sense of how strategy is distinct from means-based planning and facilitates a superior strategy-making process. Without a clearly stated theory of success, assumptions remain hidden and logic fuzzy. A strategy must describe how and why proposed actions will cause the achievement of a goal. The strategy-making process must be driven by the evaluation of rival theories of success.

It is impossible to know how good a strategy is unless it is compared to other strategies. The costs and benefits of one strategy will be different than the costs and benefits of other strategies. The tradeoffs, level of risk, and probability of success will be different. Rival strategies should be evaluated based on current knowledge of the specific situation, historical evidence of similar cases, well-supported theory, and relevant experience. Comparative analysis has long been a part of the military campaign planning process and is fundamental to intelligence analysis and the scientific method.

A nation-state with a significant power advantage over all competitors can do without strategy and can perhaps even afford bad strategy. To a certain extent this position describes the United States in the 1990s and early 2000s. During this period of time, “problems could be solved with massive funding or expensive solutions.” We no longer can assume such an envious position. Our resources are overstretched and our economic base precarious. Our problems are complex and multifarious. Now, and in the future, we “will have to seek creative and relevant solutions with fewer resources.”[xxxviii] In other words, we need good strategy.

Jeffrey W. Meiser, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and Global Affairs at the University of Portland. He previously worked for the U.S. Department of Defense as an associate professor and director of the South and Central Asia Program at the College of International Security Affairs, at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. He is on X at @jwmeiser. The author thanks Amos Fox, Bill Curtis, and Frank Hoffman for helpful comments and support.

Acknowledgements: The author gratefully acknowledges the critical comments of Andrew L. Ross and ongoing discussions about strategy with Thomaz Costa, Frank Hoffman, and Chris Bassford arising from an earlier version of this article, which was presented at the International Security and Arms Control-International Security Studies Section Joint Annual Conference in 2014.

NOTES

[i] Martin E. Dempsey, “Desired Leader Attributes for Joint Force 2020” (memorandum, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, June 28, 2013), 1. See also Martin E. Dempsey, “Joint Education” (white paper, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, July 16, 2012), 4–5.

[ii] Jim Garamone, “Dunford to NDU Grads: Embrace Change and Innovation,” US Joint Chiefs of Staff, June 9, 2016, http://www.jcs.mil/Media/News/News-Display/Article/796366 /dunford-to-ndu-grads-embrace-change-and-innovation/.

[iii] Arthur F. Lykke Jr., “Defining Military Strategy,” Military Review 69, no. 5 (May 1989): 3.

[iv] Joseph R. Cerami, “Introduction,” in US Army War College Guide to National Security Issues, ed. Joseph R. Cerami and James F. Holcomb Jr. (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute [SSI], 2001), 7.

[v] Antulio J. Echevarria II, “Op-Ed: Is Strategy Really a Lost Art?,” SSI, September 13, 2013, http:// strategicstudiesinstitute.Army.mil/index.cfm/articles//Is-Strategy-Really-A-Lost-Art/2013/09/13.

[vi] Simply typing the words “ends, ways, means, strategy” into an Internet search engine returns thousands of hits.

[vii] Lykke, “Defining Military Strategy,” 2.

[viii] Ibid., 6.

[ix] The US Army designated an official functional area for strategists: FA59. The other services are not quite so bold.

[x] Maciej Bartkowski, “Can Political Struggle Against ISIL Succeed Where Violence Cannot?,” War on the Rocks, December 20, 2014, http://warontherocks.com/2014/12/can-political -struggle-against-isil-succeed-where-violence-cannot/.

[xi] For reporting on the introduction of the term into the national security lexicon see, Walter Pincus, “Pentagon Recommends ‘Whole-of-Government’ National Security Plans,” Washington Post, February 2, 2009.

[xii] See Charles Dunlap, “A Whole Lot of Substance or a Whole Lot of Rhetoric? A Perspective on a Whole of Government Approach to Security Challenges,” in Conflict Management and ‘Whole of Government’: Useful Tools for US National Security Strategy, ed. Volker C. Franke and Robert H. Dorff (Carlisle, PA: SSI, 2012), 185–216, http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.Army.mil/pdffiles /pub1102.pdf.

[xiii] Jim Garamone, “Dempsey Talks Caution, Whole-of-Government Approach,” US Department of Defense, September 22, 2015, http://www.defense.gov/News-Article-View/Article/618120 /dempsey-talks-caution-whole-of-government-approach.

[xiv] Colin S. Gray, Modern Strategy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 17.

[xv] Richard P. Rumelt, Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters (New York: Crown Business, 2011), 6.

[xvi] Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), xii

[xvii] Andrew F. Krepinevich and Barry D. Watts, Regaining Strategic Competence (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2009), 19.

[xviii] Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 13.

[xix] Eliot A. Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime (New York: Free Press, 2002), 33.

[xx] Clayton M. Christensen and Michael E. Raynor, “Why Hard-Nosed Executives Should Care about Management Theory,” Harvard Business Review 81, no. 9 (September 2003): 3.

[xxi] For examples, see Stephen Van Evera, Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 9–12.

[xxii] See Jack D. Kem, Planning for Action: Campaign Concepts and Tools (Fort Leavenworth, KS: US Command and General Staff College / Army Combined Arms Center, 2012), 129–52.

[xxiii] Richards J. Heuer Jr. and Randolph H. Pherson, Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2011), 147–76.

[xxiv] Freedman, Strategy, xii.

[xxv] Rumelt, Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, 31.

[xxvi] Jack Fairweather, The Good War: Why We Couldn’t Win the War or the Peace in Afghanistan (New York: Basic Books, 2014), 287

[xxvii] Bob Woodward, Obama’s Wars (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011), 273. The other initiatives or actions to be added to the basic counterterrorism approach were never exactly clear.

[xxviii] Ibid., 159, 232–36, 273.

[xxix] Ibid., 275.

[xxx] Jeffrey Legro, Rethinking the World: Great Power Strategies and International Order (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 24–48.

[xxxi] This analysis is based on McChrystal’s official assessment. See Stanley A. McChrystal, Commander’s Initial Assessment (Kabul, Afghanistan: Headquarters International Security Assistance Force, 2009).

[xxxii] Ibid.

[xxxiii] Woodward, Obama’s Wars, 220.

[xxxiv] Stephen Biddle, “Afghanistan’s Legacy: Emerging Lessons of an Ongoing War,” Washington Quarterly 37, no. 2 (Summer 2014): 75, doi:10.1080/0163660X.2014.926210.

[xxxv] Ben Anderson, The Battle for Marjah, directed by Anthony Wonke (New York: HBO Documentary Films, 2011).

[xxxvi] Caitlin Forrest, “Afghanistan Partial Threat Assessment: June 30, 2016,” Institute for the Study of War, July 14, 2016, http://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/afghanistan -partial-threat-assessment-june-30-2016.

[xxxvii] Woodward, Obama’s Wars, 270–71, 300, 312–14.

[xxxviii] F. G. Hoffman, “Grand Strategy: The Fundamental Considerations,” Orbis 58, no. 4 (September 2014): 476–7, doi:10.1016/j.orbis.2014.08.002.

7. No Laughing Matter: Chief of Staff of the Army Changes His Professional Reading List to a Series of Memes

(Note: Satire - sometimes we need some comic relief. I hope the CSA approves - of laughter not necessarily the memes!)

Please go to the link to view all the memes. https://www.strategycentral.io/post/no-laughing-matter-chief-of-staff-of-the-army-changes-his-professional-reading-list-to-series-of-me

No Laughing Matter: Chief of Staff of the Army Changes His Professional Reading List to a Series of Memes

In a surprising move, the Chief of Staff of the Army has decided to shake up his professional reading list for military personnel by replacing it with a list of memes. This decision has sparked a mix of reactions within the military community. 

The reading list, which typically consists of books and articles aimed at broadening the knowledge and perspectives of army personnel, has long been considered an essential part of professional development. However, the Chief of Staff's decision to swap out books for memes has raised some eyebrows.

One unnamed source on the Army Staff stated, “This is fine, and it will fit in well with the Army culture." He went on to say, "In a recent survey we found that that less than 9% of Army generals actually read any of the documents prepared for them." When asked why this is the case a recently retired general stated, "Listen, I was selected to lead, not to read, I trusted my people enough to read for me. It's called delegation."

Some have praised the move as a creative and innovative way to boost recruiting in a digital age where memes are a prevalent form of communication. Proponents argue that memes, with their ability to convey complex ideas in a concise and relatable manner, can be a valuable tool for fostering camaraderie and boosting morale among soldiers.

Here is the 2024 Chief of Staff of the Army’s Official Meme List in its entirety:

Do you have a meme that you want considered next year? Please leave it in the comments below.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please note that the preceding article is a work of satire. The story is entirely fictional and intended for entertainment purposes only. No such event occurred, and the details provided should not be interpreted as factual. This satirical piece aims to engage readers with a humorous take on the unexpected intersections between everyday life and the realms of military planning and strategy.

8. The U.S. Needs to Rebuild Its Military Might

The question is if Trump is re-elected will Chris MIller be his SECDEF? He does not appear to be lobbying for a position, unlike others who find themselves in the news (by their own efforts) which almost assures that they will not get a position. Chris MIller provided his detailed vision and then has remained quiet which likely makes him a leading candidate.

If so, his chapter on Defense in Project 2025 is worth reading and studying.

The entire Chapter 4 can be downloaded here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bplTSfLz24ofgFSJkoQr8UUZD47msV7k/view?usp=sharing

The entire 920 page document can be downloaded here: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24088042/project-2025s-mandate-for-leadership-the-conservative-promise.pdf

The U.S. Needs to Rebuild Its Military Might

Trump and the Republican Party promise to do just that.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-s-needs-to-rebuild-its-military-might-d6c4d4f4?mod=Searchresults_pos1&page=1

By Dan Sullivan

July 12, 2024 5:47 pm ET

The USS Gerald R. Ford sails during a fueling-at-sea operation in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, Oct. 11, 2023. PHOTO: JACKSON ADKINS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Nearly every leader I spoke with during this week’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit agrees: The world has become consumed by chaos. Dictators in Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are working together to undermine the free world. There’s little doubt why they feel emboldened: Under the Biden administration, U.S. military readiness has significantly diminished and authoritarians sense weakness. They’re perceptive.

America urgently needs to embrace the philosophy of peace through strength that has guided Republican presidents from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump and kept our nation safe. Thankfully at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee next week, Mr. Trump will present the Republican Party’s plan to do exactly that should he be re-elected in November.

The party’s recently released platform calls for making America’s military the “most modern, lethal and powerful” force in the world. That isn’t a new playbook. The GOP has a long tradition of championing robust investments in America’s vital defense needs. The Democrats, meantime, have targeted the nation’s defense budget since at least Jimmy Carter’s presidency at the expense of our military readiness and national security.

Joe Biden’s defenders may take issue with this contrast, pointing to his speech at this week’s summit where he declared “history calls for our collective strength.” The president even took credit for the increase in the number of NATO members meeting their commitment to spend 2% of gross domestic product on defense—doubtless a result that is owing more to Mr. Trump’s blunt, bare-knuckle warnings to our allies.

Does Mr. Biden’s rhetoric match his record? In each year of his presidency, Mr. Biden has proposed budgets with inflation-adjusted cuts to the Defense Department, while posting double-digit increases for such agencies as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Education Department. The president has America’s defense spending on track to drop below 3% of GDP within the next two years for only the fourth year since the end of World War II. This is the wrong signal to send to dictators like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, who are building up their military forces.

Such weakness fails to inspire our own citizens. Our military is facing its worst recruiting crisis in more than 50 years. America’s Navy has been left “in its worst state for designing, building, maintaining, and crewing ships in over 40 years,” experts from the Congressional Research Service told me. Meanwhile Mr. Biden’s Navy secretary is obsessively focused on climate change.

In addition to the withdrawal from Afghanistan—which took the lives of 13 American service members—the Biden administration has enriched Iran by refusing to enforce sanctions. The White House also lifted oil sanctions on Venezuela while aggressively seeking to shut down energy production in the U.S., including in my home state of Alaska. Don’t forget that Mr. Biden rewarded Mr. Putin by banning new U.S. liquefied natural gas projects and delaying every major weapons system Ukraine’s leadership has asked for.

None of this is surprising. Mr. Biden’s record on defense and foreign policy is a continuation of a Democratic tradition. Mr. Carter cut defense spending in his first three years of office. The Russians and Iranians took advantage of America’s weakened posture, which forced him to increase spending at the end of his term. Bill Clinton cut the size of our military by a third, upending a decade of progress under the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.

Barack Obama slashed the Pentagon’s budget by 25% during his second term. Our military readiness plummeted, leaving only three out of 58 Army brigade combat teams at the highest level of readiness in 2015.

In the Middle East, Mr. Obama’s passivity and infamous “red line” in Syria led to the flourishing of Islamic State and an emboldened Iranian terrorist regime. In the runup to Mr. Putin’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, Mr. Obama opted to send the Ukrainians ready-to-eat meals and blankets when they needed weapons and ammunition. He was also reluctant to build up American forces in the Baltics and Poland.

