Further Irresponsible Speculation on the Cheonan Incident

Some thoughts:

• If Cheonan struck a mine, and the mine was recently laid (or recently released from its mooring) what kind of message was North Korea trying to send? Even if the North Koreans had relatively good information about Cheonan's patrol area, it's hard to imagine that they could have been optimistic that the release of one mine (or perhaps even a very few mines) would actually result in the destruction of a South Korean ship. The ocean is a big place; if Cheonan struck a mine, it must have been pretty lucky. Alternatively, the North Koreans could have laid an entire field or set a large number of mines adrift, but you'd expect then that there would be some evidence of North Korean activity, not to mention a considerable number of remaining mines. Is there any indication that the rescue effort has taken the threat of additional mines in the area very seriously?
• I still don't find the human torpedo idea very compelling. The literature indicates that North Korean human torpedoes travel very slowly (2km/hour) which would make it extremely difficult to use them on a target moving at any speed at all. Even if a North Korean mothership released the human torpedo in Cheonan's expected patrol area, the Norks would have to be extremely lucky to be in plausible attack position at that speed.
• There continues to be some confusion as to whether Cheonan opened fire before or after the explosion. If after, there are two relatively coherent explanations; either the crew fired on a legitimate North Korean target, or they were so panicked that they misidentified a contact and opened up anyway. If before, it seems more likely that they were firing at a Nork target, unless somehow the process of opening fire precipitated the accident. I'm not familiar with the layout of Cheonan, but this doesn't seem very likely; would an ammunition handling accident have caused an explosion in that part of the ship?

All of this remains speculation, and I do invite those better educated than me (most of the readers of this blog) to correct any misconceptions. At this point, though, the (non-human) torpedo explanation still makes sense to me, and perhaps more sense than the alternatives.

Human Torpedo?

Now this is interesting:

Kim said a torpedo was not detected by the Cheonan but said in response to a lawmaker's question that a "human torpedo attack" was also one of the possibilities.

A local newspaper report said North Korea has two-manned torpedoes, citing "former North Korean navy men who defected" to the South.

The two-manned submarines are fitted with two torpedoes or a mine and move underwater at a pace slower than two kilometers per hour to avoid detection.

Shades of the Decima Flottiglia MAS. I don't see, however, how the human torpedo could have approached and attacked Cheonan, unless the latter was essentially stationary.
H/t jhpigott.

Tromp Trumps Pirates (Again)

I was suspecting HNLMS Tromp to see less pirates, after Operation Sweeping Broom -during which the Dutch actively hunted for pirates- ended. Guess I was wrong.

I guess these pirates never learn, because yesterday the Tromp was attacked 270 NM of the Somali coast. A German MPA -I guess one of the Orions that used to belong to the Dutch but were sold to Germany in 2004- had located pirates and the Tromp sailed towards them. When they were 8 NM from the pirates, 2 skiffs came at the ship at full speed, only to turn around when they realised it was a warship they were going after.
Warning shots from the ship and the Lynx helicopter kept the pirates from fleeing and 3 skiffs with 12 pirates were detained. After destroying 2 skiffs and disarming the pirates they were put back in a skiff and sent along to Somalia.

Later the same day the Tromp caught another 7 pirates in 2 skiffs. In a recurring theme, these have also been set free.

Today a Swedish MPA discovered pirates and the Tromp was send to intercept them. The crew caught 10 pirates with a mothership and 2 skiffs, which have both been distroyed along with all the fuel not necessary for the pirates to reach the Somali coast. So yes, that means they have indeed been let go - again.

Since February 17 HNLMS Tromp has disarmed 61 pirates.

Further Cheonan Update

AP, via One Free Korea:

A naval mine dispatched from North Korea may have struck the South Korean warship that exploded and sank near the Koreas' disputed sea border, the defense minister told lawmakers Monday, laying out several scenarios for the maritime disaster.

Defense Minister Kim Tae-young said there was no sign of a direct attack from rival North Korea, but military authorities have not ruled out North Korean involvement in the sinking of the Cheonan late Friday night.

Josh Stanton notes that no mines leftover from the Korean War have been discovered since 1984, meaning that if a mine caused the explosion it was probably laid recently.

Brookings Iran-Israel Wargame

Up to about step 8, the Brookings simulation of an Israeli strike on Iran seems to have run very much like the Patterson simulation. The major difference is in the Brookings sim, the Iranians decide to attack Saudi oil facilities and mine the Strait of Hormuz after playing it cool for several days. I'd be curious to learn why the Iranian team decided to respond after such a delay; their early strategy was very similar to the of the Iran team in the Patterson sim, which was to stay quiet and try to drive a wedge between Israel and the US. This seemed to be working (Israel's only activity after the first strike was to launch an assault against Hezbollah) in the Brookings simulation, and it looks as if the strike on Saudi oil solved a lot of diplomatic problems for both the Americans and the Israelis.

Russia and India

Reaction from Recent Putin's trip to India

Putin recently made a trip to India and signed a plethora of deals worth $10 billion. The deals include several nuclear power plants and military contracts worth $4 billion. I find it interesting that the Western media's over-reaction to this trip. A common theme seems to be that the good relationship developed with India during the Bush Administration is getting squandered by Obama Administration's policies. Obama's policies were described as ignoring India while favoring engagements with "bad countries" like China and Pakistan. And due to America's neglect, India has ran back to its traditional all-weather friend Russia. And Russia is sick of China copying its weapons and value India far more.

Needless to say, I found much of these articles to be comical. While it is true that India is getting less attention from America with Obama in power, I really don't think it had much to do with these contracts. When Bush signed that landmark nuclear power deal with India, other nuclear power exporters like Russia and France were also excited that they now have an NPT-exception to sell to India. It should be to no one's surprise that India chooses to diversify its nuclear power purchases between US, France and Russia to get the best available technology for the lowest price. That is what China is doing right now with building AP-1000, EPR, Candu and AES-91 at the same time. It seems like India is a huge nuclear energy market, so I don't think American firms like Westinghouse, GE and McDermott would be missing out.

