jonathankeiler.com

In the IDF the More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same?

jkeiler — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 06:48:00 -0700

IDF force near Gaza

The second Lebanon War began a year ago today. I was pretty much the first Western ...

Shakespeare Authorship Controversy in Washington Post

jkeiler — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 07:17:00 -0700

For a clear insight into the nature of the Shakespeare authorship controversy, and the fundamental weakness of the Stratfordian case ...

Gun Talk

jkeiler — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 08:50:00 -0800

Tom Rick’s Inbox is a neat little Washington Post Outlook feature in which Ricks, a Post defense correspondent, passes on ...

Shakespeare Project

jkeiler — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 08:20:00 -0800

Attached in the Shakespeare Project file.

24 Kill Count on www.24killcount.com

jkeiler — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 07:45:00 -0800

Season Six of 24 premiers tonight. I will no longer be running the 24 Kill Count from this website. Instead, go to www.24killcount.com for the latest on the weekly Fox bloodbath.

Who is A Highly Qualified Teacher?

jkeiler — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 07:39:00 -0800

Today's Washington Post runs a good article "For Teachers Being Highly Qualified is a Subjective Matter"about the difficulties in determining ...

Israeli Strike Speculation Update

jkeiler — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 05:22:00 -0800

Yesterday the Israeli government directly denied the London Sunday Times claim that it was planning to strike Iran with tactical nuclear ...

Speculation About Israel Strike on Iran Rife Again--But Will Not Happen

jkeiler — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 10:44:00 -0800

Speculation is again rife that Israel will launch a strike against Iran in the near future to deter or eliminate that country's nuclear program. The latest assessment in the Sunday Times, based on supposed leaks from the IDF, is a plan to hit the critical Iranian nuclear sites with tactical nuclear weapons. The rationale is that only tactical nuclear weapons can devastate Iran’s deeply buried and heavily protected nuclear facilities.

Most articles, including the Sunday Times piece, are based on an assessment of Israeli capability, rather than on the actual difficulties, both military, political and diplomatic, of Israeli action. Does Israel have the capacity to hit Iranian sites accurately and effectively with tactical nukes? Yes. Will it do so? No. Here’s why.

There are about seven different possible scenarios for an Israeli strike on Iran. Most obvious is a direct one time strike across Jordan and Iraq by Israeli fighter bombers. Other conventional alternatives is a similar strike flown through Turkey, or over Jordan and Saudi Arabia, or lastly, down the Red Sea around Saudi Arabia and up through the Persian Gulf. Each has its benefits and drawbacks. Another theoretical alternative is a sustained attack operating from Israel, again with flights over Jordan and Iraq, and elaborate in-air refueling. The last conventional option is a missile attack using Israel’s land-based Jericho 2 missiles without nuclear warheads. Non-conventional options are a Jericho 2 nuclear attack, or as the Times article suggests, a tactical nuclear attack using Israeli aircraft.

Working in reverse order here is why none is actually feasible.

Tactical Nuke Strike: The tactical nuke strike scenario likely would be the most militarily effective. For that reason alone it is not quite as unlikely as it might seem at first. Its one strong point is that it is the only scenario which could reasonably wreck Iran’s nuclear program. However, it is also by far the most politically and diplomatically troublesome option, which is why it will never happen. First, the aircraft delivered nuke strike still presents all of the political military and diplomatic problems of a conventional airstrike, except that in the end it might actually succeed in destroying its targets. That is, Israeli aircraft would still have to violate the air space of Jordan (with whom Israel has a peace treaty), Iraq (which is controlled by U.S. forces and for which the U.S. cannot allow Israel permission), or Turkey (which is a nominal Israeli ally but which has an Islamic government and which would never permit transit). Secondly, the actual use of nuclear weapons, even if carefully and safely done, would instantly make Israel a pariah state, probably result in trade embargoes with its major trading partners, guarantee non-conventional retaliation (with chemical or biological weapons from Iran) and possibly and Islamic riposte with a nuke provided or launched by Pakistan. Domestically, in Israel, the reaction would be just as volatile, and possible rend the country politically such that it became completely paralyzed. Verdict: Zero chance of happening.

