Indian Strategic Studies: December 2024

31 December 2024

Digital Sovereignty: Securing India’s Submarine Cables

Samuel Bashfield

India is making strides to protect its digital links with the wider world. The nation’s reliance on submarine cables for internet connectivity and communication presents significant vulnerabilities that need to be addressed. As the global digital landscape increasingly depends on undersea cables, India’s approach to securing its submarine cable infrastructure has become a priority. Several key issues are at the forefront of India’s strategy to enhance submarine cable security, including the establishment of sovereign repair capacity, diversification of cable landing stations and promotion of domestic submarine cable links. However, in the face of rising strategic threats in the Indo-Pacific, efforts at establishing a domestic cable manufacturing capacity, response arrangements to seabed warfare and supporting connectivity amongst Indian Ocean nations should likewise be a priority.

Sovereign Indian-Flagged Submarine Cable Repair Capacity

Currently, India relies on foreign-flagged vessels for repairs within its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which leads to delays and in turn increased vulnerability. The establishment of an Indian-flagged cable repair vessel will not only reduce dependency on foreign assets but will also provide the nation with the capability to respond swiftly to cable disruptions. Furthermore, an Indian-flagged repair capacity could be a diplomatic tool to assist neighboring nations in the Indian Ocean.

On Great Nicobar: 20 Christmases After the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami

Leesha K Nair

The hymn echoed through the Nicobarese settlement of Rajiv Nagar, weaving its way through structures that its residents now call home, illuminated by strings of bright, festive lights. Yet, amidst the celebration of Christmas, a deep sense of longing permeated the air — nostalgia for a way of life that the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami had all but erased.

“Christmas back then meant traveling for days between villages to celebrate with everyone. We carried heavy loads but were happy. Now, we are cramped in one place. This doesn’t feel like the Christmas we knew before the waves came,” said Robert*, leading the carolers past tin shelters that still don’t feel like home, even 20 years later.

The Devouring Sea

On that fateful day, December 26, 2004, the sea rose as an unholy leviathan. Nine carolers, journeying to their villages along western Great Nicobar Island were the sole survivors along that coast. What awaited them was ruin beyond comprehension. The western shores of Great Nicobar — once alive with the vibrancy of life, songs, and sacred rituals — had been devoured in a single, merciless moment. Entire villages had vanished beneath the waves, leaving behind no trace of their forms. For the nine survivors, there was no solace, only an aching void where their kin, their homes, and their way of life had once thrived.

Nepal’s Mountain Communities Contemplate the End of ‘Himalayan Gold’

Eileen McDougall

Tshering* has collected yartsa gunbu, one of the world’s most valuable biological commodities, from the mountains surrounding his home for more than 40 years. He lives in the remote region of Dolpa, in northwest Nepal, where proceeds from yartsa gunbu sales have transformed local living standards over the last few decades. But, according to pickers such as Tshering, yields are drastically declining. Some attribute this to over-picking, while scientists also point to the impact of climate change.

“Before it was abundant, I used to find 10—15 pieces in a square foot,” Tshering explains. He jabs his finger firmly into the ground to indicate the frequency in a small space. “But it’s like any other crop – with potatoes for example, if you don’t keep seeds for the future and eat everything you have, then you won’t get more potatoes,” he goes on. Similar to many other Himalayan communities, locals of Dolpa now ponder when this precious natural resource will come to an end, and how they will cope afterwards.

A Crucial Income for Mountain Communities

Often called Himalayan Gold, yartsa gunbu results from a unique interaction in which fungus spores infect moth larvae living underground in the soil. The infected caterpillar is driven upward, dying just beneath the surface. The fungus, in the form of a brownish stem, sprouts from the shell of the now dead caterpillar, pushing a few centimeters above the soil.

Five Factors That Catapulted Arakan Army to Unprecedented Success Against the Myanmar Military

Rajeev Bhattacharyya

Of all the ethnic armed organizations operating in Myanmar, the Arakan Army has managed to bring under its control the largest expanse of territory in less than two decades since its formation. It has liberated as many as 13 townships from the military junta so far, covering a vast swathe in Arakan, a region that includes southern Chin State and Rakhine State, even as it seeks to wrest control over areas still under the control of the Myanmar military.

Formed in Kachin in 2009 by 26 functionaries, including Commander-in-Chief Twan Mrat Naing, with the assistance of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the Arakan Army (AA) started engaging in armed conflict with the military in northern Rakhine State in 2015. Fighting was intermittent for five years thereafter.

Then in November 2020, the AA entered into an informal ceasefire with the military. But hostilities resumed early in 2022. Another brittle ceasefire came into effect in November of that year. On November 13, 2023, the AA launched a full-scale offensive against the military which continues to date.

Tormentors Change, but Not the Torment

Hannah Beech

When the bombs started falling, they were almost beautiful — like the purple blossoms of the banana tree, Manwara and her sister Shamshida would recall later.

Their family was on the run, escaping the mortar fire that drove them from their home in Hari Fara, one of the last refuges for Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority. They left their village in August, only to be hit by a rain of bombs released from drones. The strikes killed their parents. Their other three sisters, missing, are presumed dead.

They were among thousands of ethnic Rohingya families fleeing their villages this summer amid a new wave of targeted violence, a horrible echo of the ethnic cleansing by Myanmar’s military that killed thousands and exiled hundreds of thousands in 2017.

