What's going on in the World Today 180719

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USA

Naval Update Map: July 19, 2018

Air Force cuts pilot training by five weeks

New system looks to provide solution to aviator retention crisis

By Sig Christenson

Billy Calzada
T-38 instructor pilot Josh Thomson uses a computer flight simulator at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph. Thomson is assigned to the 560th Flying Training Squadron.

The Air Force has cut as much as five weeks from the time required to teach novice pilots to earn their wings, a move that will help it replace rapidly departing veteran aviators.

But some instructors are wary of the change, warning that it could lead to a disastrous future for the service.

The new syllabus already is in use and for the first time in decades will trim the duration of undergraduate pilot training — called UPT — from 54.7 weeks to an average of 49.2 weeks.

A key element is that the best students will be able to finish the course faster.

Several veteran instructor pilots, speaking on condition they not be identified because of possible retribution, expressed concern that the syllabus makeover is too much, too fast, and could lead to unintended and even deadly consequences...

Army Is Spending Half a Billion to Train Soldiers to Fight Underground:

The Army is training and equipping 26 of its 31 combat brigades for subterranean warfare.

U.S. Army leaders say the next war will be fought in mega-cities, but the service has embarked on an ambitious effort to prepare most of its combat brigades to fight, not inside, but beneath them.

Late last year, the Army launched an accelerated effort that funnels some $572 million into training and equipping 26 of its 31 active combat brigades to fight in large-scale subterranean facilities that exist beneath dense urban areas around the world.

For this new type of warfare, infantry units will need to know how to effectively navigate, communicate, breach heavy obstacles and attack enemy forces in underground mazes ranging from confined corridors to tunnels as wide as residential streets. Soldiers will need new equipment and training to operate in conditions such as complete darkness, bad air and lack of cover from enemy fire in areas that challenge standard Army communications equipment...

Production of howitzers flawed as Army nears $1.3B decision

Manufacturer faces poor welding, other issues, Pentagon says

BAE Systems’ manufacture of the U.S. Army’s new howitzer is hobbled by poor welding, supply chain problems and delivery delays even as the service nears a $1.3 billion decision on full production, according to the Pentagon’s contract management agency.

Among the setbacks have been a six-month halt in deliveries last year because of welding flaws and the return of 50 of 86 vehicles that had already been delivered due to repair production deficiencies.


Nevertheless, Army officials plan to meet on Thursday to decide on approval of full-rate production, the most lucrative phase for London-based BAE. That would trigger $1.3 billion in contract options and increase vehicle production to about 60 from 48 a year, according to a Pentagon program assessment...


F-35 Engine Upgrade Would Enable Directed Energy Weapons

Pratt & Whitney is refining its proposed upgrade path for the F135 Joint Strike Fighter engine to include increased power and thermal management system (PTMS) capability following feedback on its initially proposed upgrade package from the F-35 Joint Program Office.

Additional power and thermal management capability will enable the use of directed energy weapons and other advanced offensive and defensive systems and, if approved, would feature in an upgrade package called Growth Option 2.0 (GO2). Pratt & Whitney, which would roll PTMS into a suite of compressor and turbine enhancements originally proposed in the first upgrade package, G01, says the complete upgrade could be available within four years of getting the official go-ahead.

Growth Option 1.0, which was floated with the JPO in 2017, offered 5% fuel reductions and as much as 10% higher thrust. Offered as a cost-neutral upgrade, it was always meant to form part of a longer-term, two-stage improvement road map for the F-35 engine under plans first unveiled by the manufacturer in 2015. However, with the move to combine GO1 and 2 into a more complete enhancement package, Pratt is tailoring the revised proposal to closer match the F-35 upgrade road map recently outlined under the C2D2 continuous improvement strategy.
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AFRICA

U.S. intelligence documents on Nelson Mandela made public

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Thousands of pages of U.S. intelligence documents on Nelson Mandela were made public on Wednesday, revealing that Washington continued to monitor the South African anti-apartheid hero as a potential Communist menace even after he was released from prison, a group that sued to obtain the papers said.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama delivers the 16th Nelson Mandela annual lecture, marking the centenary of the anti-apartheid leader's birth, in Johannesburg, South Africa July 17, 2018. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko
The Washington-based group Property of the People released the papers to mark the 100th anniversary of Mandela’s birth. It said it obtained them after years of litigation.