The military agreements that came out from this trip seem to be the new terms for the Gorshkov refitting project, additional Mig-29Ks and more signings to the 5th generation fighter project. All three of these agreements are basically additional agreements to existing projects. Does it really surprise anyone that India wants to conclude this Gorshkov saga and use the same naval fighter on all of its aircraft carriers? These decisions were made in the earlier part of this decade and really do not have anything to do with the current political climate. And with the first flight of T-50, India clearly thinks that this is the best and fastest way for it to get into the 5th generation of fighter jets. There were also talks of India purchasing additional Su-30MKIs from Russia. I think that will also happen due to the delays in the MRCA and LCA projects. Russia has always been a reliable supplier to India. There really is no reason for India to cut them out just because Western countries are join in now. America has already scored several major contracts like the P-8I and C-130J orders. It is still in competition for utility helicopters, Project 17A, missile defense, various army RFPs and the MRCA project. So while the Russians continue to sell well to India, America is in no way getting left out.

I also do not see Russia selling certain weapon systems to India as an indication that its relationship with China is decreasing. It is true that Russia is fairly pissed out at China for declining purchases and allegedly copying several of its export (although as I have stated in the past, it really is nowhere as bad as the Russians claim). However, that is due to China's much improved military industrial complex and increased military cooperation with Ukraine and Belarus (at the expense of Russia) than weapons not being available. Over the last few years, military exports have become a much smaller part of the bilateral relationship. Otherwise, the leaders of the two nations would not be meeting so often.

In conclusion, Putin's trip to India is reaffirms the decade long friendship of the two countries. The military cooperation between the two countries will continue to flourish. However, people should not see this as a rebut to the US/India relationship. India is already a power to be reckoned with and will become a superpower at sometime this century. Its relationship with Russia cannot possibly go back to the cold war period, when it was a little brother to one of the two super powers. Its relationship with US will only expand as it becomes more and more involved in the world economy. And sadly, its relationship with China will become only more complex as their growing economic ties are overshadowed by the mutual distrust. Things will never go back to the way they were in the cold war days.

Cheonan Update

According to Korea Times, a US vessel will be joining search and rescue efforts, although at this point it's very hard to be optimistic about finding any survivors. Efforts to determine the cause of the sinking continue:

The cause of the incident remains under investigation.

Defense Minister Kim Tae-young plans to announce interim results on the cause of the tragedy to lawmakers on the National Assembly Defense Committee, today.

Initially, the JCS said an explosion either from the outside or inside appeared to have torn a hole in the rear of the vessel, shutting off the engine and sinking the ship in less than three hours. Following a visit to the scene Saturday, however, Defense Minister Kim said a thermal observation device shows that the ill-fated vessel was split in half.

Some experts interpreted Kim's remarks as the possibility that an outside impact - either a torpedo or a mine - might have caused the destruction.

Korea Times also has a nice graphic of the impact that various events might have had on Cheonan. Salvage and investigation are supposed to take about three weeks. The accompanying story also sheds a bit more light on the "flock of birds" sighting; apparently Cheonan began firing on radar contacts after the explosion. This would seem to be consistent with either and accident or an attack; either Cheonan saw something real (a periscope?) or the panicked crew opened fire without good contacts.

Families of the crew are unhappy:

Weeping, angry relatives of 46 crew members missing after a mysterious explosion sank a South Korean navy ship sailed around the site Sunday as rescue teams struggled to search for survivors...

Some families also vented anger at the military, accusing authorities of a cover-up and saying survivors told them the Cheonan was leaky and in need of repair. They shouted "Liars!" and jumped on a car carrying the rescued ship captain as it drove away.

My understanding is that the Republic of Korea Navy has a pretty good maintenance record; if anyone with better information has a different impression please note in comments. I'd also be a bit surprised to find that the ROKN was deploying a ship that was barely seaworthy to what is, in effect, a war zone.

The Cheonan Crisis?

I have a short piece at Guardian: Comment is Free on the sinking of the Cheonan:

If the sinking of Cheonan was intentional, it creates a serious crisis for the Koreas' neighbours and for the United States. None of the US, Japan, or China desire the threat of major military action on the Korean Peninsula. The US, still embroiled in Iraq and Afghanistan, doesn't want another military confrontation on its plate. At the same time, it will be difficult for the US to restrain South Korea from some form of retaliation. Japan's patience with North Korea has similarly run thin, and it is unlikely that Tokyo could be relied on too heavily as a voice of caution. Beijing has only limited affection for its North Korean client, but certainly does not want war, or even the threat of war. North Korea's intentions remain mysterious; if it intended to signal its toughness and resolve to South Korea, it may have bitten off more than it can chew.

At this point, I suspect that officials in Beijing, Washington, Tokyo, and perhaps even Seoul are hoping that Cheonan sank becaue of an accidental explosion. If the North Koreans sank Cheonan and killed dozens of South Korean sailors, the situation in northeast Asia may become very dangerous very quickly.

UPDATE: The thinking seems to be moving toward "accident":

The waters around Baeknyeong island are rocky, and some senior government officials speculated that the sinking may have been an accident, not an attack, South Korean media said.

"It's looking more and more like it was just an accident that happens on a ship," Carl Baker, an expert on Korean military relations at the Pacific Forum CSIS think tank in Honolulu, said by telephone.

Naval Clash in Yellow Sea Sinks RoK Ship?

This ain't good:

A South Korean navy ship with about 100 personnel on board is sinking off the west coast near North Korea, possibly due to a torpedo attack, reports say.

The ship was sinking near Baengnyeong island, Yonhap news agency quoted navy officials as saying.

It also said the South Korean ship had fired shots toward an unidentified ship in the North. The incident has not been confirmed by government officials.

The North and the South have been playing around for awhile in this area, but the loss of a major piece of South Korean military property (potentially with significant loss of life) isn't something that can be ignored. As to the identity of the vessel, I'm guessing maybe a Donghae or Pohang class patrol corvette, from the size of the crew and the nature of the engagement.

H/t jonboy.


UPDATE: This report indicates that 58 of the crew had been picked up by midnite, which would be about an hour and a half ago. Make sure to follow CDR Salamander for additional updates.

Mark Your Calendars--Seapower Panel At Heritage 06 April 2024

I wanted to let readers know of an upcoming panel discussion at The Heritage Foundation in Washington on 06 April 2024 from 1100-1200. Follow this link to sign up to attend in person, or to follow via the live webcast.

The title of the panel is "Sea Power in the 21st Century", and joining me on the panel will be Ron O'Rourke of the Congressional Research Service and Peter Swartz from the Center for Naval Analyses.

It should be a good discussion.

First item of business: Seapower should be one word.


Bryan McGrath

Varyag is out

Well, these pictures came out this weekend.


