The National Interest

Andrés Martínez-Fernández

Security,

The U.S. and Mexico can debilitate the illicit financial networks of cartels. Here is how to do it. 

2019 closed out another violent year in Mexico with a record 34,582 murders, largely driven by organized crime. High-profile killings, including an October massacre by drug cartels targeting women and children, have brought renewed attention to the deteriorating security situation in Mexico under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). Events such as the failed capture of the son of notorious kingpin El Chapo Guzmán also highlight the continued capacity of cartels to overwhelm Mexico’s security forces. To reduce the overwhelming capacity of organized crime, the U.S. and Mexico should boost cooperation against organized crime with a particular emphasis on debilitating illicit financial structures to choke off vital funds to criminal organizations.

According to the State Department, billions of dollars are laundered through the Mexican financial system each year, primarily linked to drug trafficking and organized crime. This money is used to purchase high-powered weapons, pay hitmen, bribe government officials, and finance other activities that empower criminal organizations to keep security forces at bay.

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Michael Peck

Security,

Drone aircraft carriers in the sky?

Current drones, like the Reaper and Global Hawk, are true unmanned aircraft: they must operate from an airfield, just like manned aircraft have done for more than a century.

But what if the airfield was actually an airplane?

DARPA, the Pentagon’s pet research agency, has successfully conducted tested launching and recovering a drone by a manned aircraft in mid-air. A C-130 transport became a mothership to an X-61A Gremlin drone.

“The test in late November at the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah included one captive-carry mission aboard a C-130A and an airborne launch and free flight lasting just over an hour-and-a-half,” according to a DARPA announcement.

The idea of the Gremlins program is to demonstrate a manned aircraft can dispatch drones toward a target and then recover them, all while staying out of range of enemy air defenses. “Once Gremlins complete their mission, the transport aircraft would retrieve them in the air and carry them home, where ground crews would prepare them for their next use within 24 hours,” said DARPA.

DARPA provided few details about the November test, other than saying that it met all objectives, including gathering launch and recovery, gathering flight data and testing air- and ground-based command systems. “The vehicle performed well, giving us confidence we are on the right path and can expect success in our follow-on efforts,” said Gremlins program manager Scott Wierzbanowski. “We got a closer look at vehicle performance for launch, rate capture, engine start, and transition to free flight. We had simulated the performance on the ground, and have now fully tested them in the air. We also demonstrated a variety of vehicle maneuvers that helped validate our aerodynamic data.”

Kratos, one of the subcontractors on the development team, said the one hour and 41 minute test flight included “deploying the GAV [Gremlins Air Vehicle] docking arm.” The test also included a parachute recovery of a Gremlin as part of the test: the drone would normally be recovered in flight.

Ironically, the dictionary defines “gremlin” as “an imaginary mischievous sprite regarded as responsible for an unexplained problem or fault, especially a mechanical or electronic one.” Indeed, a fault did occur during the test, DARPA admitted.

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Robert E. Kelly

Security, Asia

Pyongyang has neither the resources nor the administrative culture – transparency, empiricism divorced from ideology, technocracy – to respond to a genuine epidemic. Sustained foreign assistance and, failing that, brutal repression would almost certainly be necessary to prevent a local plague.

As the coronavirus spreads, especially in east Asia, the response of states with weak healthcare systems and low transparency will come into question. The United Nations has already identified this as its major administrative concern in its global response. Rumors are already circulating that China has far more cases than it has admitted, and there is gross inequality in the Chinese health care system. The Chinese Communist Party is hyper-sensitive to the regime’s portrayal in foreign media, and we know that the Soviet Union’s first impulse after the Chernobyl incident was to deny it.

North Korea obviously falls into this category. The regime notoriously lies and dissembles. If corona makes it there, the regime’s first inclination will be to deny it. Similarly, the health care system has been broken for decades. Much necessary care in North Korea beyond basic necessities is either not provided at all or comes from foreign humanitarianism. And now fears of corona’s potency has driven off those foreign workers.

