Indian Strategic Studies: 03/12/25

12 March 2025

U.S. Becomes 1st Country To Classify Armed Drones As Fighters! Can They Replace Or Augment Combat Jets?

Air Marshal Anil Chopra

The two prototype aircraft, the YFQ-42A developed by General Atomics and the YFQ-44A from Anduril Industries, are the first uncrewed aircraft to receive a fighter designation.

Under Air Force naming conventions, the “Y” indicates a prototype, “F” stands for fighter, and “Q” signifies an unmanned system. Once these aircraft transition into production, the “Y” will be dropped from their names.

The CCA program aims to integrate autonomous drones as “loyal wingmen” to fly alongside manned fighters like the F-35 Lightning II.

Time To Replace Fighter Jets?

Elon Musk has suggested that drones should replace fighter jets. However, some say that drones would need to have the same electronics as fighter jets, which would make them expensive. Clearly more and more tasks are being gradually shifted to drones. Still, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are not likely to replace fighter jets anytime soon.

However, drones will fly alongside and in coordination with fighter jets and other combat platforms, taking on specific combat and combat-support tasks.

They were forced to scam others worldwide. Now thousands are detained on the Myanmar border

HUIZHONG WU

Thousands of sick, exhausted and terrified young men and women, from countries all over the world squat in rows, packed shoulder to shoulder, surgical masks covering their mouths and eyes.

Their nightmare was supposed to be over.

Last month, a dramatic and highly publicized operation by Thai, Chinese and Myanmar authorities led to the release of more than 7,000 people from locked compounds in Myanmar where they were forced to trick Americans and others out of their life savings. But survivors have found themselves trapped once again, this time in overcrowded facilities with no medical care, limited food and no idea when they’ll be sent home.

One young man from India said about 800 people were being held in the same facility as him, sharing 10 dirty toilets. He said many of the people there were feverish and coughing. Like all former enslaved scammers who talked to The Associated Press, he spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for his safety.

“If we die here with health issues, who is responsible for that?” he asked.

The armed groups who are holding the survivors, as well as Thai officials across the border, say they are awaiting action from the detainees’ home governments.

The World’s Biggest Polluter, China, Is Ramping Up Renewables

Simmone Shah

On Wednesday, China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) announced that the country would be investing in major renewable energy projects—developing new offshore wind farms and large scale clean energy bases that combine solar and wind farms.

It’s the latest move by the country, both a leader in renewable energy and the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, to make inroads in the green energy transition.

China’s renewable energy dominance has been a long time coming, experts say. “Several of the clean energy industries were identified by the government several decades ago as strategic industries, where they really wanted to invest and position themselves as the global leader,” says Joanna Lewis, director of the science, technology, and international affairs program at Georgetown University. “This has really been a long-term strategic effort on behalf of the government to both put in place policies that would promote the deployment of renewables domestically within China, but also build up the industrial capacity to allow them to actually manufacture the technologies as well.”

What is China's climate target?

In 2020, China announced that the country would reach peak carbon emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. Since then, the country has been making strides towards adopting clean energy. That same year, the Chinese government pledged to double its renewable energy capacity by 2030—only to reach that goal six years ahead of schedule. And in 2024, the country led the world in energy transition investment, accounting for two-thirds of the $2.1 trillion spent globally last year on everything from power grids to electric transport, according to BloombergNEF.

Princeton nuclear physicist Liu Chang leaves US for China in fusion energy quest

Dannie Peng

After more than a decade in the United States, nuclear physicist Liu Chang, whose research has been crucial in the journey to achieve fusion energy, has left Princeton University for a position at Peking University in Beijing.

Last month, Liu joined the Institute of Heavy Ion Physics at Peking University’s School of Physics as an assistant professor, according to a post on his new department’s social media account.

Liu’s research has centred mainly on plasma physics and nuclear fusion. In particular, he has focused on solving problems related to the physics of runaway electrons – a kind of energy leakage – and other energetic particles in magnetic confinement fusion devices.

Magnetic confinement is now seen as the primary path to make nuclear fusion a reality. The most common fusion reactors of this type are tokamaks and stellarators.

Research by Liu has been published in top academic journals in his field, such as Physical Review Letters and Nuclear Fusion.