Strategic Nuke Strike: This option avoids the problems of transiting neighboring airspace, but does not offer the certainty of success of the tactical strike unless the Israelis use big nuclear bombs which means mass destruction and radioactive fallout across not only Iran, but neighboring countries downwind including Russia, Afghanistan (where there are many U.S. and NATO troops, Pakistan, and India (which is another nominal Israeli ally). And if the wind blew westward, Israel itself. The international and domestic reaction to such a strike would be worse. Verdict: Less than no chance.

Conventional Missile Attack: This avoids all the problems of violating nearby airspace and has none of the drawbacks of the nuclear options. So why is this not the way to go? Because it is militarily ineffective. Israel’s Jericho 2 missiles armed with conventional warheads, lack both the accuracy and destructive power to do anything but annoy the Iranians, even assuming Israel has enough of them to even do that. Nobody knows how many missiles Israel has, but unless there are about 1000 available and sufficient launchers for such an offensive (and there are nowhere near that number of either) this option is completely unfeasible. Verdict: No chance.

Sustained Conventional Attack Flying Over Iraq and Jordan: Israel has the assets necessary to mount such an attack. Most often mentioned are Israel’s 25 F-15Is and 60 F-16I fighter-bombers. But the IAF has much more than that. The IAF has at least 10 F-15Ds which are two-seat F-15s capable (and used by Israel) for bombing, and for which the IAF has conformal fuel tank add-ons to increase their range. Israel also has over 30 F-16Ds which (about which all the same is true). Thus, Israel has at least 125 long range strike aircraft available, and with aerial refueling, it probably could use scores of F-16C aircraft as a supplement if necessary. If Jordan and the U.S. (which controls Iraq) would permit such an operation, the IAF could take its time, destroy Iranian command control and air defenses, scour the Iranian air force from the skies, and pound Iranian nuclear sites for several days. However, neither the U.S. or Jordan will give permission. Therefore…Verdict: No chance.

Air Strike Down the Red Sea and Around Saudi Arabia: This option has been bruited as a way to avoid all the problems associated with flying over Israel’s neighbors. The aircraft would fly down the Red Sea, take a left at the Straits of Bab el-Mandeb, fly along the southern coasts of Yemen and Oman, then turn left again into the Gulf of Oman, and thence up the Persian Gulf into Iran. The advantage? You don’t violate anyone’s airspace but Iran’s. The drawback? Look at a map. The roundabout flight would be about 3000 miles just to reach the entrance of the Persian Gulf. From there Israeli planes would have to fly another 1000 miles to their targets. Multiple in air refuelings would be necessary. The flight time alone before the planes began their attacks would be 7-8 hours (exhausting to the pilots) and then they would have to fly back, perhaps in damaged planes. More problematic still, such a strike could not be a surprise. The Iranians would know that the planes are coming hours before they arrived. All their air defenses and fighter squadrons would be on alert and already flying CAPs. The tired IAF pilots would have to fly right into alert, ready and fresh air defenses. Losses would be unacceptably high. The IAF tankers would have to orbit off the Iranian coast to the south and would themselves become lucrative targets—the destruction of an Israeli tanker would mean the loss of the planes it would have to refuel on the return flight. These planes alone would thus require a huge air escort, which itself would require more tanker planes and so on. U.S. F-15s flew long, heavily refueled bombing missions over Afghanistan amounting to 2000-3000 miles one way and back. But that is still shorter than the Israeli planes would have to fly, and over Afghanistan there was no threat from AA or fighter aircraft and U.S. forces were on the ground to rescue pilots. There were also emergency landing options. An Israeli strike force would have a longer route, into the teeth of ready, prepared and elaborate defenses, with no safety net. Basically impossible. Verdict: No chance.