This is likely why the regime has called the struggle against corona a ‘fight for national survival.’ Pyongyang has neither the resources nor the administrative culture – transparency, empiricism divorced from ideology, technocracy – to respond to a genuine epidemic. Sustained foreign assistance and, failing that, brutal repression would almost certainly be necessary to prevent a local plague.

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Sebastien Roblin

Technology,

What you choose reflects not only what your budget is, but also your personal preferences.

Choosing a laptop computer from a bewildering array of options is a task that most Americans have to face today—and unfortunately, it can be maddeningly unclear just how to get the best value for your money.

That’s too bad, because your choice of laptop can matter a lot: one study concludes that the average Americans spends around four hours per day on a computer, whether it be reading articles, writing reports, responding to emails, editing photos, or playing computer games. 

The hundreds or thousands of hours spent doing those activities will be adversely or favorably affected by your choice of computer.

The key to getting the most satisfying laptop for your buck is figuring out what level of performance you need from it, and in what circumstances you intend to use it.

Some people will only need their laptop for basic use: browsing the internet, Interacting on social media, watching videos, taking care of email and light word processing. For such tasks, you can find very decent laptops for $400 to $600, and you can find small, lightweight ones that only clock in around two or three pounds—though you’ll want to keep an eye on battery life if you like to roam around with your laptop a lot.

However, some people will require more from their laptops. Perhaps you need to keep a lot of applications or browser tabs open at once while working on projects; perhaps you need a superior quality media viewing experience; perhaps you need to manage a large media library or database.

Higher performing professional or power laptops can range in price between $600 to $1,300. You can find more expensive models but probably don’t need them unless you’re into gaming or Macbooks, as explained below. 

For your extra dollars, you may get a better screen, more RAM memory and faster processors for smoother performance, additional disk space, and more ports to plug in USB devices and other peripherals.

Some traits to look for in a power laptop include a larger disk drive (512 gigabytes to 1 terabyte) or a faster 256 or 512-gigabyte solid-state drive (SSD); an IPS monitor; at least 4 but preferably 8 to 16 gigabytes of RAM, and a quad-core processor.

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Warfare History Network

History,

It went down in Russia.

With the German Sixth Army destroyed at Stalingrad, the Soviet juggernaut lunged west and southwest across the River Donets. The Soviets seemed unstoppable, recapturing the major city of Kharkov from the Germans on February 14, 1943. However, Field Marshal Erich von Manstein was only waiting for the Soviets to overextend themselves.

Once the Soviet armor ran dry of fuel and low on ammunition, Manstein unleashed Army Group South’s riposte. Fresh panzer formations sliced into the startled Soviet flanks, ripping apart two Soviet Fronts (Army Groups). Manstein’s brilliant counteroffensive restored the southern front and culminated in an SS frontal assault and a triumphant recapture of Kharkov.

Meanwhile, to the north of the Donets campaign, the Soviet winter offensive was held at bay before Orel by Field Marshal Günther von Kluge’s Army Group Center. Operations everywhere then bogged down to a standstill as the Russian spring thawed the frozen earth and turned it to mud. The thick “rasputitsa” clung to steel tank tracks, to truck tires, to the hoofs of tired horses, and to the boots of exhausted soldiers.

The front was left with a gargantuan Soviet salient, 150 miles long and 100 miles wide, bulging around the town of Kursk between the two German army groups. The Kursk salient was consequently the target of the last, great German summer offensive, ending with the legendary tank battles in the environs of Oboian and Prokhorovka.

With the third summer of the German-Soviet war approaching, the Red Army war machine had grown more powerful while that of the Germans proportionally declined. Despite Von Manstein’s recent victory at Kharkov, only the most fanatical senior German commanders, along with Hitler, believed that the Soviet Union could be decisively defeated. A stalemate, however, was still in the cards, but only if the Germans managed to retain the initiative. To do so, Col. Gen. Kurt Zeitzler, chief of Army general staff, proposed eliminating the Kursk salient.

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Adam Taylor

Public Health, Europe

Really.