This violence was not at the hands of the military, though. Instead, it was from a pro-democracy rebel group that was raised to fight the army. The rebels’ political aim may be different, but the persecution they are inflicting on the Rohingya — airstrikes, mass arson, sexual violence — is torn from the government’s old playbook.

Syria’s New Government Steps Up Pursuit of Assad Loyalists

Adam Rasgon

Syria’s new administration has stepped up its campaign to track down and arrest members of the ousted Assad dictatorship, signaling that it would act with a heavy hand against people it claims are challenging its ability to impose law and order.

Sana, the state-run Syrian news agency, reported on Saturday that “a number of remnants of the Assad militias” had been arrested in the coastal Latakia region in western Syria. Weapons and ammunitions were confiscated, the report added.

The new administration, which has tried to assert authority over Syria since an alliance of rebels toppled President Bashar al-Assad three weeks ago, has indicated that pursuing loyalists of the Assad dictatorship who are undermining its authority is a top priority.

But a human rights organization has raised alarms about the way the transitional government was going after Assad loyalists, saying it was carrying out arbitrary arrests of supporters of the old regime.

How Donald Trump Can Make Israel a Better U.S. Partner

Will Walldorf

When President Donald Trump returns to the White House, most expect he’ll give Israel a long leash to do as it sees fit in the Middle East. However, that expectation could be tested and might prove to be wrong altogether. It is clear enough that Trump cannot stand it when allies defy him the way Israel has defied President Joe Biden on bringing about a ceasefire and a hostage deal since October 7, 2023. Furthermore, if Tel Aviv’s ongoing regional aggression embarrasses Trump by scuttling his ambitious plans to bring peace to the Middle East, Trump’s frustrations will likely boil over into a bid to reign Israel in.

The big question, then, is: how can he do that? The answer lies in changing the structure of the U.S.-Israeli alliance, namely by making it more ambiguous. A strategically ambiguous alliance will benefit both Israel and the United States. It will ensure Israeli defenses against regional foes, temper Israeli adventurism, and provide the foundation for expanding the Abraham Accords, which Trump is especially keen to do.

A phenomenon that political scientists call “moral hazard” lies at the heart of the troubles that Trump (like Biden) is almost certain to face with Israel. Moral hazard tends to emerge when a great power makes a robust security pledge to a revisionist ally, meaning a state that is desperate to fix its security problems and/or alter the prevailing security order. Protection by the great power shields the ally from the consequences of its actions, making it more risk-acceptant and less responsive to the great power’s demands. On the hook to bail out the ally when trouble comes, the great power finds that its security costs rise to unsustainable levels.

As Hopes Rise for Gaza Cease-Fire, Conditions There Have Worsened

Aryn Baker and Abu Bakr Bashir

For the past several weeks, Fadia Nasser, a widow sheltering in Deir al Balah in central Gaza, says she has subsisted on nothing but a small sandwich of herbs for breakfast and a tomato she shares with her daughter for lunch.

Eleven miles away in a tent camp in southern Gaza, Said Lulu, who used to run a small coffee kiosk in Gaza City, says he is suffering in pain from kidney disease but has no access to the clean water doctors say he must drink to keep it from getting worse.

And Ola Moen, in Beit Lahia in the enclave’s north, fears going outside because of frequent airstrikes. But she doesn’t feel she has a choice: She says she spends her days scouring pharmacies for burn cream and painkillers for her 9-year-old nephew, whose legs were broken and burned by an Israeli airstrike in October.

Even as mediators try to secure a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, Palestinians and human rights organizations say the humanitarian situation is getting more desperate.

In the 14 months since Israel launched its invasion of Gaza in response to the Hamas-led terror attack on Israel, military bombardments have turned cities into rubble-filled wastelands and 90 percent of the population of about 2.1 million has been displaced at least once. Winter is adding to the misery. A doctor at a hospital in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, said that four infants in tent encampments had died from the cold in the past week.

In Bomb-Scarred Cities, Risking Life and Limb to Get Civilians to Safety

Tyler Hicks and Gaëlle Girbes

Vasyl Pipa is not a Ukrainian soldier, but his job, at times, can be as dangerous as fighting in the trenches. As members of the White Angels, a branch of the police that evacuates civilians from the front line, he and others take extreme risks to rescue some of the last civilians who remain close to the fighting.

One of Mr. Pipa’s tasks is to evacuate civilians from Kurakhove, and from along the entire front line in the region. Traveling there is like flooring it through a thicket of life-threatening risks: Jets, drones and artillery can quickly annihilate an armored vehicle. Today, Russians control the city center, where fighting continues among the last few streets before the Kurakhove Power Station.

As the deadly Russian march forward intensifies, most Ukrainians are running for their lives. While some are loyal to President Vladimir V. Putin and welcome the white, blue and red flag hoisted here, the majority of those left behind are elderly, disabled and poor, with no means of relocating. Helping them to safety is the White Angels’ job, and as the front line shifts, its urgency is rising.

A Strange Banging Sound, Chaos and Prayers Before a Plane Crashes

Milana Mazaeva and Ivan Nechepurenko

At first, there was a strange banging noise outside the plane. Then, while one flight attendant was standing in the cabin, something hit his arm, cutting it. The passengers, sensing something was terribly wrong, began panicking. Some began praying.

One passenger recalled thinking it would be the last prayer of his life. Then, silence.

The anxious and chaotic scene on board Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 was described by two flight attendants — Zulfugar Asadov and Aydan Rahimli — and a passenger, Subhonkul Rakhimov, in interviews with The New York Times on Friday and with an Azerbaijani TV station.

