Drone War

Whoa!!

One of Preacher Command"s Proxies -  Revo Guards or even Hiz"B"Allah recently, uh, penetrated, uh, Little Satan"s Air Defense with a drone of their own...

IAF claims it could have downed the UAV during any stage of its flight but preferred to shoot it down over a non-populated area to avoid causalities and damage.  

The drone was detected while it was still flying over the Mediterranean Sea, a few minutes before 10 am. Four F-16 fighter jets were scrambled to intercept the drone even before it entered Gaza's airspace.

The fighter jets' radars also detected the drone - a significant technological feat considering the fact that drones travels at a slow speed – and later used a heat-seeking missile to down the drone, which emits less heat than other, larger aircraft.

The fact that the drone was launched on a Saturday morning is not coincidental. Its operators apparently assumed that the level of alertness is lower on Saturday, when all kinds of civilian planes and hang gliders are in the air.

The bad news is that the drone, which apparently departed from Lebanon, flew over the sea for at least three hours, and did not raise enough suspicion in Little Satan until it approached Gaza's coastline. This may indicate a technological or protocol problem, or perhaps a lack of alertness. In any case, the incident calls for improvements in all three areas.

Such a drone is capable of carrying intelligence gathering apparatus or weapons systems. It can also serve as a 'suicide drone' laden with explosives, which can crash into a target such as a cruise missile.

In the next war drones will come from the north in waves, and Gaza may contribute its part as well, as Hamas is working independently to develop its own UAVs.

For now there are more questions than answers, but there is no doubt that this incident constitutes a major turning point as far as Little Satan's security is concerned. 

  Pic - "The Iranians sent a message via Lebanon: You will be attacked not only with rockets and missiles, but with explosives-laden unmanned aircraft as well."

WoW!!

 

WoW - the Watchers Council - it's the oldest, longest running cyber comte d'guere ensembe in existence - started online in 1912 by Sirs Jacky Fisher and Winston Churchill themselves - an eclective collective of cats both cruel and benign with their ability to put steel on target (figuratively - natch) on a wide variety of topictry across American, Allied, Frenemy and Enemy concerns, memes, delights and discourse.

Every week these cats hook up each other with hot hits and big phazed cookies to peruse and then vote on their individual fancy catchers.

Thusly sans further adieu (or a don"t)

Council Winners

• *First place with 2 2/3 votes! The Noisy Room – Infiltration, Treason, Jihad – Welcome to The Project
• Second place with 2 1/3 votes – The Right Planet – Fundamental Transformation: Dhimmitude for America
• Third place with 2 votes – The Political Commentator-“Main Street” pain belies Bernanke rhetoric!
• Fourth place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – Joshuapundit- Obama Monopoly: Burn An American Embassy, Collect $450 Million!
• Fourth place *t* with 1 2/3 vote – Gay Patriot- Legacy media downplay (or downright ignore) Obama’s September of Incompetence
• Fifth place *t* with 1 vote – The Colossus of Rhodey-Just like they did with color-blindness, “progressives” re-examining First Amendment
• Fifth place *t* with 1 vote – The Independent Sentinel-U.N. Ambassador John Bolton Addressing Upcoming Assault on the Second Amendment
• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Bookworm Room – Radiolab, a Progressive public radio station, errs by showing its audience how the meat gets into the sausage.
• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Razor –An Obama Victory May Be Good for the War on Terror
• Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote –GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD –Suriya al Kubra’s WMD War
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Mellow Jihadi – William Donohue and His Jar of Brown Play-Doh
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Simply Jews – How did Bibi’s UN speech bomb so badly?