Shows that Varyag has left the dry docks in Dalian with the modified island. Although at this point, they really haven't put any of the sensors on the island yet. Looks like all of the dry dock work has been done and they will start to really install on the electronics now.

What I hear is that they completely redesigned the inside of the ship. They put a lot of serious investment into putting Varyag back into service, so it may serve past just having training purpose. Just waiting patiently for the next stage now.

Somali, Piracy, and the UN

I suggest again my colleague Charli Carpenter on Somalia and the United Nations:

The diavlog also includes clips on Western support for the Somali government and the economics of Somali piracy.

Spitfire

I never saw this, but it seems like an intriguing project:

The dilemma that faces historians and other chroniclers of World War II is, obviously, that the World War II generation is passing very quickly. First person narratives and eyewitness experience aren't the only ways to approach either history or political science, but they can be quite important. At the same time, the massive volume of writings on World War II can sometimes serve to obscure rather than illuminate the possibility for further contribution. This is to say that it takes some work to figure just how and why a particular narrative is relevant.

Piracy How To

My colleague Charli Carpenter has an excellent post bringing together a couple reports on the business model of Somali piracy. Check it out...

Operation Sweeping Broom

Off the coast of Somalia HNLMS Tromp is busy with operation Sweeping Broom. Well, of the coast of the Seychelles would be more accurate.

According to legend the namegiver of the ship, admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp, raised a broom in the mast at one time, to indicate he had swept the English from the sea. Since then every naval ship with the name Tromp has a broom on board. And at special occasions it is raised, to indicate the vessel is busy sweeping the ocean clean of everyone standing in the way of peace.

At the moment operation Sweeping Broom is going well.
March 14th a mothership was caught with two pirates.
March 15th the two skiffs that were with the mothership from the previous day were caught with 7 pirates aboard. 2 skiffs were destroyed with the Goalkeeper.
March 17th 2 small skiffs and a mothership together with 17 pirates were aprehended, after the pirates had decided to hijack HNLMS Tromp. They soon discovered that was a bad plan. The 2 skiffs have been destroyed.
March 17th 1 mothership and 2 skiffs were seen. The pirates tried to flee in one of the skiffs when they saw the Tromp coming. The helicopter of the Tromp tried to stop them with shots across the bow and when that didn't help the Tromp used her 127mm canon. The skiff wasn't stopped because the night fell and it was too dangerous, due to the shipping in the region, to proceed. However 4 pirates were caught together with the mothership and a skiff. Both vessels have been destroyed.

During all this several AK-47's, RPG's, sattelite telephones and other pirate attributes have been found and confiscated.

There is however a 'but' and that is that, in compliance with EU guidelines, the pirates have been let go or will be let go, although in at least one case the Seychelles Coast Guard have been informed of the impeding arrival of a couple of pirates.

So when will HNLMS Tromp see those same pirates again?

UPDATE
March 18th the pirates that got away in the dark yesterday have been caught this morning.

"Got Sea Control" in USNI Proceedings

My concern has been growing lately about the importance of Sea Control, and my perception that as every day goes by--the gap between our ability to "do" it and others ability to "contest it" shrinks.

In this month's Proceedings, Captain Vic Addison of OPNAV and CDR David Dominy (RN) team up to offer an interesting discussion of Sea Control, offering a useful framework for evaluating "littoral" sea control and then applying it to two scenarios--the Falklands war and the 2006 Israeli/Hezbollah conflict.

I had to read the article twice in order to fully appreciate it. One hopes that both the Brits and the Israelis had staffs who could have performed a deeper dive along these lines. I get the feeling the Israelis just got caught sleeping, thinking that there wasn't a threat to their Sea Control (Addison and Dominy bring up a truth that one doesn't often think about--that control of littoral seas does not mean possession of a Navy or Coast Guard). But the Brits could have done quite a bit more to take the Argentine air arm out earlier--the primary method by which the Argentinians contested British attempts to control seaspace.

Bryan McGrath

The German Navy's Lack of Power Projection

This past weekend Solomon asked why, of all the European Powers, Germany has the weakest navy in terms of power projection.

It's not that the German navy hasn't been thinking about it.

In 1994 Germany had trouble with the withdrawal of its troops from UNISOM II in Somalia. The navy thought a new type of ship could prevent future problems. The ship had such a priority that the navy said it should be fully operational before the year 2000.
The idea from MTG Marinetechnik GmbH -the company that has been established by the German government as an independent centre of excellence in 1966 to design German surface warships- was the Taktische Konzept Mehrzweckschiff (TKM), a 20,000t ship.
The ship would have had a range of 7,500 NM, room for 700 personnel from the army, ro-ro capability and room for 271 vehicles, 8 helicopters, 2 landing craft and a 70 bed hospital with 2 operating rooms. The cost for this all would be between 500 and 620 million Deutschmark.
For comparison it's interesting to know that HNLMS Rotterdam (12,750t) was 265 million Guilders (about 237 DMark).
In 1995 the plug was pulled by the politicians, mainly because of the huge cost of the ship.
The navy, however, hadn't given up on the idea.

In 1998 the Weizsäcker-commission was formed, with the intruction to give the goverment advice about the future of the German armed forces. This commission adviced to get a 'transport and deployment support ship'.
This became the ETrUS (Einsatz Truppenunterstützungsschiff) project. In 2003 it was removed from the Navy's plans, mainly because of costs. Most likely it would have been a further development of the Rotterdam/Galicia class.

The navy, however, was still not giving up and in 2007 news came that Joint Support Ships were to be included in the 2009 plan for the navy.
This resulted in inclusion of these Joint Support Ships -most likely a LPD/LHD- in the Zielvorstellung Marine 2025+ (Navy Plan 2025+).
However, a final decision is not expected before 2016.

So why is it taking Germany so long to get an amphibious capability?
Because Germany doesn't have a real naval tradition. Historically their focus has always been on the army and they therefore lack the marines that are usually associated with these type of ships.
This army-centric thinking also dominated during the Cold War and still exists today. Besides that, the army and air force are seeing these amphibious ships as a threat to their dominance in the 'lift' role.

The Holland-class OPVs Will Need A Change

Background
On December the 20th in 2007 the Dutch MoD and Schelde Marinebouw (now: Damen Schelde Naval Shipbuilding) signed a contract for the construction of 4 patrol vessels. These vessels were the result of the Marinestudie 2005 which proposed to sell 4 M-class (Karel Doorman class) frigates. With that money 4 patrol vessels should be bought, the Marine Corps should be strengthened, getting more capabilities for the successor of AOR HNLMS Zuiderkruis (the contract for this Joint Support Ship was signed this December) and re-introducing a minesweeping capability (in 2009 5 companies have send their proposals after a RFI).

