The Pentagon has refused delivery of so many F-35s that Lockheed Martin is running out of places to put them, according to a new report from a government watchdog agency.
Last July, the government stopped accepting new F-35s because of hardware and software delays with Technology Refresh-3, a $1.8-billion effort to enable new capabilities for the jet.
The number of jets accumulating outside Lockheed’s plant is “grossly delinquent,” Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., chairman of the House Armed Services tactical air and land forces subcommittee, told reporters Wednesday.
“We know one thing for certain: it’s going to be at least over 100 aircraft stacked up on the tarmac,” Wittman said.
The GAO report did not say how many aircraft are currently parked, saying the Defense Department deemed that figure “unsuitable for public release.”
But the report said that Lockheed would need to rethink its plans.
“If TR-3 software is delayed past April 2024, Lockheed Martin is projected to exceed its maximum parking capacity and will need to develop a plan to accommodate more parked planes,” it said.
Lockheed officials say they have all the infrastructure and capacity they need to park the aircraft until they are ready for delivery.
“Specific details about parking will not be shared due to security considerations,” officials said in a May 16 statement.
The situation is financial pain for Lockheed: the Pentagon is withholding payments of $7 million for each undelivered TR-3 jet, Bloomberg previously reported.
The government as well will face “significant liability” if any of the parked aircraft get damaged or lost while sitting at Lockheed’s facilities, according to the report.
“It is unique for so many critical DOD aircraft to be waiting for DOD acceptance, instead of stored at lower densities across many military locations throughout the world. This creates unique financial and schedule risks to DOD,” GAO said.
Once the TR-3 upgrade is ready, it will take about a year to deliver all of the jets Lockheed has parked, GAO said.
But challenges with software stability and delayed hardware are pushing the delivery of full TR-3 capability to 2025, the report said. The first TR-3 jets were supposed to be delivered last July.
The Pentagon is working on a plan to restart accepting the jets without the full TR-3 upgrade because, officials say, a part-capability is better than nothing. Those deliveries could start up as soon as July, officials say, but the interim version of the upgrade won’t be combat-ready and will only be used in training.
“According to program officials, this initial TR-3 software will allow the program to accept delivered aircraft but not deliver any new capabilities to the aircraft. TR-3 software with new capabilities will not be delivered until 2025, two years later than originally planned. This means the warfighter will continue to wait for these critical upgrades,” GAO said.
Specifically, the TR-3 software has had trouble supporting the F-35’s radar and electronic warfare systems. Some test pilots have said that they had to reboot their radar and
electronic warfare systems mid-flight, according to the report.
“Program officials stated that early versions of radar and in-flight systems software can commonly experience rebooting issues. However, even after being nearly a year delayed, TR-3 software continues to be unstable, according to test officials,” GAO said.
House lawmakers have grown so frustrated with the program that they have proposed cutting the Pentagon’s F-35 buy in the House Armed Services chairman’s mark of the fiscal 2025 policy bill—and fencing off the delivery of 10 more jets until problems are addressed.
The proposed bill would take the resources that were allocated to buy more jets and use them to create a digital twin of the F-35 and an integrated software laboratory. It’s “astounding” that Lockheed hasn’t modernized how it develops software and hardware for the program, Wittman said.
“We also believe that the resources from the 10 aircraft that will go to an integrated software laboratory, to digital twin testing, to additional test beds—all those things are capabilities that should have been done years ago and haven’t been done and that’s why we’re so far behind where we are today. So we are saying, you know what, we’re not going to leave this to chance anymore. We’re going to take an active role,” Wittman said.
The F-35 program is on track to cost over $2 trillion, making it the world’s most expensive weapons program.
System can neutralise a swarm of drones for 10p a shot.
UK designed and built system offers operational advantage and battlefield protection
UK Armed Forces will be operating with this technology in the coming years
A new game-changing weapon that uses radio waves to disable enemy electronics and take down multiple drones at once is under development for the UK’s armed forces.
This forms part of work to put the UK’s defence industry on a war footing following the Prime Minister’s announcement last month of an increase to the defence budget to 2.5% of GDP by 2030.
An example of a Radio Frequency Directed Energy Weapon (RFDEW), the versatile system can detect, track and engage a range of threats across land, air and sea. The system will be able to effect targets up to 1km away, with further development in extending the range ongoing. It beams radio waves to disrupt or damage the critical electronic components of enemy vehicles causing them to stop in their tracks or fall out of the sky.
At only 10p per shot fired, the RFDEW beam is a significant cost-effective alternative to traditional missile-based, air defence systems, capable of downing dangerous drone swarms with instant effect. The high level of automation also means the system itself can be operated by a single person. This technology can offer a solution to protection and defence of critical assets and bases.
Minister for Defence Procurement, James Cartlidge said:
We are already a force to be reckoned with on science and technology, and developments like RFDEW not only make our personnel more lethal and better protected on the battlefield, but also keep the UK a world leader on innovative military kit.
The war in Ukraine has shown us the importance of deploying uncrewed systems, but we must be able to defend against them too. As we ramp up our defence spending in the coming years, our Defence Drone Strategy will ensure we are at the forefront of this warfighting evolution.
RFDEW technology can be mounted on a variety of military vehicles and uses a mobile power source to produce pulses of Radio Frequency energy in a beam that can rapidly fire sequenced shots at individual targets or be broadened to simultaneously engage all threats within that beam.
Dstl Chief Executive, Paul Hollinshead said:
These game changing systems will deliver decisive operational advantage to the UK armed forces, saving lives and defeating deadly threats.
World class capabilities such as this are only possible because of decades of research, expertise and investment in science and technology at Dstl and our partners in UK industry.
The advanced technology is being developed by a joint team from the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) and Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S), working with UK industry under Project Hersa. The next steps for RFDEW is undergoing extensive field testing with British soldiers over the summer.