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 3 votes! – Ace of Spades-The Normative Power of Law and the Emotional Power of Drama  submitted by Joshuapundit
• Second place *t* with 2 1/3 votes – Michael Yon – America’s Dumbest War, Ever submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Second place *t* with 2 1/3 votes – Doug Ross –MEXICAN STREETS RUN RED WITH THE BLOOD OF CHILDREN: Holder Lies to Congress; Obama Covers Up; U.S. Media Ignores the Slaughter submitted by VA Right!
• Third place with 1 2/3 votes -American Thinker- Obama’s Biblical Rewrite submitted by The Right Planet
• Fourth place with 1 vote – Sultan Knish -Muslim Violence is Our New Law submitted by The Noisy Room
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes - The Compass –Mitt Romney’s Mideast Vision submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote - The Sad Red Earth –Amnesty’s Arrogance  submitted by Simply Jews
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Doug Ross –The Most Brutal Jobs Graph of the Year submitted by The Independent Sentinel
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -PJ Media –Ambassador Chris Stevens Is Dead; Al-Qaeda Is Alive submitted by The Political Commentator
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -The Blaze –Open Letter:Beck Responds To Criticism From Muse Band Leader Matthew Bellamysubmitted by The Mellow Jihadi
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -PJ Lifestyle –Why Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, and Truman Capote All Failed to Write the Great American Novel submitted by Gay Patriot
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Open Markets.Org –Fifty Years Later: Rachel Carson Is Still Wrong submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -FOX News – Interview: Dr. Henry Kissinger On The State of Foreign Policy submitted by The Watcher

See you next week! And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter

Ottoman Syrian War

 

Whoa!!

Conflicting violence is seldom contained with in borders - and the recent artillery duel betwixt the Ottomans and Suriya al Kubra gives a few direct hits

Turkey's shelling of Syrian positions and its calling of an emergency meeting of Nato ambassadors represent a final warning to the authorities in Damascus - a signal that Turkey's patience has worn thin and that President Bashar al-Assad can expect an increasingly robust response if Turkish territory is fired upon again.

Nato gave strong backing to the Ankara government, just as it did back in June when Syrian forces downed a Turkish reconnaissance jet.

But the early signs are that both Ankara and Damascus have no desire for a protracted conflict. Public opinion in Turkey has not sought Turkish intervention in Syria - though this could change with repeated shelling of Turkish soil.

And President Assad already has enough problems. But the incident inevitably fuels the growing fears of a spill-over of the Syrian crisis into a broader regional conflict.

Other causalities include Lebanon and funnily enough - the terroristical Posse of Allah - Hiz"B"Allah! 

Lebanon, unlike Turkey, is simply not acting like an independent nation. That Beirut sits quietly while Damascus runs roughshod over Lebanon’s territorial integrity is embarrassing. It is no doubt with envy that many Lebanese are watching Turkey defend itself. Meanwhile our own Foreign Minister, Adnan Mansour, is essentially a Syrian agent.

Damascus is actively trying its best to create chaos, strife and sectarian tension in Lebanon, yet the government has done nothing. This is not how a state behaves. What’s worse, it seems from the funerals held earlier this week for fallen Hezbollah fighters that the most powerful broker in this government is militarily engaged on the Syrian regime’s behalf.

The Party of God is rubbing in our faces its true colors. Hezbollah cares nothing for Lebanon. It is not a national party. It is a Syrian and Iranian proxy.

Pic - "Türk Kara Kuvvetleri!!"

Finis Saud?

Hijaz!

The World"s original He Man Women Hater Kingdom is something of an anomaly in the new millennium.- Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns, Romanovs and Pahlavis have all ended up on the Royal Autocratic trash heap like the Merovingians and Plantagenets - yet Wahabbi Arabia"s House of Saud is still hanging out  

For now LOL 

The nation's levers of power controlled by a handful of elderly Al Saud princes with an average age of 77 years and an extended family of some 7,000 princes. Yet at least 60 percent of the increasingly restive population they rule is under the age of 20. 

Saudi Arabia has become a rundown welfare state. The public pays no taxes; gets free education and health care; and receives subsidized water, electricity, and energy (a gallon of gasoline is cheaper in the Kingdom than a bottle of water), with its petrodollars buying less and less loyalty. House makes clear that the royal family also uses m"Hammedism"s requirement of obedience to Allah—and by extension to earthly rulers—to perpetuate Al Saud rule.

