2 décembre 2019 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
Murray Brewster ·
In both war and diplomacy, language matters.
And if one thing was evident from the flood of words coming out of the Halifax International Security Forum last weekend, it's that Western democracies, despite their vows to uphold human rights, have no common language to define their view of — and relationship with — China.
The world is rapidly approaching a crossroads with Beijing, a point where nations will have to decide whether to treat the burgeoning superpower as a trading partner, a rival — or an active threat.
Secret Chinese documents were released to media outlets recently which show how the Muslim minority Uighur population is being locked up in mass detention camps and subjected to "systematic brainwashing." Beijing's violent response to pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong revived grim memories of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
So is China a competitor or an adversary?
The answer to that question seems to depend on which country's leaders are answering it — how heavily Beijing has invested in their nations' markets, how badly their businesses want access to that vast Chinese market.
"For many years, folks were naive about Chinese motivations," U.S. National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien told journalists during an on-the-record briefing in Halifax over the weekend.
"In the past, the relationship with China was driven solely by trade, driven solely by economics."
O'Brien describes China, rather antiseptically, as a "near-peer competitor," not as an adversary. Still, there were points during the briefing when O'Brien's language became decidedly adversarial — even dystopian — as he described the high-tech incarceration and forced re-education of as many as one million Uighurs.
In the context of the dispute over allowing Chinese telecom giant Huawei into Western 5G wireless systems, O'Brien asked whether Western Europe would have allowed the Soviet Union into their countries to build railroads at the height of the Cold War.
On the record, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan also was not prepared to describe China as an adversary — but he was decidedly mushy when asked how we should describe it.
The confusion on display in Halifax over the question of whether the West has arrived at the threshold of a new Cold War was widespread.
U.S. Admiral Phillip Davidson, the commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, would not describe the current moment as "a new Cold War" but warned that the West needs to be prepared to continually "call out" China when it crosses internationally accepted lines.
Many say some of those lines have been crossed already — through the arbitrary detention of the Uighurs (which China attempts to justify with the claim that it's fighting Islamic extremism) and through its program of constructing artificial islands in the South China Sea, which has been condemned by an international tribunal at the Hague.
So, again ... rival or adversary?
Lady Pauline Neville-Jones, a former top British diplomat and adviser to ex-U.K. prime minister David Cameron, said China has signalled it intends to become an "unequalled" high-tech nation. Beijing has said it's prepared to pour real money into achieving that goal — with Western nations supplying the world-class post secondary institutions that are training the next generation of Chinese engineers.
"We are feeding something that could be a monster," she told the Halifax forum.
"So what do we do about it? As long as we pursue our relations with China, largely separately on the basis of short-term national interest, I think we are giving away the game."
It took Western allies several years to come with up a comprehensive Cold War strategy following the Second World War, she pointed out.
1 novembre 2023 | International, Aérospatial
Spirit AeroSystems on Wednesday projected higher-than-expected cash burn for 2023 as it slashed anticipated deliveries of 737 fuselages, but its new CEO said returning the embattled aerospace supplier to positive cash flow will be his "principle goal."
10 novembre 2021 | International, Aérospatial
Spain has no interest in the American F-35 fighter jet and is solely committed to the Future Combat Air System that it is pursuing with France and Germany, a defense spokeswoman told Reuters.
