Research and Case Studies

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  Non-Traditional Security Threats and Asia-Pacific Regional Cooperation

  James M. Keagle

  The purpose of this paper is for the better understanding of the security challenges and opportunities for expanded cooperation through global regional efforts to manage our planet and govern its inhabitants more responsibly.

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  Report of an Army Workshop on Convergence Forecasting: Mechanochemical Transduction

  Douglas Kiserow, David Stepp, Stephen Lee, and Peter Reynolds

  This is an assessment of the Mechanochemical Transduction Convergence Workshop sponsored by the Army Research Office which took place in January 2012. The workshop was a test case for identifying convergences of disciplines and their potential impact on science and the Army. The chief objective of the workshop was the identify the most promising research opportunities and interdisciplinary convergences that could lead the field of mechanochemical transduction in new direction with unexpected outcomes that would be relevant to future Army needs.

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  Reflections on Over Fifty Years in Research and Development; Some Lessons Learned

  John W. Lyons

  This paper presents some thoughts about research in science and technology gleaned from Dr. Lyons’ more than 50 years working in scientific and engineering research – first in chemical industry, then at two different government laboratories, and later some years in S&T policy. It elaborates on a paper by Richard Chait in which he interviews three former S&T executives in the DoD on how to manage a research laboratory. Its objective is to provide some insights on what it is like to work in a scientific research establishment.

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  Enhancing Army S&T Vol. II: The Future

  John W. Lyons and Richard Chait

  Chapter I of this volume is an introduction, and Chapter II offers an updated view of the work discussed in Vol. I with an emphasis on the relative roles played by the Army laboratories that manufactured the systems. The close collaboration between the two groups was judged by the authors to be the key to the successful outcomes. This chapter presents updated findings and recommendations of the previous studies in Vol I.

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  Cross-currents in French Defense and U.S. Interests

  Leo G. Michel

  France is the only European ally—except for the United Kingdom (UK)—that regards its military capabilities, operational performance, and defense industry as vital levers to exert global influence. While the French believe strongly in their need to preserve “strategic independence,” they see new challenges in the evolving international security environment that will oblige them to accept greater cooperation with others, even in areas once considered too sensitive to discuss. Although some French strategists remain uncomfortable with the notion of closer defense ties with the United States, others ask whether there might be a greater danger ahead: specifically, if Europe’s strength dissipates as America “rebalances” toward the Asia-Pacific region, where does France turn to find capable and willing partners to protect its security interests?

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  Combating Transnational Organized Crime: Strategies and Metrics for the Threat

  Samuel Musa

  This paper provides an overview of the strategic and policy initiatives that the United States and international community have taken, including an assessment of the TOC threat. The overview is followed by the metrics developed to evaluate the relative magnitude and direction of the threat of a 5-year period.

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  Russia and the Iranian Nuclear Program: Replay or Breakthrough?

  John W. Parker

  Despite protests across Russia sparked by last December’s fraud-filled Duma (parliament) elections, Vladimir Putin is preparing to return to the presidency this May. Will Putin replay his 2004–2008 approach to Iran, during which Russia negotiated the S–300 air defense system contract with Tehran? Or will he continue Russia’s breakthrough in finding common ground with the United States on Iran seen under President Dmitriy Medvedev, who tore up the S–300 contract?

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  Japan-China Relations 2005–2010: Managing Between a Rock and a Hard Place An Interpretative Essay

  James J. Przystup

  Between China and Japan, the past is ever-present. Notwithstanding shared cultural and historic ties, throughout the past century and going back to the Sino-Japanese war at the end of the 19th century, a bitter legacy of history—the Boxer Rebellion; the Mukden Incident and Japan’s occupation of South Manchuria (1931); the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, Japan’s subsequent invasion of China, and the Nanjing Massacre (1937); and the Sino-Japanese War (1937– 1945)—has left an indelible mark on this relationship.