Goodbye to the Hawk: A Quiet Extinction Event in the Royal Canadian Air Force
By the time you read this, the last Hawk will probably be gone. Seen for more than 20 years in the skies around Moose Jaw and Cold Lake, this is no native red-tailed bird felled by climate change or loss of habitat. Instead, the CT-155 Hawk was a high-performance jet training aircraft; a gateway to a career as a fighter pilot that provided over 1300 young airmen and women with their first critical exposure to fast air operations. Previously identified for retirement in the expectation that the fleet would be out of flying time by 2024, the Hawk has been removed from service. The parade is over, and the colors of 419 Tactical Fighter Training Squadron have been encased and stored away.
In practical terms, this means that Canada no longer has a sovereign fighter pilot training capability. Instead, for at least the next seven years the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) plans to send its fighter pilots to schools in the United States and Italy. In theory, nothing much will outwardly change.
Of course, in the intervening years between the original decision to remove the Hawk from service and now, many things did change. For instance, two years of pandemic and significant reductions in flight training meant that that the flying rate of the Hawk fleet fell dramatically. Unlike previous aircraft retirements, Canada isn’t shedding 17 tired, obsolete rattletraps. Of the current fleet, only five aircraft are beyond their useful life and ready for mothballs. The remaining 12 collectively have thousands of hours of flying time still in them. In fact, Canada’s Hawks are decades newer than the 1960’s vintage T-38 aircraft our pilots will now train on in the United States.
Flying rates are not the only difference. Globally, demand for pilots spiked, fell, and has again rebounded. Fighter pilots around the world are aging out, or trading ejection seats for the lucrative fur-lined comforts of civil airline cockpits. This has created growing demand for fast jet training for a new generation of fighter pilots. Companies are jockeying to fill the need, but the latest generation of training aircraft is only beginning to enter service. This places a premium on older but proven training platforms – among them aircraft such as the Hawk.
And of course, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and deepening global instability has highlighted not only the need for robust air combat capabilities, but also for more reliable and resilient defence industrial support chains generally. The need to secure and enhance national sovereign resilience across the Alliance underpins NATO’s increasingly strident demands for member countries to pay their share of collective defence’s financial burden, and is intended to focus countries’ attention on making smart, collective choices about which capabilities (including critical training and sustainment capabilities) to retain and enhance, and which to shed.
It is this last point that merits additional consideration.
Ultimately, retiring the Hawk is less about the fate of a single aircraft fleet, and more about whether Canada is making the best possible strategic decisions as it grapples with the need to simultaneously sustain operational capability, introduce new equipment into service, attract and retain scarce talent, and remain a credible contributor to international peace and security. This has always been a tall order for the Canadian Armed Forces. As both the Chief of the Defence Staff and the Minister of Defence recently signalled, these challenges are becoming considerably more difficult to reconcile with recent direction to find hundreds of millions of dollars of annual savings going forward, as part of broad government reductions.
This makes the manner in which Canada chose to retire the Hawk all the more regrettable.
The original plan was to find a commercial buyer for the remaining fleet. This would have generated revenue for the Crown while also allowing Canadian industry to offer novel options to provide short-term training services to Ukraine or other NATO and partner users. Instead, the RCAF reversed course, and unexpectedly elected to send the remaining flyable aircraft to CFB Borden. There, they will be dismantled and repurposed for maintenance training, prematurely ending their flying days.
There is no denying that maintenance training is a critical enabler of operations, or that such training is best conducted using modern aircraft parts and systems. Canada’s engine, avionics, and airframe technicians need high quality training assets – and too often settle for second-class equipment and training processes as acquisition of new operational systems are prioritized over sustainment funding. But in this case, there were already five grounded Hawk aircraft that might have been committed to the maintenance training requirement at any point, with no impact on the remaining fleet.
This makes it difficult to understand how it could be operationally advantageous for Canada to decommission fully-functional, flyable aircraft – particularly aircraft that under a commercial model could have been kept flying for training purposes at little incremental cost to the Government of Canada – especially when there are prospective users among our allies and partners who could benefit significantly from access to fighter training capabilities that Canada is historically well-positioned to provide.
So why would the Canadian Armed Forces unexpectedly reverse course on the plan to sell the Hawk fleet, when doing so could raise money for general revenues, keep a proven flight training capability in service (albeit as a commercially-furnished rather than military-operated capability) and provide collective security benefits to partners and allies?
While it might not be possible to arrive at an exact reason, what is clear is that Canada’s military is currently engaged in a desperate attempt to find savings. Although overshadowed by recent high-profile announcements of additional future funding, the fact remains that the RCAF and the other services are looking for any and all options to save money now, and to avoid or limit future costs to reduce the impact of recently mandated cuts on operations and ongoing procurement.
This is not a new phenomenon.
During the so-called “decade of darkness,” DND and the Canadian Forces were forced to implement wide-ranging austerity measures, often under significant time pressure with little analysis. Among the articles of faith for those tasked with achieving savings was the idea that there was no point in incremental reductions when it came to capital equipment. If even a single aircraft, naval vessel, or combat vehicle of a given fleet was kept in service, the need to sustain it meant that any savings from a fleet reduction would necessarily be limited.
It can be presumed that in this case, a similar concern exists. If the Hawk were retained, even under the ownership of a commercial operator, there might always be a chance that the RCAF could be somehow dragooned into continuing to support it – thereby incurring unanticipated costs, demanding additional personnel they don’t have, and perhaps even imperilling longer-term goals of bringing a new fighter lead-in trainer into service to replace the Hawk.
Although disappointing, such fears are not unfounded.
During the decade of darkness and in later waves of Strategic Review (SR) and Deficit Reduction Action Plan (DRAP), hastily-implemented cuts created adverse second order effects and unintended consequences that damaged the operational effectiveness of the Forces in myriad ways. The cuts also shaped the instincts and inclinations of the current generation of senior officers and defence bureaucrats alike. Defence has rarely been rewarded for innovative thinking or programmatic risk-taking, and bitter past experience is a disincentive to innovation. So perhaps in the end, the idea of a commercial fighter training operation – even one as Canadian as maple syrup and a prairie sunrise – just felt like too much uncertainty, or too much unnecessary risk, coming at the wrong time.