Behind the Saudi facade of order and obedience, today’s Saudi youth, frustrated by social conformity, are reaching out to one another and to a wider world beyond their cloistered country. Some 50 percent of Saudi youth is on the Internet; 5.1 million Saudis are on Facebook. 

Oh Snap!!  

Revolution in Saudi Arabia is no longer unthinkable.  Ironically, the more successfully the revolutions in other Arab states develop, the more likely Saudis will also want a government that is modern, accountable and chosen by the people.  But revolution in the Kingdom may come from angry extremists outraged by the Kingdom’s alliance with Great Satan.  al-Qaeda remains a strong force under the surface despite a vigorous and so far successful counter terrorist effort by the Saudis (with American help). 

Sixty percent of Saudis are 20 or younger, most of whom have no hope of a job. Seventy percent of Saudis can not afford to own a home. Forty percent live below the poverty line.  

One of the last absolute monarchies in the world, considered to be the final bulwark against revolution in the region, as threatened by multiple fissures and forces, its levers of power controlled by a handful of elderly Al Saud princes with an average age of 77 years and an extended family of some 7,000 princes. Yet at least 60 percent of the increasingly restive population they rule is under the age of 20.

 Foreign workers make the Kingdom work; the 19 million Saudi citizens share the Kingdom with 8.5 million guest workers.

The American alliance with Saudi Arabia is the oldest alliance Great Satan has with any country in the Middle East dating to 1945 when 32 met with the founder of the modern Saudi state, Abdul Aziz bin al Saud, and fashioned an oil-for-security bargain.

Today Great Satan needs Saudi Arabia more than ever. Our oil imports are up from the kingdom. The alliance with Egypt is in doubt. Iraq is tilting toward Iran. The Saudis are our critical partner in the war against al Qaeda in Yemen and elsewhere. Saudi intelligence has thwarted at least two al-Qaeda attacks on the American homeland since 2010. Saudi support is important to containing Iran.

Yet the kingdom is also a source of anxiety. European intelligence sources say the kingdom’s rich are still the No. 1 source of finances for extremist m"Hammedist groups including the Afghan Taliban and Pakistan’s Lashkar-e Tayyiba. And the kingdom has all but annexed her small neighbor Bahrain to squash a democratic revolution on the island that hosts Fifth Fleet. 

From key religious leaders and dissident imams to women at university and impoverished widows, from government officials and political dissidents to young successful Saudis and those who chose the path of terrorism— most Saudis do not want democracy but seek change nevertheless; they want a government that provides basic services without subjecting citizens to the indignity of begging princes for handouts; a government less corrupt and more transparent in how it spends hundreds of billions of annual oil revenue; a kingdom ruled by law, not royal whim.

Pic - "Fall Of The House Of Saud"

 

44"s FoPo Follies

Oh Snap!!

For eons perhaps - 44 and his posse of lady brainiacs have managed to keep FoPo (foreign policy for the tragically unhip) off the radar screen in Great Satan"s electile dysfunction season.

The quiet yet massive increase in drone-strike killings, the reluctance to support democratic regime-change in Iran, saying yes to the Afghan surge while insisting on an expiration date, his unwillingness to push for a continued presence in Iraq, his capitulation to 43" policies on Gitmo and domestic terrorism trials, the administration's reflexive spinning of thwarted and actual terrorism attacks (the Time Square and "underwear" bombers, the Ft. Hood shooting) as "isolated incidents" — all gave the impression there was nothing to worry about with 44 at the helm.

Not anymore!!

It is not clear whether U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice lied or made a fool of herself — and the administration — when she blamed a video for the Sept. 11 Libya attack and denied that the administration's security precautions were scandalously insufficient.