“The documents reveal that, just as it did in the 1950s and 60s with Martin Luther King Jr and the civil rights movement, the FBI aggressively investigated the U.S. and South African anti-apartheid movements as Communist plots imperiling American security,” the group’s president Ryan Shapiro said in a statement.

ASIA

The Japanese Death Cult's String of Futility

Highlights

◾From the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, Aum Shinrikyo launched the most ambitious weapons-of-mass-destruction program ever by a non-state actor.
◾Despite devoting years of effort and tens of millions of dollars, the program met with only limited success.
◾Using more readily available weapons such as guns and explosives remains far cheaper and more effective in causing mass casualties.

On July 6, Japanese authorities executed Shoko Asahara, the founder of the apocalyptic Aum Shinrikyo cult, and six of his followers, closing the book on one of the most high-profile acts of terrorism in modern Japanese history. Aum Shinrikyo is best known for the March 1995 attack in which the group released the nerve agent sarin on five different trains in the Tokyo subway system, killing 12 people and sickening hundreds of others. But the group's most infamous action was far from its first attempt to inflict mass casualties on an unsuspecting public.

Not many people are aware that before the subway assault, Aum Shinrikyo used a variety of biological and chemical agents to conduct a number of assassination attempts and other attacks. It was responsible for 20 confirmed attacks or attempts between 1990 and 1995, 13 using chemical agents and seven using biological agents. The Japanese government further suspects that Aum Shinrikyo was behind another 13 attacks that remain unsolved. In addition, there were six others that are believed to be the work of individual members or copycats. The group also reportedly executed 20 or so dissident members using VX nerve agent.

EUROPE

Stuck Between the U.S. and the EU, Poland Explores Its Options

In this photograph, demonstrators carry Polish and European Union flags during a 2016 rally in Gdansk, Poland.

Highlights

◾Friction between the United States and the European Union will force Poland to find a balance between its main security ally and its main economic partners.

◾Poland will seek to preserve its alliance with the United States on issues varying from energy to security.

◾While Poland will remain skeptical of European integration, it will not do anything to jeopardize its membership in the Continental union.

These are turbulent times for U.S.-EU relations. In recent weeks, the White House and the European Union have clashed over various issues, including the Iran nuclear deal, defense and trade, and have produced friction that could disrupt the political, economic and security institutions that the United States and Europe created after World War II. The developments give most European countries cause for concern, but the issues represent a particularly significant challenge for Poland, because its main security ally — the United States — is at odds with its main economic partner — the European Union. The disputes threaten Poland's interests, but this period of difficulty also presents Warsaw with a variety of options and opportunities.

Poland's geopolitical relevance cannot be overstated. The largest country on the European Union's eastern flank has one of the fastest-growing economies in the bloc and is an important part of Germany's supply chain. It is also the only member of the European Union that shares a land border with both Russia (in Kaliningrad, one of the most heavily militarized areas on the Continent) and Ukraine (which has been in a military conflict with Russia since 2014). In addition, Poland, once the poster child for European integration, is now governed by a nationalist party that questions the benefits of European federalization and seeks alliances with like-minded countries in the region. Given that state of affairs, events in Poland have an impact that travels well beyond its borders...


Ukrainian troops keep Russia on their minds as they train with US Marines

MYKOLAIV REGION, Ukraine — The U.S. Marines were firing at a fictional enemy, but the Ukrainian marines firing by their side during the past few days had one very real adversary on their mind: Russia.

Exercise Sea Breeze, which launched July 9 and brings together 19 nations, is a lot like many other annual drills at the operational level, and it brought with it the standard messages from U.S. officials about European partnership and cooperation.

But in this case, Ukrainians are going to use what they learn to fight separatists backed by Russia, which took the Crimean Peninsula from them in 2014 and whose leader, Vladimir Putin, is scheduled to meet with President Donald Trump on Monday in Helsinki.

Trump and Putin will discuss Ukraine, conflict in Syria and Russian election meddling in the U.S., Trump said last week.

Trump did not rule out recognizing as legitimate Russia’s seizure of Crimea, which he said happened on President Barack Obama’s watch.

The Russian takeover of the peninsula, where both the Russian and Ukrainian navies had headquarters, divided the Ukrainian 1st Marine Battalion, as many marines stayed in Crimea and sided with Russia.