But if we are to avoid repeating past errors, decisions like this need to be questioned.
More than ever before, national defence and national security are more than simply the byproduct of whatever equipment Canada chooses to purchase and retain. A modern military is a complex ecosystem of people, operational platforms, and processes, brought together by money and national will to do what other organizations cannot. What it delivers must be more than flying hours, ships at sea, or troops in the field. It must also provide national security options to Canada, including those which offer the opportunity to achieve beneficial strategic outcomes or position Canada advantageously with its allies and partners – even when doing so might require the Department of National Defence (DND) to consider innovative and unconventional ways of delivering military capability.
Canada and its allies are entering a strange and difficult time, and there is much uncertainty in the world. We know that like the wider domestic economy, DND is facing financial headwinds that it cannot ignore. We also know that in the past this led us into dark and difficult decisions about our national security apparatus. In this instance, there are legitimate options available that could allow Canada to cost-effectively retain national sovereign capabilities that the RCAF might otherwise have to give up – including the ability to simultaneously improve maintenance training while also retaining a basic fighter pilot production capability. Why wouldn’t we explore the full range of options, and ensure our choices reflect the widest possible strategic context rather than the narrow perspectives of fear and fiscal uncertainty?
When we look to the changing natural world, evidence suggests it may not be the most visible extinction events that are the most dangerous. Rather, it is the unremarked and unremarkable losses that may ultimately cost us most dearly. So too with military capabilities – even with ones as humble and seemingly insignificant as the Hawk, you sometimes don’t realize what you had until it’s gone.
About the Author
Jeff Tasseron is the Director of Business Development & Strategy at CAE D&S Canada. In this capacity he leads business development and complex program capture activities in Canada, contributes to strategy development at regional and international levels, advises on technology and market changes, and assesses and champions opportunities for non-organic portfolio growth, including partnering, mergers, and acquisitions.
A retired Naval Aviator and former Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) Colonel, Jeff is trained as an Air Navigator and Tactical Coordinator (TACCO). His extensive operational background includes deployed sea time with the Royal Canadian Navy, flying the CH-124 Sea King helicopter in antisubmarine and surface warfare roles. In addition to positions such as NATO Fleet Air Officer (OP SHARP GUARD) and 12 Wing Operations Officer, he commanded 423 Maritime Helicopter Squadron in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
D/C: Mark was a Distinguished Alumnus at the CGAI.
Exclusive: Key defence contractor says UK’s capabilities are ‘very limited’ as a result of long-term under-investmen
Daniel Boffey Chief reporterSun 12 May 2024 17.10 BSTLast modified on Sun 12 May 2024 20.15 BST
Britain’s air defence systems are “very limited, to the point of being negligible”, a key defence contractor has claimed, as the Ministry of Defence warned of the gravest risk of attack from the skies in 30 years.
Northrop Grumman UK, a leading provider of defence technology to the RAF and Royal Navy, offered its assessment in response to questioning by a parliamentary committee examining lessons to be learned from the war in Ukraine.
Asked whether there was a need for increased investment in integrated air and missile defence (IAMD), the company said Britain’s lack of capacity was a major risk to national security.
“Current capabilities are very limited, to the point of being negligible, which is the result of long-term under-investment and an over-reliance on Nato partners’ capabilities,” the company said. “This capability gap poses a significant risk to national security and the war demonstrates why IAMD is now a critical requirement.”
The intervention ranks among the starkest of public assessments of Britain’s state of readiness by an organisation with intimate knowledge of the country’s defence. Northrop Grumman UK supports the RAF’s F-35 Lightning II and the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers and submarine fleet, which are key pillars of Britain’s air defence.
The company negatively contrasted the UK’s capacity to deal with an air salvo to that of Poland, whose government recently signed a $2.5bn deal with the US government to acquire a system that will synchronise its air defence weapons, including Patriot missile launchers.
“Put simply, the UK must strengthen investment in IAMD,” the company said. “This will require an investment in the architecture that delivers true integration, as Poland has done, alongside an investment in sensors and effectors. The investment required to protect military capability, government and critical national infrastructure will require significant resources. However, Russia has shown itself willing to target all three in this war and the UK is within effective weapons range of Russian systems.”
The comments echo a recent report from the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), which found that the UK’s ground-to-air systems were “not currently equipped to be able to defeat many kinds of air threat” and that Russian submarines were within range to strike the UK without warning.
The number of personnel with expertise in air defences was said to be “very small”, and the government had not invested in the latest, most sophisticated systems that use a range of radars that are difficult to destroy or deceive.
The MoD relies on RAF Lightning and Typhoon jets to take out rogue aircraft and the Royal Navy’s six Type-45 destroyers to shoot missiles out of the sky, but many of these have been out of action for prolonged periods for maintenance or repair.
Six Sky Sabre ground-based air defence systems are each able to shoot down multiple missiles but at least two are understood to be currently deployed overseas.skip past newsletter promotion
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The MoD said in its own evidence to the House of Lords committee that it was exploring how to improve its air defences.
Officials said: “The challenge of protecting ourselves against attack from the skies, both overseas and at home, is at its most acute for over 30 years – as evidenced in the war in Ukraine and recent events in Israel.”
Last month Adm Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of the defence staff, told LBC that discussions were taking place about building an Iron Dome similar to that used by Israel. The technology is designed to use radar to detect rockets and calculate their threat level. Interceptor missiles are only fired at those expected to strike populated areas.
A MoD spokesperson said: “The UK is well prepared for any event and defence of the UK would be taken alongside our Nato allies. As part of our commitment to increase UK defence spending to 2.5% over the next six years, we continue to review potential opportunities to develop our capabilities and modernise air defence across Europe in close discussion with allies and partners.”
D/C: Canada and UK seem to be in the same boat in terms of budget and maintenance!!
The government’s attitude toward its spy agency poses problems for the future security of Canada
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears as a witness at the Public Inquiry Into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions in Ottawa on Wednesday, April 10, 2024. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press.
