Asia (Page 951)

According to a US Army research, the M1 Abrams tank should be phased out in favor of lighter, smaller, autonomous vehicles due to survivability concerns raised by the Ukraine War on potential battlefields.

The US Army Science Board research recommended replacing the M1 Abrams tank with new, smaller vehicles and uncrewed cars to rule the anticipated 2040s battlefields, according to The Warzone’s report this month. According to the study, a next-generation M1 generic with larger caliber guns and fast anti-tank missiles is required.

According to the Warzone review, the US Army Science Board foresees new risks from sophisticated anti-tank weapons, drones, and AI-assisted capabilities for potential tanks and armoured vehicles. It foresees an increase in the use of technology, cleverness, surveillance and reconnaissance( ISR ) shipping features, and cyber-attacks on command and control facilities on the battlefields of the 2040s.

According to the study, the M1 Abrams will become less dominant on future battlefields, and the US military is worried about backing forces in a high-end conflict with the People’s Liberation Army( PLA ), which is anticipated to compete with friendly supply chains. & nbsp,

The M1 Abrams needs a sizable shipping coach, which calls for enormous amounts of J – 8 flight fuel and an ongoing source of spare parts. The PLA can use its extensive anti-access / area denial ( A2 / AD ) capabilities to prevent US resupply operations or to use a combination of economic and political pressure to deny the US access to bases and logistics facilities, while the United States can directly supply its tank forces via sealift or airlift, or pre-position fuel and spares in nations like Japan, the Philippines, and Australia.

The US Army Science Board, according to The Warzone, advises looking into a lighter M1-derived tank with sophisticated 130mm main guns, reduced crew, an electric propulsion system that is hybrid in nature, and an emphasis on active protection systems ( APS ). According to the report, the US Army is thinking about a fresh crewed 35 to 40 bit light container with comparable features as well as an” mechanical friend” 20 to 30 tons.

Additionally, it mentions that the board has suggested testing drone vehicles through collaboration with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency( DARPA ) and engagement with France and Germany on sophisticated tank projects.

The study, according to The Warzone, criticizes US tank-related study in comparison to efforts in China and Russia while acknowledging the importance of armor for upcoming US military operations. The study might have influenced the US’s recent decision to stop M1 upgrade projects and alter its stance on the long-term M1 / Abrams, which went into service for the first time in 1980.

Defense News announced this month that the US Army will switch from the M1A2 System Enhancement Package Version 4( SEPv4 program ), noting that it can no longer be upgraded without adding weight and requiring a smaller logistical footprint for the tank.

According to Defense News, the new M1E3 Abrams does support open-systems layout standards and have the best features of the M2A2 SEPv4, enabling quicker technology upgrades. According to the report, the project aims to create a lighter, more resilient tank that will reportedly be more productive on the battlefield and simpler to improve.

Defense News even reports that the US Army intends to slow down production of the M1A2 SEPv3 until it can convert it to full-scale generation. It states that the M1E3 is anticipated to reach first administrative ability in the early 2030s and that it will be able to counteract longer-range threats to both lethality and resilience.

Similar choices have been made by the US Marine Corps ( USMC) when M1 tanks were removed from its stock as part of what is being billed as a major revamp of its corporate structure.

The Marine Corps Times reported in March 2020 that the USMC is removing M1 vehicles and other tools that will be difficult to survive in conflict with countries like China. According to The Marine Corps Times, tanks and armoured vehicles are now susceptible due to precision strikes and helicopter threats, which give units that shoot first a clear advantage on the battlefield. More portable units are required, according to the report, to withstand detail fire, attrite adversary forces, pose problems for the enemy, and deplete ISR resources.

However, these innovations could pose serious difficulties for US allies like Taiwan and Ukraine, both of which are expected to receive M1 tank.

Joe Biden, the president of the United States, announced in January that 31 M1A1 Abrams tanks had been delivered to Ukraine, sufficient to outfit an armoured regiment. According to Biden, Ukraine needs the tank to protect against Soviet aggression, improve its ability to move through empty landscape, and store Russia’s shifting tactics and strategies on the field.

