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| VOLUME 2, ISSUE #1 | January 8,1998 |
| VOLUME 2, ISSUE #1 | January 8,1998 |
Small Arms, Deadly Results
by David Isenberg, Senior Research Analyst, disenber@cdi.org
In the aftermath of the signing of the treaty to ban antipersonnel landmines, some governments and nongovernmental organizations are beginning to look at an issue--the proliferation of light weapons and small arms-- which has not received the attention it deserves.
It cannot be said too often that there is a close and symbiotic relationship between light weapons trafficking and contemporary forms of violent conflict. This relationship is symbiotic because the widespread availability of low-cost, highly lethal light weapons makes it possible for a wide range of combatants to initiate hostilities against a state or society. Somalia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mozambique, Afghanistan, the Great Lakes region of Africa, El Salvador, and Central Asia are glaring instances of this truth.
The initiation or continuation of internal and ethnic conflicts generates a demand for multiple and varied sources of light weapons, including illicit sources. These two factors reinforce one another: the availability of arms facilitates the outbreak of a conflict, which produces a demand for more arms and ammunition; this, in turn, encourages existing suppliers to expand their offerings and draws new suppliers into the marketplace.
Greatly contributing to instability today is the vast quantity of firearms circulating around the world, many of them left over from the superpower competition of the Cold War era and the civil wars of the 1980s. While nobody knows precise numbers, a good estimate is that there are 500 million firearms in circulation--approximately one for every twelve people in the world. And this 500 million includes at least 100 million assault rifles.
According to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), small arms and ammunition represent about 13 percent of the total worldwide trade in conventional weapons. Using ACDA's estimate of $172 billion for total world arms exports in 1990-1995, this yields $22.2 billion worth of small arms sales, an enormous figure especially considering the low cost of small arms.
Even the United States, traditionally a favored source of small arms to nations and groups around the world, is growing more concerned about the issue. In his keynote speech before the 50th UN General Assembly, President Clinton stated, "No one is immune, not the people of Latin America or Southeast Asia, where drug traffickers wielding imported weapons have murdered judges, journalists, police officers and innocent passers-by." Citing the ease with which such criminals obtain the weapons needed for their operations, the President urged states to work with the United States "to shut down the grey markets that outfit terrorists and criminals with firearms."
Since this speech there has been relatively rapid progress on several fronts. In 1996 the Clinton Administration prompted a change in U.S. law, closing a loophole which previously exempted U.S. citizens brokering arms deals in other countries from U.S. laws and regulations. In May of this year the Administration agreed to "fast track" negotiations through the Organization of American States for a convention against illicit manufacture and trafficking of firearms, ammunition, and related material. That treaty was signed by the United States and 27 other Western hemisphere governments on November 14, 1997. In June the "Group of Eight" industrialized countries highlighted the threats posed by transnational crime and terrorism. The Group reiterated its support for measures to curb illicit gun-running and agreed to consider the development of an international body to combat such traffic in the lead-up to its gathering next year in Birmingham, UK.
While the world cannot ban small arms (as they are not inherently indiscriminate weapons like landmines), it may be possible to greatly attenuate the suffering and casualties caused by their indiscriminate and unlawful use. A first step in this direction is the proposed convention on the "Prevention of the Indiscriminate and Unlawful Use of Light Weapons," written by well known expert Ed Laurance of the Monterey Institute of International Studies and introduced at a recent workshop sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In one respect, the drive to restrict small arms is beginning to mirror the successful campaign to ban landmines. Dedicated individuals and NGOs have started the ball rolling and may soon convince key governments that, working together, the world really can remove another deadly scourge.
Those interested in knowing more should check in with the British American Security Information Council which maintains a register of the world's leading researchers working on this issue. CDI maintains a section on small arms in its Arms Trade Database. For details go to http://www.cdi.org/armstradedatabase/CONTROL/Small_Arms/
Opting for the Status Quo
by Colonel Daniel M. Smith, USA (Ret.), Associate Director, dsmith@cdi.org
"Put simply, Force XXI is the future of our Army."
"The technology isn't there for Army After Next and, when you figure out how much it will cost us, it won't happen. Should we not then continue to improve our legacy systems?"
