Robert Farley vs Michael Goldfarb on BMD

For your viewing entertainment: The BMD debate.

Pay attention big Navy, Michael is pushing talking points on AEGIS BMD. If you want the core mission, then tell the American people why you should have it.

Shaping the issues and addressing the argument early: what the Navy does worst.

News of the Day

In case you missed it, the news that seems ready to break out from under the radar is in regards to a letter from nuclear proliferation scientist A. Q. Khan that was sent to his wife. The details of the letter may give us some idea of the questions the US has wanted to ask A. Q. Khan about for some time, although access to the scientist has repeatedly been denied by the Pakistan government.

The story begins with this article in the Sunday Times by Simon Henderson, and is getting more attention in India by The Times of India. I have to be honest, when I first noticed the article, I was very skeptical... but the lack of reaction kind of sums it up - this is almost certainly legit. None of the details are new exactly, most are what has been suspected for some time without specific details.

The bottom line for some will be that A. Q. Khan admits to being the guy who gave the Iranians nuclear technology, but for me the issue is the allegation of Chinese nuclear proliferation. The Sunday Times article notes this was 1982:

“We put up a centrifuge plant at Hanzhong (250km southwest of Xian).” It went on: “The Chinese gave us drawings of the nuclear weapon, gave us 50kg of enriched uranium, gave us 10 tons of UF6 (natural) and 5 tons of UF6 (3%).”

This was before the civilian nuclear agreement between China and Pakistan in 1986 and before the Chinese supplied Pakistan with a civilian reactor in 1989. Makes it somewhat tough to believe what the Chinese say when they are proliferating nuclear weapons in private while playing up the non-proliferation position in public.

No wonder the US doesn't want this guy in public, can you imagine what A. Q. Khan would say on 60 minutes? He speaks English very well you know...

Iran Shoots Down UFO

I love Iranian news. This is a new classic.

Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has targeted and downed an unidentified shining object after sighting it over Persian Gulf waters.

"Glowing objects were sighted over the Persian Gulf. IRGC air defense targeted one of the objects successfully, forcing it to plummet and sink in the seas off Boushehr (Province)," said top regional commander, Brigadier Ali Razmjou.

"The three bright objects were detected by our radars when flying over the Persian Gulf Islands of Khark and Khargou," he added, according to a Monday report posted on IRNA.

Brig. Razmjou explained that when the radars indicated that they were not Iranian aircrafts, the IRGC fired at the three objects. He also added that the fallen objects' remains have not been found yet.

The exact time and location of the sighting and downing of the weird aircraft has not been announced.

Serious topics by me shall resume shortly.

Update: Did the IRGC shoot down one of their own? Different area, but the accuracy of Iranian news is always suspect.

Grand Strategy

Check out Dr. Barry R. Posen's presentation on Grand Strategy as part of the Rethinking the Foundations of the National Security Strategy and the QDR Seminar Series.

There are several presentations that are pretty good viewing.

Future Surface Combatant at DSEi 2009

The Royal Navy is beginning to discuss their Future Surface Combatant. Janes covered the emerging ideas at DSEi 2009. The model in the picture is the BVT, described by Janes here.

A model unveiled at the show by BVT Surface Fleet has provided an initial indication of the key characteristics of the C1 variant of the Future Surface Combatant (FSC), intended to begin replacing the RN’s current Type 22 Batch 3 and Type 23 frigates from around 2020. And while officials caution that the model represents only an “early visualisation” of the C1 design concept, it nevertheless highlights some of the key attributes of flexibility, modularity and open architecture desired by the FSC programme.

Initial concept design work for the C1 variant of FSC has been completed by the Naval Design Partnership (NDP), a ‘rainbow’ team of naval architects and engineering specialists bringing together Ministry of Defence personnel and industry resource drawn from BVT Surface Fleet, Babcock Marine, BAE Systems, QinetiQ and Thales. The result is a baseline monohull platform, displacing in the region of 6,000 tonnes, equipped for anti-submarine warfare, naval fires, special forces support and possibly precision land attack.

Then Janes discusses this.

One novel characteristic of the model displayed at DSEi is the stern ramp and aft payload bay area. This concept of a mission bay is intended to afford the ship the flexibility to embark different payloads, such as a towed array sonar, torpedo countermeasures, special forces boats or unmanned vehicles.

There are obviously differences in what the Royal Navy needs and the US Navy needs, but it is worth noting the trend here. The Littoral Combat Ship is essentially an all out effort to maximize flexibility for various deployable payloads, where the Royal Navy needs a Type 23 replacement, a warship capable of independent operations to be the fleets workhorse. For the US Navy, the DDG-51 handles this role, but emerging European designs including FREMM and now the FSC for the Royal Navy are attempting to add partial capability for deployable payloads.

This is why when I look at the LCS, I believe the US Navy has the concept exactly right. Every Navy in the world wants the capability of unmanned vehicles for their fleet forces, but no other Navy can afford to do it in the quantity the US Navy is attempting to do. With that said, it is yet to be determined if either LCS design will be sufficient to effectively bring unmanned technologies for integration with fleet forces. The logistics issue specifically comes to mind, although there are several question regarding the US Navy approach towards unmanned system deployment.

The Royal Navy is already hinting the next round of defense reviews will likely result in even more cuts, which suggests the fleet will potentially fall below 20 surface combatants. This hybrid design example by BVT is about the best the Royal Navy can hope for in efforts moving towards unmanned technology at sea while sustaining a surface combatant force of 20 ships. We will see, this ship is suggested to cost £400 = US$660m, but Royal Navy cost estimates are about as reliable as US Navy cost estimates. I have huge doubts a 150 meter, 6000 ton steel ship will cost less than $1 billion, and I see 0% chance of the US Navy ever building a 6000 ton ship without wanting AEGIS (in other words, only as a competitor to existing DDG-51s).

More on FSC here (PDF).