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  Managing Sino-U.S. Air and Naval Interactions: Cold War Lessons and New Avenues of Approach

  Mark E. Redden and Phillip C. Saunders

  The United States and China have a complex, multifaceted, and ambiguous relationship where substantial areas of cooperation coexist with ongoing strategic tensions and suspicions. One manifestation involves disputes and incidents when U.S. and Chinese military forces interact within China’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Three high-profile incidents over the last decade have involved aggressive maneuvers by Chinese military and/or paramilitary forces operating in close proximity to deter U.S. surveillance and military survey platforms from conducting their missions. Why do these incidents continue to occur despite mechanisms designed to prevent such dangerous encounters? Could new or different procedures or policies help avoid future incidents?

  The problem in the U.S.-China case lies not with inadequate rules (for maritime operations) or history of practice (for air operations), but rather in the motivations that sometimes drive the Chinese to selective noncompliance with their provisions. China regards military surveillance and survey operations in its EEZ as hostile, threatening, illegal, and inappropriate. China’s harassment of U.S. naval vessels and aircraft conducting surveillance and survey operations is intended to produce a change in U.S. behavior by raising the costs and risks of these operations.

  The U.S. military has confronted this problem before. U.S. doctrine and operational practice in conducting and responding to surveillance operations derives primarily from Cold War interactions with the Soviet military. The two countries were eventually able to develop a mutually beneficial protocol, known as the Incidents at Sea Agreement (INCSEA), for managing air and naval interactions, thereby reducing the potential for an incident to occur or escalate. Given the success of INCSEA and tactical parallels between U.S.-Soviet and U.S.-China interactions, the factors that led the Soviet Union to seek an agreement provide a useful prism for evaluating the current situation.

  Three primary factors motivated the U.S.-Soviet agreement: concern over the escalation potential of future incidents, a growing parallelism in the nature and scope of surveillance operations, and a burgeoning period of détente. These factors do not presently exist in the U.S.- China relationship to the degree necessary to induce mutual restraint in maritime and air interactions within China’s EEZ. This situation may change over the next 10 to 15 years as Chinese global economic interests expand and naval modernization produces a more capable and active Chinese navy, but waiting for change is not an attractive solution given continuing operational risks and the potential for an incident to badly damage bilateral relations.

  If U.S. policymakers seek a faster change in Chinese behavior, they need to understand the underlying Chinese policy calculus, how it may change over time, and potential means of influencing that calculus. Based on Chinese policy objectives, official statements, patterns of behavior, and logical inferences, we identify seven decisionmaking variables:

  1. Sovereignty/security concerns: These reflect China’s historical concerns about sovereignty and the economic importance of defending China’s coastal provinces.
  2. Intelligence/counter-intelligence: China needs to gather strategic and tactical intelligence and also seeks to limit intelligence collection by potential adversaries.
  3. Geostrategic considerations: China has concerns about the U.S. role in Asia, needs a stable external environment that supports development, desires to shape international rules and norms, and seeks to project a positive international image.
  4. Chinese domestic context: Aggressive efforts by Chinese naval and maritime forces to defend sovereignty bolster their relative importance and justify increased resources. However, the Chinese navy also seeks to show that it can protect China’s interests and safeguard China’s economic development, missions that require cooperation with foreign militaries.
  5. Global commons access: Assured access to the global economy for resources and to reach markets is essential for continued Chinese economic growth and development.
  6. Escalation control: China shares an interest in preventing interactions with U.S. military assets from escalating into a broader conflict, but Chinese leaders and officers tend to regard the risk of such escalation as limited and manageable.
  7. Relations with the United States: A constructive relationship with the United States is important for China’s continued economic development and ability to achieve its national objectives, but Chinese leaders downplay the likelihood of a military incident causing irreparable damage to bilateral relations.