The Thirst for Power

Natasha Hall

Introduction

The story of water scarcity and conflict in the Middle East is an old one. Since 2500 BCE, the vast majority of documented violent incidents related to water have been in the Middle East and North Africa—442 by the count of the Pacific Institute.1 From ancient aqueducts to modern water systems, technology has allowed communities to develop water resources despite aridity and intervals of drought. But for all of technology’s miracles, governance and politics play a crucial role. Today, the region has access to more advanced technology for discovering and exploiting water resources than ever before. Yet communities continue to face extreme water insecurity. Violence over water is increasing, and conflict is impeding the ability to reform.

Rapidly growing populations, along with failures to effectively manage water and waste, have brought many countries to a precipice. According to the Iraqi government, the average flow of the once-mighty Tigris and Euphrates Rivers has declined 70 percent over the past century.2 The great man-made lakes of central Iraq, al Habbaniyah and al Razzaza, have all but disappeared.3 The Khabur River in Syria has been reduced to a mere dribble of sewage.4 And the legendary Jordan River is little more than a trickle by the time it reaches its eponymous country. The water level of the Dead Sea, where the Jordan River discharges, has dropped the equivalent of a seven-story building since the year 2000.

Europe’s New Power Trio

Simon Toubeau

The victory of Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Germany’s recent federal election, which all but assures that Merz will be the next chancellor, is an encouraging development for the European Union. The high level of political alignment between German and EU leadership will enable the bloc to implement economic reforms, determine how to boost public spending in vital areas, and develop a new fiscal framework.

Almost immediately after the election, Merz entered into coalition talks with the Social Democratic Party (SPD). This tried-and-true formula – it will be the fourth CDU-SPD coalition since 2005 – will provide more ideological cohesion and stability than the fractious “traffic-light” coalition – the SPD, the Free Democrats (FDP), and the Greens – that preceded it. Above all, the shift in political gravity from the center left to the center right aligns the German government with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European People’s Party (EPP) leader Manfred Weber.

Von der Leyen, a veteran CDU politician with extensive ministerial experience in the German federal government, has consolidated her authority after winning a second term last year, bolstered by several policy successes, such as a new trade agreement with Mercosur. Merz’s relationship with von der Leyen – the protégé of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who sidelined Merz to become CDU leader – could be fraught, but they have so far managed to avoid any head-to-head antagonism.

How to Defend Ukraine’s Skies During Peace Negotiations

Benjamin Jensen, Mark Montgomery, and Jose M. Macias III

Air superiority remains a decisive factor in modern warfare. As Ukraine continues to defend itself against Russian aggression, policymakers and military planners are grappling with a fundamental question: How many aircraft are required to secure Ukrainian airspace sufficiently to deter Russian provocations?

Part of the Strategic Headwinds series, this commentary outlines the base level requirements for securing Ukraine’s airspace during any ceasefire and protracted peace process. Based on historical precedent, Russia is unlikely to honor an agreement without a formidable foe in their way, thus creating a need to secure the peace with military power, including a mix of foreign observers and missions like “no fly zones” and “aerial policing.” These missions are resource intensive and often involve rotational forces from multiple countries. Based on analyzing historic NATO operations alongside doctrine for counterair missions, we estimate that it will take 40–160 aircraft to protect the skies of Ukraine during a ceasefire and peace process.

Ukraine’s Future Vision and Current Capabilities for Waging AI-Enabled Autonomous Warfare

Kateryna Bondar

Introduction

To what extent are modern unmanned systems truly autonomous, and how significantly does AI enhance their autonomy in the war in Ukraine? What are the paths for transforming military unmanned systems from ambitious theoretical concepts into practical, AI-enabled battlefield tools? What technological, operational, and strategic barriers still prevent the realization of fully autonomous warfare?

This paper explores these questions by analyzing Ukraine’s innovative deployment of unmanned systems and assessing the role of AI in enhancing their effectiveness in contested environments. Drawing on dozens of interviews with Ukrainian military officials and Ukrainian and U.S. defense technology manufacturers, this analysis begins by reviewing the Ukrainian military’s broader vision of military strategy and technology development. It clarifies the main definitions related to autonomy and autonomous weapons systems (AWSs) and then outlines the Ukrainian military’s long- and short-term perspectives on the future battlefield, though these views have not yet been formalized into an official strategy.

Building on insights from these interviews and acknowledging that current technology cannot yet support fully autonomous missions, this paper describes advancements in three essential functions—intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR); automatic target recognition (ATR); and autonomous navigation—showing how these developments steer the battlefield toward greater AI-enabled autonomy.

