The Pentagon reviews its global military requirements

China’s modernising People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is getting younger, smarter and more focused on frontline combat readiness. In line with orders from President Xi Zinping six years ago, the PLA has divested itself of 300,000 non-combat personnel, bringing to an end the military careers of dancers, singers, editors, writers and some medical staff, all of whom had roles which are now regarded as unnecessary for Beijing’s dream of being a world-class superpower. As part of China’s objective of building a military force capable of mounting both defensive and offensive missions, Beijing now has plans to increase the size of its marine corps from around 40,000 personnel to 100,000 to protect the nation’s maritime ambitions in the South and East China Seas, and prepare for a possible invasion of Taiwan, according to the South China Morning Post. In 2019 the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based US think-tank, said the Chinese marine corps had grown from two brigades to eight, totalling about 40,000 marines. It said the PLA may have transferred more than 20,000 army troops to the marine units. Recent training programmes indicate the marine force is expected to perform expeditionary missions in any terrain and climate. In its annual report on China, published this month (Nov), the Pentagon revealed that of the eight marine brigades, five were stationed in the Taiwan Strait area, alongside six amphibious brigades, seven airborne brigades and five artillery brigades. The Taiwan Strait area includes the PLA’s eastern and southern theatres. The PLA has 12 units organised and equipped to carry out amphibious landings and seize and defend small islands. Over the last five years, according to the Pentagon, the PLA army (PLAA) and the PLA navy marine corps (PLANMC) have fielded new equipment designed specifically for amphibious operations. They include the ZBD-05 amphibious infantry fighting vehicle and the PLZ-07B amphibious self-propelled howitzer. Watching the steady, and in some cases remarkable pace of China’s military modernisation programme, the Pentagon has been conducting a global posture review to make sure America’s forces are aligned in sufficient strength and firepower capability around the world to confront the security threats emerging. The unclassified version of the review’s conclusions, outlined yesterday (Tues), highlights the Indo-Pacific as the priority region for the Pentagon in the years ahead. The challenge, Mara Karlin, the Pentagon’s deputy undersecretary for policy, was “to deter potential military aggression from China and threats from North Korea” whose leader, Kim Jong-un, is supported by Beijing. The review, the first to be carried out by the Biden administration, was also about broadening cooperation with allies and partners across the region, including Australia, Pacific islands, Japan, and South Korea. The Pentagon has already taken steps to station a permanent Apache attack helicopter squadron and artillery division headquarters in South Korea. There will also be new measures to boost military infrastructure and increase the presence of fighter and bomber aircraft in order to improve deterrence for the island of Guam in the western Pacific where the US has a significant airbase, and in Australia. “In Australia you’ll see new rotational fighter and bomber aircraft deployments,” Karlin said at a Pentagon briefing. The aircraft are expected to include B-2 stealth bombers, as well as F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters. The deployment of more US jet fighters and bombers to Australia was flagged a day after the AUKUS treaty was signed with America and Britain to supply the Canberra government with nuclear-powered submarine technology. The decision enraged France because it meant scrapping the existing deal for the French to supply conventionally-powered submarines. But it also upset Beijing which accused Australia of undermining regional peace and intensifying an arms race in the Pacific. Under the global posture review, there will be Improvements to airfields in both Australia and Guam. The work which will start next year will expand America’s capacity to deploy troop reinforcements to the region in the event of a security crisis. “You’ll see ground forces training and increased logistics cooperation and more broadly across the Indo-Pacific, you’ll see a range of infrastructure improvements in Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Marian Islands [14 US islands in the north western Pacific Ocean] and Australia," Karlin said. The Pentagon announcement comes four days after Peter Dutton, the Australian defence minister, said every city in the country was vulnerable to a Chinese missile attack. Australia, he said, was at the epicentre of “global strategic competition” caused by the rise of China as a world power. Last week the Canberra government revealed a Chinese military spy ship was recently tracked for three weeks off the coast of Australia inside the 125-mile exclusive economic zone. Despite increasing belligerent rhetoric from Beijing, and regular military flights to test Taiwan’s defences, the unclassified report on the Pentagon’s global posture review does not specifically reallocate US troops from other parts of the world to the Indo-Pacific to confront China. Karlin said the Indo-Pacific region was a “priority theatre” but declined to talk about potential additional force numbers. It is possible, however, that as the Biden administration continues to reassess security requirements for the future, there will be additional troop deployments to the region. These could be outlined in the forthcoming national defence strategy which is currently under review. The global posture review has underlined the challenges faced by the Biden administration. China is not the only concern. Biden has already rescinded the 25,000-troop cap in Germany set by President Trump because of growing aggressiveness by Russia. In August the Pentagon notified Belgium and Germany that the US would keep its forces at seven sites which had previously been designated for return to the host nations.