Former USMC M1A1 tanks with Far Target Locators( FTL ) will likely be sent to Ukraine, according to David Axe in a March 2023 Forbes article. According to the author, the crew of the FTL can switch the GPS coordinates of a destination that is up to 8, 000 feet away to an ordnance shelling for fire operations.

He does, however, point out that while the US government’s most recent FTL is now two or three times more precise, the earlier USMC M1A1s had poor detail, giving tank crew accurate target sites with a 35-meter Circular Error Probability( CEP ) of up to 8, 000 feet.

The 31 M1A1 headed tanks for Ukraine won’t have the depleted uranium( DU ) armor that shields the M2 tanks in US service, according to Lara Seligman and other authors in an article published in Politico in January 2023. Instead, export models will be devoid of that armor. This gear enables US M1s to withstand the armor-piercing, depleted-uranium disease pond shells fired by China and Russia. & nbsp,

The tank are constructed in just one manufacturer in Lima, Ohio, so Seligman and other authors also point out the dubious US M1 production capacity. According to reports, the service has a minimal production potential of 100 vehicles per year compared to 250 for Russia and has struggled to meet orders from Poland and Taiwan.

Additionally, Olivia Yanchik notes in an Atlantic Council article from September 2023 that it is improbable that one regiment of M1 tanks will have a significant impact on Ukrainian battlefields and that their intended use is unknown. Yanchik asserts that when combined with good strategy and air defense assets, poor plan should never obscure the need for vehicles to breach walls or keep place.

Even though a Taiwan conflict is thought to be an air-sea battle, large M1 tanks may still be crucial in fending off an impending Chinese marine assault. Taiwan has 1, 200 tanks, far exceeding the PLA’s sealift capability to land less than half that many in a single strait crossing, according to Mandip Singh, who is conducting research for the Institute for Security & amp, Development Policy ( ISDP ) in June 2023.

However, Axe notes in a Forbes article from November 2021 that Taiwan has struggled to buy new vehicles because of Chinese force on foreign suppliers, necessitating repairs to its outdated US M48s and M60s.

He claims that even though Taiwan just bought 108 M1A2 tank from the US, the PLA may try to destroy Taiwan’s container ships before the first storm of an amphibious landing create lands because it has thousands of missiles aimed at the autonomous island.

But, according to Axe, Taiwan is well aware of the threat, has located thousands of armored vehicle hiding places, and has set aside US$ 3 million to construct bunkers for its brand-new M1 tanks.

Continue Reading

The similarities were startling and most definitely not fortuitous.

Israel was once more taken by surprise simply 50 years and a moment after being completely taken off guard by an organized military assault by its relatives, Egypt and Syria.

Hamas militants launched hundreds of rockets full into southern Israel earlier on October 7, 2023, as they invaded the nation on land, at sea, and in the air. Thousands of Israelis were killed, victims were taken, and war was declared within hours. Thousands of Palestinians have already died in Gaza as a result of ferocious Jewish retaliation, and many more may undoubtedly perish by the end of this conflict.

Because it is a battle. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared the nation is at battle, just as it was 50 years ago, after the Hamas problems started and the death toll in Israel increased.

And that is not the conclusion of the similarities.

Shock attacks on Israeli holy days set off both wars. Yom Kippur, a Jewish satisfaction time, fell on that year in 1973. Jews celebrate reading the Torah on Simchat Torah this day.

The heavily populated Gaza Strip that borders Israel is under the command of the Palestinian militant party Hamas, which appears to be trying to convey the exact message that Egypt and Syria did in October 1973: Israelis cannot be kept safe by Israel’s military might.

The 1973 conflict turned out to be a pivotal year for both the Israeli-Arab conflict and Israeli politics. Does this conflict remain the same?

Both days, I was caught flat-footed.