They were among the 29 survivors from the plane that set off on Wednesday with 67 people on board from Baku, Azerbaijan, en route to Grozny, Russia, and that crashed in a ball of black smoke and orange flames on the shores of the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan. The pilots were among those who did not survive, officials said.

Behind the Dismantling of Hezbollah: Decades of Israeli Intelligence

Mark Mazzetti, Sheera Frenkel and Ronen Bergman

Right up until he was assassinated, Hassan Nasrallah did not believe that Israel would kill him.

As he hunkered inside a Hezbollah fortress 40 feet underground on Sept. 27, his aides urged him to go to a safer location. Mr. Nasrallah brushed it off, according to intelligence collected by Israel and shared later with Western allies. In his view, Israel had no interest in a full-scale war.

What he did not realize was that Israeli spy agencies were tracking his every movement — and had been doing so for years.

Not long after, Israeli F-15 jets dropped thousands of pounds of explosives, obliterating the bunker in a blast that buried Mr. Nasrallah and other top Hezbollah commanders. The next day, Mr. Nasrallah’s body was found in an embrace with a top Iranian general based in Lebanon. Both men died of suffocation, the intelligence found, according to several people with knowledge of it.

The death of Hezbollah’s feared leader, who for decades commanded a Lebanese militia in its fight against the Israeli state, was the culmination of a two-week offensive. The campaign combined covert technological wizardry with brute military force, including remotely detonating explosives hidden in thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah, as well as a withering aerial bombardment with the aim of destroying thousands of missiles and rockets capable of hitting Israel.

Where the war stands, talking about the war, and 2025

Fabian Hoffmann

Hi all, this post is a bit different from my previous (and future) ones. I want to share my thoughts on where I see the war heading and offer some personal reflections on discussing the war over the past years.

This diverges from my usual posts, where I focus on my two main areas of expertise—nuclear strategy and missile technology—, topics I believe provide the most value for your time. If this post isn’t what you signed up for, feel free to skip it, and I look forward to reconnecting in the new year.

Where the war stands at the end of 2024

In my view, what this year has made more clear than anything else is that both sides face the finite nature of their resources as the central issue. The media has finally started picking up on this, though almost entirely in the context of Ukraine’s increasingly severe manpower shortage.

Has Russia’s Shadow Fleet, Built to Evade Sanctions, Added Sabotage to Its List?

Michael Schwirtz

Western officials have long been concerned about Moscow’s so-called shadow fleet, an assemblage of aged tankers created to covertly carry Russian crude oil around the world. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the worry primarily concerned the use of such off-the-books ships to circumvent Western sanctions and generate revenue to fuel the Kremlin’s war machine.

But Russia’s shadow fleet may now present a more pressing danger to the West.

This week, Finnish commandos boarded an oil tanker that officials suspect had cut through vital underwater cables in the Baltic Sea, including one that carries electricity between Finland and Estonia. The ship, the Eagle S, bears all the hallmarks of vessels belonging to Russia’s shadow fleet, officials said, and had embarked from a Russian port shortly before the cables were cut.

If confirmed, it would be the first known instance of a shadow fleet vessel being used to intentionally sabotage critical infrastructure in Europe — and, officials and experts said, a clear escalation by Russia in its conflict with the West.

Plane Skids Off Runway and Bursts Into Flames While Landing in South Korea, Killing 179

HYUNG-JIN KIM and KIM TONG-HYUNG

A jetliner skidded off a runway, slammed into a concrete fence and burst into flames Sunday in South Korea after its landing gear apparently failed to deploy. All but two of the 181 people on board were killed in one of the country’s worst aviation disasters, officials said.

The 737-800 operated by Jeju Air plane arrived from Bangkok and crashed while attempting to land in the town of Muan, about 290 kilometers (180 miles) south of Seoul.

Footage of the crash aired by South Korean television channels showed the plane skidding across the airstrip at high speed, evidently with its landing gear still closed, and slamming into a concrete wall, triggering an explosion. Other TV stations aired footage showing thick, black smoke billowing from the plane, which was engulfed in flames.

The crash killed 179 people, the South Korean fire agency said. Emergency workers pulled two crew members, to safety. They were conscious and did not appear to have any life-threatening injuries, health officials said.

Russia’s Economic Gamble: The Hidden Costs of War-Driven Growth

Alexandra Prokopenko

Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian economy has repeatedly defied expectations. Predictions of a double-digit contraction never materialized. On the contrary, GDP grew by 3.6 percent in 2023 and an expected 4 percent in 2024: rates that both developed and developing nations might envy. Key indicators like GDP growth, household income, and low unemployment have become President Vladimir Putin’s trump cards. He brandishes them to the West as proof that sanctions are ineffective, and presents them to partners in Asia and Africa as evidence of Russia’s sound economic policies and the resilience of its development model. Chinese officials are apparently convinced, having reportedly established an interagency commission to study Russia’s economic model.

Yet this image of resilience is deceptive. Over the past two years, Russia’s economy has operated like a marathoner on fiscal steroids—and now those steroids are wearing off. Growth is slowing, key sectors are cooling, and the arguments underpinning Putin’s claims of economic “invulnerability” are unraveling. The Kremlin faces the mounting challenge of sustaining the war effort and funding social and infrastructure programs. Simultaneously maintaining low inflation and a stable ruble is proving increasingly unsustainable. Without significant course corrections, the current momentum may falter within a year. By 2026–2027, the fiscal and social challenges now on the horizon could fully metastasize into a crisis.