Mr. Trump cleaned up these messes. He worked to rebuild America’s military might and readiness, destroyed ISIS and delivered lethal weapons to Ukraine. Mr. Trump also deployed thousands of troops to Eastern Europe, crippled Iran’s economy and unleashed American energy dominance. This suite of policies kept Moscow, Tehran and Beijing in check.

The Republican Party’s platform promises to return to these policies. The Democratic National Committee hasn’t yet unveiled its 2024 platform, but if past is prologue, it won’t be promising. The party’s 2020 platform aspired to cut America’s defense budget, chastised America for spending “more on the military than . . . on diplomacy,” and naively pledged to “maintain a strong defense” for less money. Such policies will lead only to further global chaos.

Mr. Biden can protest all he wants. But for the vast majority of Americans who want to see America’s strength restored and the world’s dictators checked, the choice in November couldn’t be clearer.

Mr. Sullivan, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Alaska.

9. Ukrainian Men Desperate to Escape War Are Drowning as They Flee

Ukrainian Men Desperate to Escape War Are Drowning as They Flee

Delays in mustering fresh troops have increased strain on soldiers who have served on the front line against Russia for more than two years

By Isabel ColesFollow

 and Ievgeniia Sivorka | Photographs by Justyna Mielnikiewicz for WSJ

Updated July 13, 2024 12:01 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/ukrainian-men-desperate-to-escape-war-are-drowning-as-they-flee-9cb6d99d?mod=hp_lead_pos10

VELYKIY BYCHKIV, Ukraine—It was seven weeks after Pvt. Ivan Pidmalivskiy had been due back on the front line with Russia when rescuers pulled his lifeless body from a river on Ukraine’s western edge. 

His death added to a toll of more than two dozen other men who have drowned in the River Tysa since Russia invaded, many of them fugitives from a military draft aimed at sustaining Ukraine’s war effort. Pidmalivskiy was different: He had fought for two years after returning to Ukraine from abroad to defend his country. 

His family had seen the war take a growing toll on the burly 32-year-old, but he never revealed the depths of his exhaustion to them. “What was happening inside his soul, I don’t know,” said his mother, Liubov Pidmalivska.

Ivan Pidmalivskiy returned to Ukraine from the safety of neighboring Slovakia when the war broke out. PHOTO: PIDMALIVSKIY FAMILY

The bodies in the river are a grim manifestation of one of the biggest issues facing Ukraine as the war enters its third summer without a clear path to victory. Many of the men who initially mobilized to repel Russia’s invasion are dead, missing or wounded—and the rest are worn out from more than two years of brutal combat. Ukraine’s government has struggled to replace them after dragging its feet over a politically unpopular decision to expand the draft. A wartime law bans men aged between 18 and 60 from leaving Ukraine. Still, tens of thousands have fled the country illegally and many are lying low to avoid conscription.

The delay in mustering fresh troops has increased the strain on soldiers serving with no prospect of demobilization other than through injury or death. Military contracts became indefinite when martial law was introduced in the early days of the war.

“We need to do this so that the guys have a normal rotation. Then their morale will be improved,” said Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in an interview with the BBC in May about the mobilization drive. A large number of brigades were “empty,” he acknowledged.

Liubov Pidmalivska had seen the war take a growing toll on her son. PHOTO: MANU BRABO FOR WSJ

Recruitment numbers have improved since Zelensky signed a law lowering the age of conscription to 25, along with other steps taken to replenish threadbare ranks. Despite the challenges, support for the war remains strong, according to a recent poll by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which found that 58% supported further mobilization compared with 35% against. 

But the conscription campaign has also driven more men into the shadows and inflamed tensions in society. Across the country, men are hiding from draft officers, who have been filmed snatching potential conscripts off the street. Data from three neighboring countries indicates the number of men fleeing Ukraine illegally has increased in recent months. Border guards catch dozens of men daily, with some of the more desperate attempts ridiculed on social media.  

“It’s impossible to look at it without shame,” commented Maksym Zhorin, the deputy commander of Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade, after border guards caught 41 men trying to escape in the back of a grain truck last month. 

Ukraine’s mountainous Transcarpathia region borders Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland.

It is a stark reversal from the heady first days of the war when so many men volunteered to fight that Ukraine’s military turned some away. Many even returned from the safety of other countries, including Pidmalivskiy, who left his wife and two children in neighboring Slovakia.

“It was a shock,” said Pidmalivska, recalling the day her eldest son turned up in his hometown of Velykiy Bychkiv, a village of some 9,000 people on the banks of the River Tysa, and said he was going to join the army.

The first year of the war went well for Pidmalivskiy. He took part in a surprise offensive that routed occupying forces from a swath of territory in the north. As Ukraine geared up for a major counteroffensive in the spring of last year, he was sent to France for training on the Caesar self-propelled howitzer.

But hopes of a breakthrough soon shattered against the hard reality of Russian defenses. Ammunition began to run low as political deadlock in the U.S. held up a key package of aid. As the victories of 2022 turned into a grinding battle of attrition against a larger, more powerful enemy, Pidmalivskiy’s mood darkened. 

Velykiy Bychkiv, a village of some 9,000 people, sits on the banks of the River Tysa, which marks part of the border between Ukraine and Romania.

In calls with his mother, he said everything was fine. But a fellow soldier who joined the army with Pidmalivskiy and served alongside him in the 148th Brigade said he confided that he and the rest of the unit were exhausted. “They were begging for a rotation,” said the soldier, who gave only his call sign, Horets, in line with military protocol. Pidmalivskiy complained his commander wouldn’t sign off on a vacation to see his family in Slovakia, and had underpaid him. “He was sick and tired of everything,” Horets said.

In March, Pidmalivskiy was finally granted his third leave since the start of the war. From the battlefields of eastern Ukraine, he returned to his village in the west, where the government is struggling to prevent men from fleeing.

At least 44,000 Ukrainians have left the country illegally since Russia invaded, according to data provided by border authorities in Moldova, Romania and Slovakia. That doesn’t include men who crossed the border officially using documents exempting them from military service issued in exchange for bribes. Zelensky fired the heads of the country’s regional military-recruitment centers last year in an effort to crack down on corrupt practices that have enabled men to avoid conscription.

Number of Ukrainian citizens who have crossed into select neighboring countries illegally, 2021–24*

Russian forces

as of July 11

BELARUS

POLAND

RUSSIA

Kyiv

SLOVAKIA

1,642

Velykiy

Bychkiv

UKRAINE

MOLDOVA

29,728

ROMANIA

13,861

100 miles

Black Sea

100 km

Slovakia

Romania

Moldova

15,000

750

5,000

12,000

600

4,000

9,000

450

3,000

300

6,000

2,000

3,000

150

1,000

22

28

0

0

0

2021

’22

’23

’24

2021

’22

’23

’24

2021

’22

’23

’24

*2024 data is through May 19 (Slovakia), May 31 (Romania), April 30 (Moldova); 2022 data is from Feb. 24 to Dec. 31 for Moldova.

Sources: General Inspectorate of the Border Police (Romania); Border Police of the Republic of Moldova (Moldova); Bureau of Border and Foreign Police (Slovakia); Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project (Russian forces)

Andrew Barnett

On the main road leading to the western Transcarpathia region, a sign at a checkpoint exhorts men not to leave. “We are strong,” it reads. Once a tourist destination, the mountainous region’s borders with four countries—Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland—have made it a hub for illegal crossings. 

Plainclothes officers are posted at train stations and monitor hotels for fugitive men. Many Ukrainians head for the mountains, undeterred by warnings about wildcats and bears. Rescue services sometimes receive calls from men who have lost their way in the rugged terrain. “It’s obvious they’re not tourists,” said a spokeswoman for the services.

Smugglers now cater to booming demand from men trying to flee the country, charging from $4,000 to $15,000 for their services. It is more lucrative than their traditional trade in counterfeit and contraband cigarettes, of which Ukraine is a top source for Europe. 

A court hearing of alleged people smugglers in the Transcarpathia region, which has become a hub for illegal crossings. A sign exhorts Ukrainian men not to leave.

Many of the smugglers are locals with knowledge of the area. Some accompany their clients to the border or send children to guide them. Others provide directions remotely.

One smuggler recently detained by the police was equipped with a bug detector he used to ensure clients weren’t informants recording his activities, authorities said. Another was a local who attempted to smuggle 20,000 packs of cigarettes along with two men concealed in a secret compartment in a minivan. In May, a soldier on medical leave for concussion was charged with attempting to smuggle a draft evader across the border.

Men caught trying to cross the border illegally face a fine of up to $360 and 15 days in prison, though it isn’t a criminal offense. The bigger risk is of being fast-tracked to the front line.

As Ukraine tightened conscription, 25-year-old Valeriy Minikhinov also came home to Velykiy Bychkiv.

Valeriy Minikhinov decided to flee to Romania with the aid of a smuggler. PHOTO: NINEL KOPEKOVA

After Russia invaded, border guards extended barbed wire along the river banks. At night, drones with thermal imaging scan for men trying to swim across to Romania.

Minikhinov’s mother had persuaded him to return from Kyiv so she could hide him away from the draft. She had previously forbidden him from enlisting in the army with his father, who has been missing in action since the first year of the war. “I was afraid of losing my son,” Ninel Kopekova said.

Unknown to her, he decided to flee across the river to Romania with the aid of a smuggler he paid $4,000. A day after he vanished, Minikhinov’s girlfriend revealed his plan to travel to Sweden, where relatives had found him a job. The journey ended about 25 miles downriver from Velykiy Bychkiv, where rescuers recovered his body in mid-February. An autopsy found Minikhinov’s heart had failed.

Ninel Kopekova had persuaded her son to return from Kyiv before he died.

Reeling from the loss of her eldest son, Kopekova is now trying to get Minikhinov’s younger half-brother enrolled in a university abroad before he turns 18 this year and is no longer allowed to leave Ukraine. She blames the government for Minikhinov’s death: “They’re destroying our kids,” she said. 

A few weeks later, the end of Pidmalivskiy’s vacation was approaching. He told his younger half-brother Mykola Yaremchuk he didn’t want to go, but began gathering supplies he said he would take back to the front.

After an evening drinking beer together on March 28, the family woke to find Pidmalivskiy was gone. At first, they weren’t concerned. His bags were still there, though his passport and bank cards were missing.

Days later, Pidmalivskiy’s commander called asking why he hadn’t reported for duty. Still, the family waited nearly a week before going to the police.

A post marks Ukraine's border with Romania, which is patrolled by border guards who catch dozens of men daily.

Rumors began swirling around Velykiy Bychkiv that Pidmalivskiy had fled across the river to Romania. One person even claimed to have spoken to him on the other side, momentarily easing the family’s disquiet. But if Pidmalivskiy had made it safely, why hadn’t he been in contact? 

As winter thawed, the Tysa swelled and the current grew stronger. In late April, rescuers recovered the bodies of two men beached on an islet in the river. Soon afterward, a fisherman spotted the body of another man in the water. Two more were pulled out the same day—one of them just 20 years old.

“They want to live,” said Oleksandr Schubert, head of a team of rescuers who work along the river. “But instead of dying there [on the front line], they die here.”

In mid-May, Romanian border guards found the corpse of another man floating in the river. He appeared to have been dead in the water for some time and wasn’t carrying any documents. It was the 30th body recovered from the river since Russia’s invasion.

A rescue team patrols the River Tysa on Ukraine's border with Romania.

Police sent Yaremchuk a photograph of a body three days later. The drowned man was of a similar build to his brother, but it was the shoes he recognized instantly. “They were my shoes,” Yaremchuk said, recalling that Pidmalivskiy had borrowed them.

Many questions remained: Did Pidmalivskiy plan to flee all along, or was it a snap decision? Why had he risked crossing after heavy rain in March, when locals know the water is high? Five more bodies have been pulled out of the river since.

Unlike soldiers killed at war, Pidmalivskiy was buried without fanfare in a plot near Minikhinov’s.

It saddened Horets that his friend and fellow soldier should receive no tribute after returning to Ukraine voluntarily and fighting for two years. “He wasn’t a draft dodger; he was a true patriot,” he said.

So he presented Pidmalivskiy’s family with the flag of their battalion, which they planted over his grave. “I don’t care what anyone thinks,” Yaremchuk said. “He deserved to be buried as a hero.”

The graves of Valeriy Minikhinov and Ivan Pidmalivskiy in the village of Velykiy Bychkiv.

Write to Isabel Coles at isabel.coles@wsj.com

10. China Freaked: The U.S. Air Force 'Elephant Walked' A Fleet of F-35 Fighters as a Warning

Does an elephant walk "freak out" China? Does it really send a clear message of air superiority?

