Je Suis Charlie? Sorry, too busy!

Earlier today I heard on the radio that the widow of one of the terrorists responsible for the Charlie Hebdo incident has fled to Syria.  My initial thoughts were great, now we will start to see the case being made to go to war with Syria.  But then tonight, I read this headline on the Daily Mail;

"America snubs historic Paris rally: Holder was there but skipped out early, Kerry was in India, Obama and Biden just stayed home"

Obama and Biden were free to attend (Kerry was India, probably trying to counter Russia's growing partnership with New Delhi).  If they now try to rally the European countries to go after Daesh in Syria, I think the call will fall on deaf ears.

I am quite puzzled by Obama and Biden's absence (please, don't send me posts about how this proves Obama is a Muslim).  France has historically been a strong ally of the United States dating back to the Revolutionary War.  France has now had its own 9/11 and it would seem this would be a time to make political hay by showing up in force ("Je Suis Charlie!"  or at least, "Vive le France!").  Instead, the US representative was Eric Holder (a soon to be former Attorney General at that!).

I am no fan of the Mr. Obama and has supposed foreign policy but this is just too damn dumb even for him.  We've drug our European allies into 13 years of war and now want their help with Daesh.  The least Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden could've done is burned some JP-4 flying Air Force One over to Paris.

No credible local threat

This has to be one of the dumbest statements I've seen lately;

No credible local threat after Paris attack - Local 12 WKRC-TV Cincinnati - News - Top Stories

We still delude ourselves into thinking fusion centers are going to spot all terrorists in advance of an attack.  The fusion centers and law enforcement catch the dumb ones, they ones that made mistakes. Ask yourself what the Parisian police would have said prior to the attack on Charlie Hebdo?

The most dangerous terrorists and terrorist groups are those that we haven't named yet.  Everyone is watching Al Qaeda and Daesh but how many new operatives have they been able to recruit?  Those operatives are highly unlikely to have criminal records or any other markers that will trigger fusion center software programs.  The terrorists most likely to commit the next attack here in the US are probably already US citizens are here on work visas.  They are regular members of their community and don't stick out.

The plea to report anything "suspicious" is ineffective.  What constitutes "suspicious" behavior?  How is "suspicious" behavior relative to terrorism different from "suspicious" behavior relative to plane old criminal activity?  Yes, that is the job of an intelligence analyst to sift through but it unnecessarily adds to the amount of data that has to be looked at.

DHS eliminated the color-coded system for threat levels because it was meaningless to the average American and no one really paid attention anyway.  There is very likely a cell, or at least a group of sympathizers, here in the greater Cincinnati area just based on the size of the metropolitan area.

A better question is why isn't there a credible threat?  Wright-Patterson AFB is 50 miles north and Ft Campbell (home of the 101st Airborne) is about 4 hours south.  GE aircraft engines and P&G are just two of the many corporations that are headquartered here in Cincinnati.  We have the Bengals and Reds sports franchises and the 2015 MLB All Star game will be held here.  The Ohio River moves 11.7 million tons of freight per year.  Interstate routes I-75, I-71 and I-74 all converge in or near Cincinnati.

"No credible threat" means the analysts are thinking (at leas the they are willing to share) outside the box and if they aren't, how are average citizens suppose to know what to look out for?

Why so much French and not Nigerian?

Our Western sensibilities were threatened when 3 terrorists killed 12 French citizens in response to Charlie Hebdo's satirical cartoon.  The terrorists then fled and killed another French police officer.  French Special Forces have just dispatched the terrorists.  Checking CNN, Fox, and NBC websites today, you would would assume this was the worse massacre thus far in 2015.  You would be wrong.

Let's go back to spring last year, a relatively unknown group called "Boko Haram" kidnapped 300 school girls.  The news outlets all wondered how Hillary Clinton, while still the Secretary of State, had refused to label Boko Haram a terrorist group.  Obama and Kerry flailed around before deciding to send in Special Forces to help advise the Nigerians on how to locate the kidnapped school girls.