The abrupt start of the war has undoubtedly shocked Israelis once more, just as it did fifty years ago. Similar to the conflict in 1973, this one is currently being portrayed as a massive knowledge failure.

Although Israeli military intelligence had forewarned the authorities that Israel’s adversaries thought the nation was defenseless, Hamas did not anticipate an attack from the intelligence creation.

Instead, according to the knowledge analysis, Hamas preferred to rule the Gaza Strip and didn’t want to go to war with Israel, at least not right away.

It was assumed that Hamas may be discouraged from launching significant attacks against Israel out of concern that Israel’s possible significant retaliation would further devastate Gaza. The next significant square of fighting in May 2021 left the area with 2 million Palestinian residents, many of whom were living in poverty.

Alternatively, many analysts and the intelligence community thought that Hamas preferred to export Palestinian violence to the Israeli-occupied West Bank in order to destroy the Palestinian Authority, which was already frail and unhappy and was headed by his political rival.

Just as it was before the start of the 1973 conflict, their brains analysis has proven to be wildly inaccurate. Israel’s defense might did not deter its enemies back next, as it does today.

Israeli knowledge failed to recognize their opponent’s arrangements both in 1973 and now, in addition to misjudging the eagerness of opponents to go to battle.

This time, given Israel’s substantial and superior intelligence gathering capabilities, that failure is even more obvious. This attack must have been meticulously planned by Hamas for several weeks, right in front of Israel.

Israel’s intelligence loss since the 1973 conflict is unquestionably worse than this.

But it’s also a military loss in addition to an intelligence one. Since the majority of the IDF models were stationed in the West Bank, it is obvious that the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, were unprepared for an invasion of this magnitude.

True, the IDF’s top brass had repeatedly warned Netanyahu Netanyahu that the storm of Israelireservists refusing to serve as a protest against the attempted judicial reform of the government had hampered the military readiness of that organization.

However, the IDF was certain that its defense walls would stop Hamas extremists from entering Israel, as they had done in a raid in May 2021, mainly the pricey hi-tech barrier that had been constructed around the Gaza Strip.

However, the Gaza challenge did not deter Hamas insurgents, just as the so-called Bar-Lev defensive line along the Suez Canal failed to prevent Egyptian troops from crossing the river in 1973. It was merely bulldozed through and circumvented.

The sport of blame starts.

After this warfare, there will undoubtedly be the same responsible activity as there was following the 1973 conflict. The Agranat Commission, which published a critical review and pointed the finger of blame squarely in the direction of Israel’s army and intelligence organisation, will likely be established, as was the case following the 1973 battle.

However, the majority of the blame for this battle does not belong to Israel’s military and intelligence formation. It is Israel’s political organisation, particularly Netanyahu, who has presided over the nation since 2009, with the exception of a one-year period between 2021 and 2022.

In addition to an intelligence loss, the 1973 battle was also the result of a political failure. In actuality, Israel’s political leadership— especially prime minister Golda Meir and her defense minister Moshe Dayan — was primarily to blame because they had rejected diplomatic offers from Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in the years leading up to the war. Even at the cost of harmony with Egypt, the Israeli government was adamant about keeping some of the Sinai coast, which Israel had taken during the 1967 war.

Similar to this, Netanyahu has disregarded current Egyptian attempts to mediate a long-term ceasefire between Israel, Hamas, and the militant organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Additionally, Israel’s existing far-right government would rather keep the West Bank under occupation than try to reach an agreement with the Palestinians.

A potential barrier to a conventional invasion of the West Bank has also been removed by the Netanyahu administration’s widely unpopular attempt to curtail the authority and independence of Israel ‘ Supreme Court. The home unrest and severe divisions that the proposed administrative overhaul has sparked in Israel are almost certainly a factor in Hamas’ decision to launch his current assault.

In general, it is evident from the most recent attack that Netanyahu’s attempt to incorporate and hinder Hamas has failed miserably. It has been disastrous for Israelis, particularly those who live in the country’s north, and even worse for Arab citizens living in Gaza.