On a slew of Sunday shows on Sept. 16, Rice said the two former Navy SEALs who were also killed were providing security. Former Navy SEAL bodyguards do not die in safe houses far from those they're protecting, just as spontaneous mobs do not orchestrate a sophisticated ground assault complete with rocket-propelled grenades.

The Libya follies are merely the most visible flashpoint of the larger unraveling of the Obama administration's foreign policy. The Gtreat/Little Satan Hook Up has become a bad soap opera. Afghanistan is slipping away, as our troops are being killed by the men they're supposed to be training for the handover. Egypt is now run by the You Know What Brotherhood. Russia casually mocks and defies. China is rapidly replacing us as an Asian hegemon and rattling sabers at our ally Japan.

Iraq is rapidly becoming an Iranian vassal state. When 44 entered office, we had nearly 150,000 troops in Iraq and much sway over the course that nation took. Now we have 150 and almost no sway. Sectarian violence is up, and Al Qaeda in Iraq is resurgent.

Pic - "Peace In Our Time"

 

Suriya al Kubra"s WMD War

Suriya al- Kubra! 

UnAssing the illegit Allawicious regime in Basharopolis ideally from the inside out - or with Foreign Peace Mongers doing the old intervention dance - (just as good) still keep clicking right back to Dr General President For Life Bashar Bay Bee"s stacked up stockpile of WMD.

Uncle Leon admits Great Satan has lost track of certain bits of nasty nerve and chemical agents and the delivery systems to deliver them - hard on the heels of rebel factions LOLing they seized control of a Syrian Army WMD depot

Is it time to intervene in Syria with a fully crunk combat mission for searching and destroying WMD?

One of gSgF"s advisors at S2C and the world famous Abu Muq unleashes a spirited bit in Great Satan"s Navy Institute bout doing Syria for WMDeliciousness

Ideally, a mission to destroy Syrian WMDs would focus on these stockpiles before regime forces forward deploy them to artillery or missile units, or before said stockpiles fall to rebel forces, which may lack the training, equipment, or discipline to safeguard chemical weapons for teams to inspect and dispose of them. Syria has more than 3,400 artillery pieces, many of which can fire chemically armed shells or rockets. Chemically armed artillery rounds would also be easiest to smuggle out of Syria. Syria also has significant surface-to-surface missile stocks, including roughly 250 range SS-21s and Iranian-made Fateh 110s, and up to 300 Scud missiles.

A mission to destroy Syrian chemical weapons stocks could perform a preventive, preemptive or mitigating measure. Effectively degrading the entire arsenal would likely require an extremely wide target set. Syria has roughly 50 sites involved in manufacturing or storing chemical weapons . Its arsenal consists of G and V-series nerve agents, which block neurotransmitters, causing convulsions and death through loss of respiratory control, as well as blistering agents, whose chemical burns restrict respiration and form large, painful blisters on the skin. Both are absorbable through the lungs or skin, requiring a full body suit for adequate protection. Between Syria’s VX, Sarin, and Tabun nerve agents, and its mustard gas blistering agents, this totals to several hundred tons of chemical agents stockpiled for combat use.

 While a preventive strike on Syrian WMDs might be able to destroy all large stockpiles, it would be extremely difficult for airstrikes to eliminate all Syrian ballistic missiles and warheads, let alone chemically armed artillery rounds. In the 1991 war with Iraq, the infamous Scud hunt required American and British Special Operations Forces (SOF), using helicopters and ground vehicles, to scour Iraq’s western desert for mobile sites. They destroyed relatively few missiles or mobile launchers, and there is no proof aerial interdiction from strike aircraft hit a single genuine Scud missile or launcher (Iraq maintained many decoy systems). Iraq retained a significant (albeit increasingly decrepit) Scud stockpile through the 2003 invasion. 

