Category: Bombs and rockets

Military matters and state security: the hard-edged kind of international relations

Resource types and the resource curse

As discussed before, the ‘resource curse’ hypothesis holds that the presence of valuable resources can sometimes reduce the security of states, since it offers up a prize to anyone capable of seizing them. A bit of recent research has added nuance to the picture. By looking at the long-running civil war in Columbia, the authors were able to look at periods when coffee (a labour intense crop) and oil (a capital intense crop) rose and fell in value:

Using newspaper reports of violent skirmishes in 950 Colombian municipalities between 1988 and 2005, Dube and Vargas find that when coffee prices went up, violence went down in locations where a large fraction of land area was under coffee cultivation. When coffee prices fell, however, as they did by almost 70 percent in the late 1990s, violence in coffee areas rose dramatically. The researchers estimate that an additional 500 deaths may have resulted from the increased conflict that came from lower coffee prices. The opposite was true for oil: It was higher prices that intensified conflict in areas with productive oil wells or pipelines. (Since both coffee and oil prices are traded in global markets, it is unlikely that price increases were caused by panicking commodities traders spooked by increased civil-war violence in Colombia.)

One suggestion that arises is not unfamiliar: establish strong governance regimes in states with capital intensive resources. It is far better to be like Norway, using resource income transparently and putting aside a share of the oil revenues for the benefit of future generations, than like Nigeria, long mired in conflict as different groups compete for resource wealth.

On the labour intensive side, the proposal is a bit more novel: provide international aid to stabilize commodity prices in conflict-prone states. There are those who argue that a 50% drop in coffee prices helped cause the Rwandan genocide. Surely, the economic cost of temporarily bolstering commodity prices in delicate states is less than the probable cost of re-establishing security and resuming development after an internal conflict. The difference between the economic cost and the moral cost of inaction is probably greater still.

Covert way to collect samples

A clever way to learn who in a town is making bombs: start a laundromat, send coupons to every house that are marked to identify each, then test the clothes and bedding for residue from explosives or explosive precursors. You can start with coupons specific to each street, then move to another set numbered for each house once the proper streets are identified.

Apparently, the British used this tactic against the IRA.

As with many security-related things, I learned about it from Bruce Schneier’s blog.

Passchendaele and glory in warfare

Before several recent films, I have seen the trailer for Passchendaele – a film that seems to provide a heroic and pro-Canada take on this WWI battle. If anything, this actual history of Passchendaele demonstrates that war is rarely heroic, and that many narratives of heroism are self-serving for those that generate them. Both sides were fighting in defence of imperialism. Furthermore, the battle served little strategic purpose. After being taken at huge cost of lives – nearly one million killed, wounded, or captured on both sides – the terrain was abandoned so the Allies could respond more effectively to the German Lys Offensive.

Of course, Passchendaele joins a large collection of films of dubious historical quality. While I have yet to see it, the trailer is guilty of mindless patriotism, historical revisionism, and perhaps the Aragorn Fallacy. It would behoove us to remember a few key things about WWI: that the war was hugely costly in lives and suffering, that none of the major powers participating got the outcome they wanted at the outset, and that it ultimately did nothing to address the imbalances in Europe caused by the unification of Germany. Of course, films that highlight such things are unlikely to be blockbuster smash hits.

Naomi Oreskes, climate science, and the JASON group

The JASON Defense Advisory Group consists of top-notch American scientists who carry out requested research on behalf of the American government during the summer months. Past areas of research have included adaptive optics of the kind used to remove atmospheric distortions from telescope images, a system for communicating with submarines using very long radio waves, missile defence, and more.

Back in 1979, the JASONs looked into the issue of climate change – concluding that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide could double by 2035, causing an increase in the mean temperature of the oceans and atmosphere. Despite not having any climatological background, they constructed their own mathematical model to approximate the relationships between greenhouse gas emissions, atmospheric concentrations, temperature changes, sea level rise, and other phenomena. Unlike many of their other non-classified reports, “The Long Term Impact of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide on Climate” doesn’t seem to be readily available online. Nonetheless, some information on both the report and the JASONs is included in this Times article by Naomi Oreskes: the woman most famous for her 2004 Science article “Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” in which she demonstrated that disagreement about the fundamentals of climate change existed in the media, not within the scientific literature.

The Times article, the Science paper, and the available JASON reports all make for informative reading.

India and the Nuclear Suppliers Group

Today, the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group decided to approve a nuclear deal between the United States and India (which is not part of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and which tested bombs between 1974 and 1998). The decision is one about which I feel ambivalent. One the one hand, it might promote the relatively responsible use of nuclear technologies in India. Despite how we could probably do better by spending our money in other ways, more nuclear power is a likely consequence of concerns about both energy security and climate change. On the other hand, the deal demonstrates that it is possible states can test bombs, remain outside the NPT, and still get access to internationally-provided nuclear fuels and technologies. The lesson to other states may be that the best long-term course of action is to ignore international efforts aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

Thinking about how many states are likely to have reactors and bombs by the end of the next century is pretty worrisome.

More comprehensive reporting on the decision:

Generation Kill

Written by a journalist embedded with the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion of the Marine Corps, Evan Wright’s Generation Kill describes the experience of invading Iraq alongside them in 2003. The book provides a graphic account of what transpired among the men of the Battalion and its subsidiary units, as well as on battlefields between Kuwait City and Baghdad.