Army halted weapon development and pushed tech to soldiers faster: 2024 in review

Ashley Roque

In what has turned out as Army Secretary Christine Wormuth’s fourth and final year as the service’s top civilian leader and Gen. Randy George’s first full year as chief of staff, the duo shed high-profile modernization programs, revamped others and pushed tech down to soldiers at a faster clip.

Wormuth, slated to wave goodbye to her post as the 25th secretary of the Army in January 2025, largely spent her tenure keeping the service’s high-profile modernization portfolio intact. This year, though, the axe fell on several initiatives starting with the early February aviation shakeup that ended development on the next generation Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA), kept General Electric’s Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP) in the development phase longer, and shelved legacy Shadow and Raven unmanned aerial systems.

“We are learning from the battlefield — especially Ukraine — that aerial reconnaissance has fundamentally changed,” Army Chief Gen. Randy George said in a press release at the time. “Sensors and weapons mounted on a variety of unmanned systems and in space are more ubiquitous, further reaching and more inexpensive than ever before.”

In turn, the service is planning to spend dollars freed up by those decisions to ink a multi-year procurement deal with Lockheed-Sikorsky for the UH-60M Blackhawk line, give Boeing the greenlight to formally begin production on the CH-47F Block II Chinook, buy new drones and more.

Space Force gets loud and proud about warfighting role: 2024 in review

Theresa Hitchens

Over the past year, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman has issued a series of internal “Commander’s Notes” that have sought to create the culture and operational concepts for the newest military service, with a firm focus on the Space Force’s warfighting role.

It’s clear that as 2024 comes to a close and the Space Force celebrates its fifth birthday, what one observer called “chest-thumping rhetoric” clearly has entered into the public domain — a change that defined how the service went about its public and private posturing over the last year.

Saltzman spent most of this year charging up the forces to think of themselves not as support specialists, but as frontline capabilities — or, as he told Guardians assembled at the Space Force Association’s Spacepower 2024 conference in Orlando, Fla., on Dec. 10, “You are warfighters, whether you carry a gun or not.”

“In accordance with the law and at the direction of the president, you are trained and expected to carry out offensive and defensive actions against military forces of other countries, or support other military elements that do. When you’re in a combat squadron, you’re the first line of defense for conflict in space and your actions directly impact lives on the ground, in and out of harm’s way.”

A year of next-gen fighter doubts for the Air Force: 2024 in review

Michael Marrowon

After years of development, the Air Force broke cover on its futuristic stealth fighter in May 2023 to announce that a winner would be picked to build the platform in 2024, teeing up the highly anticipated next generation of airpower.

And then reality started to set in, leading to what is perhaps the Air Force’s biggest programmatic headwind of the year: the question over whether it will field the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter at all and, if so, in what form.

The trouble started this summer, when whispers about NGAD’s fate first started swirling around Washington. Budget constraints bearing down on the Air Force — thanks to high-profile headaches like cost overruns with the nuclear-tipped Sentinel ballistic missile and pricey new programs like the B-21 Raider — began to exact their toll as the service built out its fiscal 2026 budget.

We fed every 2024 Pentagon briefing into ChatGPT. Here’s what it thought.

Lee Ferran

If 2023 was the year that OpenAI’s ChatGPT exploded onto the public scene, 2024 was the year the US military and Intelligence Community began carefully wading into the potential of generative AI.

Officials have said that kind of tech could be used for everything from streamlining acquisition to sifting through a mountain of open source data for relatively low-level intelligence analysis. And while the Pentagon has grown to trust generative AI enough to build a new “cell” around it’s use, many officials are still cautious because the cutting edge technology is not without its risks, especially its propensity to “hallucinate” false information.

Echoing many other officials this year, Jimmy Hall, chief information officer in the State Department’s intelligence wing, said last week, “We want to be able to use a gen AI,” but the office is “just not ready.”

“As we step our way through, we don’t want to be so quick to the trigger that we put our situation where civil liberties or privacy or something else is violated,” Hall said in a webinar put on by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. “So we’re really behind the scenes testing a few items, mechanisms, systems, tools, before we’re ready to roll that out. But we do want to take advantage of emerging technology.”

Everything comes down to Ukraine: 5 stories from Europe in 2024

Tim Martin

The war in Ukraine surpassed the 1,000 day mark earlier this year and continues on with slow Russian advances amid growing uncertainty in Europe that a new US administration under Donald Trump could end desperately needed military aid to Kyiv or result in a peace deal of greater, long-term strategic value to Moscow.

Of all that happened during the conflict in the last 12 months, the deployment of North Korean troops to the Russian border territory of Kursk stands out from the pack. The move itself was officially confirmed by Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary General in October, after he held a North Atlantic Council meeting with South Korea’s National Intelligence Service and its Ministry of National Defense.

It will be of no surprise to readers then that events from, or linked to, the war dominate our picks for the top European stories from 2024.

The ‘technology stack’ driving the Army’s next-gen C2 plans

Carley Welchon

The US Army has made upgrading its command and control capabilities a priority, but has shared relatively few details about how exactly they’re pursuing the sprawling project.

But last week at the service’s biannual Technical Exchange Meeting, service officials dove deeper into plans for the next-generation C2 (NGC2) program, revealing among other details a tiered “technology stack” the capability will be built on, and how industry can make it a reality.

“We’re really, no kidding, trying to do this different[ly] than we’ve ever done it before without falling into some of the traps,” Mark Kitz, program executive officer of the Command, Control Communications-Network portfolio, told Breaking Defense.