Since then, the marines loyal to Ukraine — like U.S. Marines, their motto is “Always Faithful” — have deployed frequently to the country’s eastern region to fight the Russia-backed separatists...

LATIN/SOUTH AMERICA

NOTHING SIGNIFICANT TO REPORT

AFGHANISTAN

NOTHING SIGNIFICANT TO REPORT

CHINA

China's Unlikely Weapon: Tourists

Highlights

China will increasingly play gatekeeper to the country's growing middle-class market for luxury goods, manufactures and food products. This consumer class will only gain more clout in the coming decades.

Flows of Chinese tourists will be an unexpected tool of statecraft, raising the potential for sharp disruptions to the travel and aviation sectors.

These risks are particularly high in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, but extend across Southeast Asia and into the islands of the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific.

Decades of explosive economic growth has handed China numerous tools it can use to exert its influence abroad. Massive defense outlays, foreign direct investment and the sprawling Belt and Road Initiative are the most visible expressions of China's economic might. But amid these earthshaking projects, the Chinese consumer has slowly gained clout. And as mounting trade tensions with the United States have shown, China can and will regulate access to its growing market...


IRAN

Iran opens new centrifuge rotor factory: nuclear chief

Tehran has vowed to boost uranium enrichment capacity to pressure remaining signatories to live up to the nuclear deal.

An Iranian factory has started to produce rotors for up to 60 centrifuges a day, upping the stakes in a confrontation with the United States over the Islamic Republic's nuclear programme.

The announcement by the head of Iran's atomic agency on Wednesday came a month after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered agencies to prepare to increase uranium enrichment capacity, if the nuclear deal with world powers falls apart after Washington's withdrawal.

Under terms of the 2015 agreement, which was also signed by Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, Iran agreed to curb its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief...

The other signatories have scrambled to save the accord, arguing it offers the best way to stop Iran from developing a nuclear bomb.

Iran has said it will wait to see what the other powers will do, but signalled it is ready to get its enrichment activities back on track. It has regularly said its nuclear programme is just for electricity generation and other peaceful projects...

...Salehi also told state TV on Wednesday the effort to acquire uranium has resulted in a stockpile of as much as 950 tonnes.

He said Iran imported 400 tonnes since the 2015 landmark nuclear deal, bringing its stockpile to between 900-950 tonnes - up from 500 tonnes.

Salehi said that's enough for Iran to reach its longtime goal of 190,000 centrifuge machines to enrich uranium.

The nuclear accord limits Iran's uranium enrichment to 3.67 percent, enough to use in a nuclear power plant but far lower than the 90 percent needed for an atomic weapon.

However, since the US pulled out of the deal in May, Iran has vowed to boost enrichment capacity to put pressure on the remaining signatories to live up to the agreement.

IRAQ

NOTHING SIGNIFICANT TO REPORT

ISRAEL

Israel: Hamas to Wind Down Arson Attacks With Kites

What Happened: After a report that Israel's government might have no choice but to embark on a military campaign in the Gaza Strip if airborne arson attacks using kites do not cease, Hamas has reportedly agreed to gradually decrease the attacks, The Times of Israel reported July 18.

Why It Matters: While neither Hamas nor Israel wants to go to war, miscalculations or mistakes from either side could lead to one.

Background: Individuals in the Gaza Strip have repeatedly used incendiary devices tied to kites to set fires near the Israel-Gaza border. A major economic crisis is enabling Palestinian factions to challenge Hamas' legitimacy as the leader of Palestinian militancy.

KOREAN PENNSULEA

The Singapore Summit in Perspective: Lessons from the Israeli-Arab Conflict
By: Stephen J. Blank
July 10, 2018
Commentary, Foreign Affairs

The path toward North Korea’s denuclearization will be strewn with obstacles and will be difficult to navigate. It will also be time-consuming, given the inherently intractable and complex verification challenges that lie ahead. Likewise, ending the state of war on the peninsula will take time. After 70 years of hostility between North and South Korea, it would be naïve to expect instant results in the process of political reconciliation, establishing a sustainable peace regime and normalizing relations.

Moreover, Americans are notoriously impatient for results and have difficulty dealing with diplomatic complexities. To maintain perspective when dealing with the North Korean challenge, it might be instructive to ponder some of the problems associated with the resolution of the Israeli-Arab conflict and the Camp David summit process that led to a formal peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.