Some of the more notable elements of the first person account include the lack of coordination between different units, poor logistics and intelligence, near-total lack of translators, wide variations in competence and attitude between officers, and the force with which the sheer terror and agony of the experience is recounted. While large portions of the invading army may have had tents, cots, and warm meals, the recon Marines operate for the entire war on pre-packaged food and holes laboriously pick-axed into the ground. They spent much of the war in bulky chemical protection suits, fearing gas attacks that never came. The Marines are intentionally sent into ambush after ambush, receiving massive amounts of fire from within open-topped Humvies, as a feint to confuse Iraqi forces about the overall American strategy. The book certainly does a good job of conveying the brutality of it all: for the Marines, their Iraqi opponents, and for the civilians all around. The most interesting aspects of the narrative are definitely the characters of the individual Marines, as effectively illustrated through quoted statements.

The book does reinforce some broader conclusions that can be drawn about the war: particularly in terms of how the treatment of the civilian population has been mismanaged. What is less clear is whether the lesson to be drawn is that much more attention needs to be paid to post-occupation planning in future conflicts, or whether expectations of anything other than absolute carnage following a ‘regime change’ are misguided. Probably, the answer lies somewhere between.

The book has also formed the basis for an HBO mini-series of the same name. The series and the book parallel one another very closely. Indeed, given the arguably greater capacity of film to depict the majority of the events described, just watching the series may be a superior option to just reading the book.

Frontline episodes

The entire archive of the PBS investigative journalism program Frontline seems to be available online for free. Some of the more interesting topics covered include:

There is certainly a consistent – and fairly critical – focus on the controversial actions of the second Bush administration. That being said, the quality of the programs seems to be quite high.

Editing video using still photos

Recently, there was controversy about a doctored photograph showing four Iranian missiles launching, whereas the original apparently showed three and one on the ground. Errol Morris discussed the images on the website of the New York Times.

Photo and video editing are nothing new, but some new software seeks to make the former much easier. It combines video data with that from still photographs in order to accomplish many possible aims. For instance, it could be used to improve the resolution of a whole scene or elements within it. It could also correct for over- and under-exposed regions. Of course, it could also facilitate video manipulation. The skills and software required to edit still images are increasingly available. Combine that with this software and you could empower a slew of new video fraudsters.

It will be interesting to see what kind of countermeasures emerge from organizations concerned about data integrity. One route is forensic – identifying markers of manipulation and tools for uncovering them. Another relies on requiring technologies and techniques for those capturing and submitting video. That could involve the expectation of multiple independent photos and videos produced from different angles using different equipment, or perhaps the widespread deployment of timestamps and cryptographic hashing to strengthen data integrity.

Knickbein

Star cactus, Montreal botanical gardens

During the Second World War, the German air force used a system called Knickbein to guide bombers to targets in Britain. Essentially, it consisted of a two radio beams which the planes could fly, allowing them to drop bombs on blacked out cities, deal with bad weather, and otherwise manoeuvre accurately. The beam to one side broadcasts ‘dot’ signals, while the other sends ‘dash’ signals. Hearing a continuous tone means you are in the middle. Hearing one or the other tells you to divert your course somewhat. Intersecting beams over targets told pilots where to drop their ordinance:

Estimates of the accuracy of the Knickebein suggested that it was capable of putting a 300 m x 300 m box around an intended target, which when saturated with bombs from a mere 40 aircraft would put the bombs down on average 17 metres apart.

The beams were 400-500 metres wide and were in operation (at a frequency of 31.5 Hz) as of 1940.

The British came up with progressively more sophisticated means of blocking the technology. Operation ‘Headache’ sought to jam the beams using radio chatter, itself produced using “modified hospital electro-diathermy units used for cauterising wounds.” Later, more sophisticated approaches were employed. According to David Khan, the British were eventually able to ‘bend’ the guidance beams using transmitters of their own, causing bombers to “unload most of their high explosive… into empty fields and the Channel.” A jamming system used against the more advanced Y-Geraet system in 1941 apparently prevented 80% of bombers employing it from dropping their bombs at all, as they were prevented from getting accurate ranging signals.

No doubt, dramatically more advanced systems and countermeasures exist today, in spite of the existence of cheap and accurate satellite-based positioning technology.

Bletchley Park today

Ottawa railway bridge

Bletchley Park, the English manor where codebreaking was undertaken during the Second World War, has been falling into disrepair due to lack of funds. This seems especially ungrateful, given the extremely important role the signals intelligence developed there played in the war. In particular, the decipherments helped to clear the Atlantic of U-boats, keep the United Kingdom supplied, and eventually shift the people and equipment required for D-Day and the retaking of the continent.

Work done at Bletchley was also important in relation to the emergence of modern computers. If there are historical sites worth preserving, this is surely one of them. Thankfully, the Heritage Lottery fund now seems likely to provide funding.

The fact that the codebreaking work done at Bletchley was not publicly announced until the 1970s makes it doubly important to tell the story well now. For decades, people who worked there had to respond with awkward silence when asked how they contributed to the war effort. Their extraordinary contribution deserves to be well marked today.