Sweating is a controversial topic at the moment. In his extraordinary recent BBC interview, Prince Andrew dismissed some of the allegations made against him by Virginia Giuffre (known previously as Virginia Roberts) on the grounds that he couldn’t sweat at the time – she had claimed he had been “profusely sweating”. During the interview, Prince Andrew, who has categorically denied all of the claims against him, said:

I didn’t sweat at the time because I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War, when I was shot at … it was almost impossible for me to sweat.

 

But what makes us sweat, why do we do it – and can some conditions prevent us from doing it at all?

The human body is an amazing entity and responds to thousands of internal and external signals every day. These responses enable us to survive in rapidly changing conditions.

The skin is the largest and heaviest organ of the human body. It is calculated to weigh approximately three to 4.5kg and, over the course of your life, you will lose about 35kg of skin. Skin constantly repairs and replaces itself and performs many functions. It protects the body against pathogens, provides insulation, synthesises vitamin D, provides sensation and most importantly regulates temperature.

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GianCarlo Canaparo

Politics, Americas

Here's an opportunity to foil Big Government.

The Maryland House Environment and Transportation Committee on Tuesday heard testimony about a bill that would prevent local governments from outlawing children’s lemonade stands on private property.

Yes, you read that right. It’s illegal in Maryland for children to run lemonade stands in their families’ yards unless they obtain all the licenses, permits, and inspections needed to run a food-service business.

Just ask Xander Alpier, who testified at the hearing. 

In 2011, when he was just 6, Montgomery County fined his family $500 (but later waived it after public outcry) for running an illegal lemonade stand to raise money for the Georgetown Children’s Cancer Center.

They were lucky they got just a $500 fine. The county could have imposed thousands of dollars in fines and sent them to jail.

Maryland law makes it a crime punishable by up to 90 days in jail to operate a lemonade stand without all the proper licenses and permits. A second offense could bring up to a year in jail.

A bipartisan pair of Maryland delegates—Neil Parrott, a Republican, and Steve Johnson, a Democrat—think it’s not right to punish children for this classic foray into entrepreneurship.

At the hearing on Jan. 28, Parrott called lemonade stands as American as apple pie and baseball, and Johnson explained that his own childhood lemonade stand was a building block of his own entrepreneurship.

The bill, HB 52, is narrow in scope. It applies only to the sale of lemonade or other non-alcoholic beverages by children on private property.   

Members of the committee seemed supportive of the bill. Democratic Delegates Vaughn Stewart and Brooke Lierman, and Republican Delegate Gerald Clark, all expressed support for it.

Only one delegate, Democrat Anne Healey of Prince George’s County, expressed opposition to it. Healey asked why the state should take away local governments’ power to regulate lemonade stands. 

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Charlie Gao

Technology,

And one of them is 'importing' guns into the U.S. Yes, this is strange. We explain why.

At SHOT Show 2020, there was an interesting announcement that flew under the radar. Sig Sauer GmbH announced that it was partnering with Legacy Sports International to import Sig Sauer firearms into the United States. This may strike some people as weird, seeing that there is a Sig Sauer in the United States that produces firearms domestically. But the new arrangement illustrates the complete split between Sig Sauer, Inc. in the United States, and Sig Sauer GmbH in Germany.

While Sig Sauer, Inc. used to be Sig Sauer GmbH’s importer, they have since split off and become their own company, with their own production, marketing, and research and design teams. Only a few designs in the Sig Sauer, Inc. lineup retain the German heritage of the original Sig Sauer guns. Both Sig Sauer, Inc. and Sig Sauer, GmbH are owned by the same holding company, L&O Holdings. L&O also owns Swiss Arms AG, which continues to produce “Sig” rifles, the Sig 550-series of rifles that were originally designed by SIG AG.