Energy and AI Coordination in the ‘Eastern Data Western Computing’ Plan

Andrew Stokols

The training and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) models is predicated on an enormous energy supply. This has ushered in a new rush for resource security—both for power generation and water use, as the data centers on which these technologies rely consume large amounts of water to keep them from overheating (Semianalysis, February 13). Currently, the United States leads the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in number of data centers by a wide margin (Statista, October 11, 2024). However, given the energy needs of cloud computing and AI, which continue to expand, there is a growing imperative for coordinating energy and cloud investment.

In the PRC, the “Eastern Data Western Computing” (东数西算) plan is a multiagency national initiative to do just that. While the United States lacks a national strategy to coordinate cloud computing and energy use, instead relying on disconnected regional initiatives and private-sector led investment, the PRC’s plan serves as an illustration of the potential benefits such coordination offers at national and local scales (NDRC, February 22, 2022; NCSTI, accessed February 26).

Russian military thinking about the Baltic Sea and the Arctic

Flemming Splidsboel Hansen

As NATO member states around the Baltic Sea and in the Arctic confront Russia over its aggressive policies, they should be prepared for Russia to execute a still wider range of military responses. These responses will be designed to deter and destabilise the NATO member states with the explicit aim of forcing the latter to change their policy towards Russia.

The accession of Finland (2023) and Sweden (2024) to NATO has made the organisational geography simpler: Russia is now confronted by a full group of NATO member states in both the Baltic Sea region (eight NATO member states) and in the Arctic (seven NATO member states). Russia itself has provoked this unwanted development by its illegal invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and by its aggressive policies towards a long list of neighbouring countries, including Finland and Sweden.

The circle of NATO member states in the Baltic Sea region and the Arctic – totalling 12 individual states as the Kingdom of Denmark, Sweden and Finland are in both areas – includes some of the fiercest critics of Russia as well as some of the most ardent supporters of Ukraine. This fact has elevated the two regions to even more prominent positions than usual in the Russian public debate; there is, simply put, a very long list of political preferences and decisions found within and across the 12 NATO member states that Russia will seek to influence and roll back.

Vladimir Putin’s Twofold Revenge

Françoise Thom

Most observers agree that the flogging of President Zelensky in the Oval Office on February 28 was not the result of an impromptu clash between the mercurial American and the indomitable Zelensky, but that a trap had been set for the Ukrainian president, probably by US Vice President JD Vance, more capable of implementing an elaborate plan than the unpredictable Donald Trump. However, this public lynching has all the hallmarks of a special operation devised within the walls of the Kremlin. For the Kremlin has long dreamed of assigning to the West the task of imposing capitulation on the Ukrainians. The experience of Georgia shows that only a demonstrative abandonment by Western democracies will enable Moscow to install a Quisling government under the guise of “preserving peace”. This was the aim of the Minsk agreements: the Kremlin hoped that France and Germany would put pressure on Ukraine’s leaders to comply with Moscow’s demands. In November 2021, Lavrov tried to force the issue, but was bitterly disappointed when Paris and Berlin refused to play along.

The Churchill of Ukraine Seeks a New Role

Christian Esch

It’s the second day of the Munich Security Conference when the Ukrainian president and former actor Volodymyr Zelenskyy is forced to admit that he does not know the play in which he is now supposed to act. He is sitting in front of a wood-paneled wall facing journalists in a room in Munich’s Bayerischer Hof hotel, crammed between a chair and a bookshelf. There is a video of the February 15 briefing.

Zelenskyy has just been through one of the most difficult weeks of his life, and his tired face clearly reflects the setbacks he has experienced. He has had to absorb one blow after another, each time from the U.S. government.

First, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in Brussels ruled out an American security guarantee for his country. Then, U.S. President Donald Trump held a long telephone conversation with Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin without Zelenskyy’s knowledge. And U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent presented a demand for Ukraine’s natural resources to compensate for past aid. In an interview with Fox News, Trump made Ukraine sound like a failed business deal: "They may be Russian someday, or they may not be Russian someday. But we're going to have all this money in there, and I say I want it back.”

On this Saturday evening in Munich, a journalist asks the Ukrainian president who will be participating in the peace talks that are set to begin in the coming days.

How COVID-19 Vaccines Inhibited Real Change

Cameron Abadi and Adam Tooze

As the world marks four years since the spread of COVID-19, scientists, public health officials, and economists are taking stock—with decidedly mixed results. Millions of people around the world died from COVID-19 or related diseases. But millions were also saved by vaccines. In a study published in 2021, scientists put the chances of a major pandemic occurring in any given year at 2 percent—a daunting figure, given the death and damage wrought by COVID-19.