The plan can seem a bit complicated, as Army officials acknowledged, so they urged industry to keep an eye on the program’s ever-evolving characteristics of need (CON) document.

End of Year Review: the Russo-Ukraine War

Lawrence Freedman

For his end of year audit Sam was able to assess his performance against some reasonably objective indicators – election outcomes and the mismatch between revenue and spending. My task is different as the wars I follow tend to drag on, without a definite conclusion against which to assess past analyses. In addition, because of the limits of the available information, especially when it comes to decision-making processes in Moscow and Kyiv, I must rely more than I would wish on inference and speculation. Accepting these limitations requires dealing more in possibilities than predictions. That is why I prefer explaining history to forecasting the future.

Yet questions about the future cannot be ducked. My aim is usually to consider available policy choices, for Western countries as well as the belligerents. That depends on identifying, and critiquing, assumptions about how conflicts are developing, and the key factors that are likely to most influence their outcomes. Over time this becomes less difficult because the approach of key decision-makers to their wars gets established and one can work out what they are trying to do even if it can be hard on a day-to-day basis to see how well they are succeeding. The country that is most difficult to get right is the US. Its leadership has been conflicted on the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, in both cases knowing which side they most support, yet seeking to impose restrictions on their military operations to prevent damage to American interests. ‘What will Trump do?’ is now the starting point for the analysis of almost any geopolitical issue.

What went wrong with capitalism

Ruchir Sharma

In his farewell address, Ronald Reagan described America as the “shining city on a hill”, open to “anyone with the will and heart to get here”. I was one of those inspired to try, and today the dynamic mix of academics and entrepreneurs who energise the world’s technology leader still strikes me as a marvel. Of the top 100 US companies, 10 now have chief executives who were born in my home country, India, a breakthrough that could have happened only in a capitalist meritocracy.

Nonetheless, I worry about where the US is leading the world now. Faith in American capitalism, which was built on limited government that leaves room for individual freedom and initiative, has plummeted. Most Americans don’t expect to be “better off in five years” — a record low since the Edelman Trust Barometer first asked this question more than two decades ago. Four in five doubt that life will be better for their children’s generation than it has been for theirs, also a new low. According to the latest Pew polls, support for capitalism has fallen among all Americans, particularly Democrats and the young. In fact, among Democrats under 30, 58 per cent now have a “positive impression” of socialism; only 29 per cent say the same thing of capitalism.

That’s not surprising, given what we’ve all been told. When Joe Biden won in 2020, op-eds in newspapers around the world hailed his presidency as a death knell for “the era of small government”, which they dated to the “neoliberal” rebellion against the welfare state launched by Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Recent histories of capitalism sketch the same arc, arguing that those two leaders ended three “glorious” postwar decades for social democracy, when ambitious governments worked with corporate and union leaders to generate faster growth and distribute the proceeds more fairly. In short, these thinkers cast Biden’s plans for new spending and regulation as a welcome break from small, penny-pinching government and a plausible fix for popular frustration with capitalism.

The Trajectory of War in 2024 and Beyond

Mick Ryan

Back in February 2022 (that seems like a long time ago now), I published a book called War Transformed: The Future of 21st Century Great Power Competition and Conflict (USNI Books) It covered the key trends which were shaping contemporary strategic competition and conflict. The book also offered several hypotheses about key initiatives that might permit contemporary military institutions to better understand the challenges they faced, remain abreast of best practice and to undertake the organisational, conceptual and personnel adaptations required to do so.

Two great disruptors - new, confident and wealthy authoritarian regimes; and, advanced technologies like AI and robotics - are changing the shape and trajectory of war in the 21st century. This is hardly the first era of massive disruption of societies, and thereafter, military institutions. The end of the 19th century was also a period of significant technological and societal change which resulted in major changes in the character of war.

The Second Industrial Revolution, which straddled the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, resulted in widespread changes to how societies lived, communicated, and interacted. It also provided different means for waging war, with the birth of wireless communications, electricity, aircraft, the internal combustion engine and new materials and chemical sciences (including the development of dynamite).

Autonomy changes everything about combat engineering

Barry Rosenbergon

Combat engineering tasks are a significantly dangerous set of activities. Combat engineers, or “sappers” as they’re called, clear the battlefield ahead using explosives and machines with front-end equipment so maneuver forces can travel forward unhindered. For countermobility, their mission is to slow down opposing land forces with terrain-based effects like Dragon’s teeth.

Deployment of robotic combat engineering assets will significantly reduce risk to exposed soldiers in the breach executing mobility/countermobility missions, while maintaining or increasing the tempo of movement for maneuver forces. In this editorial eBRIEF, Breaking Defense examines the challenges and opportunities associated with robotics and autonomy for combat engineering.

30 December 2024

Taliban Hint At Shielding Anti-Pakistan Militants In Afghanistan As ‘Guests’

Ayaz Gul

A senior Taliban leader in Afghanistan has indicated that they will continue to provide refuge to anti-Pakistan militants, describing them as “guests” under the country’s traditions.

Taliban Information Minister Khairullah Khairkhwa made the rare remarks just days after the Pakistani military reportedly conducted airstrikes against suspected terrorist locations in an eastern Afghan border province.

The Taliban claimed that Tuesday’s attack in Paktika resulted in the deaths of nearly 50 civilians, predominantly refugees from Pakistan. While the claims could not be verified from independent sources, the United Nations said that it had “received credible reports” from the remote Afghan province that dozens of civilians, including women and children, were killed in the Pakistani airstrikes.