China Freaked: The U.S. Air Force 'Elephant Walked' A Fleet of F-35 Fighters as a Warning

In 2019, amid escalating tensions with China, the U.S. Air Force conducted an Elephant Walk at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska. This display involved 24 F-22 Raptors, along with a C-17 Globemaster III and an E-3 Sentry, showcasing half of the 3rd Wing's Raptor fleet. The event served as a powerful demonstration of U.S. air superiority and a clear message to China, Russia, and North Korea.

The National Interest · by Brandon J. Weichert · July 12, 2024

Summary and Key Points: In 2019, amid escalating tensions with China, the U.S. Air Force conducted an Elephant Walk at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska.

-This display involved 24 F-22 Raptors, along with a C-17 Globemaster III and an E-3 Sentry, showcasing half of the 3rd Wing's Raptor fleet. The event served as a powerful demonstration of U.S. air superiority and a clear message to China, Russia, and North Korea.

-The F-22, renowned for its stealth, advanced avionics, and supercruise capabilities, is a formidable air superiority fighter, embodying U.S. military might. The Elephant Walk underscored America's readiness and deterrence capabilities in a visually impactful manner.

F-22 Elephant Walk, Explained

An elephant walk is a funny name for a unique U.S. military practice. It is a tradition going back to the Second World War.

Essentially, military aircraft line up single file on a runway for the media to report on. In the words of Simply Flying, “These events demonstrate the strength and preparedness of an Air Force, either for military or weather crises.”

In 2019, as tensions between the United States and China were escalating, the Trump administration ordered such an Elephant Walk to be conducted by the U.S. Air Force during the Polar Force exercise that year at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska. The walk included a formation of F-22 Raptors, a C-17 Globemaster III, and an E-3 Sentry. It displayed half of the 3rd Wing’s Raptor Fleet.

In total, there were an astonishing 24 Raptors on the tarmac when the Elephant Walk commenced.

It was the ultimate “‘Sup China?” moment.

Context is King

The location of the Elephant Walk was important, too. It wasn’t only China that was being sent a message. It was Russia and even North Korea that were being told to watch themselves. Elmendorf’s location in Alaska, America’s last true frontier on this planet, put the Raptor fleet essentially in the backyards of those three rival powers.

And let’s face it, these countries really don’t have the kind of countermeasures to stop the Raptor if war ever broke out. The Raptor is classified as an air-superiority fighter of the fifth-generation. It was originally conceived to fight the Soviet Union in a war over Europe. Since the collapse of the USSR and end of the Cold War, though, its mission set changed somewhat – and so, too, did the needs and interests of the US Air Force.

What is an “Air Superiority Fighter”?

Air superiority fighters are primarily designed to enter and seize control of enemy airspace as part of a larger mission of establishing air dominance. They primarily achieve this goal by engaging in air-to-air combat. They gain superiority by knocking out the rival’s air force in dogfights. The F-22 is second to none in this regard.

In the post-9/11 era, though, the Pentagon came to favor America’s other fifth-generation warplane, the F-35 Lightning II, because it was also a bomber. It could both dogfight and strike targets on the ground.

But let’s not undercut the F-22. As the Air Force’s own website details, the F-22 can be reconfigured to conduct air-to-ground strikes – even carrying two 1,000-pound GBU-32 Joint Direct Attack Munitions internally to get the job done.

But as an air superiority bird, the F-22 offers a masterclass.

Having 24 of these beauties assembled on the tarmac of an airbase close to Russia, China, and North Korea, as well as its attendant transport plane and electronic warfare plane, is a clear signal to Eurasia’s autocrats that America means business.

Some of the Capabilities of the F-22

The F-22 is a stealth fighter. It has an insane avionics package. The bird can supercruise (that means it can sustain supersonic flight). It is one of the most maneuverable birds ever built, too. Hitting Mach 2 and traveling at a range of up to 1,600 miles, the F-22 is a formidable craft. Having 24 of them in a particular airspace means that unless China, Russia, or North Korea have some super-secret air defense weapon, the F-22s will annihilate whatever warplanes those countries send up to meet the F-22s.

What the Elephant Walk did was calm rising tensions and re-establish deterrence, however temporarily. The Air Force wanted 750 units of these birds when they first envisioned the program. They got a fraction of that after the production line was prematurely canceled by the Obama administration in 2009 in response to the financial crisis.

An Elephant Walk to Remember

When an enemy sees 24 Raptors ready to roll on a runway near their territory, they cannot be certain that this is just a photo-op, or if the Americans are really readying to attack with these unstoppable warbirds. While America may be a declining imperial power today, she still has capabilities that send shivers down the backs of its rivals. The power this country can wield when it chooses to is great and fearsome.

The F-22 is the modern embodiment of that power. And the Elephant Walk is a wonderful display to remind the world: Do not mess with the U.S.

Author Experience and Expertise: Brandon J. Weichert

Brandon J. Weichert, a National Interest national security analyst, is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, the Asia Times, and The-Pipeline. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His next book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine, is due October 22 from Encounter Books. Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

All images are Creative Commons or Shutterstock.

From the Vault

Russia Freaked Out: Why the U.S. Navy 'Unretired' the Iowa-Class Battleships

Battleship vs. Battlecruiser: Iowa-Class vs. Russia's Kirov-Class (Who Wins?)

The National Interest · by Brandon J. Weichert · July 12, 2024

11. Why Build AbramsX When the Ukraine War Shows Thousands of Tanks Destroyed?

Why Build AbramsX When the Ukraine War Shows Thousands of Tanks Destroyed?

The U.S. is developing the AbramsX, a new hybrid-electric MBT designed to be lighter, faster, and more fuel-efficient. The AbramsX promises advanced capabilities, including embedded AI and a new lightweight XM360 gun.

The National Interest · by Maya Carlin · July 12, 2024

Summary and Key Points: The U.S. is developing the AbramsX, a new hybrid-electric MBT designed to be lighter, faster, and more fuel-efficient. The AbramsX promises advanced capabilities, including embedded AI and a new lightweight XM360 gun.

-However, its reliance on large lithium battery packs has raised concerns about vulnerabilities, particularly their potential to explode when damaged.

-Analysts are questioning whether investing in such an advanced yet potentially vulnerable tank is justifiable given the high risk of destruction in modern combat.

AbramsX: Already Obsolete Thanks to Ukraine War?

The decimation of main battle tanks in the fighting between Russia and Ukraine has some analysts wondering whether these military systems are still worth the cost.

Armored vehicles have played pivotal roles in warfare since their introduction to combat more than a century ago. Useful for breaking enemy lines in warfare, transporting troops, and providing unmatched versatility for ground forces, heavy cavalry is a vital component of an armored corps.

Tanks play a leading role in Ukraine, proving they are not obsolete. But the mounting tank losses on both sides also suggests even the most modern MBTs struggle to survive against advanced anti-tank weaponry. Thousands of tanks have been lost since Russia invaded in February 2022. Despite this performance, the U.S. is determined, to develop a costly new hybrid-electric MBT in the near future.

Introducing the Abrams Series of MBTs

The U.S. Army is designing its new AbramsX tank series to be lighter, faster, and more fuel-efficient than its predecessors.

The Abrams tank series has its roots in the Cold War-era MBT-70 program, which sought to develop a replacement for the legendary M60 Patton.

A number of variants emerged over the years. When the M1A1 Abrams was introduced, perhaps its most significant attribute was its Chobham armor, which was made to perform extremely well against HEAT rounds and other shaped charges. It was equipped with a 120 mm main gun, armor-piercing capabilities, a 1,500 horsepower engine, and sophisticated tracking systems.

The upcoming AbramsX is designed to outmatch its counterparts in future conflicts. With a reduced weight, the new variant will require half the fuel consumption. The tank will also reportedly feature an embedded artificial intelligence capability and a new lightweight XM360 gun.

Is the New AbramsX Worth the Cost?

While the AbramsX’s hybrid electric power source comes with plenty of advantages, analysts have pointed out potential drawbacks of running on battery power.

As explained by Stephen Bryen for Asia Times, the need for large lithium battery packs to power the new tank series could be consequential: “Battery packs are heavy and expensive and they also are dangerous because they can explode if hit by shrapnel or if a mine blows out the tank’s bottom. While we don’t know the size of the battery the Army will opt for, it will have to be big enough to power a heavy tank – meaning the battery could weigh a few tons. This creates a vulnerability that does not exist today and raises questions on whether it makes sense to go in the hybrid direction.”

Regardless of the AbramsX model’s performance relative to rival MBTs, the Army may not be able to justify pouring so many funds into a military system, the tank, that can be so easily destroyed in combat.

About the Author: Maya Carlin, Defense Expert

Maya Carlin, National Security Writer with The National Interest, is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel. You can follow her on Twitter: @MayaCarlin.

All images are Creative Commons Photos.

The National Interest · by Maya Carlin · July 12, 2024

12. Israel Says It Targeted Hamas Military Chief in Gaza Strike

Israel Says It Targeted Hamas Military Chief in Gaza Strike

Mohammed Deif would be most senior Hamas member killed during war; Gaza authorities say scores of civilians killed

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israeli-strike-targets-hamas-military-chief-mohammed-deif-5ded1c9d?mod=latest_headlines

By Carrie Keller-Lynn

Updated July 13, 2024 9:38 am ET

TEL AVIV—Israel targeted Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, a key planner of the Oct. 7 attack, in an overnight airstrike, three Israeli security officials said on Saturday. 

The Israeli military is still assessing whether the strike near Khan Younis, southern Gaza, killed Deif, two officials said. If it did, he would be the most senior official in the U.S.-designated terrorist group to have been killed by Israel in more than nine months of fighting in the Gaza Strip, which followed the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack that left 1,200 people dead in Israel and more than 240 taken as hostages. 

Mohammed Deif. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Israel’s attack also targeted the brigade commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis forces, Rafa Salama, the security officials said. Israel had indications in recent days that it may have the opportunity to strike Deif, one of Hamas’s most secretive commanders, but the window only emerged in real time, one official said.

Gaza officials said scores of Palestinian civilians were killed and many more wounded in the strike, which they said was in the al-Mawasi area, where Israel has told Gaza civilians to move to avoid fighting elsewhere.

An Israeli security official said the strike was in nearby western Khan Younis, within an area recently added to the military’s demarcated humanitarian zone.

“We chose to attack because we knew we were attacking a Hamas compound in this area,” the official said.

Two Israeli security officials said the strike was carried out in a fenced area controlled by Hamas within a broader open area, not a place with tents, and that most of the people killed were militants, including people assigned to guard Deif and Salama. 

Hamas disputed Israel’s claims that the strike targeted Deif. 

“These false claims are merely to cover up the extent of the horrific massacre,” the group wrote.

GAZA

STRIP

al-Mawasi

Khan Younis

Mediterranean Sea

ISR.

GAZA STRIP

Detail

Rafah

EGYPT

ISRAEL

2 miles

2 km

Camille Bressange/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The strike is likely to complicate ongoing talks to strike a deal that would pause the fighting in exchange for the release of hostages still held in Gaza. Israel and Hamas revived U.S.- and Arab-mediated attempts to reach an agreement in the past week after several previous failures to do so. 

Pressure has been building on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to secure a deal, even as he insists that any agreement must enable Israel to restart its campaign to uproot Hamas, a demand that Hamas has rejected.

Netanyahu and his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, have said military pressure is critical to bringing Hamas into an agreement. An Israeli official said Gallant called in senior security officials to discuss the potential effect of the overnight strike on talks before approving the mission.

The aftermath of an Israeli attack on al-Mawasi. It wasn’t immediately clear if it was the same strike in which Israel says it targeted Deif. PHOTO: HAITHAM IMAD/SHUTTERSTOCK

Netanyahu’s office on Saturday said that the prime minister had given a standing order at the beginning of the war to kill Hamas’s senior leadership, but didn’t mention Deif by name. Netanyahu held a security assessment with top advisers on Saturday.

Israel has made numerous attempts to kill Deif since 2002, forcing him to move between homes. Few people inside Hamas have even met Deif, who has remained in the shadows over the past two decades, fearful of Israeli bombs and bullets. His real name isn’t believed to be Deif, which in Arabic means “guest” in reference to his nomadic lifestyle, but Mohammed al-Masri, according to the U.S. government, which designates him a terrorist. 

Deif is largely credited with transforming Hamas’s military wing, known as the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, from an insurgent militia into a capable fighting force since becoming its commander in the early 2000s. Through this position he rose to be one of the most influential Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip, second on Israel’s threat list behind Hamas’s Gaza chief, Yahya Sinwar.

A camp in the al-Mawasi area that Palestinians say was part of an overnight strike by Israel. PHOTO: MOHAMMED SALEM/REUTERS

According to Israel, Deif was the protégé of Yahya Ayyash, an explosives expert known as the Engineer. Israel later blamed Deif for a series of bus bombings in the 1990s that killed dozens and marred the Israeli-Palestinian peace process known as the Oslo Accords. 

He is also credited with being a force behind Hamas’s local development of rockets, as well as supporting the development of Gaza’s extensive subterranean tunnel network and scaling up the quality of Hamas’s organized fighting forces, including the commando units that raided Israel last fall.