However, even prior to signing the contract then Deputy Minister Cees van der Knaap criticised the Dutch defence industry.

A few years ago during economic hardship the Ministry, according to Van der Knaap, 'stuck out its neck to help the business ". As main example the Deputy Minister mentioned the acquisition of four patrol vessels. These had no priority for the MoD, but to prevent the industry from having empty shipyards, it was decided to buy the ships.

Characteristics
For an OPV - called Ocean Going Patrol Vessel by the MOD - it's huge at 3750t. Even if the MoD calls them 'small flexible patrol vessels'. It's bigger than the 3320t M-class it replaces.
There are a couple of reasons for this. First, mild steel is used to build the vessels. This is heavier than the high tensile steel used for frigates. Mild steel is cheaper and since the ships will only do 22 knots, high tensile steel is not necessary. A plus is that this cheaper steel is actually more blast resistant. The second reason is the use of a lot of armour on the ships and the last reason is the need to operate the NH-90 helicopter up to Sea State 5.

Length: 354ft.
Propulsion: Diesel-electric
Max Sustained Speed: 22kts
Range: 5000nm (@15kts)
Endurance: 21 days
Crew: 50 (max. 90 + 100 evacuees)
Armament: 1x 76mm Oto Melara, 1x30mm Marlin WS, 2x 12.7mm Hitrole (all remotely operated)
Stern Launch: 1
RHIB Davit: 1 RHIB
Aviation Facilities: One NH-90 + hangar
Cost: €120 million a piece of which about €30 million is for the Integrated Mast from Thales.

On paper it actually has a lot in common with the notional characteristics of the future Offshore Patrol Cutter from the USCG.

Missions
The missions the OPV's are intended to do are at the lower end of the spectrum of conflict. And compared to the M-class the OPV's are supposed to be a lot cheaper to use. The OPV's will do Coast Guard type duties -patrolling the Exclusice Economic Zones of the Kingdom of the Netherlands- and Maritime Security Operations around the globe. A lot of these MSO's tend te be relatively close to shore and not in the 'blue water'. Examples of these MSO's would be the current operations of the coast of Somalia against pirates (although that one is moving more and more towards the open ocean) and the UNIFIL Maritime Task Force that tries to prevent smuggling, especially of arms to Libanon.

What stands out
Looking at its intended missions, there are 4 things about the OPV's that really stand out. The first is the lack of a CIWS, the second is the Integrated Mast and all its capabilities, the third one is the lack of 'provisions for' and the last is its lean manning.

A CIWS is wat the Holland class is really missing. And having no "provisions for" means that the through-deck Goalkeeper is a no-go. Both the Phalanx and the Rolling Airframe Missile are options though. The SeaRAM that's currently being developed would be easier than the RAM, since the RAM must be integrated with the ship's combat system and the SeaRAM would have it's own independent sensors.

The capabilities of the Integrated Mast are really good (at least on paper). They are actually way beyond what an OPV would need. The reason that they did buy those masts is the Defence Industry Strategy from the MoD. This Strategy has highlighted 6 technology areas in which the Dutch Defence Industry has chances of developing products that could attract international customers. Sensor systems is one of these areas and so to help industry the Dutch MoD acts as launching customer.

The absence of 'provisions for' means that upgrade possibilities in armament are very limited.
The lack of a X-band Fire Control Radar means that the Seasparrow Missiles the M-class did have can't be used. For terminal guidance these and its successor the Evolved Seasparrow, require a X-band FCR.
And though the SM-6 would be a possibility, because it has active homing, adding a VLS means a rework of the internal layouts to the point that building a new ship would be easier. The same goes for the active homing MBDA Mica, which has another drawback: it would be a new addition to the Dutch inventory. And I do think these missile systems are too much for the Holland class and its intended missions.
There are however two other options. One is the possibilty to add point deffence missile launchers to the Marlin. There is a module to add MBDA's Mistral to the Marlin WS. The other one is to add the STRALES system to the 76mm. The first fully operational 76/62 STRALES should be installed on board an Italian Navy ship at the end of this year.

The lean manning is one of the reasons the costs of operation for the OPV are much lower than for those of an M-class frigate, since the OPV's have about 1/3 of the manning of the M-class.

The lean manning might make the ship relatively inexpensive to operate, but it has a couple of drawbacks. The small crew has been accomplished by a lot of automation, but that comes at certain risks. The biggest reduction to the crew has been achieved by the automation of damage control, which means that the crew size for damage control has been reduced a lot. But it does mean that there are few people to repair the ship in the event of an emergency, so it has to get into port for repairs much earlier than a frigate. And lets hope there's never a malfunction in this control system, because there are not enough people on board to take over.

The Marlin and Hitroles are both remotely operated. An operator has to point them to a target, but after that the Combat Management System takes over.

The main problem I see with the lean manning however are not in the above points, but with operating the sensor systems. I think that the Dutch Navy should assign someone to implement the proposal of Lt. dr. ir. Wilbert van Norden on a new decision support system by on the OPVs - in its wisdom the Navy has decided to assign Van Norden to HNLMS Evertsen for 3 years, instead of letting him implement his proposal on the OPVs. In his disertation Sensing What Matters he writes:

Decision support functionalities are needed to support the human operators on board Royal Netherlands Navy ships since the missions are increasingly complex and they take place in increasingly complex environments. Furthermore, growing complexity in sensor systems requires more knowledge to utilise these sensor systems to their fullest potential. The available human knowledge on board rnln ships however is decreasing due to a strive to reduce ship's complements and to reduce their training and education time. Where previously each individual sensor was assigned to a specialised operator, now one generic sensor operator is expected to control all sensors together.

The increasingly complex missions and environment he refers to are the missions in the littoral. There are a lot of vessels in the littoral, but not all are adverseries. Just look at the current operations of Somalia. There are a lot of skiffs out there, but not every skiff has pirates on board.
Operating sensor systems close to land is more difficult than on the open ocean. Near land the weather changes faster, making sensor performance harder to predict. There's also land clutter influencing sensor systems. The above makes it harder to find your targets, resulting in a small amount of time left in which to react. And having only a few operators makes it even more difficult than it already is.