  U.S. policymakers have several broad avenues of approach to alter the Chinese policy calculus and thereby influence Chinese behavior:

  1. Intelligence/counter-intelligence approaches: These approaches link China’s own ability to gather intelligence with its tolerance of U.S. intelligence-collection activities. Options include creating direct parallels between U.S. operations in China’s EEZ and Chinese operations in Japan’s EEZ; linking Chinese tolerance of U.S. surveillance operations in its EEZ with U.S. tolerance of select Chinese intelligence-collection activities in other areas or using other means; and linking the frequency of U.S. surveillance operations to Chinese concessions or cooperation in other areas.
  2. Maritime cooperation/coercion: These approaches play on the distinction between contentious U.S.-Chinese interactions within China’s EEZ and more cooperative interactions in distant waters. Cooperative options include highlighting the value of agreed operational norms and expanding U.S.-China maritime cooperation, including via surveillance cooperation in support of counterpiracy operations; coercive options include responding to Chinese harassment with “tit for tat” actions against Chinese navy ships or commercial shipping outside China’s EEZ.
  3. Geostrategic and bilateral considerations: These approaches play on Chinese geostrategic interests in maintaining a stable regional environment and a U.S.-China relationship conducive to economic and social development. Options include a more structured, consistent, and sustained U.S. strategic communication plan that highlights international norms of airmanship and seamanship; drawing parallels between the rights of military units to conduct operations in EEZs under the freedom of navigation principle and the more general issue of commercial access to the global commons; and challenging the Chinese assumption that military incidents inside China’s EEZ are unlikely to escalate into broader conflict or seriously threaten bilateral relations.

  Given the importance that China places on sovereignty, no single option is likely to be sufficient. A mixed approach, particularly one that influences more Chinese decisionmakers, may maximize the probability of success. Cooperative approaches require time for benefits to accrue and for normative arguments to be heard and heeded. Some potential coercive approaches require violating preferred U.S. norms of freedom of navigation and U.S. military standard practice of safe airmanship and seamanship to generate the leverage necessary to alter Chinese behavior. This risks shifting international norms in undesired directions and would create greater tension and friction in military-military relations and bilateral relations generally.

  This study does not attempt to weigh the intelligence value of U.S. operations in China’s EEZ against their negative impact on U.S.-China relations or the costs of the coercive options identified above. U.S. policymakers will need to carefully consider whether the status quo is tolerable, the costs and risks of various approaches, and what mix of policies might move China in desired directions at an acceptable cost.

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  Deception, Disinformation, and Strategic Communications: How One Interagency Group Made a Major Difference

  Fletcher Schoen and Christopher J. Lamb

  This study explains how one part-time interagency committee established in the 1980s to counter Soviet disinformation effectively accomplished its mission. Interagency committees are commonly criticized as ineffective, but the Active Measures Working Group is a notable exception. The group successfully established and executed U.S. policy on responding to Soviet disinformation. It exposed some Soviet covert operations and raised the political cost of others by sensitizing foreign and domestic audiences to how they were being duped. The group’s work encouraged allies and made the Soviet Union pay a price for disinformation that reverberated all the way to the top of the Soviet political apparatus. It became the U.S. Government’s body of expertise on disinformation and was highly regarded in both Congress and the executive branch.

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  Domestic Event Support Operations (DESO)

  Andrew Smith

  This paper draws heavily on Australian experience in the last dozen years, during which time the country hosted a Summer Olympics and Paralympics, a Commonworth Games, an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders Meeting, and a number of other events, all of which required DESO to be mounted.

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  Chemical and Biological Defense Test and Evaluation (T&E) Future Challenges

  James J. Valdes and Ewelina Tunia

  The objective of this study was to identify emerging technical, methodological, and infrastructure challenges for future Chemical and Biological Defense Test and Evaluation investment, and to serve as a prequel to the development of a full strategic T&E Roadmap.

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  Modeling the Combined Terrorist-Narcotics Trafficker Threat to National Security

  Alexander Woodcock and Samuel Musa

  This modeling study demonstrated that model-generated data closely resembled actual reports about tons of disrupted narcotics substances in three consecutive years. the policy cycle model showed that increased rates of policy cycle activity increased the amount of narcotics disruption, while increased levels of corruption reduced those levels.