Despite being owned by the same holding, the extent to which Sig Sauer, Inc. and Sig Sauer, GmbH collaborate since their corporate split is disputed. In 2010, Sig Sauer GmbH reportedly manufactured SP2022 pistols, which were then sent to Sig Sauer, Inc. in the United States under the understanding that they would be sold in the USA. Sig Sauer, Inc. reportedly then sold the pistols to Colombian police, violating the initial export agreement. Sig Sauer, Inc. and Sig Sauer, GmbH also collaborated to import P210 Legend pistols to the U.S. market in 2012, though this was only a limited run. Sig Sauer GmbH and Sig Sauer, Inc. also collaborated on “main line” Sig Sauer pistols by shipping parts and frames over for assembly in the United States, namely the P226, P220 and SP2022, all pistols originally meant for the European market. However, full production of these guns has since been fully shifted over to the United States by most accounts.

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Gun News Daily

Security, Americas

It is possible.

In 2019, the Transportation Security Administration confiscated more firearms than ever before. 4,432 guns were seized by TSA at 278 airports nationwide.

The airport with the most gun confiscations was the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, with a total number of 323 firearms. On top of those staggering numbers is that fact that 87% of the total firearms found were loaded.

Already, only two weeks into the new year, the first gun was confiscated at Newark Liberty International Airport.  If you need to travel with a weapon, don’t become a statistic. It’s not illegal to fly with a firearm, but there are a very specific set of rules and guidelines that need to be followed in order to do so.  Below, the most important rules are detailed for how to transport firearms on an airplane. Before traveling, head to the official TSA website for the most up-to-date state, local, and national regulations.

How To Pack Your Firearm for Air Travel

In order to travel with a firearm, the first step is that it must be unloaded.  Absolutely no live round of ammunition can be in the chamber or cylinder.

Ammunition cannot even be in a magazine inserted in the weapon.  Once unloaded, the gun needs to be locked in a hard-sided case and submitted as a checked bag directly upon entering the airport.

This case can be locked with a key, code, fingerprints, etc.

Only the owner of the weapon should have the key or code to the case. Firearms cannot, in any circumstances, be transported in carry-on baggage.

How To Check Your Ammunition

Ammunition also has its own set of rules for being transported by air.  Like firearms, ammunition is prohibited in carry-on baggage, but can travel in checked baggage if packaged and declared appropriately.  Magazines and ammunition clips must be securely boxed, or included in the hard-sided and locked case with your unloaded firearm.

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Warfare History Network

Historty,

Tojo and Yamamoto demonstrated the divergent views between the Japanese Army and Navy on military strategy in World War II.

Three generations of Americans wrongly believe that General Hideki Tojo and Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto were equally culpable in starting the Pacific War. This is untrue.

The Imperial Army was ascendant over the Imperial Navy throughout the modern period, and it was usually led by one or another faction of highly aggressive, hegemonistic officers. As the junior service, the Imperial Navy could do little but accede to the will of the generals and support the generals’ expansionist policies.

Two Officers of Very Different Backgrounds

Tojo, who was born the son of a junior Army officer in 1884, was known by his peers as “Fighting Tojo” and “Razor Brain.” He was marked for high station by the character traits those nicknames encapsulate. His only direct exposure to the West was in postings to Switzerland in 1919 and Germany in 1921. Thereafter, his rise to power began when he was a junior major general serving in China in 1935. Anti-Soviet and pro-German, Tojo lobbied for war against the former so forcefully as to rattle other pro-war Army officers. He became chief of staff of the Kwantung Army in China in 1937, vice minister of war in May 1938, and inspector general of Army aviation in December 1938. He served as vice premier under Prince Fumimaro Konoye, then became minister of war on July 18, 1941. He finally—perhaps inevitably—took the helm as both minister of war and prime minister on October 16, 1941. While Tojo backed the final diplomatic efforts to avoid war in the Pacific and Southeast Asia, he had long since concluded that an American and British economic stranglehold against Japan was intolerable in the immediate term, that if diplomacy failed by early December 1941, war must ensue.

Except in the area of sheer brain power, Isoroku Yamamoto was Tojo’s polar opposite. Also, though he commanded the Japanese fleet when the war started, he was more than a few rungs down from Tojo when war planning began. Tojo was the policymaker, Yamamoto the policy implementer.

