They Were Expendable Part 2

What would happen to the Philippines if a naval conflict broke out with China?

A blockade of China would be conducted from the Indian ocean and the final line would be at the Malay barrier bounded by the Lombok, Sunda and Malacca Straits. That would be outside the range of Chinese area denial systems.

The strategic imperative to maintain lines of communication with Japan, Korea, Australia and optionally Taiwan can be met by convoying the Luzon strait bound ships south and east of the Malay barrier, either to the north or possibly completely around Australia. Given the importance of these allies, the USN will do everything necessary to see Japan et al are supplied.

The USN is probably not, nor ever was prepared to fight a major action in the South China Sea littoral. Not a single major WW2 fleet engagement occured in the SCS. All occurred EAST of the Philippines, on the Pacific deep water side. The SCS is more Australia’s war patrol station and its fleet of diesel electric subs is optimized for littoral operations, though that is changing now with USN’s Virginia class subs and AUUVs.

To defend the Philippines it must be supplied. That means convoying ships to the RP’s west coast ports (Manila, Batangas, Subic) since it has no east coast ports on the Pacific side. That would put the USN precisely where it doesn’t want to be, under the missiles of China’s PLAN and Second Artillery Corps. Not only that, PLAN has an immense stock of mines. China has in fact the biggest mine force in the world. Japan, not coincidentally, has the biggest minesweeping force, though USN is ramping up.

The Visayan and Mindanao ports may be fitfully supplied by coastal shipping. But Luzon will starve without convoys. Manila in particular will suffer. The most likely escorts of food and fuel and medicine, if there are any convoys at all, will come from Japan. It won’t be out of altruism. Luzon is vital to the security of Taiwan and the Ryukyus. The Philippines is a “nice to have” for the US but it is a must have for Japan.

That’s why the Japanese fleet died off eastern Philippines; why the Japanese Army died in Luzon. But the defense of the Philippines was always debated, as far back as War Plan Orange in Washington. In 1944 Roosevelt was still undecided over whether to bypass the Philippines until MacArthur convinced him that it was needed to interdict the China coast and prevent the Kwangtung Army from reinforcing the Japanese home islands.

The Philippines is the victim of geography, a weak and corrupt state surrounded by India, China, Japan, Russia, Korea and the United States — the most powerful countries in the world. Heaven watch the Philippines because nobody else will.

What was the secret Russian sub doing?

A tragic fire aboard a secret Russian nuclear ‘mini-sub’ in the Barents Sea that killed 14 senior sailors has refocused media attention on a little noticed flash point of the world: the Arctic. That an important Russian system was being tested or demonstrated was suggested by reports “that among the 14 dead were 7 senior navy captains and 2 ‘Heroes of Russia’.” The presence of so many Russian navy worthies raises questions because brass do not typically twiddle dials on mini submarines but watch them being twiddled until something went horribly wrong.

New at the Belmont Club

The perils of virtue

To say that conservative-liberal dialogue was heated was an understatement. There was in the drumbeat a buildup suggestive of teams psyching themselves to do something bold, building up a mood of defiance and despair so incandescent that Andy Ngo, a conservative journalist preparing to cover an event in Oregon, feared for his safety. He tweeted on June 29 “I am nervous about tomorrow’s Portland antifa rally. They’re promising ‘physical confrontation’ & have singled me out to be assaulted.” There were actual leaflets announcing the planned attack on Ngo.

New at the Belmont Club

The first war of automatons

The US cyberstrikes Iran’s missile systems after Tehran shoots down a US drone. This is not the end of war but a change of its forms. Just as the Coral Sea was the first naval engagement beyond visual range of the opposing fleets this is the first battle in which only automata die.

So far at least.

But the effects of virtual war are quite real, the economic cost stupendous. Just as our life savings are merely a database entry but vital what is essential in the modern world is invisible to the eye.

The one possibility the left was unprepared for was if Trump did not strike militarily at Iran. Bomb, damn you, bomb. What? No bombing?

The great thing about old style warfare is everybody knew where they stood. You were a civilian or you wore a uniform. Wars were declared. Enemies surrendered. The clever theorist believed they could gain advantages by cheating on all those fronts. Boy were they wrong.