Conclusion
With its Integrated Mast the operators on board will have a really clear picture of that anti-ship missile coming in. And while the greater range Mistral or STRALES system are nice to have, it's actually te CIWS that is really missing. This is after all an OPV, with a need for defence against an unforseen AShM or low slow flyer, and not a frigate. Everybody knows the story of what happened to INS Hanit and it shows that even these MSO's are not without danger. And who guarantees that Somali pirates can't get their hands on a Silkworm.
So for MSO operations, such as those mentioned already, a CIWS is absolutely necessary. Any suggestions that the OPV will be protected by coalition ships in these events is utter nonsence, since the ships aren't sailing in close tactical formation. They are widespread along the coastline and other ships will be too far away to offer any assistance. So the OPV has to be able to protect itself against an unforseen event. And while you may have a choice to not send the Holland-class on MSO's, that would effectively make it a Coast Guard ship without any need for either its current weaponry or sensor system.

A lot of times the OPV's will be operating in the littoral. A really complex environment with a lot of vessels, not all of whom are adverseries, and land nearby, which results in a lot of land clutter in the sensor systems. Both mean that you need more people to operate effectively in the littoral than on the open ocean. But the OPV's have a much smaller crew than the ships the Netherlands uses for these littoral tasks at the moment.
A new decision support system, such as the one proposed by Lt. dr. ir. Wilbert van Norden, could alleviate this problem.

So in its current form the Holland class are not the right ships for all of its intended missions. But this should be relatively easy to correct.

Dutch To Upgrade Goalkeeper CIWS

Deputy minister Jack de Vries has sent a letter to the Dutch Parliament informing them that the MoD is going to start a project aimed at upgrading the Goalkeeper CIWS.

The Goalkeeper has been designed by Signaal, then a subsidiary of Philips, between 1975 and 1979 and entered service with the Dutch Navy in 1980.

According to the letter the development of more sophisticated anti-ship missiles means the Goalkeeper has become less effective. Besides that a couple of parts are now technologically outdated, resulting in the system being more vulnerable to malfunctions.
The radar will be upgraded, to make the system better suitable against threats in the littorals.
The electronics, prime movers, control circuit apparatus and software will also be upgraded or replaced.
Thales Nederland and General Dynamics will be involved in the upgrade.
The actual upgrading will be done between 2012 and 2018 during the CIWS' regular maintenance.

At the moment it looks like the Dutch will have to pay for the development themselves, although the other countries that use the system have shown interest in the upgrade.

The Dutch intend to keep their Goalkeepers in service until 2025.

EU NAVFOR Have Been Busy This Weekend

It looks like the decision on the 24th of February to expand the objectives of Operation Atalanta to include control of Somali ports where pirates are based as well as going after mother ships is already paying off.

According to the EU NAVFOR website:

Over the weekend of 5 - 7 March, EU NAVFOR units have been involved in concerted operations to interdict and disrupt pirate action groups before they had the opportunity to pirate vessels in the Indian Ocean.

Six pirate action groups have been intercepted, mother ships and skiffs have been destroyed and over 40 pirates have been taken into custody.

The French captured 35 pirates and seized 4 motherships and 6 skiffs during these actions.

Now we'll have to wait and see what happens with the captured pirates.

Fired CO Accused of "Drag Racing"

I don't intend to write here about Captain Holly Graf's dismissal, only to say that drag racing one's ship should not be considered a black mark. All the great ones do it.

Bryan McGrath

CJCS Speech at Kansas State

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen gave a speech at Kansas State last night that has caused quite a stir in the military strategic blogosphere, and was heralded by the New York Times as having "re-calibrated" the use of force by the US military. Without identifying any of the writers, here is a sample of some of the reactions to the speech that appeared in my email today:

"The Mullen doctrine emerges"
"Sounds like a seminal speech to me"
"Could be a durable legacy"

The comparisons to the Powell/Weinberger Doctrine are being made, and people I respect very much seem to think that this speech was very important.

I've read it through several times now, and for the life of me, I just can't seem to figure out what all the fuss is about. You should read it for yourselves, but I'll cut and paste some of the meatier portions here, then comment on them.

First there's this: "And I’ve come to three conclusions - three principles - about the proper use of modern military forces. The first is that military power should not - maybe cannot - be the last resort of the state. Military forces are some of the most flexible and adaptable tools to policymakers. We can, merely by our presence, help alter certain behavior. Before a shot is even fired, we can bolster a diplomatic argument, support a friend or deter an enemy. We can assist rapidly in disaster-relief efforts, as we did in the aftermath of Haiti’s earthquake. We can help gather intelligence, support reconnaissance and provide security."

This is a straw man. As I wrote in an email about this subject earlier today, I haven't heard a single adult in Washington DC indicate that military "power" should be seen as a last resort. I've heard them cite military "force", but even Mullen's examples point to uses of the military (Haiti, ISR) that are clearly not uses of "force". This SOUNDS like meaningful stuff, especially when coming from the CJCS--but it really is pretty meaningless.

Then there's this: "There’s a broader issue involved here. For, in addition to bringing the full weight of the U.S. government to bear, we must also bring our allies and partners with us to the fight. Forty-two other nations fight alongside us in Afghanistan, as did so many others in Iraq. Whether by formal alliance or by informal agreement, these multinational commitments lend not only a higher sense of legitimacy to the effort, they lend to local populations certain skills and knowledge which we alone do not posses."

Has the CJCS just made a huge policy pronouncement committing the US to a future of use of force ONLY when allies and partners are willing to be brought along? Have we dealt away the ability to act unilaterally?

Next, there's this: "That brings me to number two: Force should, to the maximum extent possible, be applied in a precise and principled way. War costs the societies that engage in it a great deal; lives and resources diverted from pursuits that a more peaceful time would allow. Even now, as we are poised to reach 1,000 troop deaths in Afghanistan, we’re reminded of the thousands more Afghans who have been killed and the hundreds of over coalition soldiers who have likewise perished; not to mention the property and infrastructure damage that will yet take years from which to recover."

Again, words like these sound magnificent and meaningful when uttered by someone like Admiral Mullen, but doesn't Mullen's number two sound like two thousand years of Judeo-Christian teaching on just war theory?

Now, onto this: "Because frankly the battlefield isn’t necessarily a field anymore. It’s in the minds of the people. It’s what they believe to be true that matters. And when they believe that they are safer with Afghan and coalition troops in their midst and local governance at their service, they will resist the intimidation of the Taliban and refuse to permit their land from ever again becoming a safe haven for terror."