These quotations appeared during the first two working days of 1998, and the most appropriate response I could think of was Ronald Reagan's campaign mantra, "There you go again!"
Why? Because these statements illustrate the continuing institutional inertia of the U. S. military in translating innovative concepts into practices and budgets that reflect future rather than current or even past challenges. In this particular instance, the Pentagon is resisting the very sound recommendations of the Quadrennial Defense Review's National Defense Panel (NDP) that the military look beyond the near-term with its "legacy systems"--those Cold War era weapons and support capabilities developed to counter the Soviet Union's massive conventional force doctrines and capabilities.
To be fair the first quotation, from an article in the October-December 1997 issue of Military Intelligence, was penned well before any substantive leaks appeared about the direction that the National Defense Panel was taking. The author, Colonel Barbara Fast, focused on identifying and integrating information technologies across the full spectrum of intelligence work--something that the intelligence community failed to do as it became enamored with spies in the sky and other electronic collectors which were never fully integrated.
Even so, her ending point is short-sighted, in part because her starting point is a January 1995 publication, "America's Army of the 21st Century, Force XXI, Meeting the 21st Century Challenge," which has been overtaken by continuing changes in technology, the world's political-military situation, and intelligence assessments of the future threats to the United States. Force XXI should be seen now exactly as the National Defense Panel characterized it: a transitional "holding" structure for that part of the Army needed to maintain our national defense against a much reduced threat while the rest of the Army concentrates on the leap-ahead doctrine and technologies required for 2020 and beyond.
Less understandable is the second quotation. It comes from the ubiquitous "unnamed Army source" one month after the National Defense Panel's report. It is nothing less than a summary dismissal of the NDP's call to focus on the future.
A truism about leap-ahead technology is that it is conceptual and is not much beyond basic or advanced research when it begins to show potential. If it existed, it wouldn't be "leap-ahead" but what is in or almost in the force--more like the legacy systems the NDP discussed.
The context for the second quotation is the Army's Crusader self-propelled artillery howitzer procurement program which the service would like to almost double to 1300 (conveniently the same number programmed when Crusader was first proposed). The Army "justifies" this increase using the NDP's recommendation that artillery units in III Corps and in the forward deployed divisions in Europe and Korea be outfitted as the transitional Force XXI. But given that this force really is only four divisions--1st Cavalry at Fort Hood, 1st Infantry and 1st Armor in Europe, and 2nd Infantry in Korea, supported by three corps headquarters and the artillery battalion of the 3rdArmored Cavalry Regiment (ACR)--the number of howitzers needed (according to the Division XXI structure) is 54 Crusaders per division, 18 in the ACR (of which there is only one with self- propelled artillery), and a maximum of 54 Crusaders for each Corps Field Artillery (four brigades each--remembering that the Corps now has either two or three Multiple Launch Rocket System battalions balanced by zero or one field artillery battalion per brigade).
This totals, at most, 396 howitzers. Even adding the 4th Mechanized Infantry Division (the Army's experimental division) at Fort Hood, and stationing three battalion's worth of Crusaders at Fort Sill and another at Fort Irwin for training, the required number of Crusaders comes to only 522 against a current procurement requirement of 824.
Of course, this 522 doesn't address the point that some additional howitzers may be needed to replace ones that are damaged or destroyed. There may also be other minor but valid and verifiable requirements. But in the face of the NDP's sound logic, opting for 1300 of these new howitzers, as the Army is contemplating, makes no sense at all--unless the future is being sacrificed to the present.
Dr. Williamson Murray, Professor Emeritus of History at Ohio State University and the Charles Lindbergh Fellow at the Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, highlighted the military's foot-dragging during testimony before the House Subcommittee on Modernization on November 6, 1997: "In no sense have the Services created the climate for innovation; consequently, all the new weapons and all the research and development will only lead to faulty concepts and inappropriate doctrine...."
At the very least, the Army--and the Pentagon as a whole--has an obligation to make a case for continuing to procure large numbers of legacy systems and not simply ignore the recommendations of the NDP.