Then Daesh took the attention away from the news and the White House from Boko Haram.  The school girls still have not been found and while the terrorists in France may have made a bigger splash, their death toll of 13 pales in comparison to Boko Harams 2000 and displaced 1.5 million in just 2014 alone.

Boko Haram has started to make the non-US news sites again as the increase their activities in an attempt to disrupt elections scheduled for Feb 14th.  They just wiped out 10,000 (the estimated population of Baga, Nigeria).  You won't' see that on American websites and because of that, you could draw some really ugly conclusions.  Let's just say for now that minds are far more interested in three terrorists that may be linked to a group that may attack Americans compared to an extremely vicious group of nasties that for now are hellbent on killing their fellow countrymen.

But given that Boko Haram is a militant Islamic group, should we be just as concerned about their spread as much as we are concerned about Daesh?  The US is concerned (rightly) that Daesh has seized Syrian oil fields which produce around $2 million per day but the same concern is absent about Boko Haram which can control all of Nigeria's oil field (which produce somewhere 16-35 million barrels of oil).

Yes it was a horrible tragedy that 13 French citizens were killed by three terrorists who had a beef about a cartoon.  But why is there more coverage for this tragedy than the wholesale massacre of Nigerians?  Our biases in reporting often follow how intelligence assessments are focused.  If the news is all about France, trust me that's what the President is getting briefed on.  If no one is covering Nigeria (other than BBC), Mr. Obama is only getting sporadic updates.

Myopia is not only a disease of the eye, it is also a state of mind.  If we continue to have a myopic view of terrorism, we won't see the next attack coming and everyone will wonder why.

What can the US learn from France?

Simon Heffer offered this observation about France and its Muslim population, "Above all, France has an abominable record of managing its Muslim community – which has, in turn, become increasingly radicalised in the grim suburbs (banlieues) of northern Paris, from which countless young men have gone to fight as jihadis in Syria."  He goes on, "Ever since the Algerian war of independence broke out 60 years ago, there has been hostility between native French and the country’s increasing Muslim population (estimated now to total as much as 7 per cent)."  (Daily Mail)

The US needs to recognize it faces similar challenges here. We often think about the African American (13.2%) and Hispanic American communities (17.1%) as being disenfranchised with the government but we rarely think about our own Muslim community (6.67%).  Too often, Americans like to dismiss the issues raise by those who identify themselves as some type of hyphenated American.  The reason is we should all just celebrate being American and stop look for reasons to be different.

The argument makes a nice sound byte for conservative politicians and Christian ministers but what the argument is really doing is it the other person's problem.  "If you are African-American and don't like it here, why don't you go back to Africa?"  Stupid and racist but most importantly, it fails to recognize the concerns raised by a group of Americans.

The same mentality is why France has 12 dead and at least two terrorists running amok with AK-47s and rocket launchers.  The French way of life is thought to be so superior that former President Sarkozy said, "the burqa was not welcome in France, as it was a symbol of female subservience."  His statement missed the fact the burqa is also part of the Muslim religious identity.

In the US, African-Americans still struggle with the legacy of slavery.  White Americans tend to dismiss these struggles as "victim-mentality" or "race-baiting".  The dismissal does not change how African-American feels and it blinds all of us to a growing dissension that could be leveraged into a revolt with the result being martial law.  Any implementation of martial law will only expand the revolt to other groups (such as militia groups).

Let's not forget Mr. Obama's legislation on immigration.  With the stroke of a pen, he changed the status of 11 million immigrants.  Great except what are those now legal immigrants supposed to do?  Now they have rights (?) but no jobs and that can lead to another revolt.  Imagine federal agents showing up en masse to interior parts of the country to quell the insurrection.  Won't the 2nd Amendment advocates get into a frenzy over that scenario.

Finally, what about our or citizens who are Muslim?  How many of them have suffered from prejudices and biases against them from who the media and Hollywood portray terrorists? How many of their relatives have been killed, injured of captured in their native countries?  "Then they should be supporting terrorists!"  I wonder how many French citizens are saying the same thing?