Hamas has not been brought to its knees by maintaining a 16-year siege of Gaza, which has successfully imprisoned its 2 million residents and damaged its economy.

Instead, the repression-based power Hamas has had over Gaza has only gotten tighter. This disappointment has cost innocent residents on both sides of the border dearly.

Following the 1973 conflict, Meir was forced to resign, and a few years later, Menachem Begin’s right-wing Likud Party defeated the ruling Labor Party in the 1977 public election. The Labour Party had been in power since the country was founded in 1948 under different guises.

This marked a turning point in Israeli local politics, which was largely caused by the government’s decline in trust in the then-dominant Labor Party following the 1973 war.

Does the past be repeated this time? Did the long-standing dominance of Netanyahu and Likud in Israeli politics finally come to an end with this battle? Due to the numerous corruption scandals that surround Netanyahu, his efforts to weaken the judiciary’s authority, and the right-leaning stagger that his ruling coalition represents, the majority of Israelis have now turned against him.

This destructive surprise attack unquestionably refutes any claim made by Netanyahu that he is Israel’s” Mr Security ,” so more Israelis may then do so.

It is already obvious that this new war’s start will be long remembered by Israelis with great grief and anger, just like the 1973 battle also is, regardless of how it turns out and its political implications in Israel.

In fact, it will likely cause Israelis yet more trauma than that battle did because, unlike the surprise attack in 1973, which was primarily carried out by military personnel, this time it is Israeli civilians who have been taken prisoner and killed on Israeli soil. Therefore, this conflict differs from the one in 1973 in this important way.

Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Professor of Israel Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, Dov Waxman

Under a Creative Commons license, this essay has been republished from The Conversation. Read the article in its entirety.

Continue Reading

The spirit of Cardinal Richelieu declared,” Hamas won second prize this time.” ” First place in that region of the world means you are eligible to compete for first place the following time.” The second reward is that you are no longer alive.

The highest strategist of the Thirty Years’ War and the creator of France’s uneven victory over the wealthier and more populous Austrian Empire were both spirits I initially conjured up in the Carthusian ossuary beneath Paris’ sewers, where I was shivering once more. Skulls on top of neatly stacked rows of ivory grinned at me from all sides as nitre drippered from the green rocks.

Until I arrived at ^the location of my midnight rendezvous wi^{th th}e Cardinal, I had carried a large of Chateau Petrus and spittoon down ^the spiral stairway hidden benea^{th th}e Pont d’Alma, also known as ^the Bridge of Souls, in Paris’ 7^th district, to ^the crumbling marble stairs benea^th Napoleon III’s 19^th-century drainage system, ^through masonry covered in ^the mold of ^the ages.

I filled the spittoon with the sweet Bourdeaux and waited for the great man’s withered grey appearance. It” inserted a spectral beak into the mouth of the trashcan and absorbed the water until it transformed into Richelieu’s colored clothes.” Its mind withdrew with a plop and spoke to me in Maurice Chevalier’s intonation,” So why do you not phone?”

I stumbled,” Excuse me, Eminence.” I’ve been extremely active.

” No, Spengler, you’ve been complacent ,” reprimanded the ghost. similar to the Israelis

Eminence,” All talks about Israel’s knowledge failure.”

Spengler said,” It was much worse than a lack of knowledge.” Israel is unable to comprehend the world in which it is located. Too many people around the world can predict a time when their language won’t be used, their lifestyle will be preserved in books, and other people will live in the fields and valleys they currently call home. A people without a prospect also lacks logical self-interest.

However, Hamas are maniacs! I objected. They have lost their minds!

The Cardinal declared,” Somebody is going crazy, Spengler, with the possible exception of the Chinese, who may not have fully embraced the madness that permeates the entire world.” Think about the Ukrainians: Why should they rely on removing all Russian, as well as Romanian and Polish, from the Soviet-era territories? Why not allow Russian listeners to run their own local authorities and schools, as Putin suggested ten years ago?