Missing in Action: Substance in NATO's Accession Protocols
by Tomas Valasek, Research Analyst, tvalasek@cdi.org
At its December meeting in Brussels, NATO signed protocols of accession with the three Central European countries that are candidates for membership in the alliance. These subtle documents, under three hundred words each, give no hint of the amount of negotiating effort that went into their creation nor the possibility that, in the end, the whole effort may prove futile.
The alliance is well aware of the complexity of the planned expansion. NATO's own studies propose a number of legal measures to prevent abuse of the privilege of NATO membership by the new members. (Indeed, the need for even firmer game rules for alliance members will only increase if and as NATO expands farther.)
The possibility of abuse of NATO membership is more than mere theory. Hungarian Prime Minister Gyula Horn has indicated that his country plans to use NATO membership to influence the situation of Hungarian minorities living in neighboring countries. Horn proclaimed that NATO accession will allow Hungary "to represent the minority rights of Hungarians at international forums."
NATO was not designed to settle its members' ethnic conflicts with non-allied countries, although one could argue that, in today's world, some mechanism should be created to help ensure that any such cross-border ethnic disputes are addressed early, before tempers get out of hand. Under current circumstances, however, Hungary's "interest" in the treatment of Hungarian minorities living in neighboring states threatens to draw other NATO allies into unnecessary disputes. It would also sow suspicion between NATO and the rest of Central and Eastern Europe.
The protocols signed in December should have contained legally binding limitations to drive home to all NATO hopefuls the point that NATO accession is not a blank check to resurrect old claims based on territory or ethnicity. The protocols in their current form do not include any sanctions (e.g., expulsion of an offending member or a requirement to subject the majority of the offender's national armed forces to NATO command) that might prevent a country from asserting ethnic claims.
The alliance's 1995 "Study on NATO Expansion" also warned of the danger that new members would veto future expansion. Should Russia's membership ever come up, it would almost certainly be opposed by Central European countries. Their governments view NATO membership as protection from a perceived future Russian threat. The NATO study calls for "specific political commitment in the course of negotiations" that new members will not veto future admissions. But the study has no force behind it and again, there is no mention of any such commitment in the protocols.
The protocols need to be approved by all current and future NATO member countries before they become binding. But in the absence of legal obligations to observe the protocols, any guidelines that the current members may have enumerated in the course of the negotiations with the three candidates can be disregarded. Someday, NATO may rue this failure.
The protocols are at NATO's web site at: http://www.nato.int/docu/comm/m9712/16-17.htm#4
Iran's Attempts To Go Ballistic: A Status Report
by Andrew Koch, Senior Research Analyst, akoch@cdi.org
The potential cooling of U.S.-Iranian tensions following the election of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami worries many opponents of the Islamic Republic and has sent them scrambling for new ways to portray Tehran as hostile. One such attempt occurred on January 7, 1998, when the Office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a coalition of Iranian opposition groups, held a press conference that sought to expose Iran's "nefarious" military intentions.
The group claimed to possess new information that Tehran is developing a medium-range ballistic missile called the Shahab. Their story, like many before, is a combination of truth and fiction that intermixes already well-known facts with a garbled misunderstanding of the program's development. While Iran's efforts to develop ballistic missiles and other weapons of mass destruction are a concern, it is important to separate the hype from reality.
Using rather loose "definitions," the exile group claims that Iran has recently "tested" the missile and produced a prototype, presumably in preparation for larger-scale production and deployment. But their claims ignore the process a missile design effort takes. While U.S. intelligence has known for months that Iran has conducted static ground tests of the missile's engine, these are only one of many experiments that are needed to develop this technology. Many more ground and subsequent flight tests are necessary to produce an operational system.
Iran was said to have developed the engine and several other technologies including oxidizer, launcher, and "tail." Whether or not these steps have been accomplished, they ignore the fact that Iran has not succeeded in developing the most challenging and complex technologies such as guidance, reentry, and systems integration. By glossing over these challenges, the impression left is that Iran is much closer to having the ability to build and deploy the Shahab than is actually the case.