It is likely Syria would attempt to imitate Iraq’s success in dispersing and disguising its missile arsenal during any American bombing campaign, which would necessitate significant numbers of foreign SOF, tightly coordinating with strike aircraft that could operate with relative freedom from Syria’s Integrated Air Defense Systems. Without an extended aerial and naval strike campaign, supplemented by extensive Western SOF operations, a Syrian WMD hunt, even a preventive one, would be extremely difficult. 

An Allied or Great Satan solo military intervention in response could range from smaller-scale strikes on WMD-related and regime targets, as in 1998’s Operation Desert Fox against Iraq, to a full-scale air campaign to attempt to dismantle the Syrian regime in support of Free Syrian Army troops. Since Syria has only threatened to use its WMDs in the event of a foreign intervention, it will remain unclear for some time whether Obama’s threat was instrumental or a secondary concern in discouraging Syrian WMD use.

Yet a deterrence operation that sidesteps the problems of outright destroying Syria’s WMDs fails to address concerns about their potential proliferation into the hands of terrorists, foreign states, or Syrian combatants unaccountable to a chain of command the U.S. can target through deterrent threats. Securing Syrian WMD sites on the ground during a civil war would far outstrip any combination of allied SOF resources. 

While Joint Special Operations Command would still play a critical role, since they command some of the few units ready to conduct render safe operations under combat conditions, additional personnel, both military and civilian, operating with organizations such as the Army’s 20th Support Command and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, would likely deploy later on. However, given the possibility of regime military resistance, or units affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps and anti-American insurgents, attacking these units, large number of conventional troops would accompany these personnel as a force-protection measure.

75,000 troops (along with, presumably, the establishment of air superiority and the execution of close-air support missions) participating in an effort to secure and render safe Syrian WMD are not unreasonable, though given the logistical constraints, any deployment would likely be under-resourced relative to the Pentagon’s preferences.

It would also likely be a long process. Great Satan and her allies would need to secure transit, and then ship, chemical weapons to established facilities used in decommissioning their own chemical weapons stocks during the Cold War. That or wait for limited numbers of mobile sites and potentially hazardous controlled detonations to finish the job in country. In any case, efforts to fully destroy Syria’s WMD stockpiles could take years, which would also demand an extended force-protection mission by foreign troops or contractors.

Simply put, there are few easy options for destroying Syria’s WMD stockpiles if deterrent threats fail, and almost any strikes would need to follow on previously discussed suppression of enemy air defense efforts. Attacking Syria’s sites mainly from the air would require servicing 50 fixed targets and dozens or hundreds of mobile launchers and missiles, and require a sizable SOF presence inside of Syria to aid targeting. Even if successful, the risk of contamination and proliferation would remain, demanding thousands of foreign personnel inserting themselves into what would be, at best, the smoldering aftermath of a massive civil war. Though nonproliferation and deterring WMD use seems a simpler undertaking than protecting safe zones or overthrowing the Syrian government, it might also be the easiest way into a significant and open-ended Western presence in Syria, during and after its internal conflict. 

Yessir - it would be pure heck no doubt. Yet way more easier than responding to mass causalities from oh - say a Sarin incident in Cairo, Jeddah, Berlin or Atlanta

Pic - "More than 75,000 ground troops to secure Syria's chemical warfare facilities:"

Battle Of Senkaku Islands

Dong Feng!!

  

As PACRIM gets all het up betwixt tiny tiny Nippon and Collectivist China the potential for combat and potential winners and losers for the Battle of Senkaku Islands gets a good going over.

 

As the ancient Influ of Sea Power cat - the great fin de siècle naughtical naughtiness theorist Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan classifies - geostrategic assets should be assetted by their position, strength, and resources.  

The Senkakus/Diaoyus occupy an awkward position near the southern tip of the undefended Ryukyus chain, closer to Taiwan than to the Japanese main islands and roughly equidistant between Okinawa and the Chinese mainland. The archipelago's natural defenses are so-so at best, owing to its small size and fragmentation into several islets  

The island chain's geography opens up options for a determined attacker. Rather than mount a full-scale assault, PLA occupiers could grab one island, place weaponry on it, and pummel Japanese GSDF sites from there -- seizing the rest over time through salami-slicing tactics. And since the islets offer virtually no natural resources to support garrisons, everything would have to be shipped in by sea or air   

If China rules even a pocket of sea and airspace around the islands, it will probably get its way in a test of arms.   