Obviously, Admiral Mullen is touching on a key aspect of counterinsurgency theory here--but the notion that war is only just now being played out in national psyches ignores history. Huge propaganda machines have accompanied nations going to war specifically to manipulate the thinking of the people, and acting to break or reinforce those notions has been the object of combatants throughout history.

More here: "The notion proffered by some that once set, a war policy cannot be changed, or that to do so implies some sort of weakness, strikes me not only as incompatible with our history but also as quite dangerous. Lincoln did not emancipate the slaves when Fort Sumter was fired upon. He made that policy change when he deemed it most necessary. Though he favored a Germany-first policy, FDR still struggled to properly balance the war’s efforts against both Japan and Hitler’s Germany. And Kennedy did not embark on the war in Vietnam with any sense that his successors would be fighting it at all, much less the way they did. "

Uh oh--another straw man. Who are these people who say that once a war policy is set it cannot be changed? Have we elected people like this? Have we promoted them to General or Admiral? If so, we're in deep trouble. The use of the straw man argument in modern rhetoric has been raised to a high art by the Commander in Chief, and it seems ADM Mullen has caught the bug.

But wait, there's more: "Contrary to popular imagination, war has never been a set-piece affair. The enemy adapts to your strategy and you adapt to his. And so you keep the interplay going between policy and strategy until you find the right combination at the right time."

Again--who thinks that war is a set piece affair? Are there names?


This was a solid, interesting speech given to an appreciative audience. It was not however, an important speech in terms of setting a new vision or moving the military in new directions. It was quite plainly a re-statement of the way things largely are and have been.

Bryan McGrath

Piracy Is Only Partially a Shore-based Problem

Herb Carmen, the Navy's Thinker in Residence at the Center for a New American Security and someone whose work I am coming to enjoy, has written a blog post that Tom Ricks has picked up on his Foreign Policy blog here.

All is well thus far for the unsuspecting reader--except that I was led to Ricks' post by a post by Carmen on Facebook in which he links to Ricks' post. Carmen appends the link with the following comment: "Gotta look ashore to stop piracy at sea."

I've heard this line of thinking before, and Martin Murphy (another friend, though not on Facebook) is growing prosperous as its leading proponent. That said, when I hear it, I cringe, not because it isn't partially true--because it is. But it has become one of those DC area "truths" that has become so firmly fixed in the lexicon of the piracy discussion that it is not often critiqued for completeness. More insidious though, is the fact that I have on more than one occasion--in person and on television--witnessed uniform wearing flag officers of the world's most powerful Navy hew to this line, generally in response to a question about "what is the Navy going to do about this?" Not wishing to get drawn into the argument/discussion of piracy as force structure driver, the flag officer tends to try and diminish the impact that Naval forces actually have on the problem, pointing rather to their organization, funding and logistics ashore.

I have used the line (which I alone seem to find funny) that calling piracy a shore-based problem is a little like the DC Chief of Police describing an open-air drug market as a "foreign policy problem". At some level of abstraction, the Chief of Police is correct--as are Carmen, and Murphy, and the unnamed flag officers. But at the level of action and consequences, that drug market is a local police issue, and piracy is an issue for sea-based forces. Will all the action take place at sea? No. Will capturing and killing pirates at sea have an impact? Absolutely. Empty chairs at pirate dinner tables (a.k.a the removal of incentives) whether through incarceration or expiration will serve as a message to others looking to join in the fun. Will forces from the sea likely be a large part of whatever action occurs ashore? Yes. Are such activities likely to be planned largely by representatives of the maritime forces? Yes.

Piracy has become the issue that "jumped the shark", taking us from a paradigm in which Jointness worship has been replaced by Interagency worship, the evidence of which can be seen in Naval Officers of various ranks not seeing the importance of OWNING a mission that is some ways is at the heart of the birth of all navies. The "piracy is a land-based" problem is tailor-made for the "Interagency", giving all sorts of opportunities for "root cause" discussions, diplomacy and development, and international cooperation. None of this is bad, mind you. None of it. What is bad is that the Navy seems content to join the orchestra, when it should be conducting it.

Bryan McGrath

The European Response to Haiti: United in Diversity

Where Information Dissemination has so far mainly focussed on the US response on the Haiti earthquake, here's a brief analysis of the European response.

Leadership
Let's start with asking that all important question: Who's in charge? The answer to the question is fairly easy. It's Catherine Ashton, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Have we seen her so far? Only very briefly.
The problem Ashton has is that she has 'competition' when it comes to Foreign Affairs. The competition are:
Spain, which holds the current Presidency of the Council of the EU.
Herman van Rompuy, the President of the European Council.
José Manuel Boroso, the President of the European Commission.
All the 27 ministers of Development Aid from the EU members.
Larger members making their own policy (think about France with its international donor conference).

This all makes that there is one guarantee with a EU answer to problems: it takes about forever before there's a general agreement on actions to be taken.

As a Dutch saying goes: with Baroness Ashton the EU isn't going to win the war. She was absent from European Defence Summit in Majorca on february the 24th, the first one since her installment. Javier Solana always attended these meetings and at this one NATO secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen was also present. Ashton, however, decided that it was much more important to attended the inauguration of President Yanukovych in Ukraine.
That doesn't give much hope for the future.

Money
So the only thing that the EU has commonly decided on is to pledge €330 million in aid. (That only took them SIX days, so it was a really quick response in EU-time.)
But member states have also pledged money separately. The Netherlands national government has promised about €44.5 million besides the EU offer. So it's almost impossible to figure out what the total amount is. Especially because some of the amounts are hard to decipher. Let me explain why that is.
That Dutch promise is made up of the immediate offer of 1 million. Later 2 million was added and then another 41,5 million. The last amount came about because the Dutch minister of Development Aid promised to match what the Dutch public would raise during a telethon. But only in the Dutch press the distinction is made everywhere else you only see the total amount of €83 million raised by the telethon.

Assets
The EU has hardly any assets, but its members do. So in true EU style there was hardly any coordination of all the individual efforts.
So what happened was some mad dash to send planes to Haiti. But it's a long flight to Haiti from Europe and a fair amount of planes couldn't land in Port-au-Prince because the airport was clogged up. The delays weren't too dramatic though, so these small scale efforts went reasonably well.

