Ein paar kurze Gedanken zur zukünftigen amerikanischen Sicherheitspolitik unter Donald Trump. 🧵 1/n

Vielleicht der wichtigste Punkt zuerst: Eine erneute Präsidentschaft von Trump bedeutet nicht, dass die USA in den Isolationismus abgleiten und sich allmählich von der Weltbühne zurückziehen werden. Dieses Narrativ ist ein großer Irrtum! Es wäre grundlegend falsch zu glauben, die Skepsis Trumps und anderer Elemente seiner Partei gegenüber der NATO und sonstigen internationalen Verpflichtungen der USA sei gleichbedeutend mit einer militärischen Selbstbeschränkung und einem erneuten Isolationismus.

‘China accounts for 90% of Russia’s microelectronics imports and 70% of its machine tools. These inputs have enabled Russia to churn out cruise missiles and drones. China’s support has had surprising effects elsewhere on the battlefield: a jump in Chinese excavator imports in 2022 helped Russia build formidable defence..’
from @TheEconomisteconomist.com/international/… ‘Just as important, and less well known, is the booming exchange of technology. Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have created abundant opportunities to swap technical know-how.…[Iran] gains real-time insight into the effectiveness of its weapons against Western defences, while Russia learns from Iranian advisers how to conduct air attacks that mix drones and missiles. Russia is sharing information about its jamming of drone-control and gps signals with Iran…It is also sending the Islamic Republic captured Western kit, which will probably be stripped for technical examination.’

The Soviet Union played a critical role in fueling Nazi Germany's war machine during its European military campaigns from 1939 to 1941, providing essential resources that significantly bolstered German military power. I am mentioning a few examples below.

https://twitter.com/MilHistNow/status/1837709910072586278

Prior to the German invasion in June 1941, the Soviet Union under Stalin supplied Nazi Germany with vast quantities of crucial resources: 1.75 million tons of wheat, 23,000 tons of chrome, 214,000 tons of phosphate, and 440,000 tons of various strategic materials including rubber, wolfram, copper, tin, soybeans, and whale oil.

Interesting & informative piece. wsj.com/world/behind-u… „At around 3 a.m. on Aug. 6, they unleashed an intense barrage from six M777 howitzers, supplied by Ukraine’s Western backers, which were set up along a stretch of the border aiming into Russia.“

It looks like that some politicians in Germany only now seem to grasp that there are specific escalatory risks involved when relying on warfighting concepts built around conventional long-range strike capabilities to deter future Russian aggression. Escalatory risks that can be managed I should add with with fine-tuning concepts & doctrine among other things. Deterrence does require some calculated risk taking. De-facto silence in Germany by both civilian & military leaders on this subject was quite unhelpful.

The public debate on the stationing of new ground-based US long-range strike capabilities in Germany as part of a US Army Multi-Domain Task Force (MTDF) is interesting as it neatly illustrates the vertical escalatory potential of emerging conventional US warfighting concepts. These US warfighting concepts, in part based on conventional long-range precision fires (& information advantage/superiority), can blur the line of conventional & nuclear deterrence, especially when used against the military forces of a nuclear-armed state.

“There are other serious challenges in the current efforts to train Ukrainian soldiers. The most consistent among those EUMAM trainers cite are language and culture issues.” mwi.westpoint.edu/what-does-euro… “Some of the older German officers mention that their knowledge of East German military institutions helps them understand most of the organizational and doctrinal issues the Ukrainians face due to their shared Soviet legacies.”

“In the past six months, Ukraine intercepted around 46% of Russian missiles, compared with 73% in the preceding six-month period, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of daily data from the Ukrainian Air Force Command.” “Last month the interception rate fell to 30% of missiles. The interception rate for long-range Shahed drones, which are easier to shoot down, fell just 1 percentage point to 82% in the past six months.”

. @KofmanMichael and I have a new piece out in @SurvivalEditors 👇

In it we argue that the operative factor in this war is attrition, inflicted primarily through artillery/strike drones, & consequently needs to be included in any theory of success.

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10… While Western countries should continue to help Ukrainian forces improve their overall quality & their ability to scale up combined-arms operations, prevailing conditions in Ukraine still favor attritional & positional approaches rather than those suitable for maneuver warfare.

‘The western official says that a strategy of “active defence” — holding defensive lines but probing for weak spots to exploit coupled with long-range air strikes — would allow Ukraine to “build out its forces” this year…’ h/t @ChristopherJM

ft.com/content/d2f3b2… …and prepare for 2025, when a counteroffensive would have a better chance.’

‘Oleksandr Syrsky…suggested this week that the strategy does not amount to a drastic shift. “Our goals remain unchanged: holding our positions . . .exhausting the enemy by inflicting maximum losses.”’