When the World Closed Its Doors

Edward Alden and Laurie Trautman

In 1983, Donna Ann Baker, a Canadian, married John McCall, an American, in Madoc, Ontario, a rural town halfway between Toronto and Ottawa. The McCalls set up their lives in Chicago, where both their children were born and would take their father’s U.S. citizenship. The family later moved back to Ontario, where Donna worked for decades as an ICU nurse. She would regularly drive to visit their adult children who had settled on the U.S. side of the border.

In February 2020, just before Canada instituted strict border controls in an attempt to halt the spread of COVID-19, Donna was diagnosed with liver failure. She was put on the transplant list, but as her condition worsened, her family pleaded with the Canadian government for a compassionate exemption that would allow her children, Ian and Meghan, to enter from the United States to help with her care. Both children had birth certificates showing their right to enter Canada based on their mother’s Canadian citizenship, but their passports were American. They were told their best hope was to file for Canadian citizenship, but they would not be allowed to cross the border until the applications were approved.

Ukraine Feeling Impact Of U.S. Arms, Intel Pause

Howard Altman

Days after U.S. officials announced a temporary pause on providing arms and some intelligence products to Ukraine, Russia on Friday made advances in its Kursk region and launched a massive missile and drone bombardment on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. The pause in assistance to Ukraine came in the wake of the blowout between U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during an Oval Office press conference called to discuss the peace process.

The cutoff of U.S. intelligence “significantly impacts Ukrainian force protection of High Value Equipment’s shoot, move and scoot timelines, indications and warning of high-threat aircraft,” a retired high-ranking Ukrainian officer told us. “It significantly hampers the ability to target Russian forces and conduct long-range strikes against critical, mobile high-value targets.”

The lack of satellite imagery over Kursk is playing a role in the Russian advance there, the retired officer added. The lack of air defense munitions is making it harder to battle Russian airstrikes.

“The move of Russia in Kursk was a surprise to us,” one battlefield commander told The War Zone. “We only had information about the attack right when it came.”

An Assessment of Critical Minerals, Strategic Competition, and Ukraine

Estelle Denton-Townshend

The demand for critical minerals is increasing due to their growing importance for the green-energy transition, defence systems, and advances in AI. The EU’s critical minerals list includes 34 minerals, while the U.S.’s list comprises 50 [1]; [2]. Ukraine possesses 22 of these critical minerals [3]; [4]. NATO identifies 12 minerals as critical for the Allied defence industry of which Ukraine has six [5]; [6]. As noted by Andy Home, a senior metals columnist for Reuters, due to supply vulnerabilities, critical minerals and metals are a “new bargaining chip on the geopolitical table” [7].

In the now infamous press conference on February 28, 2025, President Trump sought to finalize a deal that gave the U.S. access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, and he wanted this deal secured before a security guarantee was discussed. President Zelenskyy made it clear he wanted a security guarantee upfront. However, this transactional approach to geopolitics became unstuck as Zelenskyy, Trump and Vice President Vance publicly argued over the deal [8].

In the press conference Trump made his administration’s goals clear:

As you know our country doesn’t have much raw earth minerals. We have a lot of oil and gas, but we don’t have a lot of the raw earth. What we do have is protected by the environmentalists but that can be unprotected, but still, it’s not very much. They have among the best in the world in terms of raw earth. We are going to be using that, taking it, using it for al l the things we do including AI and including weapons, military. It’s really going to satisfy our needs. So, it’s something that we just worked out really well. We have a lot of oil, lot of gas, but we don’t have raw earth. This has just about every component of the raw earth that we need for computing, for all of the things we do. This puts us in great shape [9]

For this French senator, Trump is a traitor—and Europe is now alone

François Diaz-Maurin

These users were not reacting to the latest late-night show, a political analysis in The Atlantic or the New York Times, or even a TV appearance by a representative from the Democratic party. They were praising a French lawmaker after watching his speech on the French Senate floor on Tuesday, as it made the rounds across Europe and North America. By Thursday morning, social media posts about the speech had been viewed at least hundreds of thousands of times.

Amid the fallout after US President Donald Trump reversed an 80-year-long strategic partnership with Europe to side with Russia in the Ukraine war, Claude Malhuret, a center-right senator who was largely unknown outside France, struck a chord that resonated with both European and American audiences.

During a general session in the French Senate, Malhuret offered an eight-minute-long, extremely direct “intervention” about the war in Ukraine and the security of Europe. For the most part, however, his speech—which among other things called Trump an “incendiary emperor”—was a critique of the Trump administration. Foreign officials and lawmakers don’t generally comment about the domestic politics of another country, much less of an ally.