In March, Israel killed Marwan Issa, who was considered Hamas’s third most senior official in Gaza, behind Deif and Sinwar.

Abeer Ayyoub and Suha Ma’ayeh contributed to this article.

13. The US held off sanctioning this Israeli army unit despite evidence of abuses. Now its forces are shaping the fight in Gaza

The US held off sanctioning this Israeli army unit despite evidence of abuses. Now its forces are shaping the fight in Gaza | CNN

CNN · July 13, 2024

Illustration by Alberto Mier/CNN

CNN —

Former commanders of the Netzah Yehuda battalion, an Israeli military unit that has been accused by the United States of gross human rights violations against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank prior to October 7, have been promoted to senior positions in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and are now active in training Israeli ground troops as well as running operations in Gaza, a CNN investigation has found.

Among CNN’s findings was rare whistleblower testimony from a former soldier of the unit who described a command that encouraged a culture of violence, an issue identified by US State Department investigations.

In April, the State Department said that it had determined five Israeli security units had committed gross violations of human rights prior to the outbreak of the war with Hamas in Gaza. The department said that four of the units had “effectively remediated,” or reformed themselves, in the wake of those violations, but that it was still deciding whether to restrict US military assistance to the remaining unit: The Netzah Yehuda battalion, originally created to accommodate ultra-Orthodox Jews in the military.

In this 2014 photo, Israeli soldiers in the Netzah Yehuda battalion are seen taking part in training in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, near the Syrian border.

Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images/File

The news that the US might withhold assistance from the Israeli military unit triggered a furious response at the time from top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said: “If anyone thinks they can impose sanctions on a unit of the IDF, I will fight with all my strength.”

In a letter obtained by CNN, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told House Speaker Mike Johnson that the US was working with Israel “on identifying a path to effective remediation” for the Netzah Yehuda battalion. The letter did not name the unit, but current and former US officials confirmed to CNN that Blinken was referring to Netzah Yehuda, which has been accused of a string of abuses in the occupied West Bank over the last 10 years, including in the death of a 78-year-old Palestinian-American man in 2022.

Using facial recognition technology and other open-source techniques, CNN has found that three former commanders of the Netzah Yehuda battalion – who were in charge of the unit at the time of alleged abuses in the West Bank – have risen through the ranks of the IDF. CNN tracked these commanders by matching their faces to publicly available imagery over the years, ranging from photographs of military ceremonies to battlefield updates.

“When a commander from a tainted unit goes on to another unit, he can render the new unit ineligible for US assistance too.”

Charles Blaha, former director of the State Department’s Office of Security and Human Rights

CNN has spoken with a former member of the unit, who detailed instances of cruel and excessively violent treatment of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The whistleblower said that commanders actively supported vigilante violence and that promoting them into senior IDF positions risked bringing the same culture to other parts of the military.

“A lot of us probably did not see Arabs, Palestinians in particular, as someone with rights – okay, like they’re really the occupier of some of the land and they need to be moved,” he said.

The former soldier, who asked not to be named due to fears about his security, told CNN that the unit was well known for carrying out what he described as the “collective punishment of Palestinians.” He gave an example of the battalion’s forces assaulting a Palestinian village, going door-to-door with stun grenades and gas grenades as retribution for some local children throwing rocks.

While he was in Netzah Yehuda, he said, the battalion’s commanders played a key role in perpetuating a culture of violence, both by standing by as it happened and promoting it.

Responding to CNN’s request for comment on the allegations of abuse by Netzah Yehuda, the IDF said that the battalion “operates in a professional and ethical manner” and that its soldiers and commanders “act according to the orders and protocols expected of soldiers in the IDF.” The IDF added that it investigates “every exceptional incident,” and takes command and disciplinary measures against those involved when appropriate. It did not comment on the subsequent promotion of some commanders.

In the course of its month-long investigation, CNN spoke with several current and former US officials, who revealed the intense frustrations within the Biden administration at the perceived special treatment that Israel receives from the US when it comes to addressing human rights violations by its security forces. The former US officials said the fact that Netzah Yehuda’s former commanders have continued to be promoted through Israel’s military ranks was a worrying result of America’s inaction and could have devastating consequences.

Watch CNN’s full investigation into Israeli unit that the US knew committed abuses

05:46 - Source: CNN

The US determined that four of the five Israeli units under scrutiny were remediated on the basis that Israel had taken steps to “bring to justice” responsible service members, according to an internal memo sent by the State Department to Congress and obtained by CNN. Israeli military veterans from Breaking the Silence, an anti-occupation advocacy group, told CNN that the IDF often scapegoats junior soldiers or officers, arguing that abuses are the fault of a few bad apples rather than reflective of institutional problems stemming from longstanding military practices or government policies. That approach should not meet the bar for effective remediation, US officials said.

A State Department spokesperson told CNN that they do not discuss the circumstances of individual cases, but its experts had “concluded that several Israeli security force units were credibly implicated in gross violations of human rights (GVHRs),” and that for four of those, the Israeli government had “taken effective steps to bring those responsible to justice.”

“We continue to assess reports of GVHRs by Israeli security forces, in accordance with the law, and all US security assistance to Israel is provided consistent with domestic and international law,” the spokesperson added.

Current and former US officials also told CNN that the five Israeli units were not the only ones the State Department had been examining. The special State Department panel had reached unanimous consensus at a working level that three additional units had been guilty of abuses prior to October 7, the officials said. Only Blinken or the Deputy Secretary of State can make a final determination on whether units remain eligible to receive US military assistance and it is unclear if the matter has come before them. The findings by the expert panel would have been enough to disqualify a military unit from any other country, the officials said.

The incidents include the killing of Ahmad Jamil Fahd, who was allegedly shot by forces from the Israeli police counterterrorism unit, the Yamam, near Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, in May 2021; the killing of a Bedouin man identified as Sanad Salaam al-Harbad, who was allegedly shot by the Israel Border Police in the southern Israeli city of Rahat in March 2022; and the alleged rape of a 15-year-old boy by an interrogator from the Israeli Internal Security Forces at the Russian Compound (Moscobiyya detention center) in Jerusalem in January 2021. One US official CNN spoke with said these were among “the most flagrant abuses looked into.”

CNN reached out to the Israel Border Police and Shin Bet, the country’s domestic security agency, for comment on the State Department’s findings.

Soldiers walk near missile defense systems during Juniper Cobra, a joint US-Israel ballistic missile defense exercise, at Hatzor Israeli Air Force Base in central Israel, on February 25, 2016.

Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP/Getty Images

Josh Paul, who as a former director in the State Department’s political-military affairs bureau spent more than 11 years working on US defense diplomacy, security and weapons assistance before resigning in October 2023 over the transfer of arms to Israel, told CNN that there was “not even the slightest basis” to suggest that the three further units identified to CNN — the Yamam, the Israel Border Police and Internal Security Forces connected to the Moscobiyya detention center — had done anything to reform.

Paul had previously referenced the Moscobiyya rape allegation in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, adding that a charity had drawn it to the attention of a State Department vetting panel he was on. The allegation was believed to be credible and raised with Israel’s government, he said. “And do you know what happened the next day? The IDF went in to the (charity’s) offices and removed all their computers and declared them a terrorist entity,” he told Amanpour.

Two of the units have been linked to deadly incidents in the wake of October 7. The Yamam was involved in Israel’s hostage rescue operation in Nuseirat refugee camp, in northern Gaza, on June 8, which freed four Israelis and, according to local health authorities, killed more than 270 Palestinians and injured over 700. The IDF has disputed those numbers, claiming that casualties from the operation were “under 100.” CNN cannot independently verify the casualty figures given by either side. Meanwhile, the Israel Border Police shot and killed a 3-year-old Palestinian girl in the occupied West Bank in January and a 12-year-old Palestinian boy in occupied east Jerusalem in March.

The fact that the US has never imposed sanctions on any Israeli military unit shows “the lack of political will and moral courage to hold Israel accountable,” Paul added.

Palestinians inspect the damage a day after a deadly hostage rescue operation by Israeli forces in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza on June 9, 2024.

Eyad Baba/AFP/Getty Images

‘Culture of impunity’

The US is by far the biggest supplier of weapons to Israel, and its military assistance has helped shape Israel’s operations in Gaza. But it has increasingly come under international pressure over its support as the war drags on.

Nine months since Hamas militants killed around 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped more than 250 people, Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed more than 38,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities. US President Joe Biden has called for the war to end, and laid out a US-backed Israeli ceasefire proposal, but his administration has continued to supply Israel with billions of dollars’ worth of weapons.

Paul told CNN that Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza would look far different if the US had enforced legislation known as the Leahy law. The 1997 law, named for former Sen. Patrick Leahy who authored the legislation, prohibits the US from providing assistance to any foreign security units that are credibly implicated in human rights violations.

“Had the US used the leverage that Leahy laws provide over the years to encourage the IDF to crack down on misbehavior and to snuff out its current culture of impunity, we would have seen at the very least a much stronger unit discipline (than what we see in Gaza right now) at a tactical level,” said Paul, who was a member of the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum – created in 2020 to identify Israeli units that should be barred from receiving US aid.

Under the Leahy law, in cases where an entire unit is designated to receive assistance, the State Department vets not only the unit but also its commander.

Charles Blaha, the former director of the State Department’s Office of Security and Human Rights, and also a former member of the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum, said that the panel pays “special attention” to commanders. “They set the tone for the units. When a commander from a tainted unit goes on to another unit, he can render the new unit ineligible for US assistance too,” said Blaha, who retired from the State Department last year.

Hear from former State Department official who investigated the Netzah Yehuda battalion

00:43 - Source: CNN

‘Moral failure’

The Netzah Yehuda battalion was created by the Israeli military in 1999 for ultra-Orthodox Jews, to accommodate their more stringent religious practices, like the separation of men and women. Since it was established, the battalion has also attracted religious nationalists from the West Bank settler movement, according to those familiar with the unit. It forms part of the Kfir Brigade, the largest infantry brigade in the IDF.

One of the most shocking and widely reported incidents involving the Netzah Yehuda battalion was the death of a 78-year-old Palestinian-American man, who was detained in his home village of Jiljilya in the occupied West Bank in January 2022. Omar Assad was held gagged and with his hands tied for a period before being freed and left unresponsive by soldiers from the unit, according to an IDF investigation. An autopsy report determined that Assad had died from a heart attack after he was detained.

The IDF investigation concluded that the incident resulted from “a moral failure and poor decision-making on the part of the soldiers.” Following the initial probe, the IDF said that it would reprimand the commander of Netzah Yehuda – Lt. Col. Mati Shevach – and remove the platoon commander and company commander from their positions, barring them from commanding roles for two years. But no criminal charges were brought against the soldiers, because the military said there was no causal link found between Assad’s death and their conduct. The IDF referred CNN to its findings when questioned about Assad’s death.

Mourners carry the body of Omar Assad during his funeral in the West Bank village of Jiljiliya, north of Ramallah, on January 13, 2022.

Nasser Nasser/AP

Current and former US officials told CNN that the Assad case reflects a broader trend of the types of cases that the US examines. To date, the only incidents in which the US has implicated Israeli units in gross human rights violations were cases in which Israeli courts had already ruled. “The State Department has never made an independent determination of a gross violation of human rights by an Israeli unit. Ever,” Blaha said.

Speaking further about the special treatment that Israel gets from the US, he added: “Of course, we treat Israel differently and that really undermines our human rights advocacy in the rest of the world.”

Shevach, Netzah Yehuda’s commander at the time of Assad’s death, was promoted to the role of deputy commander of the Kfir Brigade, which oversees Netzah Yehuda, soon after his two-year stint in charge of the ultra-Orthodox battalion ended in August 2022. And now, Shevach is training soldiers who are about to enter combat, according to an IDF press release and media reports.

“The type of violations that the Netzah Yehuda have committed are going to metastasize to the new units because if that person is in charge of training, he is going to promulgate the same lack of ethos regarding human rights.”

Charles Blaha, former director of the State Department’s Office of Security and Human Rights

Shevach has been running drills for Israeli forces at the military’s Urban Warfare Training Center, a mock city in Tze’elim military base in the Negev desert, preparing them to go into Gaza. In an October interview with US broadcaster CBS at the center, Shevach explained how he was readying soldiers to fight Hamas, adding that “the major concern for most of the soldiers” was that at a certain point they would get “an order that the war ends, and we didn’t finish our mission.”

CNN put its findings on Shevach’s career trajectory to Blaha, who said that it “strongly suggests that the types of tactics, the types of abuses, the type of violations that the Netzah Yehuda have committed are going to metastasize to the new units because if that person is in charge of training, he is going to promulgate the same lack of ethos regarding human rights.”

CNN found that two other commanders who oversaw Netzah Yehuda – also known as the 97th Battalion of the Kfir Infantry Brigade – at the time of alleged abuses in the occupied West Bank were also promoted.