Islamabad has refrained from publicly acknowledging the cross-border strikes, but Pakistani security officials anonymously confirmed and told reporters that the military action had targeted and destroyed several “terrorist hideouts” of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an outlawed group engaged in lethal attacks against Pakistan. Several key TTP commanders were also said to be among more than a dozen militants killed.

Afghanistan: Now It Can Be Told, After All The Harm Has Been Done – OpEd

Norman Solomon

This week, the New York Times reported that the U.S. government made war in Afghanistan while helping to “recruit, train and pay for lawless bands of militias that pillaged homes and laid waste to entire communities.” Those militias “tortured civilians, kidnapped for ransom, massacred dozens in vendetta killings and razed entire villages, sowing more than a decade of hatred toward the Afghan government and its American allies.”

Written by a former Kabul bureau chief for the Times, the article appeared under a headline saying that “U.S.-backed militias” in Afghanistan were “worse than the Taliban.”

Now they tell us.

The new reporting made me think of a chapter in my book War Made Invisible titled “Now It Can Be Told.” Here’s an excerpt:

Timing is crucial in media and politics — and never more so than when war is at stake. It’s completely unsatisfactory for journalists to toe the war line for years and then finally report, in effect: Now it can be told — years too late.

Chinese Soft Power Strategy In Bangladesh – Analysis

Dr. Saleh Shahriar

Introduction

What are the key elements of the Chinese ‘soft power’ strategy in Bangladesh? How has China’s soft power strategy influenced Bangladesh’s economic, social and cultural landscape? These questions are addressed in this article.

On March 2, 2023, Brand Finance – the world’s most famous consultancy agency – published a report on Global Soft Power Index (GSPIS) in London which examined the brands of 121 nation-states. The report reveals that among the top 20, Western countries are much ahead in pursuing soft power compared to South Asian or African countries. Soft power is a term used in international relations to describe a country’s ability to influence others through cultural appeal, values, and diplomacy rather than coercion or force.

Coined by political scientist Joseph Nye in the late 1980s, soft power contrasts with “hard power”, which involves military might and economic sanctions. Soft power involves the power of attraction in international politics. Nye developed the concept of soft power in a Cold War context. The concept of soft power refers to the ability to achieve desired outcomes through attraction rather than coercion or monetary incentives. Since the end of the Cold War, the concept of soft power has evolved over time into a broader concept.

China launches new amphibious assault ship in a race to rival US military

Brad Lendon and Nectar Gan

China has launched its first next-generation amphibious assault ship, adding a powerful cutting-edge warship to the country’s fast-expanding navy as it races to rival the military power of the United States.

The Type 076 amphibious assault ship entered the water on Friday at a launch ceremony at a shipyard in Shanghai, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) said in a statement.

Named Sichuan after a southwestern Chinese province, the independently developed ship is hailed as a “key asset” for advancing the Navy’s transformation and enhancing its long-range operational capabilities, according to the statement.

China, which already boasts the largest naval force in the world, is building carriers and large warships at a staggering pace as it seeks to project power far beyond its shores and catch up to the military supremacy of the US.

With a full-load displacement of over 40,000 tons, the Type 076 ranks among the world’s largest amphibious assault ships, featuring a twin-island superstructure and a full-length flight deck, according to the PLAN.

Dorito in the Sky: Unpacking China’s Radical New Stealth Fighter

Kyle Mizokami

Stealth Bomber or Fighter? Decoding the Secrets of China’s New Warplane

This afternoon, video and images of a brand-new Chinese fighter jet hit social media. While details are still sketchy, the Dorito-shaped aircraft is China’s most advanced manned aircraft design. Thanks to the netizens who posted images and clips to social media, we can infer a few things about its role and capabilities.

Still, other details will likely remain a mystery for months, if not years.

What We Know About China’s New 6th-Generation Fighter (Or Bomber?)

In a characteristically low-key release, China revealed a new, previously undisclosed fighter jet design to the world by flying it over an urban area, allowing citizens below to record video and feed clips into the never-ending social media stream.

For example, the 2010 reveal of the J-20 “Mighty Dragon” fighter involved flying it over a Chengdu airfield, whereupon aviation enthusiasts promptly photographed it.

China’s New Information Support Force: Military Lessons from Ukraine

Toomas Hanso

Over two years into Russia’s war against Ukraine, the People’s Liberation Army announced a structural change: the Strategic Support Force (SSF) was disbanded, and the new Information Support Force (ISF) was launched, signalling yet another step forward in the PLA’s push for informationisation.

This analysis examines the extent to which the creation of the ISF is linked to lessons that Beijing has learnt from the Russian operations in Ukraine. A strong correlation is suggested by two factors: multiple Russian Network Information Systems (NIS) failures and the temporally coinciding publications by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and PLA, with the language identical to that used during the ISF’s launch event. This analysis further identifies four key areas where the Russian military made NIS-related mistakes, thereby outlining the lessons that China could have derived: namely, in the areas of general communications, Command, Control, Communications, and Information (C3I), cyberspace operations, and Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR).

A thorough and critical assessment of military conflicts around the world and subsequent, corresponding changes to the PLA can provide a window into Chinese military thinking, as well as hint at where PLA capabilities are strong and where they are lacking. As PLA exercises around Taiwan continue to grow in frequency and threaten the status quo, the importance of making such observations cannot be overstated in analysing future conflicts and anticipating their outcomes.

The Panama Canal: Hostage to the US-China Trade War?