There is free-riding among the US military services, too

Maximilian K. Bremer and Kelly A. Grieco

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has vowed to serve as the Pentagon’s “change agent,” reforming the acquisition process and placing emerging capabilities in the hands of warfighters faster.

This is a tall task.

Truly disrupting the Pentagon will require starting at the top, specifically adopting a comprehensive joint force design, in which capabilities are developed and integrated cohesively across all military services, domains and functions.

This approach is especially critical for identifying capabilities vital to the joint force, but which no single service has a major interest in funding, because they are “common pool” assets.

By the Joint Staff’s own admission, joint force design is “necessary to produce a unifying vision for the future of the Joint Force.” Yet the U.S. military lacks such a future-oriented framework for guiding joint modernization priorities and timelines. While the Joint Warfighting Concept outlines a broad approach for how the Joint Force should fight in a future conflict, it lacks specificity about which services are expected to provide what future capabilities and on what timelines. As the Marine Corps commandant lamented in 2023, the services lack “a common aimpoint … that says this is where the Joint Force needs to be 5, 6, or 7 years into the future.”

Trump Administration Foreign Policy Tracker: March

John Hardie

Welcome back to the Trump Administration Foreign Policy Tracker. Once a month, we ask FDD’s experts and scholars to assess the administration’s foreign policy. They provide trendlines of very positive, positive, neutral, negative, or very negative for the areas they watch.

President Donald Trump opened negotiations with Moscow by undercutting Ukraine while doing nothing to pressure Russia. Getting a good deal will require the opposite. Then again, Trump has himself admitted he does not “care so much” about the agreement’s specific terms. Rather, as Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg explained, Trump’s chief goals are to end the fighting, disentangle the United States from the war, and “reset relations with Russia.” The silver lining: Europe is now more serious than ever about stepping up.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is looking for around $50 billion in cuts, which the Pentagon says will be reallocated to other defense priorities. The administration reportedly ordered Cyber Command to halt offensive operations against Russia, while dismantling efforts by other agencies to counter foreign malign influence. Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other top officers for political reasons, sending a dangerous message to American service members.

How Trump Loosened the Rules for Hunting Terrorists

Eli Lake

When Dr. Sebastian Gorka started his job as the senior director for counterterrorism at the White House’s National Security Council, one of the first things he did was order new lanyards for his team with eight letters and an ampersand: WWFY & WWKY. These cryptic abbreviations were drawn from a quote from Gorka’s boss, President Donald Trump: “We will find you, and we will kill you.”

Gorka has fashioned that directive into a new policy that streamlines the process for the CIA and U.S. military to find, fix, and finish terrorists all over the Islamic world. The old protocols held that the president or national security adviser had to sign off on every strike. Now the authority to approve these air strikes and drone strikes sits lower down the chain of command.

“We undid four years of the insanity of the 8,000-mile UAV joystick,” Gorka told The Free Press.

In practice, one U.S. intelligence official told The Free Press, midlevel CIA and military officers in charge of targeting teams now have the authority to approve the operations. Another senior Trump administration official told The Free Press, “There are still significant levels of checks and balances in place, and the president has confidence in his military to act within their lawful authorities.”

Musk: If I Turn Off Starlink, Ukraine’s Frontline Would Collapse

Billionaire Elon Musk stated that his Starlink satellite system is critically important for the Ukrainian army and that if he were to shut it down, Ukraine’s front line would collapse.

“I literally challenged Putin to one-on-one physical combat over Ukraine, and my Starlink system is the backbone of the Ukrainian army. Their entire front line would collapse if I turned it off,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X.

He said he was “sickened by years of slaughter in a stalemate that Ukraine will inevitably lose.”

In his opinion, everyone who truly cares, thinks, and understands the situation wants this “meat grinder to stop.”

Musk also called for sanctions against Ukraine’s top 10 oligarchs, saying this would end the war.

“Place sanctions on the top 10 Ukrainian oligarchs, especially the ones with mansions in Monaco, and this will stop immediately,” he said.

Last month Kyiv Post reported that the US has threatened to cut off Ukraine’s access to Starlink – the global satellite network that has proven essential on the battlefield – if Kyiv does not accept the White House’s deal to exchange its rare earth minerals for continued security guarantees, according to anonymous sources.