Lt. Col. Nitai Okashi oversaw the Netzah Yehuda battalion from 2018 to 2020. In January 2019, soldiers from his unit were captured on video beating and taunting a Palestinian father and son after their arrest in the occupied West Bank. Four were later convicted of aggravated abuse. Okashi, according to Israeli media reports, asked the judge for mercy, saying the soldiers had learned their lesson. In another incident, in October 2019, 14 soldiers from his unit were arrested, according to the Israeli military, after they were caught on video assaulting Bedouin men at a gas station in the West Bank.

Using facial recognition technology, CNN found former Netzah Yehuda commanders have since risen through the ranks of the IDF.

CNN

Since leaving the battalion, Okashi has been promoted into a number of commanding roles in the IDF. He has operated in Gaza since the beginning of the war as the commander of the Jerusalem Brigade and taken reporters from international media, such as German magazine Der Spiegel and Britain’s Guardian newspaper on military embeds into the strip. The IDF announced a further promotion for Okashi in March. 

Lt. Col. Uri Levy was in charge of Netzah Yehuda from 2014 to 2016. During that time, a Netzah Yehuda soldier was indicted for abuse under aggravated circumstances by a military court in Israel, after he allegedly administered electric shocks to Palestinian suspects in two separate incidents in October 2015. After leaving the unit, Levy was promoted to work in the Kfir Brigade.

Levy retired from the military in 2023 and now regularly appears on Israeli talk shows as a pundit. In April, when news broke that the US could be poised to sanction Netzah Yehuda, he told Israeli Channel 7: “Anyone looking to find some kind of flaw in an IDF unit like this can find it, and I suggest looking at the glass half full … the operational successes, the achievements, the hard work night after night.”

CNN reached out to the IDF for comment on the alleged abuses carried out by Netzah Yehuda over the past decade. In response, the IDF said: “It should be noted that in relation to the events that took place in 2015 and 2019 … the involved had been indicted and the military court had imposed prison sentences in both cases, along with additional punishments.”

Men forced to strip naked

In late 2022, Netzah Yehuda, which had been stationed in the occupied West Bank since its inception, was reassigned to the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. The IDF said it was an extended operational deployment, but Blinken, in his letter to Speaker Johnson, wrote that it was an acknowledgement that the battalion had “engaged in conduct inconsistent with IDF rules.” Still, that track record has not stopped the IDF from deploying Netzah Yehuda soldiers to Gaza, where they have been fighting since the start of the war.

“Soldiers are going to do what their commander is expecting them to do and follow orders. And so, if these commanders don’t put their foot down and punish them for their behavior, then they are in fact condoning their behavior.”

Netzah Yehuda whistleblower

On April 16, under the leadership of then-commander Lt. Col. Shlomo Shiran, Netzah Yehuda was involved in an operation at the Mahdiyya Al-Shawwa school in Beit Hanoun, in northern Gaza, where thousands of displaced Palestinians were sheltering, according to eyewitnesses, local journalists and IDF statements. Eyewitnesses said that the soldiers surrounded the school, “fired excessively” on the complex and forced men to strip naked before detaining them. The IDF said intelligence indicated Hamas fighters were in the area.

A voice note allegedly recorded by Palestinians inside the school as the attack unfolded, obtained by CNN, captured panic as the civilians remained trapped inside and gunshots rang out. A video posted on social media showed a Palestinian man forced to strip naked in front of an IDF tank. The IDF did not respond to CNN’s request for comment on the incident.

In turning a blind eye and failing to take action against Netzah Yehuda and other units in the past, Paul said that the US has contributed to a continuing culture of impunity whose “effects we see in every outrageous TikTok video recorded and published by Israeli soldiers on the ground as they plunder, pillage, and mock their way across Gaza.”

In this picture taken from a video, fire rages following an Israeli strike on an area designated for displaced Palestinians in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, on May 26, 2024.

Reuters TV/Reuters

Related article US-made munitions used in deadly strike on Rafah tent camp, CNN analysis shows

That Netzah Yehuda has been allowed to fight in Gaza after having been pulled from the occupied West Bank in the wake of violent incidents is “ironic” and concerning, the whistleblower who served in the Netzah Yehuda told CNN. In the strip, he said: “They pretty much get a carte blanche, where they can do more or less whatever they want.”

In the rare interview, he told CNN that he has felt compelled to speak out about the mistreatment of Palestinians by the force after reflecting on his time as a soldier.

After he joined the unit at age 19, he recalled, he heard about soldiers being rewarded for killings. “If you kill a terrorist, you get two weeks off as a compensation … which is quite an attractive reward for someone that’s spending a lot of time in the military,” he said.

The IDF said in a statement to CNN that the claim soldiers are rewarded with early leave for killing terrorists was “false and baseless.”

“Soldiers are going to do what their commander is expecting them to do and follow orders. And so, if these commanders don’t put their foot down and punish them for their behavior, then they are in fact condoning their behavior,” the whistleblower said.

But, he added, “Most of the commanders couldn’t care less (about abuses), as long as it didn’t end up on video.”

Credits

Investigative Reporter: Katie Polglase

Investigative Producer & Writer: Pallabi Munsi

Investigative Producer: Benjamin Brown

Executive Producer: Barbara Arvanitidis

Senior Photojournalist: Alex Platt

Investigative Video Editor: Mark Baron

Senior Digital Video Producer: Augusta Anthony

Visual Editor: Alberto Mier

Photo Editor: Toby Hancock

OSINT Editor: Gianluca Mezzofiore

Features Editor: Laura Smith-Spark

Senior Investigations Editor: Eliza Mackintosh

Executive Editors: Dan Wright & Matt Wells

Ami Kaufman and Jennifer Hansler contributed to this report.

CNN · July 13, 2024

14. Completely unbelievable: US pilots say traumatized by intensity of Yemen retaliatory operations

I believe this is some propaganda from Iran. 

Note how they use the statements from pilots to support the narrative.

Completely unbelievable: US pilots say traumatized by intensity of Yemen retaliatory operations

presstv.ir · by Presstv

'Completely unbelievable': US pilots say 'traumatized' by intensity of Yemen retaliatory operations

Saturday, 13 July 2024 8:46 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 13 July 2024 8:46 AM ]

Strike Fighter Squadron 83 flies over families of pilots as they return to NAS Oceana in Virginia Beach, Va., on Friday, July 12, 2024. The pilots returned after a nearly nine-month deployment with the Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group. (Via AP)

US Navy fighter pilots have described as “traumatizing” their encounters with Yemen’s Armed Forces launching daring strikes on Israeli-owned and -bound shipping in the Red Sea in retaliation for the occupying regime’s months-long genocide against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.

The fighter pilots came home in Virginia on Friday after nine months of maritime clashes with the Yemeni military and their missile and drone strikes, in what CBS News referred to as “the most intense running sea battle the Navy has faced since World War II.”

The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier strike group, which includes three other warships supported by squadrons of F/A-18 Super Hornets, was tasked with protecting Israeli vessels and US-allied warships in a Red Sea corridor that leads to the Suez Canal and into the Mediterranean.

The carrier strike group left Virginia in mid-October last year but its deployment at the strategic waterway was extended twice following the escalation of Yemen’s pro-Palestine retaliatory attacks.

“Honestly, it was completely unbelievable,” Lt. Cmdr. Charity Somma told CBS News. “I don’t think anybody on board that carrier strike group was expecting that to happen.”

Commander Benjamin Orloff, a Navy pilot, told reporters in Virginia Beach that most of the sailors, including him, were not used to being fired on, given their previous military engagements in recent decades.

“It was incredibly different,” Orloff said. “And I’ll be honest, it was a little traumatizing for the group. It’s something that we don’t think about a lot until you’re presented with it.”

When asked by CBS News if what they faced could be described as the most intense naval combat since Word World War II, Orloff called the description “pretty apt.”

Underlining the severity of the Yemeni military’s confrontation with the US Navy forces, Orloff said, “This was not long-range projection. This was…right in our face.”

The CBS News also cited Caitlyn Jeronimus, whose husband is a Navy lieutenant commander and pilot, as saying that she initially thought it could be a “fun deployment,” and would be relatively easy but Eisenhower’s plans changed due to Yemen’s escalating strikes and “it was stressful.”

According to an AP report quoting American military commanders and experts last month, the US-led campaign to protect Israeli interests in the Red Sea has escalated into the “most intense” running sea battle the Navy has faced since World War II.

US Navy says faces 'most intense' combat since World War II against Yemenis

The US-led campaign to protect Israeli interests in the Red Sea has escalated into the most intense running sea battle the Navy has faced since World War II.

The report said the US Navy had been exhausted after confronting non-stop naval operations by Yemen’s Armed Forces, with commanders warning that the situation there is perilously dangerous for them.

Yemenis have declared their open support for Palestine’s struggle against the Israeli occupation since the regime launched a devastating war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, after the territory’s Palestinian resistance movements carried out a surprise retaliatory attack, dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, against the occupying entity.

Yemeni Armed Forces have said that they will not stop their attacks until Israeli ground and aerial offensives in Gaza, which have killed at least 38,345 people and wounded another 88,295 individuals, come to an end.

The leader of Yemen’s Ansarullah resistance movement, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, has said that it is “a great honor and blessing to be confronting America directly.”

The attacks have forced some of the world’s biggest shipping and oil companies to suspend transit through one of the world’s most important maritime trade routes.

Tankers are instead adding thousands of miles to international shipping routes by sailing around the continent of Africa rather than going through the Suez Canal.

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15. An argument against establishing a U.S. Cyber Force

Excerpts:

A more reasonable approach is to build up the existing Cybercom-centric model while allowing for controlled progress toward a more robust model like that of the Socom. The force generation model of Socom works because each of its service components deliver domain-peculiar forces and capabilities to the Joint Force. Maturing Cybercom’s employment of the Socom-like force generation model has the potential to address the recruiting, training, retention and readiness challenges.

It is essential that U.S. leaders give Cybercom a reasonable amount of time to implement, test and iterate on its newly enhanced budgetary control authority, doctrine development authority, and joint force provider and joint cyberspace trainer responsibilities. Leaders, and the broader community of interest, should also allow highly-qualified DOD experts with firsthand experience to complete and present maturation recommendations under the Cybercom 2.0 initiative and likewise consider how leaders in the services, DOD and Congress can enable more rapid progress toward Cybercom 2.0-recommended solutions to address DOD’s challenges in cyberspace.

DOD has made significant progress toward integrating cyberspace operations within broader department operations. Many challenges remain to optimizing DOD processes that enable successful cyberspace operations, but the arguments for establishing a new service do not justify this extremely expensive and radically disruptive course of action. Instead, U.S. leaders should stay the course, double down on the Cybercom-centric model for military cyberspace operations, and trust the expert recommendations of the experienced individuals they have appointed to lead military cyberspace operations on behalf of the nation. Any solution presented to address these challenges should include robust course of action evaluation criteria, including the degree to which they are likely to disrupt ongoing cyberspace operations and put the nation’s cybersecurity at risk. Future analysis should be focused on evaluating, implementing and refining Cybercom 2.0-recommended solutions.

An argument against establishing a U.S. Cyber Force

"Some academics, military leaders and politicians believe that establishing a U.S. Cyber Force will address challenges faced by the DOD cyberspace operations community. We disagree," Alan Brian Long Jr. and Maj. Alexander Pytlar write in this Op-Ed for DefenseScoop.

BY

ALAN BRIAN LONG JR.

AND

MAJ. ALEX PYTLAR

JULY 11, 2024

defensescoop.com · by Jon Harper · July 11, 2024

Over the past twenty plus years, the Department of Defense has made significant progress normalizing cyberspace operations. After United States Cyber Command was established in 2010, DOD continued to conduct most facets of DOD cyberspace operations through the command. This Cybercom-centric approach, built on centralized authorities and control, has resulted in many significant operational outcomes for the nation. Despite that progress, DOD struggles with recruiting, training, retaining, and tracking operational readiness of its cyberspace forces.

Through several National Defense Authorization Acts, Congress mandated studies focused on these challenges. The Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Principal Cyber Advisor, Cybercom, and the rest of the DOD cyberspace operations community are currently supporting DOD’s response to each study. Cybercom 2.0 is the capstone response which will include the command’s recommendations to the secretary of defense and Congress. Recent academic examination and inquiry into these challenges has produced a variety of solutions — not all informed by realism or logic. Some academics, military leaders and politicians believe that establishing a U.S. Cyber Force will address challenges faced by the DOD cyberspace operations community. We disagree.

Proponents of USCF establishment often cite excision of the U.S. Army Air Corps from the Army to form the U.S. Air Force as precedent for their argument. Equating the creation of the USAF to the proposals for a USCF is built on flawed logic and a fundamental misunderstanding of DOD cyberspace operations missions.