Ex-US defence secretary takes on the Pentagon

Former US defence secretary Mark Esper who was “terminated” in a tweet by President Trump is now suing his old department for blocking key passages in a memoir about his volatile relationship with his ex-commander-in-chief. Esper, 57, was Pentagon chief from July 2019 to November 2020 and has written his own version of what it was like to serve under Trump, including during the violent civil unrest following the murder by a white police officer of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis. The memoir called A Sacred Oath includes his recollection of private one-to-one conversations he had with Trump as well as discussions with the former president and officials during crisis national security meetings. Esper who was deeply engaged in high-level Trump administration debates on pulling US troops out of Afghanistan and acting against Iran and North Korea over their nuclear weapons programmes, denies that his book includes any classified material, or compromises national security. The issue that finally persuaded Trump to sack Esper just six days after losing the presidential election on November 3, 2020 was the defence secretary’s opposition to deploying active-service troops on the streets in Washington and elsewhere to counter rioters protesting over the fatal shooting of George Floyd. The dispute over his memoir is the most bitter legal issue involving a past cabinet member since the attempt by the Trump administration to stop John Bolton, ex-national security adviser, from publishing a book about his tempestuous relationship with the former president. In a statement, Esper said the objective with the book was to make public “a full and unvarnished accounting of our nation’s history, especially the more difficult periods”. His lawsuit, filed in the federal district court in Washington, says: “Significant text is being improperly withheld from publication in Secretary Esper’s manuscript under the guise of classification.” “I am more than disappointed the current administration is infringing on my First Amendment constitutional rights,” Esper said. The lawsuit says Esper was in charge at the Pentagon through “an unprecedented time of civil unrest, public health crises, growing threats abroad, Pentagon transformation and a White House seemingly bent on circumventing the constitution”. Esper submitted a draft of his memoir in May to the Pentagon department that handles security reviews of planned books to ensure there are no breaches of national security. In November he wrote an email to Lloyd Austin, his successor at the Pentagon, complaining that “multiple words, sentences and paragraphs from approximately 60 pages of the manuscript were redacted”. He had been asked not to quote Trump and others in meetings nor to describe conversations with the former president and “to not use certain verbs or nouns when describing historical events”. “Many items were already in the public domain, “ Esper said. “As with all such reviews, the department takes seriously its obligation to balance national security with an author’s narrative desire,” John Kirby, Pentagon press secretary, said. “Given that this matter is now under litigation, we will refrain from commenting further,” he said.

So there won't be an Xi variant of Covid-19

The World Health Organisation has moved swiftly to make sure that there can never be an Xi variant of Covid-19. The new one emanating from Southern Africa and considered to be potentially the most dangerous and transmissable one to date was described as the Nu variant. That new name only lasted a few hours because, presumably, some official in China, possibly someone working high up in the WHO, realised with heart in mouth that when the next strain turned up, the new variant might be called the Xi variant because xi follows nu in the Greek alphabet. Even though the alphabet hasn't been followed strictly, some wag in WHO might have insisted on Nu being followed by Xi, just to emphasise to the world at large that Covid originated in Wuhan in China and therefore it was right and proper and appropriate that one of the variants should be called Xi - although of course not in honour of, or in deference to, let alone as an insultt to Xi Zinping, the Chinese president who gets very angry when anyone suggests the virus started in China at all. Anyway the danger passed. The WHO dropped Nu and went for Omicron, skipping Xi which in the Greek alphabet sits between the two letters. Diplomatic crisis averted. If variants get all the way to Omega, the last letter in the Greek alphabet I bet the watchmakers with that name will kick up a helluva fuss. With any luck the pandemic will be over by then and there will be no Omega variant or for that matter pi, rho, sigma, tau, upsilon, phi, chi or psi.

Franco-British war of words

Boris has bungled. Writing a letter to the French government, setting out what he wants France to do to meet the growing migrant problem, and then publishing it on his Twitter account smacks of Trump. With such a sensitive issue dividing Britain from France, these sort of things need to be dealt with confidentially, especially with the French who get very uptight very quickly if they think the Brits are trying to get one over them. Basically, since Brexit, the French government under Macron despises the Brits and Boris in particular. So to publish his demands on Twitter will be seen in Paris as Boris throwing down the gauntlet like a schoolboy in the playground. They immediately cancelled the invitation to Pritti Patel, the Home Secretary, to attend a crucial meeting with the EU countries affected by the present crisis. Patel was disinvited. I bet she didn't appreciate that. What a farce, grownups or alleged grownups behaving like spoilt children. And now we have yet another variant of Covid potentially to hit our shores with an even more dangerous pedigree. Boris has cancelled all flights from South Africa and other African countries as from today (Friday) but the variant was first discovered in South Africa on Tuesday, so two whole days went by with many flights arriving in the UK. How many of the passengers will have brought the new virus with them? It won't be long before the whole of Europe is suffering from the so-called Nu variant which might be too strong for the vaccines and make everyone vulnerable once again. Is anything going right at the moment? It seems not.