My latest for @ForeignPolicy: 'What Ridley Scott’s ‘Napoleon’ Gets Wrong About War'

The film’s ideas have poisoned military thinking for centuries.
🧵👇 1/n

foreignpolicy.com/2023/12/02/nap… I’m just a defense analyst, so I’ll leave a proper critique of Ridley Scott’s new blockbuster biopic Napoleon to the many reviewers who have already disparaged it.
My perspective on Napoleon is a different one. 2/n

I just returned from another research trip to Ukraine with @KofmanMichael, @RALee85, & @konrad_muzyka. My colleagues and I gained lots of new insights into the current state of the war some of which we will share publicly in the near future. Here are a 5 quick thoughts: 1. Morale remains high, but exhaustion among troops & impact on attrition on materiel is visible. Defenses are holding while offensive operations continue along select parts of the front; innovative new tactical concepts are being tried out.

#New (short) 🧵: @konrad_muzyka, @RALee85, @KofmanMichael, & I just returned from another research trip in Ukraine. We gained lots of new insights into the current state of war some of which we will share publicly. Here are a few quick thoughts. 1. Morale remains high, but exhaustion among troops and impact on attrition on materiel is visible.
2. The importance of the FPV drone adaption battle and ability to scale FPV production for current & future military operations by both sides cannot be overstated.

I thought tanks were obsolete?

"Tanks, though increasingly vulnerable to drones, loitering munitions and modern anti-tank guided missiles, which strike from the top, remain the only platform on the battlefield combining mobility, protection and serious firepower." Similar to how the IDF fought initially in the 1973 War.

“They [Russians in Ukraine] fought there in a single-corps fashion, instead of using combined arms tactics,” says Brigadier General Hisham Ibrahim, commander of the IDF's Armoured Corps.

economist.com/briefing/2023/…

Any upcoming military operation will also for the first time test some of the core tenets of the IDFs new & much debated ‘Decisive Victory’ operational concept. The "Decisive Victory" concept has been specifically developed by the IDF over the past years to rapidly defeat “diffuse, rocket-based terror armies” (i.e Hamas & Hizbollah) Its success or failure can also perhaps teach other militaries much about the future of warfare.

#Neu: Österreich kauft 8 IRIS-T SLS/SLM Luftverteidigungssysteme. Eine Einheit/System besteht aus einer taktischen Einsatzzentrale, 3 Launcher mit jeweils 8 Lenkflugkörpern, einem Radarsystem und einer Materialerhaltungseinrichtung. Vier der Systeme sollen über eine kurze Reichweite (SLS, 15 bis 20 Kilometer) bzw. mittlerere Reichweite (SLM, 40 bis 50 Kilometer) verfügen. In Summe also werden 24 Raketenwerfer.
kleinezeitung.at/politik/innenp…

Must-read by @KofmanMichael & @RALee85 in @WarOnTheRocks on Ukraine's counteroffensive at three months.

"Ukraine’s offensive neither is over, nor has it failed."

warontherocks.com/2023/09/persev… "What the past 18 months of fighting illustrate is that Western nations need to develop a long-term plan to sustain and improve Ukraine’s war effort instead of pinning hopes on the next capability that will be introduced on the battlefield."

6 kurze Punkte zur 🇺🇦 Gegenoffensive:

1. Der mediale Fokus liegt zu sehr auf die einzelnen 🇷🇺Verteidigungslinien. Durchbrüche an einzelnen Stellen der diversen Linien mögen taktisch signifikant sein, haben aber wenig Aussagekraft bezüglich strategischer Erfolge. 2. Es war immer klar, dass früher oder später die 🇷🇺 Verteidigungslinien durchbrochen werden können. Die Frage war immer unter welchen Bedingungen, vor allem ob die Ukraine noch genügend Reserven haben wird um in den Bewegungskrieg überzugehen und tief in den Raum zu stoßen.

Good piece. The “engine driving the effort [breaching Russian layered defenses] are hundreds of small-scale assault groups, often just 8 to 10 soldiers, each tasked with attacking a single trench, tree line or house.” nytimes.com/2023/09/02/wor… “Before attacking Russians in a village, Ukrainians fight to control the elevated positions on the flanks, hoping to make the Russian positions untenable and limit the house-to-house fighting.”

Interesting article on Ukrainian special forces’ evolving operational concepts in the face of more effective Russian electronic warfare capabilities. Squares with some of the info we gathered last month. washingtonpost.com/world/2023/08/… Good tactical vignette: “The Russians were using the electronic warfare system to spoil the work of Ukraine’s satellite-guided rockets. The drone…crashed into one of the antennas, detonating on contact.”

New🧵: @konrad_muzyka , @RALee85 , @KofmanMichael,& I spent some time this month visiting the frontlines in Ukraine to gain new insights into the ongoing counteroffensive & the war overall. Here are some general observations. (Note: More detailed analysis will be coming out by all of us in the coming weeks.)

First off, we spoke to NCOs, officers, a number of brigade commanders (national guard & regular army) in the field plus senior intel & defense officials in Kyiv (alongside @DAlperovitch).