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Kris Osborn

Technology, Americas

Wait, already?

Key Point: What about the trillion spent on the F-35? 

(Washington, D.C.) Drone fighter jets, hypersonic attack planes, artificial intelligence, lasers, electronic warfare and sensors woven into the fuselage of an aircraft - are all areas of current technological exploration for the Air Force as it begins early prototyping for a new, 6th-Generation fighter jet to emerge in the 2030s and 2040s.

While the initiative, called Next Generation Air Dominance(NGAD), has been largely conceptual for years, Air Force officials say current “prototyping” and “demonstrations” are informing which technologies the service will invest in for the future.

“We have completed an analysis of alternatives and our acquisition team is working on the requirements. We are pretty deep into experimenting with hardware and software technologies that will help us control and exploit air power into the future,” Gen. James Holmes, Commander, Air Combat Command, told reporters at the Association of the Air Force Air, Space and Cyber Conference.

Part of the progress with the program, according to Air Force Acquisition Executive William Roper, is due to new methods of digital engineering.

“I have spent six months with our industry leaders and NGAD team looking at examples of applied digital engineering. I’m impressed with what they have done,” Roper.

Digital engineering, as Roper explains it, brings what could be called a two-fold advantage. It enables weapons developers to assess technologies, material configurations and aircraft models without needing to build all of them -- all while paradoxically enabling builders to “bend metal” and start building prototypes earlier than would otherwise be possible.

“The reward is more than the risk,” Roper said, speaking of the need to “try something different” and pursue newer acquisition methods which at times results in prototyping earlier in the process than the traditional process typically involves.

The Air Force Research Laboratory has been working with the acquisition community on digital engineering techniques, often explored through modeling and simulation, for many years.

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David Axe

Security, Europe

It's expensive.

Key point: There are not a lot of aircraft in Denmark's air force.

The U.S. ambassador to Denmark wants the Nordic country to buy more American-designed F-35 stealth fighters.

Ambassador Carla Sands’s advocacy for a “made-in-America” warplane should come as no surprise. But leaving aside the benefit to U.S. industry, Sands has a point. Denmark has too few fighters.

Of course, it’s in part the fault of the country’s determination to buy the F-35 that it stands little chance of growing its fighter fleet. The radar-evading warplane probably wasn’t the best choice for an air arm that struggles to maintain adequate aerial capacity for a meaningful contribution to international security.

Sands “is concerned that NATO’s aircraft power and surveillance capacities are not enough in the Arctic and that Denmark should fulfill three-year-old promises to strengthen defense and surveillance there,” Danish news outlet CPH Post reported.

Ambassador Sands referred to a report from the Ministry of Defense on the tasks in the Arctic from 2016, which show concern about the presence of Russian soldiers in the Arctic. Sands also believes the report shows that the lack of satellites means that Denmark does not monitor Greenland’s skies or waters well enough.

“There are not a lot of aircraft in Denmark. You have 38 to 40 F-16 aircraft today. It is actually a reduction in the number of aircraft, and Denmark should probably look into it,” Sands told Jyllands-Posten. However, according to the Ministry of Defense, Denmark only owns 30 F-16 planes

The Danish fighter fleet is about to get even smaller as it takes on the F-35.

On May 11, 2016, the government of Denmark recommended that lawmakers approve the purchase of just 27 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters from U.S. firm Lockheed Martin in order to replace the Scandinavian country’s F-16s.

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Warfare History Network

Histoty,

Yet millions more still perished.

General George S. Patton, Jr., once said, “An army is like a piece of cooked spaghetti. You can’t push it, you have to pull it after you.” He was referring to commanders being leaders as he had little use for commanders that were not out in front of their units. This attitude was the norm in the U.S. military in World War II, and the amazement is not that a few dozen general officers were lost, but that U.S. armed forces did not lose more!

Leaders being out front or is not a unique military concept, nor exclusively that of the United States. Since the earliest days of recorded warfare, the good leaders have always been at the forefront of battle.

