Category Archives: Defense Department

Defense Department, Iran, Policy, Soutwest Asia

Iran’s Sejil missile ‘threatens Europe’

Iran’s Sejil missile ‘threatens Europe’ .

“Uzi Rubin, former head of Israel’s ballistic missile defense program, says Iran has made a “technological and strategic breakthrough” with its Sejil-2 intermediate-range ballistic missile, which will be able to hit a swathe of European states in three to four years.That assertion…intensified concerns that Iran has stepped up its drive to acquire ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. He said that the two-stage Sejil-2 has an estimated range of 1,560 miles, not 1,250 miles as previously thought, and that the successful testing of a solid-fueled missile on May 20 was a major breakthrough for Iran.”

Watch for this being used as justification of additional work on the land-based ABM defense, and, as a result, further diplomatic tension with Russia over that system — either that, or the Obama administration is going to have to come to some sort of agreement with Russia over cooperative policies on Iran and on missile defense.

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Afghanistan, Coalition/Allies, Defense Department, Soutwest Asia

Stavridis: Afghanistan Situation Challenging, But Winnable

DefenseLink News Article: Stavridis: Afghanistan Situation Challenging, But Winnable.

“The situation in Afghanistan is “extremely serious,” Navy Adm. James G. Stavridis wrote, but he expressed confidence that “the coalition, working with the Afghan people, will ultimately win.”

Adm. Stavridis, the new NATO commander and former commander of US Southern Command, is at least not pulling punches.  He laid out what he sees as the keys to success in Afghanistan, and none of them are easy. Stopping collateral damage, balancing civil and military activities, and training the Afghan forces–all of these are pretty traditional counterinsurgency tasks made all the much harder by the geography and political economy of Afghanistan.  And then there’s owning the information war:

— Effective strategic communication. Messages must be well defined and communicated to the citizens of Afghanistan as well as to the 42 nations that make up the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force there, Stavridis said. Meanwhile, he cited the need for a truthful, realistic antidote to negative Taliban messaging.

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