I first Googled “How do I become a Canadian spy” in July 2005. I was living in London, U.K. working in finance when a bus and several subway stations had just been blown up by domestic homegrown terrorists only a few blocks from my office. Fifty-two people were killed and 770 were injured. Just four years earlier when two passenger planes hit the Twin Towers murdering nearly 3,000, I was a senior at Brown University in Rhode Island. This was followed by terrorists killing 191 civilians on a Madrid train. For those who don’t remember this time period, it was the age of terrorism. It was an age where not only did you know what the threat was, but it felt very real and dangerously close.
So, I signed up to be an intelligence officer with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and joined the Canadian Forces Infantry Reserves with the Queens Own Rifles of Canada. I became part of a generation of young, idealistic Canadians who, as one of my former colleagues put it, “ran away and joined the circus.” We wanted to serve Canada and really weren’t all that sure what that meant or how to do it. If I’m honest, my first Google search was actually “Does Canada have spies?”
I would go on to spend nearly a decade serving in both organizations, leaving in 2016. Looking back, I am extremely proud of where I worked, what we accomplished, and the important work my former colleagues continue to do to keep Canada and Canadians safe. I was able to share some of this in my memoir, but most of it will always be a secret.
When I wore my army uniform in public, people used to walk up to me and thank me for my service. But my military career was mostly confined to parade nights at the armoury and the occasional weekend exercise in rural Ontario. It was while wearing my intelligence officer uniform (a generic button-down shirt and navy blue blazer) that I got to do the cool spy stuff that no one would ever know about or thank me publicly for.
Working long hours, dealing with stressful cases, and then lying to everyone I knew about what I was up to was a challenge. Occasionally you’d get a rah-rah speech from CSIS management saying things like, “The powers that be [the politicians in power] really appreciate everything you’re doing. They were so impressed with the information you were able to collect and you are making a real difference in the safety of our country.” It was a thankless job in many ways, but we did it because we believed we were making a difference.
Today, I am not sure how any executive at CSIS will be able to stand up and give that speech with a straight face after watching Prime Minister Trudeau and senior officials at the foreign interference inquiry hearings say under oath, repeatedly, that they don’t often read CSIS briefs. That they take our intelligence with a huge grain of salt. That they don’t think our findings are worth following up on.
“There is a certain degree of—I would not say skepticism—but of critical thought that must be applied to any information collected by our security and intelligence services,” explained Prime Minister Trudeau.
The reason this is a major problem is not the hurt feelings of former spies, but what it reveals about the government’s attitude towards its spy agency and perhaps the wider public’s views on security. It’s an attitude that poses problems for the future security of Canada. There has always been a naiveté and complacency about the threats we face in an increasingly dangerous world. Canadians just don’t think much about our security. There is a general attitude of: “What does anyone want with us?” The lack of pressure the public is applying to government to fund our military in recent years may be a good illustration of this.
The reality is that our national security is not an accident. It is the result of thousands of men and women in our intelligence community, military, law enforcement, and corporate security, getting up each day and going to work. The safety we enjoy is on some level proof that the system is working. This also means our security is not guaranteed to continue. I believe Canada has been able to get by on the sacrifices of the few men and women who do these jobs, and that our political leadership, despite a lack of political pressure, has taken generally this threat seriously. Unfortunately, I fear that as the threats we face become more nuanced, those we entrust with our safety are increasingly unwilling or not sufficiently empowered to protect us.
The CSIS mandate is to collect, analyse, and advise government on threats to the security of Canada. There are four main threats: espionage and sabotage, foreign interference, terrorism, and subversion. It was my job to be a “collector” of information. As an intelligence officer for a domestic security service in the post-9/11 days, I was in the coffee and conversation business. I would often knock on doors 20 minutes from where I grew up, asking people for information and help with my national security investigation.
Back then when we tackled enemies like the 2006 Toronto 18 terrorists and the 2013 Via Rail derailment plot, it was a pretty straightforward job. We didn’t want to see the domestic attacks we saw around the world happen here at home. They were tangible threats we could see and easily explain at those doorsteps.
Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino, left, and Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), David Vigneault, right, wait to appear before the Special Committee on Canada-People’s Republic of China Relationship (CACN) on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday, Feb. 6, 2023. Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press.
The threats CSIS is being asked to monitor today are far more nuanced and less visible. My colleagues and I used to worry about bombs going off in capital cities, but now an act of terrorism could be someone hacking into a water treatment plant to change chemical levels. In my day, foreign interference was honey traps and the attempted blackmail of elected officials. Now, we are uncovering potential state-sponsored misinformation campaigns during elections. Espionage and sabotage are rampant in the theft of IP and the hacking of companies. These threats are far less tangible and often difficult to attribute to a single source. Often we’re left with no easy answers to mitigate the risk.
Meanwhile, during this period when threats are evolving, our security apparatus is left to contend with a political leadership that is hesitant to listen to our warnings and seemingly content with avoiding having to deal with them.
Recently the government announced legislation to counter the threat of foreign interference, including expanding CSIS powers and a foreign agent registry. While many will be applauding these actions, I can’t help but think back to how this all began and what it took to finally get government to act. The public inquiry was the result of political pressure caused by the leaking of sensitive information to the media on the growing threats and their continued inaction on foreign interference. Leaking is wrong. It’s also not done lightly. It is a symptom of an intelligence service that felt its reports and advice were not being dealt with appropriately. I hope this is a wake-up call because it’s a terrible way to make national security policy.
I worry about what all of this means for Canadian security. What has this complacency meant for the next generation of army reservists and intelligence officer recruits?
In 2024, what is prompting their Google searches before submitting a job application to CSIS? And what are they going to encounter if they get there? In my time working for the intelligence service, it was a growing organization capitalizing off of a strong mandate, an army of bright-eyed recruits, and a risk-tolerant executive. Today, I fear that, at a time when their job is more difficult than ever, we may be losing our will to support those who are working to keep us safe. This is a dangerous direction to be going in.