Some nations have a unique concept of control over military leadership. This was especially evident in the Soviet Union in the years before the onset of World War II. During the war, Hitler not only directed military battles, but controlled the general officer corps to an incredible, and as it turned out, disastrous degree.

Russia and Germany Both Hard Up for Officers

A few years before World War II Soviet Dictator Josef Stalin purged the Soviet military of most of its high ranking and experienced officers. During his frenzied attack on the officer ranks through the end of 1938, Stalin had executed at least 65,000 officers, including 13 of 15 generals of the army, 93 percent of all officers ranked lieutenant general and above, and 58 percent of all officers ranked colonel through major general. Ironically, one of the few senior commanders to survive, Dimitri Pavlov, would be executed within days of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union because of incompetence.

After the war started, Germany was equally hard on general officers. During the course of the war, Hitler executed 84 German generals, and another 135 generals were killed in action.

Demoting Officers Who Fall Behind Expectations

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Joseph Stinn

economy, Americas

Rewarding charities that scrimp is less strategic than it sounds.  The end of the year is a popular time to give to charity.

Historically, Americans have made 30% of their annual donations in December. Many of them get a head start on the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving during the global online fundraising campaign known as Giving Tuesday.

But no matter what time of year it is, donors want help deciding which charity to support.

Because I conduct research about nonprofit evaluation methods, I’ve been studying the approach of ranking charities depending on how much of their budgets they spend on everything from paperclips to insurance.

A dangerous obsession

Known as the overhead ratio, this metric encompasses expenditures that might appear to be unrelated to work that advances a charity’s mission. Such money, the argument for low overhead ratios goes, might be wasted.

Nonprofits typically have overhead ratios of around 20%, meaning that they spend about 1 out of every 5 dollars on fundraising expenses, accounting, publicity and everything else needed to operate. Some salary and benefits expenditures count as well, depending on what the employee does.

Pressure from donors, charity watchdogs, the media and even lawmakers to keep overhead costs low can conspire to deprive nonprofits of the money they need to run smoothly. In some cases, pressure to keep overhead low can depress pay and bring about skimpy staffing and benefits, making it harder for charities to hire strong job candidates and keep their best employees on board.

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Robert Gudmestad

History, Americas

She remained fearless as she rescued slaves.

Millions of people voted in an online poll in 2015 to have the face of Harriet Tubman on the US$20 bill. But many might not have known the story of her life as chronicled in a recent film, “Harriet.”

Harriet Tubman worked as a slave, spy and eventually as an abolitionist. What I find most fascinating, as a historian of American slavery, is how belief in God helped Tubman remain fearless, even when she came face to face with many challenges.

Tubman’s early life

Tubman was born Araminta Ross in 1822 on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. When interviewed later in life, Tubman said she started working when she was five as a house maid. She recalled that she endured whippings, starvation and hard work even before she got to her teenage years.

She labored in Maryland’s tobacco fields, but things started to change when farmers switched their main crop to wheat.

Grain required less labor, so slave owners began to sell their enslaved people to plantation owners in the the Deep South.

Two of Tubman’s sisters were sold to a slave trader. One had to leave her child behind. Tubman too lived in fear of being sold.

When she was 22, Tubman married a free black man named John Tubman. For reasons that are unclear, she changed her name, taking her mother’s first name and her husband’s last name. Her marriage did not change her status as an enslaved person.

Five years later, rumors circulated in the slave community that slave traders were once again prowling through the Eastern Shore. Tubman decided to seize her freedom rather than face the terror of being chained with other slaves to be carried away, often referred to as the “chain gang.”

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David Axe

Security,

“I witnessed an F-117 along with four F-16s go up against F-15s and F-22s. The F-117's callsign was KNIGHT, the F-16s were GOMER and MIG, and they were communicating on the aggressor frequency.”

Eleven years after the U.S. Air Force officially retired the type, an F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter has made yet another public appearance.

Plane-spotter Kris Tanjano was posted up outside the Nellis Test and Training Range in Nevada on Dec. 3, 2019 when he witnessed an aerial exercise play out overhead. F-117s apparently flying from Tonopah Test Range were in the mix along with F-16s, F-15s, F-22s and possibly B-1 bombers coming from Nellis Air Force Base.