Proponents leverage the aforementioned force generation and readiness challenges then employ a logic that there are no unique aspects of cyberspace, or cyberspace functions, specific to the services to justify the establishment of a USCF. The argument continues that this homogenous domain requires a standalone advocate because the services do not have unique equities and therefore cannot advocate properly for the maturity of DOD cyberspace operations overall. But cyberspace is not the same across the services, and the excision argument built on this is therefore similarly challenged.

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For example, DOD cyberspace enclaves are not separable components that can be removed and used to create a USCF. These enclaves, and their interconnected functions, permeate all facets of DOD operations and support activities. Furthermore, the cyberspace expertise resident within each service is tailored to the unique mission and domain-specific requirements for the cyberspace elements supporting the warfighting platforms in the physical domains (land, air, maritime and space.)

A USCF would, by necessity, be forced to integrate itself within each of the other services, since cyberspace systems, and the forces that secure, operate and defend them cannot be extracted from the existing services. Such an integration has already been most efficiently accomplished by establishing cyberspace forces within each of the services. Giving these cyberspace forces a new uniform and a new chain-of-command will not improve the operational integration of cyberspace with the other domains.

Following the logic applied by most proponents, establishing a separate USCF would be equivalent to establishing a separate service that flies all military aircraft or a separate service to drive and maintain all military trucks. Of course, that is not a reasonable approach, but neither is establishing a service whose forces would need to be similarly integrated at the tactical level with the forces of other services.

Practically, the Marine Corps’ experience in Guadalcanal and the resultant establishment of the Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF) are illustrative comparisons. During the Marine campaign in August 1942, Naval air and amphibious support forces “left the 1st Marine Division alone” and “exposed to Japanese attacks,” rendering them “virtually a besieged garrison.” In December 1963, the Marine Corps published Marine Corps Order 3120.3 which formalized the MAGTF as an organization to ensure the Marine Corps deployed projection forces with the ability to move ashore with sufficient sustainability for prolonged operations, including organic air, ground and support assets. Today cyberspace operations are also integrated into the standard MAGTF structure. There are similar examples that demonstrate how quintessential elements of force projection are retained within each service, and cyberspace forces should be no different. Cyberspace operations are inherently connected to the modern battlefield, so cyberspace forces must be integrated down to the tactical level — an effect which is best achieved by the current model.

A recent article claimed that a USCF should be established because only a USCF could adequately develop and maintain doctrine for cyberspace operations. The article claims that the Army is primarily responsible for developing cyberspace operations doctrine today. These claims are false. Congress gave the Cybercom commander authority to develop doctrine for DOD cyberspace operations in section 167b of Title 10 U.S. Code, and Cybercom has diligently worked to do so.

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The article claims that there is only one joint doctrine publication for cyberspace operations. This claim is also false. There are two joint publications for cyberspace operations (Joint Publication 3-12 Joint Cyberspace Operations, and Joint Publication 6-0 Joint Communications).

Furthermore, Cybercom develops and maintains many command-level doctrine publications in a Cyber Warfighting Library, and some of the services have developed service-specific doctrine for cyberspace operations (e.g. Army Field Manual 3-12 Cyberspace Operations and Electromagnetic Warfare and Air Force Doctrine Publication 3-12, Cyberspace Operations, and Navy Warfare Publication 3-12 Cyberspace Operations). Doctrine development for DOD cyberspace operations is not a challenge equivalent to recruiting, training, retaining, and tracking readiness of cyberspace forces.

Proponents of USCF establishment often present creation of a new service as the only reasonable approach to address training and readiness issues faced by Cybercom and the services. This assertion is false. Congress recently expanded Cybercom service-like authorities to include enhanced budgetary control, and the president designated the command as joint force provider and joint cyberspace trainer for cyberspace forces. Despite becoming a unified combatant command in 2018, it is only now in 2024 that there is a complete alignment between acquisition, the scope of training and provisioning, and budgetary responsibility and authorities. Therefore, it is only in fiscal 2024 that the commander responsible for readiness of cyberspace forces now has the authority over the acquisitions and resources to drive that readiness. These authorities have not yet been fully implemented and evaluated, but external commentators are already calling for a solution that is completely divergent from the Cybercom-centric approach U.S. leadership has advocated for consistently over the past 15-plus years.

Both the former Cybercom commander, retired Gen. Paul Nakasone, and the current Cybercom commander, Gen. Timothy Haugh, answered congressional inquiry about establishing a new service with discussion on how effective the existing U.S. Special Operations Command (Socom)-like model is. Nakasone also publicly declared his opposition to the creation of a new service for cyberspace operations. A recent article highlights Mieke Eoyang, deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, advising caution toward the idea of creating a USCF. The article quotes her as warning “be careful what you wish for” in reference to the aforementioned excision fallacy.

Recent articles claim that existing services place a low priority on, and perform poorly at, recruiting and retaining cyberspace forces. Creating a new service is not the only way of addressing this problem and it should not be presented as such. Congress, DOD and Cybercom need to hold the services accountable for providing the trained and ready cyberspace forces they’ve been tasked to deliver. What existing programs can be used to improve performance? How might the Congress, DOD and Cybercom help the services improve recruiting and retention? Ultimately, what is evident to us is that some current scholarship proposes a course of action without adequately considering alternatives to the one they prefer. Without providing complete evaluation criteria to compare proposals against, the community of interest is left wanting.

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However, aside from the obvious associated cost, the most critical evaluation criteria must be disruption. Cybercom is responsible for ensuring the security, operations and defense of all DOD-controlled cyberspace, defending the nation from advanced cyber threats, and providing cyberspace operations support to other combatant commands. These are critical all-day-every-day missions. Among the wide range of possible solutions, which options are least disruptive to these ongoing missions? What options are most likely to result in steady improvement while minimizing the disruption of these missions? It is reasonable to assume that creation of a USCF would be the most disruptive option. It is highly likely that all the personnel that are actively working to implement new service-like authorities and address these challenges today would have to cease their progress to “Go figure out how to establish a cyber service.” This disruptive proposal presents unacceptable risk to the nation.

A more reasonable approach is to build up the existing Cybercom-centric model while allowing for controlled progress toward a more robust model like that of the Socom. The force generation model of Socom works because each of its service components deliver domain-peculiar forces and capabilities to the Joint Force. Maturing Cybercom’s employment of the Socom-like force generation model has the potential to address the recruiting, training, retention and readiness challenges.

It is essential that U.S. leaders give Cybercom a reasonable amount of time to implement, test and iterate on its newly enhanced budgetary control authority, doctrine development authority, and joint force provider and joint cyberspace trainer responsibilities. Leaders, and the broader community of interest, should also allow highly-qualified DOD experts with firsthand experience to complete and present maturation recommendations under the Cybercom 2.0 initiative and likewise consider how leaders in the services, DOD and Congress can enable more rapid progress toward Cybercom 2.0-recommended solutions to address DOD’s challenges in cyberspace.

DOD has made significant progress toward integrating cyberspace operations within broader department operations. Many challenges remain to optimizing DOD processes that enable successful cyberspace operations, but the arguments for establishing a new service do not justify this extremely expensive and radically disruptive course of action. Instead, U.S. leaders should stay the course, double down on the Cybercom-centric model for military cyberspace operations, and trust the expert recommendations of the experienced individuals they have appointed to lead military cyberspace operations on behalf of the nation. Any solution presented to address these challenges should include robust course of action evaluation criteria, including the degree to which they are likely to disrupt ongoing cyberspace operations and put the nation’s cybersecurity at risk. Future analysis should be focused on evaluating, implementing and refining Cybercom 2.0-recommended solutions.

Authors’ note: The views expressed in this work are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Cyber Command, the Department of Defense, or any other U.S. government entity.

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Alan Brian Long Jr. is a Senior Policy and Doctrine Analyst at U.S. Cyber Command, where he serves as one of the foremost experts on DOD cyber policy and doctrine. He has 11 years of experience at Cybercom, and prior to arriving at the command, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps signals intelligence community. Brian is credited with authoring several notable cyber policy and doctrine documents within the DOD cyberspace operations community. He has deep institutional knowledge about the maturation of Cybercom and the broader DOD cyberspace operations community derived from over a decade of firsthand experience as a practitioner and action officer.

Maj. Alexander Pytlar is an Army Strategist (Functional Area 59) at U.S. Cyber Command, where he serves as the Deputy Branch Chief for the Strategy Branch within the Cybercom J55 Strategy, Policy, and Doctrine Division. His most recent assignment was as an assistant professor of geography at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Prior assignments include reconnaissance platoon leader and tank company commander, with deployments supporting Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Spartan Shield, respectively.

Written by Alan Brian Long Jr. and Maj. Alex Pytlar

In This Story

• Cyber Command
• cyber force
• Cybercom 2.0

defensescoop.com · by Jon Harper · July 11, 2024

​16. General Officer Announcements

At least one of these officers served his entire tour in a 2 star position and has since moved to his second one and is now finally being promoted. I wonder if this list was long delayed.

I think MG Ahern will be one of the highest ranking strategists in the Army, if not the senior strategist as a Major General.

RELEASE

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

General Officer Announcements

https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3837130/general-officer-announcements/

July 12, 2024 |   

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III announced today that the president has made the following nominations:

Army Brig. Gen. Stephanie R. Ahern for appointment to the grade of major general. Ahern is currently serving as director, Strategy, Plans and Policy, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-3/5/7, U.S. Army, Washington, D.C.

Army Brig. Gen. Guillaume N. Beaurpere for appointment to the grade of major general. Beaurpere is currently serving as chief of staff, U.S. Special Operations Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida.

Army Brig. Gen. Frederick L. Crist for appointment to the grade of major general. Crist is currently serving as deputy director, C-4, Combined Forces Command; director of logistics, U-4, United Nations Command; and director, J-4, U.S. Forces Korea, Republic of Korea.

Army Brig. Gen. Sean P. Davis for appointment to the grade of major general. Davis is currently serving as deputy chief of staff, G-4, U.S. Army Forces Command, Fort Liberty, North Carolina.

Army Brig. Gen. Patrick J. Ellis for appointment to the grade of major general. Ellis is currently serving as director, Network Cross Functional Team, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland.

Army Brig. Gen. Jasper Jeffers III for appointment to the grade of major general. Jeffers is currently serving as commander, Special Operations Command Central, U.S. Special Operations Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida.

Army Brig. Gen. Niave F. Knell for appointment to the grade of major general. Knell is currently serving as deputy commanding general (support), 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kansas.

Army Brig. Gen. Michael B. Lalor for appointment to the grade of major general. Lalor is currently serving as commanding general, U.S. Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command, Warren, Michigan.

Army Brig. Gen. Francisco J. Lozano for appointment to the grade of major general. Lozano is currently serving as program executive officer, Missiles and Space, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama.

Army Brig. Gen. Constantin E. Nicolet for appointment to the grade of major general. Nicolet is currently serving as director, J-2, U.S. Central Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida.

Army Brig. Gen. Kimberly A. Peeples for appointment to the grade of major general. Peeples is currently serving as commanding general, Mississippi Valley Division, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Army Brig. Gen. Philip J. Ryan for appointment to the grade of major general. Ryan is currently serving as commanding general, U.S. Army South, Joint Base San Antonio, Texas.

Army Brig. Gen. Christopher D. Schneider for appointment to the grade of major general. Schneider is currently serving as program executive officer, Program Executive Office Soldier, Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

Army Brig. Gen. Michael J. Simmering for appointment to the grade of major general. Simmering is currently serving as commandant, U.S. Army Armor School, U.S. Army Maneuver Center of Excellence, Fort Moore, Georgia.

Army Brig. Gen. Jason C. Slider for appointment to the grade of major general. Slider is currently serving as commanding general, U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, Fort Liberty, North Carolina.

Army Brig. Gen. James D. Turinetti IV for appointment to the grade of major general. Turinetti is currently serving as commanding general, U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command and Aberdeen Proving Ground, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland.

Army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. VanAntwerp for appointment to the grade of major general. VanAntwerp is currently serving as deputy chief of staff, G-3/5/7, U.S. Army Pacific, Fort Shafter, Hawaii.

17. U.S. military to award $3 billion contract for AI-driven intelligence

Note that SOCPAC is the lead.

Excerpt:

The program is coordinated by the Special Operations Command Pacific that supports U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM).

U.S. military to award $3 billion contract for AI-driven intelligence

The U.S. Indo-Pacific command plans to procure a wide spectrum of commercial data and AI-fueled analytics

spacenews.com · by Sandra Erwin · July 12, 2024

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military is poised to award an estimated $3 billion multi-year contract for commercial data and analytics services to monitor potential threats across the Indo-Pacific region, a focal point of global geopolitics and a priority theater for the Department of Defense.

The program, known as Long-Range Enterprise Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Activity (LEIA), seeks to procure a wide spectrum of commercial data and advanced AI-driven analytics, integrating information from ground, aerial, and space-based platforms.

The LEIA contract is expected to be awarded later this year. It is a full and open competition and several firms are expected to compete for the award..

The program is coordinated by the Special Operations Command Pacific that supports U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM).