When will race not be an issue in the US?

The answer is never unfortunately. Race divisions have been part of the American way of life since the country was founded in 1776. The terrible days of racial and racist segregation are over but the murder of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, a black man, by three white men, has shown that the lynch-mob tendency is still alive and well. Arbery was jogging in a white area and was therefore seen as highly suspicious and possibly a robber because of a spate of recent burglaries and needed to be challenged and dealt with. It was like a scene out of the brilliant 1980s film, Mississipi Burning. The court case in which the three white men were eventually found guilty and now face life imprisonment, had terrifying echoes of that film. The defence counsel for the defendants spoke in appallingly racist language to try and persuade the jury that Arbery deserved what happened to him. At one point attorney Laura Hogue told the jury that Arbery was wearing no socks "to cover his long dirty toenails". I wasn't in the court room obviously but I can just see the attorney saying these words with a sneer on her face. The whole case was riddled with racism and the fact that the jury dismissed the self-defence argument and found the men guilty was thanks to the clear evidence on video that Arbery had been killed for only one reason. He was black. Or to put it another way, he didn't look like any of the three men who were involved in his brutal death. On Thanksgiving Day, a time of celebration for the whole nation, I wish all my American friends a happy family get-together. Added to the Thanksgiving should be huge thanksgiving and relief that the three white men were convicted of this appalling crime.

The Pentagon is back hunting for UFOs

The Pentagon and America’s top spying agency are to begin an investigation to decide once and for all whether UFOs pose a threat to the United States. After decades of failing to explain the unexplainable presence of mysterious brightly-lit, rapidly accelerating and oddly-shaped phenomena in the skies, especially over US military installations, the Pentagon has set up yet another organisation to try and find answers. Only five months ago, a special US government task force concluded following an examination into more than 140 UFO sightings over two decades that there was no evidence of anything non-terrestrial involved in the incidents. However, the possibility of an alien presence could not be ruled out. In 18 cases there appeared to be a demonstration of technological know-how unfamiliar to the US – or, it was believed, to China and Russia. With both intelligence officials and UFO conspiracy theorists dissatisfied with the result, the Pentagon decided to have one more go at tracking and identifying any future suspected mystery objects in the sky. “Incursions by any airborne object into our ‘special-use airspace’ pose safety of flight and operations security concerns and may pose national security challenges,” the Pentagon said in a statement. Special-use airspace is defined as areas over military bases, training ranges and national security locations, such as the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and the National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Meade in Maryland. “The DoD [department of defence] takes reports of incursions – by any airborne object identified or unidentified - very seriously and investigates each one,” the Pentagon said. Now the UFO issue, or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) as the Pentagon calls it, has been handed over to a new organisation consisting of senior defence officials and representatives from the office of the director of national intelligence which oversees America’s 18 spying agencies. The 18th spy service belongs to the recently formed US Space Force which is expected to play an important role in deciding whether or not strange aerial phenomena might have begun their journey from beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. The new organisation has the acronym AOIMSG (airborne object identification and management synchronisation group).

China's questionable hypersonic missile test

So now it seems China carried out a hypersonic missile test at the end of July as well as in August and, according to the Financial Times, during the earth-orbiting hypersonic trip the Mach 5-plus glide vehicle managed to launch another projectile of some sort before it headed for its target, missing by about 12 miles. What on earth was the objective of this missile within a missile experiment? Very clever if true and certainly the Pentagon seems somewhat aghast at the technology demonstrated by the Chinese. But to what end? Could this extra hidden missie/projectile be a decoy system to fool attempts to shoot down the hypersonic glide vehicle? Possibly. Could it be just another missile with another target in mind? Possible, too, but seems a little silly, especially if the Chinese actually go ahead with having such a weapon careering round the earth during an international crisis - with a nuclear warhead attached. The biggest mystery of all is why Beijing is so intent on having the technology to put a nuclear warhead into low orbit. Is it supposed to be a new type of deterrent to the United States or is it seen as a usable war-winning weapon to force the US to surrender or back off what it was thinking of doing, like going to Taiwan's aid in the event of a Chinese PLA invasion? No one knows what's in Xi Zinping's mind but there is only one conclusion as far as I can see. The Chinese president is playing a very dangerous, even reckless, game here.