Andrew Kirsch served as an intelligence officer with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) for 10 years. His memoir “I Was Never Here: My True Canadian Spy Story of Coffees, Code Names, and Covert Operations” was a national bestseller. He is currently CEO of Kirsch Group, a security risk consulting firm based in Toronto. He is a public speaker on issues of cyber, physical and national security. He also ran for the Ontario PC Party in the 2018 Ontario provincial election in the riding of Toronto-St Paul’s.
D/C: We have known for years about foreign interference. So sad that the government has done absolutely nothing to stop it, for purely political reasons.
BBCAn unusual-looking wreckage that hold many clues
On 2 January, a young Ukrainian weapons inspector, Krystyna Kimachuk, got word that an unusual-looking missile had crashed into a building in the city of Kharkiv. She began calling her contacts in the Ukrainian military, desperate to get her hands on it. Within a week, she had the mangled debris splayed out in front of her at a secure location in the capital Kyiv.
She began taking it apart and photographing every piece, including the screws and computer chips smaller than her fingernails. She could tell almost immediately this was not a Russian missile, but her challenge was to prove it.
Buried amidst the mess of metal and spouting wires, Ms Kimachuk spotted a tiny character from the Korean alphabet. Then she came across a more telling detail. The number 112 had been stamped onto parts of the shell. This corresponds to the year 2023 in the North Korean calendar. She realised she was looking at the first piece of hard evidence that North Korean weapons were being used to attack her country.
“We’d heard they had delivered some weapons to Russia, but I could see it, touch it, investigate it, in a way no-one had been able to do before. This was very exciting”, she told me over the phone from Kyiv.
Since then, the Ukrainian military says dozens of North Korean missiles have been fired by Russia into its territory. They have killed at least 24 people and injured more than 70.
Ms Kimachuk works for Conflict Armament Research (CAR), an organisation that retrieves weapons used in war, to work out how they were made. But it wasn’t until after she had finished photographing the wreckage of the missile and her team analysed its hundreds of components, that the most jaw-dropping revelation came.
It was bursting with the latest foreign technology. Most of the electronic parts had been manufactured in the US and Europe over the past few years. There was even a US computer chip made as recently as March 2023. This meant that North Korea had illicitly procured vital weapons components, snuck them into the country, assembled the missile, and shipped it to Russia in secret, where it had then been transported to the frontline and fired – all in a matter of months.
“This was the biggest surprise, that despite being under severe sanctions for almost two decades, North Korea is still managing to get its hands on all it needs to make its weapons, and with extraordinary speed,” said Damien Spleeters, the deputy director at CAR.
Over in London, Joseph Byrne, a North Korea expert at the defence think tank the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), was equally stunned.
“I never thought I would see North Korean ballistic missiles being used to kill people on European soil,” he said. He and his team at RUSI have been tracking the shipment of North Korean weapons to Russia ever since Mr Kim met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Russia in September of last year to strike a suspected arms deal.
Using satellite imagery, they have been able to observe four Russian cargo ships shuttling back and forth between North Korea and a Russian military port, loaded with hundreds of containers at a time.
In total RUSI estimates 7,000 containers have been sent, filled with more than a million ammunition shells and grad rockets – the sort that can be fired out of trucks in large volleys. Their assessments are backed up by intelligence from the US, UK and South Korea, though Russia and North Korea have denied the trade.
“These shells and rockets are some of the most sought-after things in the world today and are allowing Russia to keep pounding Ukrainian cities at a time when the US and Europe have been faltering over what weapons to contribute,” Mr Byrne said.
Buying and firing
But it is the arrival of ballistic missiles on the battlefield that has concerned Mr Byrne and his colleagues the most, because of what they reveal about North Korea’s weapons programme.
Since the 1980s North Korea has sold its weapons abroad, largely to countries in the North Africa and the Middle East, including Libya, Syria and Iran. They have tended to be old, Soviet-style missiles with a poor reputation. There is evidence that Hamas fighters likely used some of Pyongyang’s old rocket-propelled grenades in their attack last 7 October.
But the missile fired on 2 January, that Ms Kimachuk took apart, was seemingly Pyongyang’s most sophisticated short-range missile – the Hwasong 11 – capable of travelling up to 700km (435 miles).
Although the Ukrainians have downplayed their accuracy, Dr Jeffrey Lewis, an expert in North Korean weapons and non-proliferation at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, says they appear to be not much worse than the Russian missiles.
The advantage of these missiles is that they are extremely cheap, explained Dr Lewis. This means you can buy more and fire more, in the hope of overwhelming air defences, which is exactly what the Russians appear to be doing.
This then raises the question of how many of these missiles the North Koreans can produce. The South Korean government recently observed North Korea has sent 6,700 containers of munitions to Russia, it says that Pyongyang’s weapons factories were operating at full-tilt, and Dr Lewis, who has been studying these factories through satellites, reckons they can churn out a few hundred a year.
Still reeling from their discovery, Mr Spleeters and his team are now trying to work out how this is possible, given that companies are banned from selling parts to North Korea.
Many of the computer chips that are integral to modern weapons, that guide them through the air to their intended targets, are the same chips that are used to power our phones, washing machines and cars, says Mr Spleeters.
These are being sold all over the world in staggering numbers. Manufacturers sell to distributors in their billions, who sell them on in their millions, meaning they often have no idea where their products end up.
Even so, Mr Byrne was frustrated to learn how many components in the missile had come from the West. It proved that North Korea’s procurement networks were more robust and effective than even he, who investigates these networks, had realised.
From his experience, North Koreans based overseas set up fake companies in Hong Kong or other central Asian countries to buy the items using predominantly stolen cash. They then send the products onto North Korea, usually over its border with China. If a fake company is discovered and sanctioned, another will quickly pop up in its place.
Sanctions have long been considered an imperfect tool to combat these networks, but to have any hope of working they need to be regularly updated and enforced. Both Russia and China have refused to impose new sanctions on North Korea since 2017.
By buying Pyongyang’s weapons, Moscow is now violating the very sanctions it once voted for as a member of the UN Security Council. Then earlier this year it effectively disbanded a UN panel that monitored sanctions breaches, likely to avoid scrutiny.