Furthermore, the estimates of the opposition groups are based on the fact that Tehran is allegedly receiving North Korean and Chinese assistance. No one disputes that Iran had access to North Korea's No-dong program and received some Chinese aid in the past, but it is unclear if assistance is continuing. Interestingly, no mention was made of Russian cooperation with the program, which previous reports said was the most troubling.
The group's analysis of the Shahab program had one further glaring technical inconsistency. During the press conference, Tehran was said to be content with the missile's guidance system which reportedly gives it an accuracy (circular error of probability, or CEP) of 4 kilometers. This, however, would give the Shahab a CEP equivalent to a SCUD missile, making it useless against military targets and useable only as a terror weapon against large, unprotected targets such as cities. A missile with this limited capability would hardly provide the powerful counterweight to U.S. military forces in the region that Tehran likely seeks.
While the U.S. public should be aware that several countries, including Iran, are seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction, accurately portraying the nature of the threat is important. Attempts to demonize Iran's behavior and predictions that Tehran will soon have the ability to strike far-off targets with ballistic missiles creates a dangerous misperception that could mislead policymakers.
Air Force's T-3 trainer continues to have problems
Chris Hellman, Senior Research Analyst, chellman@cdi.org
The January 12, 1998 issue of "Time" magazine included the story titled "A Perilous Plane" about problems the Air Force has experienced with its T-3 training aircraft. The T-3A "Firefly" is a single-engine propeller plane used by the service for flight screening, the process used to determine whether a candidate is potentially suited for pilot training.
The T-3, which replaced the T-41 trainer in 1994, has been involved in three Class A mishaps that killed three instructors and three students. According to the Air Force Safety Center (AFSC), which monitors safety issues for the Air Force, a Class A mishap is one which results in $1 million in damages to the aircraft or in the death or permanent disability of any member of the flight crew. In addition to these three accidents, the aircraft has experienced numerous cases of engine failure.
The February 1996 issue of the AFSC's publication, "Flying Safety Magazine," in reporting on the service's flight safety record for the previous year, noted that "Mishaps in Flight Screening are rare. The last Class A in the T-41 occurred in 1981." That may be true, but the statement begs the question of the T-3's Class A mishaps--one in each of its three years of operation--and its already lifetime fatality rate of 3.39 deaths per 100,000 flight hours. (By comparison, the older T-37 and T-38 jet aircraft, used for more advanced training, have lifetime fatality rates of 1.11 and 1.58, respectively.)
The last Class A mishap involving a T-3 occurred on June 25, 1997. The fleet was not grounded, however, until July 29 following an unexplained airborne engine stoppage during a training mission in Colorado. Fortunately, the instructor was able to land the aircraft safely. The fleet of 110 aircraft remains grounded while the Air Force investigates the cause of the most recent incidents and looks for ways to solve the plane's engine problems. Or, as the December, 1997 issue of "Flying Safety Magazine" put it, "AETC [Air Education and Training Command] suspended T-3 operations in an attempt to come to final resolution of the T-3's continuing engine woes."
"Resolution" may be more difficult than it seems. The aircraft, built by Slingsby Aviation of England, was originally equipped with a 160 horsepower (hp) engine. This was found to be underpowered, particularly for operations in the thin Colorado air over the U.S. Air Force Academy where much of the early pilot screening is done. This engine was soon replaced with a 260 hp. engine produced by Textron-Lycoming and installed in the T-3 in the United States. The new engine has not, however, solved the aircraft's problems. "Flying Safety Magazine" noted in January 1997, that "changes have been made in engine break-in, acceptance, setup and starting procedures, while fuel line shielding, oil cooler, and cowling modifications have been undertaken in an attempt to further mitigate the risk of engine stoppages. Despite these efforts, uncommanded engine shutdowns continue to plague the Firefly."
The Air Force plans to spend $6.2 million for additional modifications. Gen. Lloyd Newton, commander of the AETC, says he expects the necessary changes to be completed by mid-1998.
Combat training at any level is risky. This is increasingly true as the training becomes more advanced and realistic. All the services are obligated to minimize these risks however possible. It is simply unacceptable that young pilots and their instructors should face the additional risks created by equipment failures. Our service personnel must be provided with the best possible training systems. At the very least, their equipment should meet basic performance standards.