24 avril 2018 | International, Terrestre, C4ISR
By: Mark Pomerleau The Army is upgrading how it tracks friendly forces to increase readiness. During the fiscal 2019 budget roll out in February, Army officials at the Pentagon indicated that the service would be accelerating its Joint Battle Command-Platform, which provides friendly forces awareness information known as blue force tracking, as well as encrypted data and faster satellite network connectivity. The change is intended to solve mounted mission command problems across all formations. The new budget request shows the service is serious about the issue. The Army asked for $431 million for the program in FY2019. That's up from a total of $283 million during the FY2018 budget. Moreover, the Army plans to procure 26,355 systems as opposed to 16,552 from the FY2018 budget. However, officials in the program office were careful to note this was not a “plus-up, so to speak,” but an effort to accelerate the fielding of the tracking systems. C4ISRNET's Mark Pomerleau recently spoke about the program's modernization efforts with Col. Troy Crosby, project manager for Mission Command, alongside Lt. Col. Shane Sims, product manager for JBC-P, assigned to Project Mission Command. C4ISRNET: How should we interpret the FY2019 budget request for this program? COL. TROY CROSBY: It's important to understand that there wasn't necessarily a plus-up. Really what happened is we shifted already approved authorizations to the left. We're just expediting sooner. The Army asked us what we could do to modernize faster ... essentially, we went back to them and said give us the funding and the resources to move a lot of those units to the left because every year the G-3/5/7 comes out with this priority list and we weren't able to get down to that priority list because of funding. That's really what you're seeing with that movement of money from the out years closer in to the left. C4ISRNET: What led to the decision to baseline the program across formations? CROSBY: The Army's looking to standardize their baselines not only on the platforms like JBC-P, but also a similar effort in the command post with software baseline reduction. Moving to the standard baseline on the platform-side helps with training, readiness and the physical constraints as we can depreciate the older versions of FBCB2/BFT [Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below/Blue Force Tracking] out of sustainment. C4ISRNET: How does standardization help the Army? CROSBY: Any time you're greatly standardized in a organization the size of the Army, you're going to get easier interoperability down at the tactical level. If Lt. Col. Sims is Sgt. Sims and he is in a unit at Fort Stewart and we were trained on the current systems in the force and then he gets [a permanent change of station] out to Fort Riley, he already has a base of knowledge when he hits the ground on what those systems are because they're the same across the force. So, the training burden for his new units greatly reduced. I think it also helps in readiness as units and soldiers move around the battlespace. The other reason the Army really wants to standardize on JBC-P is, like with all systems in the tactical network, we're always looking to improve cyber posture, and there were multiple improvements in our cyber posturing that the department felt were relevant to try to accelerate so we could get that capability to the entire force as quickly as possible. C4ISRNET: In terms of cyber, what are some modernization efforts you're undertaking to help this platform perform in the more dynamic environments? CROSBY: I think the best way that we can characterize it is looking to ... achieve a cyber posture that allows us to operate both in a counter-insurgency/counterterrorism role and a near-peer adversary role. We're looking to answer both sides of that coin. Yes, current fight, but we're also looking to make sure we're cyber postured for a near-peer. LT. COL. SHANE SIMS: You can probably draw some conclusions from what you know on the commercial side. Imagine having a computer that's over 20 years old — that's where some of our platforms are right now when you're talking about the FBCB2 that was fielded almost two decades ago. C4ISRNET: In terms of your FY19 funding, could it be characterized as investing in standards to help increase readiness and lethality? CROSBY: Very much so. The plus-up kind of touched a couple of areas. On the research and development side, the plus-up helps us in looking at ways to modernize and bring new capability for the blue force tracking network side. We're really looking to expedite that fielding for better cyber posture. C4ISRNET: It sounds like standardization is very important from an Army readiness and lethality perspective. SIMS: When talking JBC-P, there are really three components: the software, the hardware and then the network. Really, what we're doing on a couple fronts [is] we're expediting the fielding to get the hardware out there but that's going to set the conditions for what we're doing in the command post with the infrastructure. That same infrastructure is going to reside on our hardware that's in the platform. The commanders are in environments where they experience something completely different in the command post than you experience on the platforms. You hear repeatedly from the commanders, “Can I have the same type of user experience?” Data's really what we're addressing with the modernization of the command post and the mounted computing environment. That user experience is going to be one and the same for the commander when he or she is in the command post and then when they get in the vehicle. That is really what we're doing with modernization for JBC-P. C4ISRNET: The National Defense Strategy has stressed prioritization on great power competition. How does JBC-P modernization and standardization fit into that strategy? CROSBY: The first one is looking to modernize JBC-P mission command on the move at the platform level. How we continue to modernize and field as fast as we can so that we can maintain both that counter-insurgency/counterterrorism fight and near-peer adversaries is one piece of this. https://www.c4isrnet.com/thought-leadership/2018/04/13/how-the-army-plans-to-improve-its-friendly-force-tracking/