Author Archives: Naval Open Source Intelligence (NOSI)

US Navy – Knifefighter

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– Aviation Week – There’s something special and hopeful about steaming into a tropical port on the bridge of a Navy warship that’s just finished a trek across the Pacific as the year’s drawing to a close. It’s a time of reflection of the deployment that’s been and hope for the potential that lies ahead. Green island hills hovering above a postcard Honolulu cityscape and a blue sea – all add to the dreamy scene. It’s easy to ignore the storm clouds gathering on the horizon. And as the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS-1) USS Freedom steamed into Pearl Harbor and docked, it was easy to focus on all of the positives of the ship’s maiden Western Pacific deployment – and forget about the roiling seas still threatening the LCS program.

Geopolitics / Middle East – Disraeli And The Eastern Question

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– Forbes – Robert D. Kaplan writes that the Eastern Question strikes at the heart of present-day debates over humanitarian intervention in the Balkans, Libya and Syria. Simply put, the Eastern Question was about how to respond to the slow-motion demise of the Ottoman Empire, whose territory included not only much of the Near East but much of Southeastern Europe besides.

Chinese Navy – Eying Taiwan, China Is Getting Four Giant Hovercraft

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– War is Boring – The first of China’s four giant hovercraft has been spotted conducting trials on the Pearl River in the country’s south. Meanwhile, hovercraft number two is being assembled in nearby Guangzhou. It’s not hard to see why Beijing is spending a reported $300 million on the four Zubr-class hovercraft—two built in Ukraine and two in Guangzhou. Able to speed a distance of 300 miles in six hours while carrying eight armored vehicles or 500 marines apiece, the 187-foot-long Zubrs will help Beijing back up its once-empty threat to invade Taiwan in the event the island nation ever formally declares independence from the mainland.

Chinese Navy – Deterrence by Denial: How to Prevent China From Using Force

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– National Interest – To ensure that Beijing cannot use force—or the threat of force—to change the status quo in the Asia-Pacific, the U.S. must maintain military capabilities that will deter any threatening or aggressive actions by China—even as they cooperate in areas of shared interest. At a minimum, the U.S. must continue to prevent force from being used to resolve Asia-Pacific disputes and cooperate where it can until Beijing embraces the mutual efforts required for the two Pacific powers to achieve durable, if frequently or even continuously competitive, coexistence. To ensure this, the U.S. should demonstrate the capability to deny China the ability to seize and hold disputed territories. Given the inherent defensiveness of the U.S. approach, it should be possible to meet core objectives at an affordable price through the most critical timeframe—likely over the coming decade—with a bottom-line strategy of deterrence by denial.

US Navy – Defending the Fleet From China’s Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile: Naval Deception’s Role in Sea-Based Missile Defense

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– Georgetown University Institutional Repository – A *fascinating* analysis from Jonathan Solomon of how lessons learned in the Cold War by the US Navy in how to defeat the Soviet Ocean Surveillance System and air-launched anti-ship cruise missiles can be applied today against the Chinese Ocean Surveillance System and their anti-ship ballistic missiles. 137 pages long, but well worth the read. Happy Holidays!

Geopolitics / Syria – Whose sarin?

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– London Review of Books – Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack. In the months before the attack, the American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports, culminating in a formal Operations Order – a planning document that precedes a ground invasion – citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity. When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad.

US Navy – Navy says training could kill dozens of sea mammals

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– Virginian Pilot – Navy testing and training could kill dozens of dolphins, whales and other sea mammals and injure thousands more over the next five years, according to the service’s own analysis. But while environmental groups say those estimates only scratch the surface of the impact that sonar and explosives can have on sea life, the Navy believes that most of those injuries would be temporary, that the numbers will likely be lower and that the long-term effects on the species will be negligible.