Category Archives: Government

Britain, Defence, Government, Military, United States

A replacement for the Nimrod. The search is on…

DEFENCE

Four years ago, Britain scrapped its Nimrod maritime surveillance aircraft. But the issue of whether an island nation needs a plane to patrol its waters remains.

The Ministry of Defence cancelled the Nimrod’s replacement as part of the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), citing the need to cut costs. The decision, however, meant Britain lost a crucial ability to monitor the threat from foreign submarines in its territory.

There have been reports of Russian vessels mooring and sending sailors ashore to enjoy local hospitality – all without being tracked by the UK military, the security implications of which should be clear.

Some aspects of the Nimrod’s function have continued, using surface ships, the RAF’s E3D Sentry aircraft and helicopters.

But much of what the Nimrod was good at has been lost – particularly the ability to detect small objects on the sea’s surface, such as submarine periscopes.

That Britain has no suitable maritime patrol aircraft capability is viewed by some defence analysts as a ‘national disgrace’. As a minimum, Britain needs to be able to monitor what goes on within the UK search and rescue area – no small task given it covers 2m square miles of sea.

A typical mission for these aircraft lasts eight hours before refuelling is required.

However, if rumblings from within Whitehall and industry are to be believed the gap left by the Nimrod could soon be filled.

Prior to Philip Hammond leaving Defence to become Foreign Secretary in the recent UK Government reshuffle, Mr Hammond is said to have privately given ‘top priority’ to the project, insisting that it be contained within the 2015 SDSR.

Analysts estimate that plugging this gap will cost around £2bn. Once funding is assigned, it could go into the MoD budget cycle for 2016 with an aircraft in service by the end of the decade.

The MoD is keen to emphasise that the first question is just what is required. Only then can the machine and sensors that will provide the surveillance be considered. One idea is some form of multi-mission aircraft that can be used for maritime patrol, intelligence gathering, airborne command and control and even in some transport capacity.

The current favourite appears to be the P8 Poseidon made by US aerospace giant Boeing – effectively a militarised 737 passenger jet. Instead of seats, the P8 would be packed with sensors and equipment used to track submarines or missing surface ships.

British crewmen are already flying on the P8 aircraft to maintain their skills. As defence secretary, Mr Hammond also visited a P8 squadron in America and is said to have been impressed.

Other ideas include packing the fuselage of Lockheed Martin’s rugged C-130 Hercules transport aircraft with high-tech sensors and turning it into a maritime patrol specialist.

Northrup Grumman, another US defence firm, would like to see its drones used to monitor the ocean from high up and then send specialist reconnaissance aircraft in to check on possible discoveries closer to the surface.

Just how many aircraft will eventually be needed is another moot point. Analysts suggest a minimum of 12, given some aircraft will inevitably be in maintenance, some used for training and others deployed overseas at any one time.

But senior industry executives believe the MoD’s decision is also about the continued viability of Britain’s defence industry.

Buying off the shelf might be seen as ‘cheaper’, but if the domestic capability to design and manufacture military equipment is lost it will leave the nation’s security at the mercy of foreign powers.

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Britain, European Court, Government, Human Rights, Legal, National Security, Politics, Society

Surveillance legislation: Conflicts exist between freedom and security…

SNOOPING LAWS

The announcement of a new surveillance law has fostered the suspicion that a voracious security state is elbowing aside the rights of civilians to communicate in private. There may well be cause for mistrust – but such concerns lie in the manner of the law’s introduction, and much less so the provisions it contains.

The UK Government justifies bringing in ‘emergency’ legislation as it intends to keep a full-blown register (a ‘who’s who of public enemies) that will shore up the power of government bodies to gather data on British citizens.

This is a law which has been agreed upon in principle by party leaders at Westminster behind closed doors. The speed of its introduction has raised many eyebrows, not least because this is a process that has not been open to public consultation and one which clearly adds to the impression that the Government is seizing for itself unwarranted powers.

In reality, though, the ‘emergency’ being enacted upon is more banal. In a few years, the law may actually benefit the libertarian cause. The exact cause for adopting parliamentary legislation in the first place is down to a legal case launched by the Open Rights group. Although the organisation is temporarily dormant, it has been made active following an April ruling from the European Court of Justice (ECJ). That ruling would have lifted the requirement for telecommunications companies to keep a wide range of billing data on their customers for a period of 12 months.

Keeping this data available to the authorities is the reason for instigating emergency legislation. This is preferable than to suddenly ‘going dark’, and appears to require no immediate development in changing the status of our security. Important concessions have been conceded: an independent privacy and civil liberties board is to be created, and there will be a review of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). This sets the limit on digital surveillance. The emergency amendments will also expire in 2016, so that new laws can be created once the review has been completed and appraised.

Some critics argue that what we need is smarter surveillance, not yet more of it. This far reaching extension of government spying on our daily lives, they say, would be illiberal and possibly ineffective.

Since this Bill is also about interception (and not just retention of data) many people will want to know what the additional protections will be if we are to have any confidence in such powers. One requirement is greater transparency so that we know how and why this data is being used. Government openness around surveillance can be improved without compromising security.

The Government has promised an annual transparency report. The concerns of libertarians will be whether it is sufficiently comprehensive, but that can only be deduced once the full details are known. In his annual report, the Interception Communications Commissioner, Sir Anthony May, said: ‘The unreliability and inadequacy of the statistical requirements is a significant problem which requires attention.’ Sir Anthony also expressed ‘considerable sympathy’ with those who are hazy and unsure about the details and implications of snooping legislation.