The size of the contract reflects the U.S. military’s growing demand for commercial sources of data such as imaging satellites and AI-driven analytics to track and respond to potential threats. U.S. INDOPACOM in the LEIA solicitation emphasized commanders’ needs for timely ISR and space-based capabilities to maintain situational awareness in the region.

The military’s appetite for AI-powered data analytics stems from the challenge of information overload, as government agencies have increasing access to data but not necessarily insights. The U.S. Space Force in response to these needs started a pilot program called Tactical Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Tracking (TacSRT) designed to leverage commercial space capabilities for providing rapid intelligence and analytics to military commanders. The program uses a web-based interface called the Global Data Marketplace to advertise and award short-term surveillance, reconnaissance, and tracking contracts with commercial vendors.

The TacSRT program has already supported various U.S. combatant command operations responding to earthquakes in Morocco and Japan, floods in Libya and wildfires in South America.

Related

spacenews.com · by Sandra Erwin · July 12, 2024

18.What AT&T Customers Need to Know About the Massive Hack, Data BreachWhat AT&T Customers Need to Know About the Massive Hack, Data Breach

What AT&T Customers Need to Know About the Massive Hack, Data Breach

Cellphone carrier said nearly all of its customers were affected

https://www.wsj.com/business/telecom/at-t-says-hacker-stole-data-on-nearly-all-its-wireless-customers-32d6969d?mod=latest_headlines

By Alyssa Lukpat

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Updated July 12, 2024 9:30 pm ET

AT&T said the stolen data was mostly from 2022 and encompassed nearly all its wireless customers. PHOTO: JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES

AT&T’s T -0.27%decrease; red down pointing triangle disclosure Friday that a hacker downloaded call and text-message data from its subscribers raised questions about how its millions of customers would be affected.

The cellphone carrier said in a securities filing Friday that it became aware in April of someone claiming to have accessed customer data. AT&T said the stolen data was mostly from 2022 and encompassed nearly all of its wireless customers. The company has nearly 90 million cellphone subscribers.

While the hacked records didn’t include names, it did have phone numbers that could be linked to owners using public databases. Some customers have raised concerns the information could be used to expose business deals, secret meetings or romantic affairs.

Here is what AT&T customers should know about the hack:

What did the hacker steal?

The hacker stole AT&T records accessed through an outside company’s cloud platform. The data didn’t include the content of calls or texts, nor did it have personal information like birth dates and Social Security numbers.

The stolen data showed the telephone numbers a customer contacted between approximately May and October 2022 and on Jan. 2, 2023, according to AT&T. The records also showed how many times those numbers were contacted and the total duration of calls over time. A subset of the data included details about cellular sites that could be used to determine users’ locations.

AT&T said it doesn’t believe the data was leaked to the public.

Who is involved in the hack?

Authorities linked the AT&T breach to John Binns, an American hacker who claimed responsibility for a massive heist of T-Mobile user data in 2021, according to a person familiar with the matter. Binns moved to Turkey several years ago. Neither he nor his attorney could immediately be reached for comment.

The linking of the AT&T attack to Binns was earlier reported by 404 Media.

AT&T said at least one person connected to the hack was apprehended and it was working with law enforcement to arrest those involved.

When did AT&T know of the breach?

AT&T said it learned on April 19 of this year that someone was claiming to have accessed customer data. The cellphone carrier said it investigated the claim and believes the stolen data was accessed between April 14 and 25.

A Justice Department spokesman said the company reported the incident shortly after learning about it. Authorities held off on disclosing the hack to help bolster their investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said.

How do I know if I’ve been affected?

AT&T said the hack covered nearly all of its wireless customers. A customer was likely affected if he or she was a subscriber between May and October 2022, the dates on the stolen records. The records also include information about landline customers.

The database would have also included some customers of mobile brands that use AT&T’s network, including Cricket Wireless, Consumer Cellular and Tracfone.

The cellphone carrier said it would notify affected customers by text, email or mail.

What should I do if I’m an AT&T customer?

AT&T subscribers affected by the hack, including former customers, can request until December that the company send them the phone numbers illegally downloaded from their records. For more information, check AT&T’s website.

Where was the breached data stored?

AT&T stored the data with the data-warehousing service Snowflake SNOW -1.76%decrease; red down pointing triangle. Customers entrusting data with their cellphone carrier are also required to trust the security of every cloud company it uses. The layers of third-party software providers that businesses use can make data breaches more likely.

A Snowflake spokeswoman referred to a past statement by the company’s security chief, who said the company hadn’t found evidence that a recent uptick in threats to customer accounts was caused by any vulnerability, misconfiguration, or breach of Snowflake’s platform. The company said it was improving its clients’ ability to add safeguards like multifactor authentication to their accounts by default.

Other major Snowflake customers, including Santander bank and Ticketmaster, have disclosed data breaches in recent weeks.

Drew FitzGerald and Sadie Gurman contributed to this article.

Write to Alyssa Lukpat at alyssa.lukpat@wsj.com

19. U.S. Navy's 'Triple Submarine Surfacing' Sent Shivers Down China's Military Spine

Well, "shiver me timbers."

2010?  

U.S. Navy's 'Triple Submarine Surfacing' Sent Shivers Down China's Military Spine

The National Interest · by Brandon J. Weichert · July 12, 2024

Summary and Key Points: In 2010, the United States showcased its strategic power when three Ohio-class submarines surfaced in the Pacific, signaling a potent warning to China. These nuclear-powered subs, capable of launching 24 Trident II ballistic missiles each, represent one of the U.S. Navy's most formidable assets.

-This unprecedented move came amidst heightened tensions and geopolitical provocations from China, particularly in the South and East China Seas.

-The deployment was a clear message from the Obama administration, emphasizing America's military prowess and deterring further Chinese aggression.

-Despite advancements in China's anti-submarine warfare capabilities, the Ohio-class submarines continue to serve as a critical element of U.S. nuclear deterrence.

Inside America's Strategic Submarine Fleet: The Power of the Ohio-Class

America’s Ohio-class submarine is a nuclear-powered sub that can fire scores of ballistic missiles. It is the third-largest submarine class in the world. These silent killers carry 24 Trident II missiles into battle. They are one of the U.S. Navy’s most secret power projection platforms.

But America’s enemies understand the kind of firepower these boats can deliver on a target at a moment’s notice. That’s why China’s leadership had a collective stroke when three Ohio-class submarines surfaced in the Pacific.

In essence, three undersea weapons platforms capable of firing a combined 72 ballistic missiles at any target in the Indo-Pacific suddenly appeared on Beijing’s sonar. It was a very big “Uh-oh” moment in the minds of many Chinese leaders. In fact, China’s leadership vowed to not allow such an action to recur.

But in 2010, China lacked any credible defense against America’s Ohio-class submarine missile threat. All they could do was take notice of the clear signal that Washington’s leadership was sending to Beijing: Don’t mess with us today, pal.

What was occurring at this time to prompt the Navy to send three of its valuable ballistic missile subs into the range of enemy weapons?

The Political Context of the Moment

The moment that Barack Obama was elected in 2008, China (and the world) understood that this was not a normal American presidential election and transition. The country was in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. America was humiliated in Iraq and was losing in Afghanistan.

All the things that America—indeed, the world—had taken for granted in terms of what America stood for and what its capabilities had been thrown out the window.

Not only was America experiencing a transition from one president to another, but the 2008 election saw the transition of power from one political party, the Republicans, to another, the Democratic Party. What’s more, Barack Obama was America’s first African-American leader. And the forty-fourth president was young.

So the Chinese government had spent the lead-up to Obama’s inauguration in January of 2009, as well as his first year in office, challenging the new American president. The greatest challenge China posed to the United States came in the form of manmade Chinese islands that were illegally built in the South China Sea, as well as provocations against Japan in the East China Sea over control of the Senkaku Islands.

These provocations went unanswered. Obama was advised by his China hand, Kurt Campbell, to ignore the provocations from Beijing in an effort to stay focused on building a better relationship with Beijing. Paradoxically, though, the more Obama ignored China’s threats, the more belligerent they became, and the less inclined to work with America.

There were things that Obama wanted and needed from China at the diplomatic level. Not only in terms of trade and economic deals, but regarding newer issues, such as cybersecurity agreements. Unable to make any headway on these crucial matters, the Obama administration announced its “Pivot to Asia.”

America signed basing agreements with an assortment of nations in the region, notably with Australia, and tried to focus its forces away from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific. In this geopolitical context, the surfacing of the three Ohio-class submarines is best understood.

Obama was telling China to behave.

It worked, to a point. China calmed down. They started dealing with Obama. Of course, the substance of those agreements was lacking in the end. Nevertheless, Obama started getting what he wanted from China at the diplomatic and political levels. With tensions cooled down by Obama’s third year, America moved on.

Sadly, Washington was distracted yet again by the terrible events in the Middle East during those years. As a final distraction, Russia invaded Eastern Ukraine and annexed Crimea.

Lost Momentum: Overcome By Events

Out went the much-ballyhooed Asia Pivot. By the end of the Obama years, the U.S. was less focused on the Indo-Pacific than it had been at its start. Meanwhile, China, having learned a lesson from three Ohio-class submarines surfacing within firing range of their shores, implemented an entirely new shipbuilding program to outmatch the Americans. Beijing also invested in cutting-edge detection and anti-submarine warfare capabilities.

While we can all hope that the Biden administration has the gumption to overmatch whatever countermeasures China has built over the last decade, the fact remains that Washington might not be able to rely on the kind of deterrence it exercised in years past. Still, the sudden surfacing of three U.S. ballistic missile subs in one’s own proverbial backyard ought to give any power, regardless of countermeasures, significant pause.

It did in 2010.

Author Experience and Expertise: Brandon J. Weichert

Brandon J. Weichert, a National Interest national security analyst, is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, the Asia Times, and The-Pipeline. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His next book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine, is due October 22 from Encounter Books. Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

All images are Creative Commons or Shutterstock.

From the Vault

Russia Freaked Out: Why the U.S. Navy 'Unretired' the Iowa-Class Battleships

Battleship vs. Battlecruiser: Iowa-Class vs. Russia's Kirov-Class (Who Wins?)

The National Interest · by Brandon J. Weichert · July 12, 2024

20. How Hamas Is Fighting in Gaza: Tunnels, Traps and Ambushes

A lot to study and learn from.

How Hamas Is Fighting in Gaza: Tunnels, Traps and Ambushes

Hamas overwhelmed Israel’s border in October with a coordinated, large-scale maneuver before committing atrocities. Now, it acts as a guerrilla force, its fighters often disguised as civilians.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/13/world/middleeast/how-hamas-is-fighting-in-gaza.html

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Israeli soldiers, photographed during a tour organized by the Israeli military, standing near the entrance to what the military said was a Hamas tunnel, near the Erez border crossing in Gaza, in December.Credit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

By Patrick Kingsley, Natan Odenheimer, Aaron Boxerman, Adam Sella and Iyad Abuheweila

The reporters interviewed Hamas fighters, Israeli soldiers and military analysts and assessed dozens of videos published by Hamas’s military wing.

July 13, 2024

Updated 1:01 p.m. ET

Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

They hide under residential neighborhoods, storing their weapons in miles of tunnels and in houses, mosques, sofas — even a child’s bedroom — blurring the boundary between civilians and combatants.

They emerge from hiding in plainclothes, sometimes wearing sandals or tracksuits before firing on Israeli troops, attaching mines to their vehicles, or firing rockets from launchers in civilian areas.

They rig abandoned homes with explosives and tripwires, sometimes luring Israeli soldiers to enter the booby-trapped buildings by scattering signs of a Hamas presence.

Through eight months of fighting in Gaza, Hamas’s military wing — the Qassam Brigades — has fought as a decentralized and largely hidden force, in contrast to its Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which began with a coordinated large-scale maneuver in which thousands of uniformed commandos surged through border towns and killed roughly 1,200 people.

Instead of confronting the Israeli invasion that followed in frontal battles, most Hamas fighters have retreated from their bases and outposts, seeking to blunt Israel’s technological and numerical advantage by launching surprise attacks on small groups of soldiers.

From below ground, Hamas’s ghost army has appeared only fleetingly, emerging suddenly from a warren of tunnels — often armed with rocket-propelled grenades — to pick off soldiers and then returning swiftly to their subterranean fortress. Sometimes, they have hid among the few civilians who decided to remain in their neighborhoods despite Israeli orders to evacuate, or accompanied civilians as they returned to areas that the Israelis had captured and then abandoned.

Hamas’s decision to keep fighting has proved disastrous for the Palestinians of Gaza. With Hamas refusing to surrender, Israel has forged ahead with a military campaign that has killed nearly 2 percent of Gaza’s prewar population, according to Gazan authorities; displaced roughly 80 percent of its residents, according to the United Nations; and damaged a majority of Gaza’s buildings, according to the U.N.

By contrast, fewer than 350 Israeli soldiers have died in Gaza since the start of the invasion, according to military statistics — far fewer than Israeli officials had predicted in October.