Ukraine is a dying nation, which is the cause. Nine million of its 21 million working-age residents had left for work abroad before the war, producing little more than one child per woman. This intra-Slavic slaughter was the easiest battle in recent memory to avoid, but the Ukrainians entered a war with Russia out of arrogance born of despair.

The ghost of the Cardinal started to enlarge like Faust’s puppy. Why did Azerbaijan feel the need to conquer the Armenian enclave of Nagorno – Karabakh after more than 30 years and drive out 120, 000 people whose ancestors had lived there for 2,000 years? Request the Serbs why their army is stationed on Kosovo’s borders, ready to drive out Albanians who, with the aid of the United States, seized the county from Serbia in 2008?

But how does that relate to the Palestinians? ” I objected.

The Cardinal’s spirit hissed,” The Palestinians are the most susceptible of all citizens ,” because they were never a people in the first place. Why is there even such a thing as an Israelite? No Arab identified as a Arab prior to Israel’s declaration of independence. A people transfer similar to the exchange of Greeks and Turks after 1922 occurred during and after the 1948 war between Israel and Arab countries, which resulted in the expulsion of 800 000 Jews and 800,000 Arabs from Israeli territory.

” As well as the offspring of the Hispanic Jews driven out of Spain in 1492, the Jews of Iraq and Persia, whose ancestors had lived there for 2,500 years, left with the clothing on their backs.” Israel took them in. The 800,000 migrants from the 1948 war were kept in isolated camps by the Arab state because they refused to accept the existence of the Hebrew State.

Prior to the Hebrew state’s resolution, the majority of Arabs in Palestine were economic immigrants who arrived as the Zionists started to rebuild the nation. They were merely hostages of the Egyptian states’ rejection of Israel’s living; they were not a country. The Palestinians wouldn’t have any explanation to be there in the first place if the Muslim states were to make peace with Israel, especially Saudi Arabia, the protector of Islam’s holiest sites. Simply put, they would be asynchronous Arabs.

I retorted,” But Israel has the help of the Americans in dealing with Saudi Arabia.

The Americans, perhaps? Richelieu let out a snort. Israel’s issue is that it is an alliance of a decrepit power that destroyed Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria.

But Eminence, what will happen? What will become of the Palestinians?

” Ask the Serbs in Kosovo, the Eastern ethnic Ukrainians, or the Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh.” The issue is that the inhabitants transfer from the 1940s, which involved 800,000 Arabs to 80,000 Jews, was not finished. The cultural jumble of the previous dynasties is disintegrating. Israel may make life in Gaza so challenging that a sizable portion of the population will depart, or Israel itself may be uninhabitable, and Israelis will depart.

Some might argue, Eminence, that people transfers are an act of ethnic cleansing, shocking the world’s conscience.

Balivernes! The spirit of the Cardinal, which had grown so big that it was pressing up against the bone bundles, exclaimed. It may burst the moralizing amour-proper balloon that has kept American policy thus constantly stupid for the past 50 years. For people who are cursed with an death foreboding, Gilead contains no remedy.

” Majesty, if Israel destroys Hamas with some civilian casualties, absolutely the Arab Gulf States may turn against it.”

” Foutaise!” exclaimed Richelieu. ” Once the Arab world accepts Israel’s life, the Gulf States know better than anyone that the Palestinians have no reason to exist.” The Gulf States, on the other hand, are painfully aware that they have raised a dragon and are more eager than anyone to get rid of it.

I was now pinned against the wall by the expanding form, and the legs behind me tickled my rear. We were again a folks, and now we are no more, the skulls started to rock back and forth. Those who are alive you see their lot in those who have come before them.

The grinning skulls shone through the fading robes of the Cardinal, whose spirit had lost its crimson shine and was turning shiny. Their chorus grew louder and more loud. I tried to scream,” Go back to being dead ,” but their clamor drowned out my own voice.

A version of the Jerusalem Post and an empty container of Bowmore greeted me when I awoke.

Continue Reading