Allison Fedirka

In November 1906, Theodore Roosevelt became the first sitting U.S. president to make a diplomatic visit outside the continental United States, sailing to Panama to view the construction of the Panama Canal. In September 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed a treaty that would ultimately give Panama full control and operation over the canal in 2000. And in December 2025, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump threatened to retake the canal from Panama. The chances of this happening are slim, of course. But like most political rhetoric, his comments denote larger goals and aspirations – in this case, Trump’s domestic agenda, which likely includes a trade war with China. The U.S.-Panama relationship is merely a hostage to that agenda.

Control over the Panama Canal gave Washington a valuable source of revenue and immense geopolitical influence. Since the 1500s, explorers and entrepreneurs had dreamed of a path that would drastically cut the time and resources required to cross from one ocean to the other: Sea transit between the U.S. east and west coasts was a weekslong, 13,000-mile journey. Alfred Thayer Mahan, the naval and geopolitical writer, knew that U.S. control of the Central American isthmus, and the possibility of a trans-isthmus canal, would be pivotal for the projection of U.S. military and commercial power. Presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt, both former military officers, were keenly aware of the isthmus’s strategic value. Grant commissioned a series of expedition surveys to identify possible locations and assess construction feasibility. Roosevelt later oversaw the creation of the U.S. Great White Fleet and canal construction.

National Standard of the People’s Republic of China: Cybersecurity Technology – Basic Safety Requirements for Generative Artificial Intelligence Services (Draft for Feedback)

1. Scope

This document2 specifies the basic safety requirements for generative artificial intelligence (AI) services, including training data safety, model safety, and safety measures, and provides safety assessment requirements.

This document applies to service providers carrying out safety assessments, and also provides the relevant main oversight department (主管部门) a reference.

2. Normative Reference Documents

The contents of the following documents, through normative references in this text, constitute indispensable provisions of this document. Among them, for dated references, only the edition corresponding to that date applies to this document. For undated references, the latest edition (including all amendments) applies to this document.

Information security technology terminology GB/T 25069-2022

3. Terminology and Definitions

The terms and definitions defined in GB/T 25069-2022 and listed below apply to this document.

3.1 Generative Artificial Intelligence Services

The use of generative AI technology to provide text, graphics, audio, video, and other content generation services to the public.

The Near Enemy: China’s Subnational Reach Into the United States

Emily de La Bruyère & Nathan Picarsic

Introduction

In 2015, former U.S. ambassador to Iceland and senior aide to President George H.W. Bush, Sig Rogich founded the US-China Transpacific Foundation (UCTPF). A Nevada-based 501(c)(3) non-profit, UCTPF describes its mission as one to “promote the mutual interests of both the United States and China through political, cultural and educational exchanges.”2 Rogich is an influential political leader with experience at both the local and national levels in the United States.3 He worked in a senior capacity for the presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and John McCain, as well as the congressional, gubernatorial, and state political races of Senators Harry Reid and Dean Heller, Congressmen Joe Heck and Jon Porter, and Governors Paul Laxalt, Kenny Guinn, and Jim Gibbons. He served as the national finance chair for the Republican Governor’s Association. He is alternately described as a “kingmaker” of Nevada politics, “Republican czar,” and Las Vegas’s “most powerful political operative.”4

UCTPF has organized “track two” dialogues between key U.S. and Chinese players.5 UCTPF has also been involved in the organization of delegations of U.S. national and subnational government leaders to China, as well as exchanges between them and Chinese government entities in the United States.6 Rogich has a track record of commenting publicly on U.S.-China relations, including in local news outlets. In a 2019 interview with the Nevada Newsmakers political talk show, he suggested that the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong were sparked by paid “thugs” and that elements of the narrative about China’s detention camps in Xinjiang potentially misinterpret Beijing’s response to a terrorist threat.7

The Drones of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham: The Development and Use of UAS in Syria

Broderick McDonald

The lightning offensive which toppled the Assad regime and captured Damascus in less than two weeks has shocked observers both inside and outside Syria. While the rapid progress of the offensive was primarily the result of the professionali s ation of the main rebel force and the inherent weakness of the regime and its allies, new advanced drones and specialised units played important roles in bolstering the advance. This Insight examines the development and strategic use of these drones by the largest and most powerful rebel force in Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

The new wave of drones deployed by HTS during the offensive included both short-range kamikaze FPV drones and larger long-range rocket-propelled UAVs that are believed to travel up to 50km and carry significantly largely payloads. These kamikaze FPV drones enabled HTS and its allies to accurately strike tanks, artillery positions, and individuals behind enemy lines and were akin to similar models used in Ukraine and other conflicts. The larger rocket-propelled UAVs enabled the group to reach far behind enemy lines and destroy regime command centres and other hardened targets with larger payloads than was previously possible. While other rebel groups have made use of FPV drones, including the Syrian National Army (SNA), which also participated in the recent offensive, none matched the sophistication of HTS. The use of armed consumer drones is not new to Syria, which saw the first widespread use of them by ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra during the early days of the civil war. However, the variation and capabilities of the drones used have become more sophisticated in the past five years. What began as the modification of primarily consumer off-the-shelf drones used to drop grenades and other small explosives has expanded significantly.

The Iranian Regime Is Crumbling – Time for Max Pressure

Robert Harward

The Iranian empire is crumbling. Just three months ago, Iran sat astride the Middle East, effectively controlling at least four Arab capitals and multiple well-armed proxy forces. Now, it has lost Syria and Lebanon while Hamas and Hezbollah have been decimated. This Israeli success presents the incoming Trump administration with a historic opportunity to dislodge other parts of the region from Iran’s rapacious grasp.