Mainly by positioning to win the air and sea battle around the disputed archipelago. The obvious way to ward off attack -- stationing garrisons and artillery on the tiny, resource-poor islands -- should be a secondary measure. And it would likely prove a losing one, absent superiority in nearby seas and skies. Forces left ashore without external support would find themselves stranded and outgunned, not to mention hungry and thirsty

To be sure, heavily armed ground detachments can convert islands with rugged terrain into virtual "porcupines," prickly to the touch. For instance, Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) troops equipped with truck-launched anti-ship cruise missiles could give any naval assault force fits. They could dig in, hardening their positions against air and missile bombardment. Despite their small numbers, GSDF defenders would be exceedingly tough to dislodge  
 

Only for a time. Whoever controls the sea and sky will ultimately determine the islands' fate. If Great Satan -Japanese naval, air, and ground forces can hold open access to the islands while fending off Chinese assailants, the allies would stand to win a limited clash. They can resupply defenders perched there, letting them hold out more or less indefinitely. But if China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) wrests control of the air and sea commons from the allies, on the other hand, it will be at liberty to cordon off the islands and starve out the defenders. And then Beijing will stand to win.  

Mahan's British contemporary and sometime rival, British theorist Sir Julian Corbett, observes that limited maritime war is the prerogative of the belligerent that can isolate the theater through naval action while shielding its homeland from an "unlimited," asymmetric counterstroke -- a strike that would disarm its military from afar, unseat the government, or otherwise compel it to sue for peace 

The antagonist whose armed forces can make the sea an "insuperable physical obstacle" to enemy action enjoys the luxury of concentrating overpowering military might at decisive points in the theater -- improving its expeditionary forces' prospects of attaining operational, strategic, and political goals. The Great Satan/Nippon Hook Up is unlikely to escalate to strikes against the Chinese mainland for the sake of the Senkakus/Diaoyus. Japan has little capacity to mount such a threat, whereas the logic of nuclear deterrence eliminates any real chance of the Great Satan doing so. And thus, if the PLA can seal off the archipelago, it will meet Corbett's standard for limited war. The allies will never fully meet that standard.

First and foremost, Japanese commanders and officials must figure out how to pry open and keep open access to the islands should the PLA actively dispute their access -- as it will, should China and Japan come to blows. Local command of the commons may demand staging naval and air forces in and around the Ryukyus, closer to the likely scene of combat.  

Second, Japanese commanders must consider how to bar Chinese access to the embattled area. For example, deploying mobile anti-ship missiles on Yonaguni Island, at the extreme southwestern tip of the Ryukyus, would allow the GSDF to hold Chinese surface ships at risk around the Senkakus/Diaoyus. Stationing weaponry on the islets themselves would generate overlapping fields of fire. Mining nearby waters is worth considering, as is building large numbers of small, stealthy combatant ships armed with anti-ship missiles. Swarms of unobtrusive but deadly small craft could ruin Chinese commanders' whole day. Indeed, Beijing has premised its "anti-access" strategy vis-a-vis Great Satan"s Global Force For Good  in part on such craft. Tokyo can take a page from Beijing's book, fashioning a small-scale, anti-access zone of its own. 

Finally, Japanese officials must not overlook the politics of island defense. Blunting a PLA offensive may not come cheap, either in the Senkakus/Diaoyus or elsewhere. It is high time for Japan to reconsider its unofficial cap on defense spending, which has stood at 1 percent of gross domestic product for decades. This is not a serious enough commitment for a nation facing Japan's geostrategic predicament

Pic - "China's recent assertiveness in the South China Seas is a harbinger of things to come."