The Lockheed-made stealth fighters apparently were acting as radar-evading adversaries in a mock battle with other plane types, Tanjano told Tyler Rogoway at The War Zone. “I witnessed an F-117 along with four F-16s go up against F-15s and F-22s. The F-117's callsign was KNIGHT, the F-16s were GOMER and MIG, and they were communicating on the aggressor frequency.”

“First, the F-16s came in pairs attacking the blue force (F-22s, F-15s, and maybe a B-1) then an F-117 came in at low-level just behind the F-16s towards the blue force,” Tanjano added. “They all fought it out for about five to 10 minutess then restarted for a second push. Once again the F-16s came high overhead, followed by a low-level F-117. Several times the aggressors called out a target which was a low-level heavy aircraft which I believe was B-1, but I am not certain.”

The sighting seems yet again to confirm what Rogoway long has suspected. “Having a small aggressor force of F-117s available for putting our and our allies' latest radars, infrared search and track and electronic emissions detection system to the test, as well as to develop tactics for defeating such threats, seems like a perfect job for the F-117.”

The first of 59 front-line F-117s became operational in the mid-1980s and most famously led deep strike missions targeting Iraqi forces during the 1991 Gulf War. F-22 stealth fighters in 2008 assumed the F-117s’ strike role pending the 2016 introduction of F-35 stealth fighter-bombers.

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David Axe

Security,

China reportedly is slowing its plan to acquire two aircraft carriers for each of its regional fleets. Instead of speeding ahead with the development of a six-carrier fleet -- two each for the northern, eastern and southern fleets -- the Chinese navy could stop after acquiring flattop number four.

China reportedly is slowing its plan to acquire two aircraft carriers for each of its regional fleets.

Instead of speeding ahead with the development of a six-carrier fleet -- two each for the northern, eastern and southern fleets -- the Chinese navy could stop after acquiring flattop number four.

“Plans for a fifth [carrier] have been put on hold for now, according to military insiders,” the Hong Kong South China Morning Post reported. “They said that technical challenges and high costs had put the brakes on the program.”

The possible pause in carrier-production could cement the yawning capability gap between the U.S. and Chinese fleets.

Song Zhongping, a military expert and T.V. commentator, in late 2018 told Global Times that China needs at least five aircraft carriers to execute its military strategy. Wang Yunfei, a retired Chinese navy officer, said Beijing needs six flattops.

The Chinese defense ministry declined during a November 2018 press conference to specify how many carriers it ultimately planned to acquire.

But leaving aside the high cost, six flattops would have made sense. Equipping each of the three regional fleets with two flattops would have allowed one carrier from each fleet to deploy while the other underwent maintenance.

In 2019, each fleet possesses between 20 and 30 major surface warships, at least a dozen submarines and a handful of amphibious vessels. Just one, the Northern Theater Navy headquartered in Qingdao, operates an aircraft carrier -- Liaoning, China's refurbished, former Ukrainian flattop, which commissioned in 2012.

The second carrier Shandong, a slightly-improved copy of Liaoning and China’s first home-built flattop in late 2019 is completing sea trials. Carrier number three, a bigger vessel than Liaoning and Shandong, is under construction in Shanghai. Flattop four presumably would be similar in design to number three.

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David Axe

Security,

The greatest threat that Russia and China pose to the United States is in space, Gen. David Goldfein, the U.S. Air Force’s chief of staff, said at an event in California in early December 2019.

The greatest threat that Russia and China pose to the United States is in space, Gen. David Goldfein, the U.S. Air Force’s chief of staff, said at an event in California in early December 2019.

“Russia is a rather dangerous threat because it’s an economy in decline and the demographics are challenging for [Vladimir Putin],” Goldfein said, according to Defense News. “But China is the face of the threat. China has the economy."

Goldfein’s assessment comes as U.S. lawmakers prepare to authorize a new military service for space warfare.

