Denial and Disinformation - The Future of Warfare ???

COL Ted Mc — Tue, 06 Jan 2015 01:50:52 -0500

Aviation Week has an interesting article on the future of warfare

http://aviationweek.com/defense/denial-and-disinformation-will-shape-future-warfare

Denial And Disinformation Will Shape Future Warfare

2014 was a year in which world peace broke out as long as your standard for conflict was declared and open war between nation-states. The actual picture was very different, with two major wars in the Middle East and a European state facing the real threat of being dismantled.

A common factor behind these conflicts is the difficulty of assigning responsibility to the actors involved, which is a prerequisite for any non-violent settlement. One striking example: Six months after a Buk-M1 missile shot down a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 over Ukraine, killing 298 people, the chain of commands that led to the attack is unknown. The international community does not know who was at the controls of the missile, or how and by whom the firing order was given. Whether ex-military people working with the East Ukrainian insurgency obtained the missile system from a Ukrainian base, or whether it was brought across a border with Russia—porous to the point of non-existence—is not known. Whether the operators needed training, or who supplied it if they did, is equally a mystery.

The same goes more generally in the Ukraine conflict, for the “little green men”—well-trained troops with modern equipment, blending with the Russian-speaking insurgents, and believed by the Ukraine government to be members of the Russian military. The role of Russian forces in the annexation of Crimea was fairly overt, but in that case Russia was exercising a claim that many considered valid and that the Ukrainian government did not use force to challenge. But the little green men of the Eastern Ukraine are denied and deniable.

[EDITORIAL COMMENT:- One of the big political advantages of fighting "proxy wars" is that none of "our boys" are likely to get killed - and that is true no matter what country "our boys" come from.

Denial And Disinformation Will Shape Future Warfare

2014 was a year in which world peace broke out as long as your standard for conflict was declared and open war between nation-states. The actual picture was very different, with two major wars in the Middle East and a European state facing the real threat of being dismantled.