An awful lot of speculation and hyperbole in that article. Sometimes no information means just that. No information.
It is always justifiable to throw up a bunch of hypotheses for testing, to see if anybody can supply additional information that may flesh out a picture or, more likely, disprove a possibility. To go from that to the sensational headline about WWIII, IV, V or whatever .... well it serves the interest of the paper (money), the authors (notoriety) and conceivably the state of Israel. There was more than a little tub-thumping going on in that piece. Effectively it can be read as propagandizing the event by claiming sole credit for the Israeli government and forces. That plays well if the Israelis are concerned that they may lose friends in Washington at the next election: they may want to generate the local impression that they don't need the Americans anyway. It may also just be a case of wanting to convince themselves that they didn't need the Americans.
As far as the Americans themselves are concerned, some operations do not need to be discussed. An effective intervention that leaves no trace really shouldn't be discussed in the mess, much less the press. In any event, the locals and their supporters (the Sino-Russians) already know/believe that America and Israel are joined at the hip and what one is capable of, both are capable of.
Regardless of the nature of the point target the more critical issue is that of the porosity of the mega-billion Sino-Russian air defence net. The Syrians now know that they sit naked in the field. Hezbollah and Hamas are likewise reliably informed as are the Iranians and the North Koreans AND the Russians AND the Chinese. Whether or not it was Israelis, Americans or evil Djinn it is now clear that all of the above entities are equally vulnerable.
If they felt that America had lost its edge because of worn out tracks in Iraq and older model aircraft in the skies, they now get an opportunity to reevaluate their positions. With much alacrity in the Iranian case if we can believe that panic reported by an Indian General on another thread.
China was already feeling the heat from the American threat to such an extent that they have issued warnings about a year or so ago, saying that if the Yanks bring their Precision Guided Munitions to bear in their part of the world then they, the Chinese will have no choice but to go nuclear in response. IE "We have no effective response to your rapier. If you persist then I pull the pin on this grenade and we all die!" That is a threat that sounds dangerously like a bluff.
I am of the opinion that the Americans are already moving to the stage where they are developing sufficient confidence in the capabilities of PGMs that they are considering moving some of their "paper projects" like PGM-ICBMs into the real world to be used as effective tools. They are very cheap, very timely and very precise - available to supply fire support to anybody with a pair of eyeballs and a cell phone. On-call fires anywhere in the world with 30 mins notice. It was already difficult to stop ICBMs. This latest exercise in Syria just adds another layer of uncertainty to the potential targets.
The problem of course, is that nervous targets, on detecting incoming ICBMs, may decide that a response is in order. Those with their own ICBMs and Nuclear capability would be problematic.
The counter would be for the Americans to declare themselves Nuclear-Free. But that would be a bold and nervous-making step. What if the ICBM-PGM system CAN be countered? Where are you then. Unfortunately it is likely not possible to get the Targets to allow for only some of the missiles to be converted to PGM-ICBMs. What happens then? They detect missile launch and wait for the incoming rounds to land so that they can determine at what level the Americans are playing? Or do they call up the Americans and ask if it's Nukes or PGMs that are inbound? The call will have to be all or nothing for the Americans.
In the meantime the Americans have to weigh the economic impact of declaring nukes obsolete.
Wars are lost when one side runs out of money.
The Cold War was lost when the Russians ran out of money. A good chunk of that money was spent building thousands of tanks. Part of the rationale for continuing to buy tanks on such a large scale would have been that the Americans were still building them at a tremendous cost (one that they could afford however). If they weren't of use, despite the evidence of 1973 and the Yom Kippur War/Battle, why continue to build tanks if they weren't still effective. My opinion is that tanks were and are effective, in some applications. But, the vast tank armies that were created were in large part the result of an effective economic strategy by the Americans. If the American Army had stopped buying tanks and had bought hordes of anti-tank systems instead then the Russians would have stopped building tanks for themselves and their client/slaves at a horrendous cost. They would have stopped hemorrhaging money and would have been better placed to keep the locals happy at home. The Gorbachev/Yeltsin Revolution may never have happened. At least not yet.
The American Army needed tanks and still does. The American Government needed the Russians to need tanks (and the APCs, and SPHs and troops and mechanics and cooks and production workers that went along with them) still more.
Likewise nuclear weapons programmes are very pricey and cause a lot of money to diverted.
(By contrast the actually delivery system, the missile, is relatively cheap. The Germans designed them and built them as a cheap and highly effective method of delivering explosives on target when bombers became too difficult to build, man and successfully penetrate defences. If the aim of all weapons systems from 9mm to ICBM is to eliminate threats/targets then the cheaper the better and longer ranges enters into that calculus. IF - currently a VERY BIG IF - but IF it is possible to eliminate tactical targets in Afghanistan by launching missiles from secure bases in Nebraska then there is less need to invest invest in ballistic missile subs and their screening attack subs to get closer with shorter range missiles. There is less need to build aircraft carriers with their 5000 man crews and their multi-ship escorts to deliver still shorter ranged aircraft. There is less need to build airfields in foreign lands at great financial and diplomatic cost. There is less need to supply guns and missiles with their crews and support in foreign bases AND there is less need to supply tanks which need to be heavily armoured so as to deliver their very short range ordinance in the face of enemy fire.