Part of being American is being able to disagree with one another but we have to remain vigilant that our disagreements don't cause us to miss the threats from outside our country.  The superpower status the US enjoyed is being seriously challenged by Russia and China.  Even small groups such as Daesh and Al Qaeda see a chance to create havoc within our borders.

One last item, matters in France are not likely to improve given this report from Air Force Times:

"France is dispatching the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to the Persian Gulf along with its fleet to join coalition efforts to combat ISIS militants in Iraq, reported Yahoo! News via Agence France-Presse. The country is contributing 15 land-based strike aircraft as well as an E-3F AWACS, KC-135FR tanker, and a pair of Atlantique II maritime patrol aircraft, according to the Jan. 6 press report. French aircraft have flown a combined total of some 130 sorties, predominantly focused on providing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance to coalition forces, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian was quoted as saying. Though US aircraft are currently conducting approximately 60 percent of Operation Inherent Resolve strike sorties, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom are all contributing air assets to the fight in Iraq, while several Arab states are hitting targets alongside the US over Syria."

Attack in France

Headline from BBC News this morning, "Gunmen have attacked the Paris office of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people and injuring seven in an apparent Islamist attack".  The attack was in response to satirical cartoons Charlie Hebdo has published about Islam.  The magazine's offices in Paris were firebombed back in 2011.

It appears the GOP cyber-attack on Sony Pictures, and the latter's brief acquiescence, may spur more aggressive attacks by other terrorist groups in the future.  The cyber-attack did get "The Interview" pulled from opening and forced Sony Pictures to release over the Internet.  Perhaps the group responsible of the attack in Paris hopes the extreme violence of their attack will prevent other magazines and media from publishing satirical comments about Islam.

France has had a tumultuous relationship with its Islamic citizens way before 9/11.  The colonization of Algeria in the 19th Century by Napoleon III led to land reforms whereby most Algerians lost their lands.  Worse, while Napoleon III wanted to see Algerians integrated into French society the result were Algerians and people from other colonies were treated as second class citizens.  Today, France still has problems with integrating Muslim citizens as seen by the demand for Muslim women to remove their head scarves in schools.  Therefore, the attack on Charlie Hebdo may be just part of a long standing feud between the French and her Muslim citizens.

The US has been anticipating a second attack to 9/11 for 13 years, to the point that many Americans now are deaf to any warnings issued by the government.  The attacks in Paris won't resound as much with Americans now that we are engulfed by the deteriorated state of relations between police and the community (especially the African American community).  Hard to worry about a "what if?" scenario when you are far more likely to see another police officer assassinated or suspect die at the hands of a police officer.

Still, this latest attack may be just what the Republicans need.  The embattled House Speaker John Boehner survived a rebuke to his position.  The uprising was spurred by Conservative Republicans who see Boehner as weak and to willing to defer to the President.  His hastily cobbled together "CRomnibus" bill limited funding for DHS to the end of February.  The Paris attack could allowed Boehner and the Republicans to leverage the President away from his stance on immigration.  However, the track record of Boehner's political savvy across the aisle leaves me skeptical.

Regardless of the political hay to be made or lost, it is important not to assume a similar attack is likely on the US.  The next attack is going to look nothing like previous attacks, hence it will have a profound impact.  The reason for this is simple, authorities already are on the look out for aircraft hijackings and weapons of mass destruction.  But they weren't ready for a massive, well planned cyber attack on Sony Pictures.  A well coordinated attack on our financial system, power grids or water treatment facilities could all be done virtually.  I remain unconvinced that we've taken the threat of a cyber attack to airliners seriously.  We are still looking for carbon-based (people) threats when the digital threat is far more pervasive and likely.

Not enough drone pilots or F-35, oh my!

Daesh has a cash flow of something around $2 million per day thanks to the oil fields that are under their control.  At first, it appeared that the US would be put at a financial disadvantage in fighting Daesh but now another shortfall has raised its head (with no short-term fix in sight).