“We are witnessing the real-time crumbling of UN sanctions against North Korea, which buys Pyongyang a lot of breathing space”, Mr Byrne said.
All this has implications that reach far beyond the war in Ukraine.
“The real winners here are the North Koreans”, said Mr Byrne. “They have helped the Russians in a significant way, and this has bought them a tonne of leverage”.
In March, RUSI documented large amounts of oil being shipped from Russia to North Korea, while railcars filled with what are thought to be rice and flour have been spotted crossing the countries’ land border. This deal, thought to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds, will boost not only Pyongyang’s economy, but its military.
Russia could supply the North with the raw materials to continue making its missiles, or even military equipment such a fighter jets, and – at the most extreme end – the technical assistance to improve its nuclear weapons.
Additionally, the North is getting the chance to test its latest missiles in a real-war scenario for the first time. With this valuable data, it will be able to make them better.
Pyongyang: A major missile supplier?
More troubling still is that the war is providing North Korea with a shop window to the rest of the world.
Now that Pyongyang is mass producing these weapons, it will want to sell them to more countries, and if the missiles are good enough for Russia, they will be good enough for others, said Dr Lewis – especially as the Russians are setting the example that it is okay to violate sanctions.
He predicts going forward that North Korea will become a big supplier of missiles to countries in the China-Russia-Iran bloc. In the wake of Iran’s assault on Israel this month, the US said it was “incredibly concerned” that North Korea could be working with Iran on its nuclear and ballistic weapons programmes.
“I see a lot of gloomy faces when we talk about this problem,” said Mr Spleeters. “But the good news is that now we know how reliant they are on foreign technology, we can do something about it”.
Mr Spleeters is optimistic that by working with manufacturers they can cut off North Korea’s supply chains. His team has already succeeded in identifying and shutting down an illicit network before it was able to complete a critical sale.
But Dr Lewis is not exactly convinced.
“We can make it harder, more inconvenient, maybe raise the cost, but none of this is going to prevent North Korea from making these weapons,” he said, adding that the West had ultimately failed in its attempt to contain the rogue state.
Now not only are its missiles a source of prestige and political power, but they are also generating it vast amounts of money, explains Dr Lewis. So why would Kim Jong Un ever give them up now?
BRUSSELS – NATO on Thursday condemned Russian “malign activities” on its territory, saying actions like disinformation, sabotage, violence and cyber interference threatened the alliance’s security.
The incidents “are part of an intensifying campaign of activities” Russia is carrying out across the Euro-Atlantic area and NATO allies “express their deep concern over Russia’s hybrid actions, which constitute a threat to allied security”, NATO said in a statement.
Authorities in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Britain have recently investigated and charged people in connection with “hostile state activity”.
NATO said allies would work together to deter and defend against the hybrid actions and that they would remain steadfast in supporting Ukraine as it struggles to fend off Russia’s invasion, now in its third year.
Last month, a 20-year-old British man was charged with masterminding an arson plot against a Ukrainian-linked target in London. Moscow’s ambassador Andrey Kelin dismissed claims of links to Russia as “absurd” and “unfounded”.
In late March, Czech authorities said they had busted a Moscow-financed network that spread Russian propaganda and wielded influence across Europe, including in the European Parliament.
Baltic Times: Tartu airport under Russia’s hybrid attack – Baltic foreign ministers
2024-04-29
LETA/BNS/TBT Staff
TALLINN – The foreign ministers of the Baltic states warn that the GPS signal interference, as a result of which two Finnair flights from the Finnish capital Helsinki to the southern Estonian university town of Tartu were unable to land at Tartu airport last week, is being carried out by Russia and is so dangerous that sooner or later it can cause a plane crash, the regional Tartu Postimees writes.
The foreign ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania told the Financial Times (FT) that GPS jamming across the Baltics has increased in recent weeks. Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said that the GPS jamming at Tartu airport is a Russian hybrid attack.
“We consider what is happening with GPS as part of Russia’s hostile activities, and we will definitely discuss it with our allies. Such actions are a hybrid attack and are a threat to our people and security, and we will not tolerate them,” Tsahkna told the Financial Times.
“If someone turns off your headlights while you’re driving at night, it gets dangerous. Things in the Baltic region near Russian borders are now getting too dangerous to ignore,” Gabrielius Landsbergis, the foreign minister of Lithuania, told the Financial Times.
Roman Kulikov, operations manager at Tartu airport, said that the Finnair flight that took off from Helsinki on the night between Sunday and Monday landed in Tartu at 1:04 a.m. safely and without problems.
D/C: And do not forget the Balkans .. Russian interference and spying everywhere especially in Europe right now.
Arab News: Keep an eye on the Balkans: It’s the world’s next flash point
Commissioner Justice Marie-Josée Hogue speaks about her report from the Public Inquiry Into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions in Ottawa on May 3.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Foreign interference in 2019 and 2021 undermined the right of Canadian voters to have an electoral process “free from coercion or covert influence” and may have affected results in a small number of ridings, a public inquiry has concluded in the first of two reports.
While foreign meddling did not alter the overall outcome of the two elections, Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue, a justice of the Quebec Court of Appeal, issued a call to action Friday for the government to vigorously enact measures to tackle this “malign” threat to Canadian democracy.
She identified China as the “most persistent and sophisticated foreign interference threat to Canada” at the moment.
The acts of foreign interference that occurred, or are suspected to have occurred, “are a stain on our electoral process and impacted the process leading up to the actual vote,” she wrote.
Justice Hogue warned in her 193-page report that foreign interference undermines trust in the electoral system and discourages diaspora communities from participating in Canadian democracy.
“The government must re-establish this trust by informing the public of the threat of foreign interference, and by taking real concrete steps to detect, deter and counter it,” she wrote.
Inquiry Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue warned in her initial report that foreign interference taints the electoral process, undermines trust in the electoral system and discourages diaspora communities from participating in Canadian democracy. Justice Hogue is now moving on to conduct a second phase of hearings on foreign interference in the fall.