The Government has made a strong case for law enforcement agencies to be given access to communications traffic (which precludes its content as this would require a warrant) in the investigation of serious crime and terrorism.

The Coalition remains divided over how wide the new powers should be. The Prime Minister has indicated that he favours revisiting the option of wider snooping powers, but Nick Clegg remains opposed. But however surveillance legislation evolves it is right that a sunset clause exists in the Bill to curtail its powers in 2016. That forces a renewal by the next Parliament – but only after a wider democratic debate about how best to strike the balance between privacy and security.

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Economic, Financial Markets, Government, Politics, Society

The global economy and the threats it faces…

FLASHPOINTS AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

Never has the world been subject to a constant flux of shifting alliances as it is in modern times. The world is once again in turmoil, from Iraq to the West Bank and from the Ukraine to the South China Sea. The geographical stakes and risks are extraordinarily high leading some strategic thinkers to compare the global landscape to that which preceded the First World War a century ago.

When the International Monetary Fund (IMF) produced its April 2014 forecast of 3.6 per cent global output for the current year it added an important caveat. It warned that geopolitical factors, at the time mainly thought to be the turmoil in Ukraine, posed a potential threat to its projections.

There are, however, five major geopolitical flashpoints which currently pose a threat to economic stability:

  • The ISIS advance in Iraq

That a small ragtag of some 30,000 jihadists born out of Syria’s civil war could be a threat to Iraq, with its American trained forces and weaponry, would have seemed inconceivable just a few weeks ago.

But ISIS is well funded, as a result of wealth created from kidnappings on the Turkish border, secret donations from Sunni Gulf states and the seizure of bank deposits in Mozul. It is also battle hardened from Syria.

Its seizure of refineries in Northern Iraq threatens the country’s oil production of 3.4m barrels a day or 11 per cent of the world’s current supply.

Brent Crude has exceeded, once again, $113 a barrel. So far the valuable fields of Baghdad, including those operated by BP, remain in operation. But that cannot be guaranteed even with any form of US-led intervention.

  • Middle East peace process

The recent unification deal between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas led to deadlock with Israel over future negotiations. Then came the kidnapping of three Israel youths from a bus stop on the West Bank; murdered in haste after being wrongly identified as Israeli soldiers. Tit-for-tat followed which has ultimately led to high level tensions in the Middle East with the Government of Binyamin Netanyahu amassing 40,000 troops who appear ready for a land invasion and incursion into the Gaza Strip.

The risk now is of Israel escalating the current difficulties into a much wider conflict with the threat, for example, to Middle Eastern oil lanes and production.

  • Iran nuclear talks

The July 20 deadline set for Iran to relinquish its nuclear ambitions fast approaches.

Despite some rather conciliatory language from President Rouhani of Iran, intelligence suggests little ground has been given on vital issues such as reducing the numbers of centrifuges and ending experiments with intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The US tilt at diplomacy with Iran has been met with heavy resistance in Congress. President Obama has been finding it hard to persuade Capitol Hill to ease the financial and economic sanctions that brought Tehran to the bargaining table in Geneva.

Western oil and banking interests are champing at the bit for an end to sanctions that could re-open Iran as a lucrative market.

  • Ukraine-Russia

Flashpoints continue on the borderlands of Western Europe. President Putin shows no signs of backing down from his efforts to infiltrate and recolonize Russian speaking enclaves in Eastern Ukraine.

The so-called ‘Putin doctrine’ – the idea that Moscow is planning to retake areas of vital Russian interest reaching into the Baltics – is almost certainly a myth because that would mean directly confronting NATO.

But the threat to gas supplies following cut-offs to Ukraine is a clear and present danger that will become worse as time moves on.

The crisis already has led to a Russian pivot towards Asia in the shape of the Chinese natural gas deal in which London-based Glencore is involved in financing.

Creating a secure environment in Ukraine, in which Western assistance is co-ordinated by the IMF (where monies can be released), is proving extraordinarily difficult to enact.

  • South and West China Seas

Many strategic experts see this as the theatre for the next great strategic rivalry with China and the US – that has moved much of its navy into Pacific waters – eventually clashing.

At present the dispute is manifesting itself in proxy stand-offs between Japan and China and Vietnam and China.

There are overlapping claims to islands such as Senkaku in the Okinawa Sea that are claimed by both China and Japan.

Similarly, South Korea and Japan have clashed following large scale Korean naval operations in the region.

There are fears that a collision of war ships, an attempt to run blockades or guns fired in error could provoke an all-out war.

The tensions, serious as they are, could be unexpectedly good news for BAE Systems and other defence firms as surplus Asian nations rebuild their rundown defences.

Nevertheless, a conflict in the region – the locomotive of manufacturing output – could be devastating for Western economies.

General Western Outlook

The immediate highest risks for Western economic output come from an interruption of oil supplies in the Middle East and gas supplies from Russia via the Ukraine.

However, America’s increased oil and gas fracking activities together with new gas finds – such as those off the coast of Israel – make the world a little less vulnerable than it was after the Yom Kippur war in 1973 and the first Iraq war of 1990-91.

More serious long-term threats come from the China seas where a battle for hegemony, not dissimilar to that which caused two world wars, looks to be underway.

Globalisation has produced rich rewards in terms of fast economic development, industrialisation and prosperity.

But it has also brought with it profound new strategic concerns that could damage confidence and crush output at a time when the West is still recovering from the financial and Eurozone crisis.

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