According to an article in the Daily Beast, there are more mission requests for drones than the USAF has the manpower to meet.  The success of drones during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has meant an increased reliance on their use by theater commanders.  Even though drones are "unmanned"they still require the use of a manned operator.  The demands for these missions have kept the drone pilots from being able to go to the required military schools (PME) necessary for career advancement.  In short, mission demands have killed the pilots careers.

The demand is so high, drone pilots have been pulled out of the school houses (including the Fighter Weapons School, "Red Flag") to fly operational missions.  This short-sighted approach means fewer students can be sent through the pipeline and now the instructors are getting burned out as well.  It won't take long before you see drone pilots doing one tour of duty and then getting out.  Long-term this means there will only be the youngest, least experience pilots operating the drones.

In part, this is what lead Iraqi Lt. Gen. Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi to complained that US airstrikes were erratic.  "Sometimes, they would carry out airstrikes that I never asked for, and at other times I begged them for a single airstrike and they never did it," he said in an AP article.

Thank God we still have manned fighters, right?  Well the legacy fighters (F-15, F-16, F/A-18) have aged rapidly due to the OPSTEMPO of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  Even the A-10, which is ideally suited for the type of warfare we are engaged with Daesh, is nearing the end of its lifecyle.

These aircraft are slated to all be replaced by the F-35 (the F-35A for the USAF, the F-35B for the USN and the F-35C for the USMC).  The problems with the F-35 are long and depressing but a new issues has now surface.  According to the Daily Beast, the F-35 won't be able to fire is 25mm canon until at least 2019, 3-4 years AFTER it is become operational.

Let's start with the biggest problem.  The F-35 is supposed to take over the Close Air Support (CAS) role from the A-10.   The canon on the F-35 is smaller (the GAU-8 Avenger on the A-10 fires 30mm depleted uranium rounds) and holds only 180 rounds (enough for one tactical burst).  For ground troops, canons are far safer the bombs and rockets since any explosive munition can easily kill or injure friendly forces as well as the enemy.

But it gets worse with the F-35.  Its primary selling-point is to be stealthy.  In order to accomplish stealthiness on a large aircraft, engineers designed an internal weapons bay.  Awesome for being stealth, lousy for any air-to-groud stuff since you need multiple munitions and the F-35 just can't carry that many.

Some of the pilots interviewed quipped that the F-35 doesn't need a canon since it is strictly a beyond-visual-range (BVR) aircraft.  Huh?  Spoken like true Air Force pilots who seem to forget this same aircraft needs to support the air-to-mud doctrine of the USMC.  And while we would like think modern warfare has evolved past dogfighting, we need to only look back to the F-4 when the same thing was assumed.

The F-4 could carry  four AIM-7s and four AIM-9s for air-to-air combat (it could also carry a mix of bombs and rockets for air-to-ground).  The AIM-7 radar guided missile was state of the art and it was assumed air warfare would be fighters shooting missiles at each other.  What fighter ace Brig Gen Olds discovered was the missiles didn't always hit their targets and the fast closing speeds of jet fighters soon had the F-4s face to face with MiGs (which had 30mm canons).  Olds quickly had his F-4s fitted with gun pods to help down enemy aircraft that were to close for missiles.  Apparently, despite every USAF officer having to study the Vietnam War, today's pilots have forgotten that lesson.

The F-35 could very easily find itself engaged at ranges too close to use the AIM-120 (and I've not see mention of the F-35 being able to carry the AIM-9).  Getting rid of the canon is not a good idea.  The next conflict that will see the F-35 used will most likely go against Russian or Chinese made aircraft.  These aircraft are less expensive which means there are more copies than the F-35 has missiles to shoot.    It may just need that canon.

All of this occurs over the backdrop of French President Fracois Hollande asking for sanctions to be lifted against Russia.  France, an EU member. needs the cash from the sail of two French made warships to Russia that the sanctions prevent.  Cracks in the European alliance are beginning to show along with the potential exit of Greece from the EU may cause some other economic hardships for US allies in Europe.  In the meantime, BRICS continues to prosper with Russia now starting talks about selling oil to India (who has benefitted from Russian nuclear technology for years).  Russia seems to be positioning itself to be at a great advantage over the US in a few years (if not sooner).