The impact of the M777s, with their 30-40 km ranged PGMs, on operations is proof-of-concept. There is not the call for weight of fire that would necessitate a lot of tubes, as with the old 25 pdrs of WW2 vintage. But those large numbers of tubes also had the capability to be deployed from dispersed firing points to supply support over a wide area. But a large number of dispersed firing points and tubes equates to a large number of crews, mechanics, cooks and commanders as well as ammunition dumps as well as security elements. The area currently being effectively serviced by a troop of 4 M777s or (PzH2000's) would need 6 troops of 11 km M109s to get the same job done. 6x4 is 24 or two Regiments, a Brigade of Artillery minus. A Brigade replaced by a Troop (by the way does that mean that the FSC/CRA should be a Brigadier or a Captain? Although you only need 4 Guns you still need 6-8 FOOs and should they be Capts, Lts, WOs or Sgts? )
I think it is possible to see the discussion about 5th Generation fighters in the same light as the Nukes and the Tanks. In the discussion on the Air Force board about a Hi-Lo mix of Aircraft (pricey F15s and F22s along with "economical" F16s and F35s) I made the jesting observation that some folks are dusting off P-51 Mustang drawings to supply Close Air Support. That would be the lowest of the low cost solutions. But, if all you need to create a war-winning assymetry is the ability to field a capability that the other side can't match or counter then P-51s (or my personal favourite the DeHavilland Mosquito - two crew, two engines and a form that would work brilliantly with carbon fibre given that it was originally made from plywood) would still do slaughter amongst the Taliban. Especially if equipped with an underslung 30mm turret and a few 250 lb PGMs.
But a cheap solution doesn't necessarily win wars. If we demonstrate that the manned multi-Mach fighter-bomber is now surplus to requirement - that its job can be reliably performed by cheaper solutions like wooden aircraft, UAVs, gun launched and missile transported PGMs or old men with suitcases on bicycles - then the other side will stop "wasting" money it can't afford to spend.
The game plan is to get the other side to spend as much money as they have and then a lot more faster than they can generate it. The same effect can be created by employing cheap weapons. That is why IEDs are such a threat. They cost virtually nothing to build, although sown widely are only occasionally effective, and have little effect on actual operations beyond the local, tactical level BUT....they are forcing the enemy (Us, the US, Britain) to spend billions of dollars and years of time to reequip to meet the new threat. THEY are winning that battle.
Knights on very expensive horses with more expensive armour and still more expensive retinues were driven off the field by a bunch of farmers armed with a split yew tree, a length of catgut and willow wands with goose feathers. The most costly part of the system was the ounce or two of iron on the tip. Hundreds of Bows. Thousands of Knights and retainers. But Hundreds of Thousands of Arrows. Arrows win.
In real estate the mantra is "location, location, location". In comedy the mantra is "timing is everything". It is my belief that timing is also the critical factor in strategy. It generates surprise.
The enemy may know the where but he is less likely to know the when. If coupled with uncertainty as to the how then he can be back-footed.
In the first Gulf War,the USSR was dead and buried. That was a suitable time to demonstrate the vulnerability of both the large tank army and linear siege lines to PGMs and Air Power. It now served the West's interests to have people understand that not only was their "friend" the USSR no longer in the game, but their weapons, tactics, training and procedures were all outmoded. The little guys were being encouraged to get in line.
I think this Syrian escapade is designed to reinforce that message - and to ensure that it is heard not just in Peking but also by Vladimir Putin who, I believe, as a propagandist for the KGB had come to believe that he could win big by restaging the 1968 Tet offensive on a grand scale. Potemkin's village is a Russian tale after all.
Because the American's have held firm in Iraq - the Democrats and Fellow-Travelers at MoveOn.org failed - then Putin is reduced to allowing his military to resort to their old style tactics of bluster by launching "provocative" flights in ancient aircraft knowing full well that nobody is going to shoot them down. But it assuages some egos and may help King Vlad hang on to power for a while.
One final observation: Did you notice how the Americans released new camouflage gear within months of the conflict in Iraq commencing? I wonder how long that pattern has been in the catalog. The older chocolate chip pattern was replaced during/after Gulf War 1. The Sage and Woodland patterns were used going in to Gulf War 2 but replaced during the occupation. The Chocolate Chip and other patterns were all commercially available to kids all over the world making "identification friend or foe" something of a challenge. Is it poor planning that new uniforms had to be issued "just in time" once the troops had to mix with potentially chocolate-chip coated kids? Or was it good timing?
Ramble ends.
I'm baaaack ;D