The Labor Theory of AI

Ben Tarnoff

Silicon Valley runs on novelty. It is sustained by the pursuit of what Michael Lewis once called the “new new thing.” The Internet, the smartphone, social media: the new new thing cannot be a modest tweak at the edges. It has to transform the human race. The economic incentives are clear: a firm that popularizes a paradigm-shattering invention can make a lot of money. But there is also something larger at stake. If Silicon Valley doesn’t keep delivering new new things, it loses its privileged status as the place where the future is made.

In 2022 the industry was having a bad year. After a lucrative pandemic—the five most valuable tech companies added more than $2.6 trillion to their combined market capitalization in 2020 and nearly the same amount in 2021—the sector suffered one of its sharpest-ever contractions. Amazon lost almost half of its value, Meta close to two thirds. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 33 percent, its worst performance since the 2008 financial crisis.

The reasons were straightforward enough. At the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates to zero, and people stayed home, where they spent more time and money online. By 2022 both trends were in reverse. Most Americans had decided to stop worrying about the virus and were happily resuming their offline activities. Meanwhile the Fed began hiking interest rates in response to rising inflation.

SpaceX’s Latest Starship Explosion Marks Two Consecutive Failures

Stephen Clark

SpaceX’s Starship launcher spun out of control minutes after liftoff Thursday, showering fiery debris over the Bahamas and dealing another setback to Elon Musk’s rocket program after a failure under similar circumstances less than two months ago.

Starship and its Super Heavy booster, loaded with millions of pounds of methane and liquid oxygen propellants, lumbered off their launchpad in Texas at 5:30 pm Central time to begin the eighth full-scale test flight of SpaceX’s new-generation rocket. Thirty-three Raptor engines propelled the 404-foot-tall (123.1-meter) rocket through a clear afternoon sky with more than twice the power of NASA’s Saturn V rocket, the workhorse of the Apollo lunar program.

Repeating a feat SpaceX accomplished with Starship twice before, the rocket’s Super Heavy booster separated from the Starship upper stage roughly two-and-a-half minutes into the flight, then guided itself back to the Texas coastline for a catch by mechanical arms on the launchpad’s tower. SpaceX is now 3-for-3 with attempts to catch a Super Heavy booster back at the launch site, a sign that engineers are well on their way to mastering how to recover and reuse boosters in a similar way as they do with the smaller workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.

How One Air Force General Explains Information Warfare—Using Football

David Roza

As deputy commander of the 16th Air Force, the organization responsible for information warfare, Maj. Gen. Larry Broadwell has a difficult task explaining what he does to outsiders.

“It’s hard to really understand the importance of it,” Broadwell said March 4 at the AFA Warfare Symposium. “I was trying to explain this to my dad at the breakfast table one time, and he just wasn’t getting it.”

Broadwell’s father isn’t the only one; a 2024 report by the RAND Corporation said information warfare in the Air Force lacks clear roles and responsibilities, adequate resources, and a unifying identity, which can contribute to unclear expectations of what information warfare can do and how it fits into the joint force.

“Airmen cited a sense of paralysis related to this issue, noting, ‘without a [socialized] definition of IW, everyone in the USAF IW community is unsure of how to proceed, what it means, and what is expected of them,’” RAND wrote.

Information warfare involves using military capabilities in or through “the information environment” to affect adversary behavior and protect against adversary attempts to do the same. It encompasses several fields, including cyber operations, electromagnetic spectrum operations (EMSO), public affairs, intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), and weather, but none of that really rolls off the tongue.

US ‘to cease all future military exercises in Europe’

Connor Stringer

The United States has told its allies that it does not plan to participate in military exercises in Europe, according to reports.

The move, the latest in Donald Trump’s pivot away from the bloc, would see America pull out of exercises beyond those already scheduled for this year.

The withdrawal concerns exercises that are on the “drawing board”, according to Swedish newspaper Expressen.

It means that Nato countries will be forced to plan exercises without the participation of the US military, the largest in the alliance.

Mr Trump has repeatedly criticised Nato countries for not meeting the current goal of spending two per cent of GDP on defence, arguing that the disparity puts an unfair burden on the United States.

On Friday, he warned that the US may not defend Nato allies who do not meet the spending target as part of a major shake-up of the alliance.

Mr Trump told reporters: “When I came to Nato, when I first had my first meeting, I noticed that people weren’t paying their bills at all, and I said I should wait till my second meeting.

“And I did. And I brought that up, and I said, ‘If you don’t pay your bills, we’re not going to participate. We’re not going to protect you.’

“And when I said that, as soon as they said that, it was amazing how the money came in, the money came in, and now they have money. But even now, it’s not enough. They should be paying more.”