She agreed with the views of all the participants at the inquiry, including the Conservative Party, that foreign interference did not sway the outcome of the last two elections in which the Liberals won the most seats. “The fact that there is agreement from the members of the Conservatives that this did not occur reflects the seriousness with which Parliamentarians in these proceedings have approached the commission’s work.”
The inquiry went further than a May, 2023, report by former governor-general David Johnston, who discounted assertions from the Conservative Party that Chinese state interference affected the vote in certain ridings in 2021. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau bowed to pressure to set up an independent commission of inquiry in September after Mr. Johnston lost the confidence of all the opposition parties in the House and resigned as special rapporteur.
In her report, Justice Hogue said the eight-month inquiry, much of which was held in-camera, found “ample evidence that some foreign states engaged in foreign interference in the past two Canadian elections.”
“It is possible that results in a small number of ridings were affected, but this cannot be said with certainty,” the report said.
Justice Hogue singled out the Vancouver-area riding of Steveston-Richmond East where Conservative MP Kenny Chiu lost the 2021 election as one example where concerns remain about the possible impact of interference by the People’s Republic of China.
Foreign interference in 2019 and 2021 undermined the right of Canadian voters to have an electoral process “free from coercion or covert influence” and may have affected results in a small number of ridings, a public inquiry has concluded in the first of two reports.
While foreign meddling did not alter the overall outcome of the two elections, Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue, a justice of the Quebec Court of Appeal, issued a call to action Friday for the government to vigorously enact measures to tackle this “malign” threat to Canadian democracy.
She identified China as the “most persistent and sophisticated foreign interference threat to Canada” at the moment.
The acts of foreign interference that occurred, or are suspected to have occurred, “are a stain on our electoral process and impacted the process leading up to the actual vote,” she wrote.
Justice Hogue warned in her 193-page report that foreign interference undermines trust in the electoral system and discourages diaspora communities from participating in Canadian democracy.
“The government must re-establish this trust by informing the public of the threat of foreign interference, and by taking real concrete steps to detect, deter and counter it,” she wrote.
Inquiry Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue warned in her initial report that foreign interference taints the electoral process, undermines trust in the electoral system and discourages diaspora communities from participating in Canadian democracy. Justice Hogue is now moving on to conduct a second phase of hearings on foreign interference in the fall.
She agreed with the views of all the participants at the inquiry, including the Conservative Party, that foreign interference did not sway the outcome of the last two elections in which the Liberals won the most seats. “The fact that there is agreement from the members of the Conservatives that this did not occur reflects the seriousness with which Parliamentarians in these proceedings have approached the commission’s work.”
The inquiry went further than a May, 2023, report by former governor-general David Johnston, who discounted assertions from the Conservative Party that Chinese state interference affected the vote in certain ridings in 2021. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau bowed to pressure to set up an independent commission of inquiry in September after Mr. Johnston lost the confidence of all the opposition parties in the House and resigned as special rapporteur.
In her report, Justice Hogue said the eight-month inquiry, much of which was held in-camera, found “ample evidence that some foreign states engaged in foreign interference in the past two Canadian elections.”
“It is possible that results in a small number of ridings were affected, but this cannot be said with certainty,” the report said.
Justice Hogue singled out the Vancouver-area riding of Steveston-Richmond East where Conservative MP Kenny Chiu lost the 2021 election as one example where concerns remain about the possible impact of interference by the People’s Republic of China.
Dominic LeBlanc, the Public Safety Minister, says foreign agent registry legislation is ‘coming soon,’ along with other measures to combat foreign interference from hostile states.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
MPs from all parties in the House of Commons have joined a coalition of diaspora community groups in calling on the federal government to immediately table legislation setting up a foreign agent influence registry.
Coalition spokesperson Gloria Fung told a news conference Tuesday on Parliament Hill that diaspora groups have been waiting since 2021 for Ottawa to act.
“We are tired of empty promises. We need action now,” Ms. Fung said.
MPs from the Liberal, Conservative, NDP, Bloc Québécois and Green parties joined the community groups to voice their support for a registry for anyone working to influence governments, elections or citizens on behalf of a foreign power.
Failure to register could result in fines or jail sentences for foreign agents.
“There has to be a cost associated for any country that interferes with our democratic processes or our elections,” Liberal MP Ali Ehsassi said. Conservative MP Tom Kmiec added: “If you take money from a foreign government, you should have to register in Canada. It’s time to do it.”
The government has been working since last year on a package of reforms to deal with foreign interference. It includes a foreign agent registry and changes to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, the Security of Information Act and the Criminal Code to make foreign interference an offence.
Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc told reporters Tuesday that foreign agent registry legislation is “coming soon,” as are other measures to combat foreign interference from hostile states.
“This is part of our ongoing effort to strengthen legislation with respect to foreign interference,” he said. “So I’m confident that the foreign influence registry will be part of a broader effort to strengthen legislation with respect to countering foreign interference.”
Bloc MP René Villemure said his party will table its own foreign agent legislation before June if the government does not get its act together.
The United States and Australia have already set up foreign agent registries, and Britain has a law on the books that will come into force later this year.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation used the 86-year-old Foreign Agents Registration Act last year to arrest Chinese agents suspected of trying to intimidate Chinese citizens in the U.S. – an activity that also appears to be taking place in Canada in so-called “police stations” operated by Beijing.
Previously, the FBI used the FARA law to pursue investigations into Russian agents suspected of involvement in election meddling and influence peddling in Washington after the 2016 U.S. election.
NDP MP Jenny Kwan, who has been targeted by Beijing for her criticism of China’s human-rights abuses, said the government needs to get the foreign agent registry up and running before the election expected next year.
The proposed registry has been opposed by some within the Chinese-Canadian community. Independent Senator Yuen Pau Woo, appointed to the upper house by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2016, has argued that a foreign-influence registry could do more harm than good and could infringe on Canadians’ Charter rights.
Ms. Kwan accused Mr. Woo of promoting disinformation.