But the large scale effort is a real disappointment. Where are all those European LPDs, LHDs and carriers that were built because the future, since the Cold War is over, is in Sea Basing and disaster relief?
A few in Haiti, but mainly not going at all. And that's disappointing, since in total the EU members have 6 CV's, 2 LPH's, 2 LHD's, 11 LPD's, 4 LSD's

Spain has sent a LPD, the UK sent a LSD, Italy a CV and the Netherlands offered a LPD.
But it took these countries more than a week to offer them in the first place and not all vessels actually went. The Dutch LPD HNLMS Johan de Witt didn't go. The reason is the UN has said it will not be needed any more by the time it will get there. Now there's a shocker. That's what happens when you wait too long with a decision.
But the Dutch can now take the moral high ground. They offered and the UN has said it isn't necessary.

The EU will also send a European police force of 350. We all know that's going to be an invaluable contribution next to those 20,000+ American soldiers and 2,000 Canadian soldiers.

Conclusion
The EU members have definitely taken the EU motto “United in Diversity” quite literally. The lack of a coordinated response is certainly what unites them.

Any EU members still wondering why the US world doesn't take them serious, especially on a military level?

The European Commission's Seminar on Piracy

The Mobility and Transport department of the European Commission - the executive body of the EU - has a seminar today in Bruxelles called 'Piracy and armed robbery at sea: How best to protect seafarers'.

Looking at the agenda it seems like the focus of the seminar is on how seafarers can protect themselves, the impact of piracy on their personal lives and the economic consequences for shipping and insurance companies.
While this is an interesting subject, it's not one I'd discus with the Commission and if I were a seafarer or a shipping company I'd have different questions for the Commission.

I think the Commission should be discussing 2 points:
1. What's the role of the EU in protecting seafarers?
2. How best to protect seafarers.

While EU NAVFOR is the first maritime EU operation that's reasonably planned and not some haphazard action by individual members you can't help but wonder where all the EU vessels are. Together the EU members have about 120 frigates and destroyers. And they are struggling to deploy around 6 frigates a time.
So the role of the EU is to make sure its individual members deploy more resources to protect seafarers.

And on the second question the answer is simple: stop the piracy from happening.
And while the recent decision to expand the mission of Operation Atalanta to include control of Somali ports where pirates are based, as well as catching pirate mother ships will help, it's battling the symptons and ingnores the root of the problem. Because the root of the problem, as has been said by Galrahn and others often enough, is on land.
But who is seriously thinking the EU will intervene on land?

My Visit to the Air Command and Staff College

Apparently, it's now cool to ask why the country needs an independent Air Force. Last week, I traveled to the Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama to participate on a panel about the future of air power. I had been invited because of an article I wrote several years ago titled "Abolish the Air Force". Also on the panel were two gentlemen from RAND who had much more first hand experience with air power than myself. The audience consisted of the faculty and student body of the ACSC, roughly 400 or so mid-career officers. Most of the attendees were USAF, but there were also generous contingents from the Army, USN, USMC, and a variety of foreign military organizations.

I didn't use slides, and I didn't deliver precisely this lecture, but the linked presentation nevertheless represents a good summary of my remarks. After introductory remarks of 12-15 minutes each, the panel got down to the serious business of answering audience questions. In addition to the panel, I sat in on morning and afternoon classes focusing on roughly the same topic, where I answered more questions.

Below is a very rough summary of the questions I fielded and the answers I gave:

Are you serious?
As a heart attack. Some articles are written as part of a particular debate, and can only really be understood in the context of that debate; the claims made intelligible to the participants in a way that they're not available to outsiders. In this case, however, it means what it means; I think that the Air Force should be folded into the other two services. However, if I fail to snuff out the Air Force, I won't consider the article a failure; part of the point is to get people to think about the contingency and malleability of our institutions.

Relations between the traditional Army and the USAAF were pretty bad prior to and during World War II; wouldn't a return to that structure simply recreate those debates?
Possibly, but I think that many of the questions that animated those debates have become obsolete. The debate in the interwar period became very polarized, with air advocates arguing that the ground army was literally useless, and ground advocates allocating only a very small role to aerial forces. While I'm suspicious of "history teaches us" arguments, I nevertheless think that history has taught us that ground and air units must work together in order to have tactical, operational, and strategic effect. The current arrangement, in my view, makes that more rather than less difficult. Moreover, I think that aerial forces were improperly allocated between the services during the interwar period, and that this allocation caused some of the tension. In particular, strategic air components, especially today but even then, are more at home in the Navy than in the Army.

You argue that the career of military officer isn't as specialized now as it was in the past. This seems crazy to me. Explain why you say such crazy things.
I think it's clear that individual military careers are more specialized now than they have ever been; the technical requirements of flying an aircraft or operating sophisticated computer equipment or doing dozens of other tasks take years to learn. However, this specialization is largely independent of branch organization; a USAF lieutenant could be trained in most of the tasks of a USN ensign without really missing a beat. This is to say that while military professionals specialize in lots of things, they don't really specialize in being an "Air Force officer," or at least not in a way that is meaningfully distinct from being a "Naval officer."

Why pick on the Air Force? Why not just create a unified military, like Canada or China?
Because I think that there's some logic to the "mission" justification for independent services. I think that it's possible for both the Army and the Navy to think about conducting war independent of each other, or at least that it's much more possible for the Army and Navy to do so than for the Air Force. Apart from strategic bombing, every mission that the Air Force conducts by nature involves tight cooperation with one of the other two services. It seems to me that, if this is the case, the use of airpower ought to be conceived of as an organic element of how the Army and the Navy manage military force.

But what about strategic bombing?
Like Robert Pape, I'm very skeptical of the effectiveness of strategic bombing campaigns. I think that they violate an essential Clauswitzian prescription by failing to disarm the enemy, and that consequently they inevitably leave the decision whether to concede or endure in the hands of the enemy. Moreover, I think that the existence of an independent Air Force creates a situation in which civilians are faced with bad, destructive options about the use of military force. The Air Force, like every single other bureaucratic institution in existence, by nature tries to acquire more resources and improve its competitive stance. Consequently, the Air Force has a vested interest in presenting its best case for military intervention, just as do the Army and the Navy. In the case of the Air Force, this best case appears to the untrained civilian eye to be a cheap, easy, and effective way to wage war. This leads, in my view, to poor decisions about military engagement.