As impressive as Iran’s weakening has been, the United States cannot afford to declare mission accomplished and rest on Israel’s laurels. It needs a concerted and comprehensive strategy that synchronizes all elements of American power and marshals international support to finish the job that Israel began, ensuring the collapse of the Islamic Republic.

Diplomatically, Iran must be isolated and U.S. partners united. Europeans—having seen Tehran’s thugs beat up and kill women for daring to bare their hair, witnessed the evolution of drone warfare and watched Russia launch long range ballistic missiles into Ukrainian civilians—are finally willing to get tough on Iran. By convincing Berlin, Paris, and London to invoke “snapback,” the United States can get United Nations sanctions reimposed on Iran, without giving Russia and China a chance to veto them. But it will have to act quickly, this legal tool and the sanctions it can bring to bear, expire in October 2025.

From Sudan to the Sahel, War Spreads

Sasha Polakow-Suransky

Throughout 2024, many of Africa’s crises worsened: Sudan’s civil war escalated, tensions between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo grew, and militants in the Sahel continued to spread south toward coastal states.

In Sudan, fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the rebel Rapid Support Forces has not abated. Sudanese writers have contributed hard-hitting arguments to FP since the war began in April 2023, and this year, the conflict continued to take a horrendous toll on civilians, exacerbating the mass refugee crisis.

In eastern Congo, near the border with Rwanda, clashes between Congolese troops and M23 rebels—widely considered to be a Rwandan proxy—have escalated, leading some to call on the United States to intervene before it’s too late. This is a war that is not only being fought on the battlefield; increasingly, disinformation on social media is fomenting violence in Congo and further afield.

Hatred-filled Facebook posts have been linked to violence in Ethiopia’s civil war, and advances in artificial intelligence could make social media much more dangerous in conflicts across the continent—especially because of the dearth of content moderation in African languages in which hate speech and disinformation are spread.

The New Gods of Weather Can Make Rain on Demand—or So They Want You to Believe

Amit Katwala

In the skies over Al Ain, in the United Arab Emirates, pilot Mark Newman waits for the signal. When it comes, he flicks a few silver switches on a panel by his leg, twists two black dials, then punches a red button labeled FIRE.

A slender canister mounted on the wing of his small propeller plane pops open, releasing a plume of fine white dust. That dust—actually ordinary table salt coated in a nanoscale layer of titanium oxide—will be carried aloft on updrafts of warm air, bearing it into the heart of the fluffy convective clouds that form in this part of the UAE, where the many-shaded sands of Abu Dhabi meet the mountains on the border with Oman. It will, in theory at least, attract water molecules, forming small droplets that will collide and coalesce with other droplets until they grow big enough for gravity to pull them out of the sky as rain.

This is cloud seeding. It’s one of hundreds of missions that Newman and his fellow pilots will fly this year as part of the UAE’s ambitious, decade-long attempt to increase rainfall in its desert lands. Sitting next to him in the copilot’s seat, I can see red earth stretching to the horizon. The only water in sight is the swimming pool of a luxury hotel, perched on the side of a mountain below a sheikh’s palace, shimmering like a jewel.

Trump’s Border Czar Says Military Bases Could Aid Deportation Effort

Tarini Parti and Michelle Hackman

Donald Trump’s team is looking at using military bases to detain migrants and military planes to boost deportations, the president-elect’s incoming border czar Tom Homan said.

“It’s something that’s certainly on the table,” Homan said Friday in a wide-ranging interview, adding that specific plans haven’t been drawn up yet. “We’re waiting to see what Congress is going to give us for funding.”

U.S. To Send $1.25 Billion in Weapons to Ukraine

Lolita C. Baldor & Matthew Lee

The United States is expected to announce that it will send $1.25 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, U.S. officials said Friday, as the Biden administration pushes to get as much aid to Kyiv as possible before leaving office on Jan. 20.

The large package of aid includes a significant amount of munitions, including for the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems and the HAWK air defense system. It also will provide Stinger missiles and 155 mm- and 105 mm artillery rounds, officials said.

The officials, who said they expect the announcement to be made on Monday, spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details not yet made public.

The new aid comes as Russia has launched a barrage of attacks against Ukraine’s power facilities in recent days, although Ukraine has said it intercepted a significant number of the missiles and drones. Russian and Ukrainian forces are also still in a bitter battle around the Russian border region of Kursk, where Moscow has sent thousands of North Korean troops to help reclaim territory taken by Ukraine.

US Navy takes delivery of SSN 797 Virginia-class attack submarine

The latest Virginia-class attack submarine, SSN 797, has been officially handed over to the US Navy, representing the 12th battle force ship delivered this year.

Constructed through a partnership between General Dynamics Electric Boat and HII-Newport News Shipbuilding, this submarine is the 24th of its class and the 13th delivered by Electric Boat.

The transition marks the builder’s formal transfer of the vessel to the Navy, which will now undergo extensive testing and trials prior to its commissioning for active service.

Christened by American literacy advocate and politician Christie Vilsack in Groton, Connecticut, in 2023, the latest submarine is scheduled for commissioning in April 2025.

The Iowa is the sixth submarine of the ten VCS Block IV-configured attack submarines and the first submarine to bear the name of the Hawkeye State.

The name, USS Iowa, has previously been used for vessels such as the USS Iowa (BB 61), a battleship commissioned in 1943 that saw service during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.

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