The essay by @KofmanMichael in this volume is the single most interesting thing I've read on NATO-Russia military questions for a long time. "While in the abstract NATO may appear superior ... in reality Excel spreadsheets don’t fight" frivarld.se/wp-content/upl…
"The Russian General Staff would not expect the decisive phase of conflict to last beyond 2-3 weeks, at which time most precision-guided munitions would be expended and the war liable to escalate to nuclear employment." frivarld.se/wp-content/upl…
"From a Russian perspective, the initial period of war will be decided by the contest between aerospace assault and aerospace defense, and the ability of the two sides to destroy each other’s critical infrastructure. Ground forces matter little" frivarld.se/wp-content/upl…
"While Moscow expects any war with a coalition to constitute a regional war, there is a perplexing notion in the West that conflict can be localized to the Baltics ... a conflagration in the Baltics is a low probability event" frivarld.se/wp-content/upl…
"Those familiar with the last several decades of US combat operations would recognize that A2/AD as a strategy against US airpower is not especially viable, which is why Russian literature on the subject clearly indicates that they consider defense to be cost prohibitive"
"Russian operational-level thinking has leaned more towards the offensive ... far too much attention is paid in the West to the problem of getting forces into the theater, not enough time is spent on question of attrition in the initial period of warfare" frivarld.se/wp-content/upl…
On Russian options for escalation management. "These include deterrence by intimidation, the use of single or grouped strikes with conventional precision weapons, nuclear demonstration, and selective nuclear strikes in follow-on phases of conflict" frivarld.se/wp-content/upl…
"Whether NATO collectively responds to aggression is immaterial as long as the US commits and is afforded opportunity to do so by necessary allies .. without the US, even if all of NATO responds its chances of success in the initial period of war are slim" frivarld.se/wp-content/upl…
"deterrence remains a common place slogan for policies that are about anything except deterrence. Meanwhile, there is no strategy for dealing with Russia beyond sanctions, spending on military capability in Europe" frivarld.se/wp-content/upl…
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I wrote this week on the latest skirmishing in the crypto wars. End-to-end encryption has conquered the world. Governments continue to push back in defence of lawful intercept. But the debate around technical solutions has changed little in years. economist.com/international/…
A few sources for this piece. In 2018 & 2021 a pair of GCHQ officials proposed various solutions for reconciling gov't interception with end-to-end encryption. The first piece proposed that govts could be added secretly to particular communications: lawfaremedia.org/article/princi…
The second proposed various types of "client-side scanning"—automatically comparing content on a device to a stored library of illegal material—as a way of detecting child sexual abuse material on social media sites without intercepting content in transit. arxiv.org/abs/2207.09506
A CNAS tabletop exercise. "This study finds that a hypothetical, protracted U.S.-PRC conflict creates conditions under which nonstrategic nuclear weapons use is both appealing to the PRC and difficult to manage for the United States" cnas.org/publications/r…
"once nuclear escalation in the Indo-Pacific occurs, reciprocal tactical nuclear exchanges may continue, but not necessarily lead to general nuclear war." cnas.org/publications/r…
"These findings reflect the fundamental differences of deterrence in the emerging Indo-Pacific era, where distinct geography, targets, and capabilities make limited nuclear escalation potentially more tolerable than in the Cold War era." cnas.org/publications/r…
“Russia has trained its navy to target sites deep inside Europe with nuclear-capable missiles in a potential conflict with Nato, according to secret files…Maps of targets as far-flung as the west coast of France and Barrow-in-Furness” on.ft.com/4fzYtM2
‘The document notes the navy’s “high manoeuvrability” allows it to conduct “sudden & pre-emptive blows” and “massive missile strikes . . . from various directions”. It adds that nuclear weapons are “as a rule” designated for use “in combination with other means of destruction”..’
‘The presentation also references the option of a so-called demonstration strike — detonating a nuclear weapon in a remote area “in a period of immediate threat of aggression” before an actual conflict to scare western countries.’ on.ft.com/4fzYtM2
Kommersant reports from Kursk. General sense being chaos & abandonment by Moscow. “I want to understand where our state is at all? Where is the administration? I wish they could talk to us. We don't know anything at all… there's no one.” kommersant.ru/doc/6890223
“Why wasn't there a fucking evacuation? Everyone ran away as best they could - under fire, under kamikaze drones! Why did they lie on TV to the last? They said that the situation was stable” kommersant.ru/doc/6890223?fr…
“Tell the state that we want to see them. Let the state tell us the truth - what should we expect? Will we return to our homes or can we say goodbye to them? Well, at least some crumb of honest information from the state!” kommersant.ru/doc/6890223?fr…
Struck by the fact that we can barely work out with confidence which Ukrainian brigades & what proportion of them are properly in in Kursk, let alone if anything is in reserve & what precisely is happening. OSINT can be absolutely magical, and sometimes incredibly limiting.
And so beware wild evidence free speculation however enjoyable it feels.
This seems to have been taken as a complaint. It is not. It is a comparison between the relatively high levels of battlefield transparency we have become used to, esp. when front lines are static, to when they become fluid & when Ukr prioritises surprise.