In addition to ground-based jammers, lasers and rockets that can mute, blind and destroy low-flying satellites, Moscow and Beijing are working on small, maneuverable satellites that can tamper with American spacecraft.

"Our adversaries are increasingly leveraging rapid advances in technology to pose new and evolving threats — particularly in the realm of space, cyberspace, computing and other emerging, disruptive technologies," the U.S. intelligence community concluded in its 2019 strategy report.

"No longer a solely U.S. domain, the democratization of space poses significant challenges for the United States and the I.C.,” the report explained. Russian and Chinese anti-satellite weapons could “reduce U.S. military effectiveness and overall security."

Between 2013 and 2015, the Russian government launched several mysterious satellites into low orbit. Zipping across orbital planes hundreds of thousands of feet above Earth, the nimble little Kosmos-2491, -2499 and -2504 spacecraft — which apparently were the size of mini-refrigerators -- were able to approach within just a few feet of other satellites.

"You can probably equip them with lasers, maybe put some explosives on them,” Anatoly Zak, a space historian, said of the Kosmos triplets. “If [one] comes very close to some military satellite, it probably can do some harm."

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Akhilesh Pillalamarri

Security, Asia

What can Chinese history tell us about China today?

Key Point: China has a long, proud history going back thousands of years.

Chinese civilization is one of the world’s oldest continuous civilizations. Indeed, unlike Western, Islamic, and Indian civilizations, China has managed to remain politically unified for much of its history.

Contrary to the common perception of China being historically isolated and weak, many Chinese dynasties were very powerful and have had a profound impact on global history. Yes, it is true that during the Ming Dynasty, China ships conducted multiple voyages of exploration (1405-1433) before abruptly stopping. But this hardly dented the enormous economic and political influence China wielded for most of its history in East, Southeast, and Central Asia. Although the people of these regions pursued their own interests as best as they could, China was always the major power to be dealt with.

Nonetheless, not all Chinese dynasties were created, and these three stood above the rest.

The Han Dynasty

The Han Dynasty ruled China for a solid four centuries, from 206 B.C.E. to 220 C.E. Although the preceding Qin Dynasty unified China, it was the Han Dynasty that kept it together and developed the institutions that characterized most of Chinese history since.

The Han Dynasty was able to maintain its bureaucracy and military through a more efficient and thorough system of taxation than many contemporary empires. Additionally, to gain increased revenue, the Han created monopolies on iron and salt. The salt monopoly has been a traditional source of revenue for Chinese states since, one that apparently lasted until 2014.

The Han’s large coffers allowed it to expand China’s boundaries outwards from its traditional heartland in the Yellow River valley toward what is today southern China. Southern China would prove to be very important to China in the future since it can support a large population through the rice crop. Thanks in part to southern China’s wealth, China’s sociopolitical development was usually greater than its neighbors, allowing China to easily incorporate or defeat them.

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Patricia Friedrich

economy, Americas

A recent study shows that women were more likely to be introduced by their first names rather than by their titles.

If you work in medicine, does it matter if you are called by your title? Is it all right if patients, colleagues, and others call you by your first name?

The answer of course depends on whom you ask. However, for many doctors who are women, that is not necessarily the central concern. It is more worrying that they and their male counterparts receive different forms of address. Women are more often referred to by first name, even when the situation of communication is formal. The same does not happen to doctors who are men.

Women in medicine may wonder whether or not those variations in how they are addressed might have far-reaching consequences for their careers. Do they reflect a systematic difference in attitude?

As a linguist, writer, and professor who teaches mostly sociolinguistics content, I have always been fascinated by the ways in which we use language. Linguistic categories and beliefs can affect different areas of our lives.

When my colleagues and I became curious about the use of titles, we conducted a study. It is part of a number of efforts by researchers interested in the social aspects of gender in medical fields. Our study shows that women are indeed less often called “doctor” than their male equivalent, and by a large margin.

Informal feedback by online readers reveals that the practice leads to concerns about everything from career advancement to professional respect.

Not quite ‘little lady,’ but not quite right

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