Happy New Year

Happy Year!

2015 does seem to hold the most potential for chaos, at least since I started writing this blog back in 2007.  The issue with Daesh/Syria, Russia, and China remain unresolved at best and have the potential to escalate and in the the case of the latter two escalate into armed confrontations.

Internally, we are facing an especially bad strain of flu along with of course the potential for an ebola outbreak.  We seem to have quietly forgotten about the millions of illegal immigrants now here legally but still with no documentation so we don't know where they are or if they might have brought with them same contagious disease.

The hackers who attacked Sony pictures still remain elusive, while North Korea remains the prime suspect (even taking credit for it) there is still the possibility of the attacks being accomplished through a 3rd party.  Worse, the case has been made for cyber attacks to prove much more lucrative than other forms of terrorism.  We have only just begun to see cyber terror and future attacks may be far more sinister (i.e. power grids or healthcare facilities).

New York does not to seem any closer to resolving differences between police and the mayor.  And while the media is playing up the reduction of arrests by police (in reaction to increased fears of being assassinated), there are two interesting statistics that the media isn't covering.  First, has the reduced number of arrests led to the implied increase number of crimes?  Second, were all of those arrests necessary in the first place?  (Both of these questions were actually posed by another colleague originally on his FB page).

The media is playing up fears by the African-American community concerning police violence (although social media is making other groups, such as white Americans, aware of these issues).  At the same time, the media is fostering fear amongst police officers that there are under siege (which the shooting in New York would seem to indicate).  The problem is thus far, the police have response in the media is one of victim rather than taking an active lead in working with the community to stop the violence.

Unfortunately, this will lead to more Americans seeing the police as part of the problem and not part of the solution.  The federal government will want to respond to implementing martial law.  If that happens, it will actually aggravate matters and turn even more Americans against the police and federal government.

In regards to police, the Secret Service has fallen from its once prestigious perch as a premier agency.  The several lapses of security around the White House has called into question the ability of the Secret Service to do its primary function of protecting the President.  The problems for the Secret Service seem to be a result of many seasoned agents leaving (due to a switch from a retirement system based on Washington DC police to the federal retirement system) compound by their move from the Treasury Department to the Department of Homeland Security.

The Bush Administration claimed the number one factor leading to the events of 9/11 was an intelligence failure which is what led to the creation of the DHS.  Unfortunately the two biggest intelligence agencies responsible for countering terrorism, the FBI and CIA, were not part of the re-organization legislated through the USA PATRIOT Act.  So the intelligence failures still have not been addressed yet dissimilar agencies such as the Secret Service, Coast Guard and FEMA were slammed together with unimpressive results.

DHS is largely focused on preventing another 9/11 meaning it is ill-equipped doctrinally as well as organizationally to deal with other terrorist threats (such as cyber).  Further, agencies such as the Secret Service seem to be losing their core skills.

The military is not faring much better and now with both wars "over",  funding is becoming even scarcer.  How prolonged operations against Daesh and Syria while trying to contain an increasingly aggressive Russia remains to be seen.

Let me conclude with some predictions (just because its what people tend to do at the New Year);

1. Another cyber attack, potentially against another major movie company.

2. Increased activity from Russian aircraft, especially in NATO and Alaskan airspace.

3. Increased Russian military activity in Cuba to counter US overtures

4.  Russia and India will further their relationship including energy and nuclear weapons technology.

5.  NYPD is going to overplay their hand and it will backfire putting them in worse light.

6.  Daesh (ISIS) will continue to recruit Americans and at least one will attempt an attack in 2015.

7.  Either our power grid or cellular networks will be targeted for attack

8.  The next Presidential candidates will be named Clinton and Bush.

9.  An attack will be launched in the Middle East which will raise oil prices.

10.  A cure for ebola will be announced involving blood transfusions.