“This registry will protect everyone. It doesn’t matter what community you come from,” Ms. Kwan said. “We want every single Canadian to be protected. Without this registry that means those vulnerable communities could be targeted.”
Marcus Kolga, president of the Central and Eastern European Council in Canada, said we already have laws requiring lobbyists to register when they try to influence the government, so “shouldn’t we demand transparency from those who advance the aims of foreign regimes, specifically those like Russia, China, Iran and others.”
The registry will shine a light in the shadows where former diplomats, politicians, government officials and academics are paid to work on behalf of authoritarian regimes, Mr. Kolga said.
By now, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambition to remake the world is undeniable. He wants to dissolve Washington’s network of alliances and purge what he dismisses as “Western” values from international bodies. He wants to knock the U.S. dollar off its pedestal and eliminate Washington’s chokehold over critical technology. In his new multipolar order, global institutions and norms will be underpinned by Chinese notions of common security and economic development, Chinese values of state-determined political rights, and Chinese technology. China will no longer have to fight for leadership. Its centrality will be guaranteed.
To hear Xi tell it, this world is within reach. At the Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs last December, he boasted that Beijing was (in the words of a government press release) a “confident, self-reliant, open and inclusive major country,” one that had created the world’s “largest platform for international cooperation” and led the way in “reforming the international system.” He asserted that his conception for the global order—a “community with a shared future for mankind”—had evolved from a “Chinese initiative” to an “international consensus,” to be realized through the implementation of four Chinese programs: the Belt and Road Initiative, the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative.
Outside China, such brash, self-congratulatory proclamations are generally disregarded or dismissed—including by American officials, who have tended to discount the appeal of Beijing’s strategy. It is easy to see why: a large number of China’s plans appear to be failing or backfiring. Many of China’s neighbors are drawing closer to Washington, and its economy is faltering. The country’s confrontational “Wolf Warrior” style of diplomacy may have pleased Xi, but it won China few friends overseas. And polls indicate that Beijing is broadly unpopular worldwide: A 2023 Pew Research Center study, for example, surveyed attitudes toward China and the United States in 24 countries on six continents. It found that only 28 percent of respondents had a favorable opinion of Beijing, and just 23 percent said China contributes to global peace. Nearly 60 percent of respondents, by contrast, had a positive view of the United States, and 61 percent said Washington contributes to peace and stability.
But Xi’s vision is far more formidable than it seems. China’s proposals would give power to the many countries that have been frustrated and sidelined by the present order, but it would still afford the states Washington currently favors with valuable international roles. Beijing’s initiatives are backed by a comprehensive, well-resourced, and disciplined operational strategy—one that features outreach to governments and people in seemingly every country. These techniques have gained Beijing newfound support, particularly in some multilateral organizations and from nondemocracies. China is succeeding in making itself an agent of welcome change while portraying the United States as the defender of a status quo that few particularly like.
Rather than dismissing Beijing’s playbook, U.S. policymakers should learn from it. To win what will be a long-term competition, the United States must seize the mantle of change that China has claimed. Washington needs to articulate and push forward its own vision for a transformed international system and the U.S. role within that system—one that is inclusive of countries at different economic levels and with different political systems. Like China, the United States needs to invest deeply in the technological, military, and diplomatic foundations that enable both security at home and leadership abroad. Yet as the country commits to that competition, U.S. policymakers must understand that near-term stabilization of the bilateral relationship advances rather than hinders ultimate U.S. objectives. They should build on last year’s summit between President Joe Biden and Xi, curtailing inflammatory anti-Chinese rhetoric and creating a more functional diplomatic relationship. That way, the United States can focus on the more important task: winning the long-term game.
I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW
Beijing’s playbook begins with a well-defined vision of a transformed world order. The Chinese government wants a system built not just on multipolarity but also on absolute sovereignty; security rooted in international consensus and the UN Charter; state-determined human rights based on each country’s circumstances; development as the “master key” to all solutions; the end of U.S. dollar dominance; and a pledge to leave no country and no one behind.
This vision, in Beijing’s telling, stands in stark contrast to the system the United States supports. In a 2023 report, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed Washington was “clinging to the Cold War mentality” and “piecing together small blocs through its alliance system” to “create division in the region, stoke confrontation and undermine peace.” The United States, the report continued, interferes “in the internal affairs of other countries,” uses the dollar’s status as the international reserve currency to coerce “other countries into serving America’s political and economic strategy,” and seeks to “deter other countries’ scientific, technological and economic development.”
Finally, the ministry argued, the United States advances “cultural hegemony.” The “real weapons in U.S. cultural expansion,” it declared, were the “production lines of Mattel Company and Coca-Cola.”
Beijing claims that its vision, by contrast, advances the interests of the majority of the world’s people. China is center stage, but every country, including the United States, has a role to play. At the 2024 Munich Security Conference in February, for example, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that China and the United States are responsible for global strategic stability. China and Russia, meanwhile, represent the exploration of a new model for major-country relations.
China and the European Union are the world’s two major markets and civilizations and should resist establishing blocs based on ideology. And China, as what Wang called the “largest developing country,” promotes solidarity and cooperation with the global South to increase its representation in global affairs.
China’s vision is designed to be compelling for nearly all countries. Those that are not democracies will have their choices validated. Those that are democracies but not major powers will gain a greater voice in the international system and a bigger share of the benefits of globalization. Even the major democratic powers can reflect on whether the current system is adequate for meeting today’s challenges or whether China has something better to offer. Observers in the United States and elsewhere may roll their eyes at the grandiose phrasing, but they do so at their peril: dissatisfaction with the current international order has created a global audience more amenable to China’s proposals than might have existed not long ago.
D/C: Certainly China has been buying huge amounts of gold to get off their dependency on the dollar, But also they need to get American’s a little on side to aid their exports, as their economy is a problem right now!
CNN: Choose between stability and ‘downward spiral,’ China tells Blinken during Beijing trip
BBCAn unusual-looking wreckage that hold many clues
Mark Collins 3Ds Blog 