We should first remember that initially only Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel—and only after strenuous US mediation to broker a deal. By contrast, the US is a combatant in the Korean War and one of the main protagonists in this process, not a trusted mediator and broker as it was at Camp David. Second, the Korean question, unlike brokering Egyptian-Israeli peace, involves overcoming the division of what was previously a unified polity into two hostile camps and thus has elements of resolving a civil war; a notoriously difficult and lengthy process.

The Trump administration may have backed off its previous position that North Korea’s complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization (CVID) must happen immediately at the beginning of the negotiations, although there are conflicting accounts of the “asks” in the negotiation process. It is likely that the process will be closer to Kim Jong Un’s vision of a phased and incremental process of denuclearization involving mutual concessions by both sides....


A Black Korean in Pyongyang

Ethnic identity is the latest issue to split the two Koreas.

Steven DenneyJuly 17, 2018, 9:43 AM
This photo taken on July 5, 2018 shows players from North (red) and South Korea (blue) competing during a friendly men's basketball match at the Ryugyong Chung Ju-Yung Indoor Stadium in Pyongyang. (KIM WON-JIN/AFP/Getty Images)
This photo taken on July 5, 2018 shows players from North (red) and South Korea (blue) competing during a friendly men's basketball match at the Ryugyong Chung Ju-Yung Indoor Stadium in Pyongyang. (KIM WON-JIN/AFP/Getty Images)
For the 12,000 North Koreans packed into Pyongyang’s Chung Ju-yung Gymnasium earlier this month, South Korean athlete Ra Gun-ah must have been an unexpected sight. Ra is a 6-foot-8 power forward. He’s also black.

Ra, also known as Ricardo Ratliffe, first moved to South Korea from the United States in 2012 and became a South Korean citizen this January. That may seem surprising: South Korea has a long history of ethno-nationalism and laws that excluded outsiders and defined citizenship in racial terms. The Nationality Act, promulgated in 1948, specified that only children of an ethnically Korean father deserved nationality.

Revisions to the act, starting in the late 1990s, opened the naturalization process to children with foreign fathers, spouses of South Korean citizens, and incomers like Ratliffe, among other changes. Social attitudes have gradually followed the law. But while South Korean concepts of identity and belonging have radically changed, North Korea’s haven’t — and that could be a problem.

The basketball game, in which the North and South mixed their teams, calling one “peace” and the other “prosperity,” was part of an increase in inter-Korean cultural exchanges. As the barriers between the two countries begin to erode, a cloistered Korea will be meeting a global Korea.

What North and South Koreans think defines the Korean nation has diverged considerably...


RUSSIA

NOTHING SIGNIFICANT TO REPORT

MIDDLE EAST GENERAL

Saudi Arabia: Israel Asks U.S. to Limit Saudi Nuclear Deal

What Happened: Israel's government has asked Washington to include certain limits in the nuclear energy deal it is negotiating with Saudi Arabia to ensure that Riyadh cannot start a nuclear weapons program, Axios reported July 8.

Why It Matters: Israel wants to restrict Saudi capabilities to enrich uranium and potentially start a nuclear weapons program, despite the Saudi goal of attaining full control over a uranium enrichment process.

Background: Saudi Arabia has been attempting to gain nuclear power capabilities for more than a decade and is currently in negotiations with multiple countries, including China, Russia and the United States.

CYBER ISSUES

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TERRORISM

NOTHING SIGNIFICANT TO REPORT

MISC

10 Technologies That Are Reshaping Aerospace

Hypersonic Acceleration

The U.S. military has gone from ignoring to prioritizing hypersonics in barely two years after decades of on-again, off-again research frittered away a technological lead over Russia and China. Now there are at least three U.S. high-speed strike missiles in development and an urgent requirement to defend against its adversaries’ hypersonic weapons. DARPA’s rocket-accelerated Tactical Boost Glide and scramjet-powered Hypersonic Air-Breathing Weapon Concept demonstrators are to fly in 2019, and Lockheed Martin’s rocket-powered Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon is planned to be operational with the Air Force in 2022. If sustained, this push also will ramp up ground- and flight-testing for reusable systems.