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  The Ongoing Insurgency in Southern Thailand: Trends in Violence, Counterinsurgency Operations, and the Impact of National Politics

  Zachary Abuza

  Since January 2004, a Malay-Muslim–based insurgency has engulfed the three southernmost provinces in Thailand. More than 4,500 people have been killed and over 9,000 wounded, making it the most lethal conflict in Southeast Asia. Now in its 8th year, the insurgency has settled into a low-level stalemate. Violence is down significantly from its mid-2007 peak, but it has been steadily climbing since 2008. On average, 32 people are being killed and 58 wounded every month. Most casualties are from drive-by shootings, but there are also about 12 improvised explosive device (IED) attacks a month.

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  Elevating the Role of Socioeconomic Strategy in Afghanistan Transition

  Michael Baranick, Albert Sciarretta, Cyrus Staniec, and John Applebaugh

  This paper reviews the System Analysis and Studies Panel of the NATO Research and Technology Organization which created a Specialist Team in June 2010 in response to an International Security Assistance Force request to help develop, define, and implement a strategy for data collection and management. The goal of the initiative was to provide direct assistance to NATO, ISAF, and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

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  A Review of the 2001 Bonn Conference and Application to the Road Ahead in Afghanistan

  Mark Fields and Ramsha Ahmed

  Ten years ago in Bonn, Germany, the United Nations Envoy to Afghanistan, Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi, and U.S. Envoy to the Afghan Opposition, Ambassador James Dobbins, led a diverse group of international diplomats and warriors to consensus and charted the political course for Afghanistan well into the decade. The process that led to the Bonn Agreement (Bonn 2001, or Bonn I) reflects the best of U.S. and United Nations statesmanship and was the result of the effective application of military and diplomatic power.

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  Secret Weapon: High-value Target Teams as an Organizational Innovation

  Christopher J. Lamb and Evan Munsing

  This study argues that interagency teams were a major catalyst in turning around the Iraq War, and that they will disappear from America’s arsenal unless the knowledge base supporting the innovation can be secured. Most explanations credit the dramatic reduction in violence in Iraq between 2007 and 2008 to new U.S. leadership, the surge in U.S. forces, and/or U.S. financial support to Sunni tribal leaders. In contrast, we argue that the United States employed an underappreciated organizational innovation—interagency teams—to put insurgent clandestine organizations on the defensive and give population security measures a chance to take effect.

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  The Use of High Performance Computing (HPC) to Strengthen the Development of Army Systems

  John W. Lyons, Richard Chait, and Charles J. Nietubicz

  This paper seeks to discuss the growth and trends in High Performance Computing (HPC) and how the Army has utilized HPC in research. It also addresses the possibilities for design and production of new systems and how industry has advanced the use of HPC. One intent of this paper is to re-evaluate the advanced manufacturing area in light of the many recent developments in computational capability and availability. It concludes with comments and recommendations for strengthening Army acquisition using advanced computer technology.

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  Assessing Army Power and Energy for the Warfighter

  John W. Lyons, Richard Chait, and James J. Valdes

  This paper reviews some of the landscape of research and development on power and energy as it pertains to the needs of the Army warfighter. It focuses on the battlefield and considers questions related to vehicles, dismounted soldiers, and forward operating bases. The context of the study is twofold: the National need to reduce the use of petroleum-based fuels and the Army’s need to reduce the logistical burden and hazards moving said fuels on the battlefield.

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  Joint Interagency Task Force–South: The Best Known, Least Understood Interagency Success

  Evan Munsing and Christopher J. Lamb

  Joint Interagency Task Force–South (JIATF–South) is well known within the U.S. Government as the “gold standard” for interagency cooperation and intelligence fusion, despite its preference for keeping a low profile and giving other agencies the credit for its successes. It is often cited as a model for whole-of-government problem-solving in the literature on interagency collaboration, and other national security organizations have tried to copy its approach and successes. Despite the plaudits and attention, the way that JIATF–South actually operates has only received superficial analysis. In fact, few people actually understand why JIATF–South works as well as it does or how its success might be replicated.