Sea hunt

In 1970 to 1980 trained dolphins killed 2 Russian frogmen who were putting limpet mines on a US cargo ship in Cam Ranh bay in Vietnam.[19] Subsequently, Russian PDSS frogmen were trained to fight back against trained dolphins. In an incident on the coast of Nicaragua PDSS frogmen killed trained anti-frogman dolphins. Arrival of underwater rifles and pistols seems to make the trained animal threat less.

Wikipedia

But the dolphins struck back.

Though the Navy declines to discuss the classified program in detail, former Navy trainers of the dolphins say the animals are being taught to kill enemy divers with nose-mounted guns and explosives.

NYT

Anyhow, look who’s interested in swimmer attack technology. Iran.

“Just a few years ago, Ukraine restarted training the animals for military purposes, though it may have been close to phasing it back out just before Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula last year. In any case, Russia helped itself to Ukraine’s stable of combat dolphins after Moscow took over Crimea. And four Ukrainian military dolphins had actually ben sold to Iran and transported by air in 2000, according to the BBC.”

Tech Billionaire To Joe Rogan: ‘The Left Has Won The Culture Wars. Now They’re Just Driving Around Shooting Survivors’

And just think. All this time the population was worried about neo-Nazis holding conventions in some low rent venue.

“[They need to] realize that these social media platforms are picking the next president, the next congressmen — they’re literally picking — and they have the power to pick, so they will be controlled by the government.” …

“The most powerful people in the world today are the people who are writing the algorithms for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram because they’re controlling the spread of information. They’re literally rewriting people’s brains. They’re programming the culture.”

Red State

So was it a race all along between the Chinese Commies, the Western PC socialists and radical Islam for who’d get to rule the world? All those people on TV — did they know?

Or is the case that this human rule, this man-made narrative that will last a thousand years is no more proof against reality than Ozymandias? The biggest fear of those who are writing the algorithms for social media is that someone else is writing the algorithms of the world.

Incident in the Gulf

There was a scripted outcome that fell apart. The IRGC tried to ad lib but flubbed its lines. The open source evidence points to an attempt to goad the Trump admin into escalation in the belief that would damage the US politically. The fish weren’t biting that day but they’ll try again.

It seems that those who planned the attack believed that at least one ship would sink and that they could valiantly rescue the sailors. …
In addition they likely hoped the ship would sink with the evidence aboard, including the unexploded mine. …
The Iranians didn’t stop trying to get hold of both ships until June 14. An Iranian tugboat reportedly approached the Kokuka and even wanted to push it back towards Iranian waters before the Bainbridge interceded.

Jerusalem Post

The problem with hybrid operations is complexity. The Iranians were aiming for political and media effects not simply kinetic ones. The scenario called for valiantly forcibly rescuing the survivors. That meant the explosive couldn’t be too big. But it proved too small.

Modern warfare as it exists, less resembles WW2 than the rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel or the shooting up of Sri Lankan “Easter worshipper” churches. The objective isn’t geographical features but column inches, invitations to talk shows, followers on Twitter.

The goal of modern war is not the conquest of a state but its takeover by means of assisting to power the domestic political force most congenial to the attacker. “Collusion” is not the exception but the entire point.

In fairness this is exactly the game America is playing against Iran. It doesn’t want to conquer the territory but ensure that a “moderate” and/or “reformist” faction comes to power in Tehran. It would be silly to think China and Russia are not trying the same stunt on Washington.

That’s why the cry “sappers are in the wire” is still valid even though it’s a different kind of sapper and a different kind of wire.

https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/theyre-coming-through-the-wire/

One of the reasons things are so confused and upsetting is that the media, which heretofore stood off to one side as chroniclers of the kinetic battle, are now one of the combatant arms. They are the panzer columns of modern hybrid war, along with the social media platforms.

Prosecutors and their power

But was the real-life Ms. Fairstein as scheming as the TV version? (She is played by Felicity Huffman, who was arrested in the college admissions scandal after filming was complete.)

NYT

Is the system capable of conveying unvarnished truth?

But it’s not just about 5 wrongly convicted teenagers in NYC who have lost their youth and lives. It may be about significant problems with prosecutorial misconduct.