Aviation Electrified

With a half-dozen prototypes flying and scores more projects of variable credibility, the electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) market is lifting off. But achieving stable flight will require the air-taxi sector to demonstrate high safety and low noise, as well as overcome challenges from aircraft certification and vehicle manufacturing to airspace integration and infrastructure development. But as Uber’s 2020 target for demonstration flights draws closer, serious funding and several major players are already on board the urban air-mobility bandwagon, including Airbus, Bell, Boeing and Embraer.


Credit: Kitty Hawk


Alternative Energy

Today’s batteries are poor repositories for energy compared with aviation fuel, but the potential for reduced energy costs and emissions has the aviation industry interested. And it goes beyond propulsion: The potential for clean and quiet auxiliary power on aircraft has manufacturers exploring alternatives to today’s small turbines, such as fuel cells. NASA is researching systems that produce hydrogen for solid oxide fuel cells by reforming kerosene. It also is looking further into the future, from safer, high-energy-density lithium-air batteries to flow batteries running on charged liquids that are handled like fuels.

Going Beyond

From inspecting miles of railway tracks and surveying square miles of farmland, to mapping mines and delivering packages, unmanned aircraft are poised to be let off the leash. The ability to fly beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) of the operator is expected to unlock the true commercial potential of drones. Pilot projects from Canada and the U.S. to Switzerland and the UK, and beyond to Australia and Japan, are helping to develop the technology and operations—and define the regulations and policy—for BVLOS, whether over short distances in urban environments or long ranges in national airspace.

Lasers Versus Drones

The threat from small unmanned aircraft is driving a high-tech response, as directed-energy weapons move rapidly from laboratory to field testing and potential deployment as a cost-effective countermeasure. With a low cost-per-shot and the ability to keep firing as long as there is power, high-energy lasers look likely to be fielded first to counter inexpensive drones while higher-power systems are perfected that can intercept rockets and cruise missiles, and then go on to defend combat aircraft, arm special-operations gunships and, ultimately, knock out ballistic missiles in their boost phase.

Tracking From Space

Space-based air traffic surveillance is set to go live by year-end with launch of the remaining spacecraft in Iridium’s new constellation of low-Earth-orbit communications satellites hosting Aireon’s automatic dependent surveillance–broadcast (ADS-B) payload. Operational trials are planned to begin over the North Atlantic in early 2019. With backing from five air navigation service providers and agreements with others, Aireon will provide global aircraft tracking and emergency location. And it will not be alone: Aerial & Maritime plans to offer space-based ADS-B from 2021 using nanosatellites from GomSpace.

Low-Cost Launch

Small satellites came first, but smallsat launcher startups are moving rapidly to provide a more cost-effective and convenient route to low Earth orbit than a piggyback ride on one of the industry’s big boosters. Rocket Lab’s Electron has flown, Virgin Orbit wants to air-launch its LauncherOne by summer’s end, and Vector launch hopes to make its first orbital flight from Kodiak, Alaska, toward the end of 2018. Building on this commercial activity, DARPA is offering a $10 million top prize for launching two payloads from two locations, with only days’ notice, in a competitive challenge to be staged late in 2019.

Large-Part Printing

Aerospace has faced two key challenges in embracing additive manufacturing. The first has been moving to high-strength metal from low-strength polymer parts and is well underway, with 3D-printed titanium components flying on Airbus and Boeing aircraft. The second is moving from the small parts that can be produced today to the large components used in aircraft structures, and is beginning. The next challenge is in reimagining how components can be engineered, which requires new tools and new thinking by designers. And what lies ahead? Additively manufactured fiber-reinforced composites and 3D printing space already are advancing.

Robots on the Move

Robots are used routinely in aircraft assembly, bringing speed and repeatability to the drilling and fastening of large structures. But such machines are inflexible, immovable monuments designed to perform one task on one aircraft type or family. A glimpse of a possible automated future is provided by demonstrations of “cobots,” smaller robots that work alongside humans on complex assemblies, or German research institute Fraunhofer’s mobile robot, which can move itself around the factory floor to precision-machine aircraft structures where they stand.

AI Inside

Autonomy and artificial intelligence (AI) are set to become as essential to aviation as aerodynamics and propulsion. AI is taking root on the ground, where machine learning is being applied to extracting knowledge from data, but competition for bandwidth means AI will have to take flight and move from the data center to the aircraft—to be co-located with the sensors collecting the data being analyzed and used. Edge computing—low-power supercomputers on chips—and massive onboard data storage also will be key enablers for increasingly autonomous flight and mission capabilities.