But what of the Air Force's elite service tradition?Service traditions should be taken seriously; military organizations reinforce and emphasize tradition for a reason. Tradition and esprit de corps allow a military organization to function. I'm just not convinced that the Air Force elite service tradition is that much more effective than, say, the elite service tradition of the Marines or of naval aviators. This is to say that branch independence doesn't seem to be strictly necessary to the maintenance of an elite service tradition.

This is only a partial recap of the questions I answered; all of the questions were good, some I answered more than once, and most I answered less cogently than I suggest here. I was impressed, but not surprised, by the professionalism of the student body and the incisiveness of their questions.

Finally, I recently received a grant to work on an expanded version of this argument. Hopefully it will lead to some form of publication, although I don't yet have a sense of where or in what form. This project has, however, helped push back my work on the history of anti-submarine warfare.

2010 Patterson School Policy Simulation

Beginning on Friday at noon, the Patterson School ran a 22 hour simulation of an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. Patterson School policy simulations are designed to create situations in which student must make decisions in a limited time frame based on asymmetric and incomplete information. In the past, we have simulated a coup in Belarus, the death of Fidel Castro, and a hostage crisis in Afghanistan, among other events.

Structure:
The teams consisted of 5-6 students, led by either a faculty member or a recent graduate. The students played the foreign and defense policy principals of their respective states, with the leader playing the CoG (Russia and Iran both had two CoGs).

United States
United Nations
Israel
Iran
Iraq
Russia
Saudi Arabia

The simulation was primarily focused on the key political decisions associated with the fallout of the attack, rather than the military details. When necessary, Simulation Control (myself and two recent Patterson graduates) supplied information and made rulings regarding military efforts. The simulation was conducted in real time, although certain events were telescoped for playability and dramatic effect.

As was the case in the last two years, the Patterson School conducted the simulation in cooperation with the University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Telecommunications. Students from the SJT operated websites representing two news networks, Gulf News Service (an Al Jazeera clone) and International News Network (a CNN clone). These networks were managed by faculty from the SJT, and were independent from Simulation Control; on more than one occasion one of the networks declined to run stories from Simulation Control either because of a lack of confirmation or a lack of newsworthiness.

Course of the Simulation:
The simulation began when the last Israeli aircraft left Iranian airspace at 12pm EST. In order to create an incentive for a second strike (and thus tension between the teams), Simulation Control posited an intelligence leak from Israel to Russia, then from Russia to Iran. This leak allowed Iran to organize its air defense network such that the effectiveness of the Israeli strike was reduced. Nevertheless, Iranian forces were badly mauled, losing dozens of interceptors and suffering damage to all key targets in exchange for downing seven Israeli bombers. One surviving pilot was eventually captured in Iran, and another was captured by a pro-Iranian militia in Iraq.

The Iranians responded with a limited ballistic missile strike against Israel. Most of the missiles were intercepted, about half by the United States and half by Israel. The remaining missiles did no significant damage. Iran also pressured Hezbollah and Hamas to engage Israel. Simulation Control proceeded on the assumption that both Hezbollah and Hamas would be reluctant to commit there full strength to this, and consequently the attacks in both north and south were light. Nevertheless, Israel became involved in a costly series of tit-for-tat exchanges with Hezbollah.

Overall, however, the Iranians played it very cool. They made no effort to destabilize Iraq; in fact, they explicitly pressured affiliates in Iraq to refrain from attacks. Iran also made no attacks on Gulf shipping, or on any other targets. This posture clearly defied the expectations of Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Iraq, and Simulation Control. The lack of a strong Iranian response left attention squarely on Israel, in particular the violation of Saudi and Iraqi airspace in the course of the attack.

The destruction of above ground facilities at Natanz, and the consequent dispersal of stockpiled LEU, focused the attention of the United Nations and became a growing problem for Israel. Increased radiation levels were discovered in several neighboring countries, increasing pressure for a ceasefire and for the introduction of IAEA inspectors for damage assessment. The United States, the United Nations, and Saudi Arabia all pressed early for a formal ceasefire, while the Saudis and the Russians attempted to take advantage of back channel approaches in order to end the war. The Saudis, however, were involved in a double game; they were attempting to facilitate a second Israeli strike in order to finish off previously damaged targets while they were publicly pursuing the cease fire. For their troubles, Simulation Control blew up a police station in Medina.

The restrained attitudes of both the United States and Iran led to domestic difficulties in both countries. In Iran, Mousavi and the Green movement attacked the Iranian government from the right, accusing the Ahmadinejad regime of failing to respond adequately to the Israeli attacks. State security organizations, however, managed to hold the protests in check. In the United States, the Obama administration came under immediate assault from the right for failing to sufficiently support Israel. However, the mutual policies of restraint helped both the US and Iranian teams keep a lid on the situation; with only limited provocation, it was easier for the teams to ignore domestic critics. Simulation Control attempted to ramp up the domestic tension with a series of twitter feeds, but this didn't work as well as hoped. It's worth noting that the Friday evening/Shabbos timing of the attack probably would have limited the mobilization of domestic opposition within the United States.

Israel was hampered by an increasingly troubled relationship with the US, and by the lack of sufficient "bunker buster" ordnance. Eventually, at around 7:15 am on Saturday, they ordered a second strike, in spite of US refusals of in-flight refueling, replacement ordnance, and access to Iraqi airspace. This led to a dramatic confrontation with the United States over Iraq, with US SAMs eventually targeting and shooting down an Israeli F-16. Shortly after this took place, we called the simulation.

Evaluation:
This was the most intricate simulation that Patterson has run in several years, and it came off relatively well. As the purpose of the Patterson simulation is to place decision-making responsibility in the hands of tired, tense, ill-informed students, we made a decision long ago to sacrifice realism for drama. Obviously, a US shoot-down of an Israeli warplane is exceedingly unlikely to happen in the real world. Then again, the turn of events was very surprising to Simulation Control. To the extent that the simulation revealed anything of policy relevance, it suggested that a policy of restraint on the part of Iran could cause some serious strategic problems for Israel. Iran suffered substantial damage to its nuclear facilities and Air Force, but was generally perceived to have won a major diplomatic victory (although for reasons that were unclear to Simulation Control, relations with Russia soured). The United States also did relatively well; the US position in Iraq was not threatened, and there was no evident danger to the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf. Israel managed to cause some damage, but at the expense of serious tension with its major sponsor and a general perception of ineffectiveness.

For a more general take, see this article in the Kentucky Kernel.