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  Strengthening Government Laboratory Science and Technology Programs: Some Thoughts for the Department of Homeland Security

  Samuel Musa, Richard Chait, Vincent Russo, and Donna Back

  This paper summarizes the second phase of a research and analysis project that stemmed from the initial work which provided DHS Science and Technology leadership with examples of practical approaches to risk-informed decisionmaking and metrics for program and project selection. The second phase was undertaken to provide additional relevant information to DHS as it seeks to strengthen its laboratory programs.

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  Russia’s Revival: Ambitions, Limitations, and Opportunities for the United States

  John W. Parker

  Independent Russia is approaching the start of its third decade of post-Soviet existence. After the economic chaos of the Boris Yeltsin decade and the recovery and stabilization of the Vladimir Putin decade, Russia’s leaders have high ambitions for a return to great power status in the years ahead. Their aspirations are tempered, however, by the realities of Russia’s social, economic, and military shortcomings and vulnerabilities, laid painfully bare by the stress test of the recent global financial crisis. Looking ahead, some also calculate that Russia will be increasingly challenged in the Far East by a rising China and in the Middle East by an Iran that aspires to regional hegemony.

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  Challenges to Leadership: Responding to Biological Threats

  Paul Rosenzweig

  This paper seeks to identify certain gaps and overlaps in existing structure and mechanisms and to advance potential solutions that can be implemented. It examines two issues of concern: Federal Coordination Structure and Federal/State Coordination and recommends that a more comprehensive set of planning and response exercises be developed in order to better understand and develop a doctrine of incident leadership suitable for a biological crisis.

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  Korean Futures: Challenges to U.S. Diplomacy of North Korean Regime Collapse

  Ferial Ara Saeed and James J. Przystup

  There is no shortage of plausible scenarios describing North Korean regime collapse or how the United States and North Korea’s neighbors might respond to such a challenge. Yet comparatively little attention has been paid to the strategic considerations that may shape the responses of the United States, the Republic of Korea (ROK), Japan, China, and Russia to a North Korean crisis. These states are most likely to take action of some kind in the event the North Korean regime collapses. For the ROK (South Korea), North Korean regime collapse presents the opportunity for Korean reunification. For the other states, the outcome in North Korea will affect their influence on the peninsula and their relative weight in Asia. This study identifies the interests and objectives of these principal state actors with respect to the Korean Peninsula. Applying their interests and objectives to a generic scenario of North Korean regime collapse, the study considers possible policies that the principal state actors might use to cope with such a crisis.

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  Buy, Build, or Steal: China’s Quest for Advanced Military Aviation Technologies

  Phillip C. Saunders and Joshua K. Wiseman

  Although China continues to lag approximately two decades behind the world’s most sophisticated air forces in terms of its ability to develop and produce fighter aircraft and other complex aerospace systems, it has moved over time from absolute reliance on other countries for military aviation technology to a position where a more diverse array of strategies can be pursued. Steps taken in the late 1990s to reform China’s military aviation sector demonstrated an understanding of the problems inherent in high-technology acquisition, and an effort to move forward. However, a decade later it remains unclear how effective these reforms have been. Where are the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) and China’s military aviation industry headed? What obstacles must be overcome for China to join the exclusive ranks of those nations possessing sophisticated air forces and aviation industries capable of producing world-class aircraft?