Yet despite the carnage in Gaza, Hamas’s strategy has helped the group fulfill some of its own goals.

The war has tarnished Israel’s reputation in much of the world, prompting charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice, in The Hague. It has exacerbated long-running rifts in Israeli society, prompting disagreements among Israelis about whether and how Israel should defeat Hamas. And it has restored the question of Palestinian statehood to global discourse, leading several countries to recognize Palestine as a state.

Just as important for Hamas, its war doctrine has allowed it to survive.

Hamas’s leader in the territory, Yahya Sinwar, and most of his top military commanders are still alive. Israel says it has killed more than 14,000 of Hamas’s 25,000 fighters — an unverifiable and disputed number that, if true, suggests thousands remain active.

Image

Members of the Qassam Brigades in central Gaza in July 2023 during a military parade marking the anniversary of the 2014 war with Israel.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

An analysis of battlefield videos released by Hamas and interviews with three Hamas members and scores of Israeli soldiers, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, suggests that Hamas’s strategy relies on:

• Using hundreds of miles of tunnels, the scale of which surprised Israeli commanders, to move around Gaza without being seen by Israeli soldiers;
• Using civilian homes and infrastructure — including medical facilities, U.N. offices and mosques — to conceal fighters, tunnel entrances, booby-traps and ammunition stores;
• Ambushing Israeli soldiers with small groups of fighters dressed as civilians, as well as using civilians, including children, to act as lookouts;
• Leaving secret signs outside homes, like a red sheet hanging from a window or graffiti, to signal to fellow fighters the nearby presence of mines, tunnel entrances or weapons caches inside;
• Dragging out the war for as long as possible, even at the expense of more civilian death and destruction, in order to bog Israel down in an attritional battle that has amplified international criticism of Israel.

“The aim is to vanish, avoid direct confrontation, while launching tactical attacks against the occupation army. The emphasis is on patience,” said Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, a Hamas member and former fighter in its military wing who is now an analyst based in Istanbul. Before Oct. 7, the Qassam Brigades operated as “an army with training bases and stockpiles,” Mr. al-Awawdeh said. “But during this war, they are behaving as guerrillas.”

At the start of the war, Hamas and its allies fired a barrage of rockets toward civilian areas of Israel, including roughly 3,000 on Oct. 7 itself, often using launchers hidden in densely populated civilian neighborhoods in Gaza. The Israeli Army captured and destroyed scores of launchers, including some it said it found near a mosque and a kindergarten, bringing the rocket fire to a near halt.

After Israeli ground troops invaded in late October, Hamas wen further in transforming civilian areas of Gaza into military zones, setting traps in scores of neighborhoods and creating confusion about what a combatant looks like by dressing its fighters as civilians.

Israeli officials say that Hamas’s tactics explain why Israel has been forced to strike so much civilian infrastructure, kill so many Palestinians and detain so many civilians.

Mousa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official based in Qatar, dismissed criticism of Hamas’s use of civilian attire and storage of weapons inside civilian homes, saying that it deflected attention away from Israeli wrongdoing.

“If there’s someone who takes a weapon from under a bed, is that a justification for killing 100,000 people?” Mr. Abu Marzouk said. “If someone takes a weapon from under a bed, is that a justification to kill an entire school and destroy a hospital?”

Image

Emergency workers carrying a person from the rubble of the Sousi Mosque in Shati, west of Gaza City, on Oct. 9.Credit...Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

Other Hamas members acknowledge and defend the movement’s use of civilian clothes and civilian homes, saying the group had no alternative.

“Every insurgency in every war, from Vietnam to Afghanistan, saw people fighting from their homes,” said Mr. al-Awawdeh. “If I live in Zeitoun, for example, and the army comes — I will fight them there, from my home, or my neighbor’s, or from the mosque. I will fight them anywhere I am.”

Hamas militants wear civilian clothes in a legitimate attempt to avoid detection, Mr. al-Awawdeh said. “That’s natural for a resistance movement,” he added, “and there’s nothing unusual about it.”

How Hamas Reacted to the Invasion

Hamas’s response to Israel’s ground invasion on Oct. 27 became a model for its strategy since.

When Israeli tanks and infantry battalions surged into Gaza that Friday, they were met with little to no resistance for the first couple of miles, according to four soldiers who were among the first to cross the border.

Lior Soharin, an Israeli reserve sergeant major, helped overrun a Hamas outpost a few dozen yards from the border. There was no one inside, he recalled.

“We learned in retrospect that they were there — just underneath the ground,” Mr. Soharin said.

Having retreated into their labyrinth of tunnels, Hamas fighters had ceded thousands of acres of farmland to Israeli forces.

That was partly because the Israeli forces advanced along routes that Hamas had not lined with explosives and traps, according to a Hamas junior officer from northern Gaza who left the territory before Oct. 7 and remains in close touch with his subordinates. But it was also because the Qassam Brigades’ strategy was to ambush Israeli soldiers once they had advanced deep into the territory, instead of counterattacking immediately, according to the fighter.

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An Israeli tank near the border with Gaza in January.Credit...Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Dozens of Hamas propaganda videos, posted by the group on its social media channels, show small groups of Gazan fighters — often clad in jeans, sweatpants, sandals and sneakers — emerging from tunnels to take potshots at nearby Israeli tanks and personnel carriers; rushing on foot toward tanks and attaching mines near the turrets; firing rocket-propelled grenades from residential buildings; and shooting at soldiers with sniper rifles.

Hamas had been preparing for this moment since at least 2021, when the group began scaling up production of explosives and anti-tank missiles, in preparation for a ground war, and stopped making so many long-range rockets, the Hamas officer said.

It also expanded a vast network of tunnels, creating entry points in houses across Gaza that would allow fighters to enter and exit without being seen from the air but made targets of civilian neighborhoods. The network was fitted with a landline telephone network that is difficult for Israel to monitor and that allows fighters to communicate even during outages to Gaza’s mobile phone networks, which are controlled by Israel, according to the Hamas officer, Mr. al-Awawdeh and Israeli officials.

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By the start of the war, Hamas had enough explosives in its underground arsenals for an extended campaign — as well as enough canned vegetables, dates and drinking water to last for at least 10 months, the officer said.

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A tunnel believed to have been used by Hamas militants at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in November.Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times

The tunnel network grew so extensive that it ran underneath a major U.N. compound and the largest hospital in Gaza, as well as major roads, countless homes and government buildings. Nine months later, senior Israeli officials say that they have destroyed only a small fraction of the network, and that its existence has stymied Israel’s ability to destroy Hamas.

Hamas’s commandos had also been trained to remain alert and focused during shortages of food and water, the officer said. Before the war, fighters were sometimes ordered to spend days eating only a handful of dates and to sit for several hours without moving, even as instructors splashed water on their faces to distract them, the officer said.

As vast swaths of Gaza began to empty out in October, Hamas fighters began booby-trapping hundreds of houses that they expected the Israeli troops would seek to enter, the officer said. The mines were linked to tripwires, movement sensors and sound detectors that detonate the explosives once triggered, the officer said.

The terrain prepared, the fighters then descended into the tunnels — and waited for the Israelis to arrive.

How Hamas Sets a Trap

In the best-planned ambushes, Hamas squads have lulled Israeli forces into a false sense of security by allowing them to move freely for hours or even days in areas marked for attack.

Hamas fighters and Israeli soldiers say that Hamas tracks the Israelis’ locations using hidden cameras, drones and intelligence provided by civilian lookouts. Five Israeli soldiers said those lookouts include children, who stand on roofs and relay information to commanders below.

Hamas’s ambush squads typically stay hidden until an Israeli convoy has moved through an area for several minutes, or Israeli forces have grouped in a particular place for hours, creating the impression that Hamas has left the area, six Israeli soldiers and the Hamas officer said. After a period of calm, a squad emerges from a tunnel, often as a group of four.

Two fighters are tasked with fixing explosives to the sides of a vehicle or firing anti-tank missiles at it, according to the Hamas officer. A third carries a camera to film propaganda footage. A fourth typically stays at the tunnel entrance, preparing a booby-trap that can be activated as soon as the others return, to kill any Israelis who try to follow them underground.

A well-planned ambush aims to take out not only the initial Israeli force, but also the backup fighters and medics who come to rescue the injured, according to soldiers who experienced such ambushes and the Hamas officer.

One Israeli special forces member recalled how a group of Hamas fighters appeared to have positioned itself specifically so that Israeli backup forces would have to fire across stricken comrades in order to hit the ambushers.

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A drone that members of the Israeli military claimed to have found on the grounds of Al-Shifa Hospital in November in Gaza.Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times

Another described Hamas fighters waiting after members of an Israeli unit had been wounded by an exploding mine and then emerging to fire on the rescuing force. In a June 11 attack in Rafah, both Hamas and the Israeli military said that Qassam fighters fired mortars at an Israeli relief force that came to rescue soldiers who had been attacked earlier in the day.

Hamas showed off most of these approaches in an extensive eight-minute video released on its social media channels in early April.

The video appears to show fighters carrying out a multistage ambush that is said to take place in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.

The video seems to show Hamas fighters, their faces blurred, sitting on patterned mats as they plan the attack. They use pen, paper and a digital tablet to draw simplistic maps detailing where they want to plant a set of roadside mines.

“We ask, O Lord, for the ambush to achieve its goals — let us kill your enemies, the Jews,” the narrator says.

Next, Hamas men — wearing civilian clothes — are seen laying those explosives in the rubble of a ruined neighborhood. Then, the video cuts to what appears to be the planned ambush: Filmed by hidden cameras, a group of Israeli soldiers pick their way through the rubble before being hit by gunfire. That attack seems to lure an Israeli relief squad to the scene, and the arrival of those rescuers appears to trigger the mines.

“This is a miniature sample of what their defeated army is suffering in the mire of Gaza,” the narrator concludes.

How Hamas Uses Homes

In addition to setting traps in houses, Hamas has also used residential buildings to conceal scores of small arms caches across the territory, according to more than a dozen Israeli soldiers who have found such stockpiles.

The soldiers said it became normal to find munitions hidden inside civilian homes and mosques, which is one of the reasons, they said, the army had destroyed so many such buildings.

Some soldiers said their units needlessly destroyed civilian property, or filmed themselves vandalizing it, creating the impression that the Israeli military often had little reason to be searching civilian homes. But others said there was usually a clear military purpose to picking through civilian belongings: One recalled finding guns behind a false wall in a child’s bedroom, while another said his unit found grenades in a woman’s clothes closet. International law requires combatants to avoid using “civilian objects,” which include homes, schools, hospitals and mosques, for military objectives.

Sometimes, Hamas fighters emerged from tunnels without weapons, passing as civilians until they reached a house where other fighters had hidden weapons and ammunition inside the lining of furniture, Israeli soldiers said.

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Israeli soldiers in central Gaza in January in a building reportedly used by Hamas to manufacture rockets.Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times

To help its gunmen find these weapons caches, several Israeli soldiers said, Hamas has developed an elaborate system for marking houses that double as military storerooms, or contain tunnels or booby traps. Some buildings were marked with a particular symbol, some had red fabric hanging from windows, and others had plastic barrels or plastic bags outside — all of which told Hamas fighters something about what was concealed inside.

Some Israeli units were eventually supplied with printed guides to help them identify the meaning of each symbol or object, one soldier said.

When in doubt, soldiers entered houses by blowing a hole in their walls, in case the front doors were rigged with mines, according to a senior military officer, Maj. Gen. Itai Veruv, who escorted a reporter from The New York Times in central Gaza in January.

To draw Israelis toward a trap, Hamas gunmen sometimes scattered a building with visible signs of their presence, such as a Hamas flag. At other times, two Israeli soldiers said, Israeli troops were lured inside by a piece of Israeli clothing or identification card, which hinted that hostages might be held within.

One soldier said Hamas used chained dogs to entice soldiers toward a booby-trapped building, hoping that the soldiers would try to free the dogs.

Another soldier recalled spotting a dead Hamas fighter inside an apartment block and making his way toward the body. As he drew closer, he realized the corpse had been rigged with an explosive, he said. When his squad fired at the body, it blew up and set the building ablaze, he said.

Some soldiers said they found weapons in houses that they had searched earlier in the war. It suggested that at least some of the arms had been placed in houses after the start of Israel’s invasion.

Even in areas where Israel claims to have defeated Hamas, Israeli forces have often had to return, weeks or even months later, to continue the battle against fighters who had survived earlier phases of the war.

For Hamas, “it was always about avoiding losses for as long as possible so they can fight another day,” said Andreas Krieg, an expert on military strategy at King’s College London. “They’re nowhere near being defeated.”

Adam Rasgon contributed reporting from Doha, Qatar.

Patrick Kingsley is The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, leading coverage of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. More about Patrick Kingsley

Aaron Boxerman is a Times reporting fellow with a focus on international news. More about Aaron Boxerman

A version of this article appears in print on July 14, 2024 of the New York edition with the headline: After Oct. 7, Hamas Became a Ghost Army. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

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