  This study identifies potential aviation technology development and procurement strategies, presents a general model of the options available to developing countries, and applies that model to explain Chinese procurement and aviation technology acquisition efforts over the last 60 years. The model articulates three main technology procurement avenues: purchase (buy), indigenous development (build), and espionage (steal), and three subavenues: reverse engineering (combining buy/steal and build), coproduction (combining buy and build), and codevelopment (combining buy and build, with an emphasis on build). It examines the costs, benefits, and tradeoffs inherent in each approach. Four variables influence decisions about the mix of strategies: (1) a country’s overall level of economic development, in particular the state of its technical/industrial base; (2) the technological capacity of a country’s military aviation sector; (3) the willingness of foreign countries to sell advanced military aircraft, key components, armaments, and related production technology; and (4) the country’s bargaining power vis-àvis potential suppliers.

  In applying the model, we divide the evolution of China’s military aviation industry into five periods based on China’s changing access to foreign suppliers of military aircraft and aviation technology. Soviet assistance (1950–1960) provided the foundation for China’s military aviation industry, which cut its teeth coproducing Soviet fighter, bomber, and transport aircraft. Given Western embargoes, Moscow offered the only viable path to advanced aviation technology and provided assistance on favorable terms to support its communist ally. The second period (1960–1977) is marked by the Sino-Soviet split, which eliminated Chinese access to cutting-edge aviation hardware. China continued to produce and make modest refinements to 1950s vintage Soviet aircraft designs, using reverse engineering to fill in gaps where technical information was lacking. In the third period (1977–1989), China gained some access to Western aviation components and technologies and sought to apply them to a variant of the J–8 (a twin engine fighter based on a modified MiG–21 design) and the JH–7 (a fighter-bomber with a British engine). The fourth period (1989–2004) is marked by Western bans on arms sales to China in the wake of Tiananmen, Sino-Soviet rapprochement (leading to sales of advanced Russian fighters and coproduction arrangements), and a brief but important window of access to Israeli technologies. Covert access to advanced Western fighters and espionage (in both traditional forms and via computer network operations) also began to make more contributions.

  In the fifth period (2004–present), China has enjoyed increased access to foreign commercial aviation technologies and has benefited from a “spin-off, spin-on” dynamic in gaining commercial access to dual-use technologies and applying them for military purposes. However, China’s legitimate access to advanced military-specific technologies has been reduced as Western sources of supply remained closed and Russia has become more reluctant to provide advanced aviation technology due to China’s reverse engineering of the Su-27, fear of future competition for export markets, and concerns about China’s long-term strategic direction.

  China has used coproduction, selected purchases of advanced aircraft, reverse engineering, and foreign design assistance to build a capable military aviation industry with a significant indigenous design and production capacity. The Chinese military aviation industry can now produce two fourth-generation fighters roughly equal to those in advanced air forces: the J–10 (indigenously developed with Israeli assistance) and the J–11B (based on coproduction and reverse engineering of the Su-27). Both aircraft still rely on imported Russian turbofan engines. Test flights of the new J–20 stealth fighter prototype demonstrate Chinese ambitions to build fifth-generation fighters, but the extent to which the J–20 will match the performance of state-of-the-art Russian and Western fighters is unclear. Significant technical hurdles in engine design, avionics, and systems integration are likely to delay operational deployment of the J–20 until about 2020. This would be about 15 years after the F–22 entered U.S. Air Force service, supporting an overall assessment that the Chinese military aviation industry remains 15–20 years behind.

  Producing state-of-the-art fighters requires an aviation industry to master a range of highly advanced, military-specific technologies. The historical development of China’s military aviation industry reflects an ongoing tension between the desire for self-reliance in defense and the need for access to advanced foreign technologies. China’s legitimate access to cutting-edge Western military technologies will likely remain curtailed and Russian reluctance to supply advanced military technologies will likely grow. These assumptions support two important conclusions. First, the Chinese military aviation industry will have to rely primarily on indigenous development of advanced “single-use” military aviation technologies in the future. The Chinese government is pursuing a range of “indigenous innovation” and technology development programs, but mastering advanced technologies becomes more difficult and expensive as a country moves closer to the technology frontier. This leads to a second, related conclusion: China will likely rely more heavily on espionage to acquire those critical military aviation technologies it cannot acquire legitimately from foreign suppliers or develop on its own.