Attack Route Over Jordan and Saudi Arabia: This option avoids the problems of dealing with the U.S. over Iraq, but still amounts to wrecking Israel’s peace treaty with Jordan, and inviting a war with Saudi Arabia. Both Jordan and Saudi Arabia have modern Western air defenses and Western fighters (F-16s in Jordan, F-15 and Tornadoes in Saudi Arabia). True the IAF managed this in 1981 against Iraq’s Osirik reactor, but the Israeli strike force was small (only 14 planes) and the operation was a complete surprise. This time, both the Saudis and Jordanians will be looking for such a move, they have the means to wreck it, and the Israeli attack force would be too large not to notice. Despite all these problems, this is probably the most likely means of attack absent an explicit American green light over Iraq, which in fact, Israel will never get. Therefore, this strike, for all its problems is the overall most likely option for the Israelis. Verdict: Small chance Israel would do this if desperate.

Attack Route Over Turkey: There is zero chance that the Turks will give permission for an Israeli overflight. There is zero chance Israel would provoke a war with Turkey by attempting such an overflight without Turkish permission. Therefore…Verdict: Zero chance.

Direct Strike Across Jordan and Iraq: This makes the most sense militarily. Israel could mount an effective one time strike with its 125 capable strike aircraft (and probably a much smaller number) escorted by a one or two dozen F-15 air superiority fighters, depending on the strike packages chosen. In-air refueling would be unnecessary. The operation would be over in a few hours, Israeli losses would be light. The effectiveness of the attack would be modest, not sufficient to wreck Iran’s nuke program, but enough to set it back for years. However, neither Jordan or the U.S. will permit the transit of Israeli fighters, and Israel will not push a force into this airspace without permission. From the U.S. perspective, in the unlikely event the President should decide to allow a transit, and Jordan could be accommodated, it would behoove the U.S. to allow Israel to mount a sustained strike (option 5) because the U.S. will be widely blamed and condemned for allowing any Israeli strike, so why not allow a more effective operation when the U.S. is going to be blamed anyway? The only reason not to go to option 5 is to assuage Jordan, in the highly unlikely event it would go along with such an arrangement. Since Jordan could only be accomdated, if at all, with a one time no-refuel strike, their is a slightly greater chance that this option would be used as opposed to a sustained strike. What does slightly better than zero chance mean? Verdict: Very, very, very, extremely low chance.

So there you have it—all of Israel’s possible options. None are any good, therefore, there is next to no chance that Israel will ever mount a pre-emptive strike on Iran. The speculation is good fun, but that’s all it is.

Banning Burkas

jkeiler — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 06:48:00 -0800

The Dutch are first among the people's of the earth to claim that they are tolerant above all others. It is true that historically, Holland has been a progressive country, culturally and politically, stretching back to the Middle Ages. That tolerance was born at least in part out of comfort and security. The modern Dutch state, which tolerates (as this Washington Post editorial points out) prostitution, drug use, euthanasia, and public nudity (all of which I favor by the way) is having trouble accommodating its Muslim minority (now over six percent of the population). Holland, small and prosperous, is the canary in the European coal mine on the subject of aggressive Islam.

In reaction to a number of outrages (though nothing nearly on the scale of 9/11 or the atrocities that daily afflict the Israelis) the Dutch have reelected a rightist government which promises laws banning the wearing of burkas and other Islamic garb in public. The Post in the editorial linked above condemns this action, but the fact is it is both justifiable and perhaps inevitable, and anyway is just window dressing. Banning burkas is not going to arrest the Islamic tide flooding Europe.

It does show that the Dutch and the Europeans in general are not nearly as liberal and tolerant as they like to make out. Those nations like to lampoon Americans as rubes and cowboys, but now the supposedly most tolerant of the bunch are banning Muslim fashion for "security reasons." Let's not forget that less that little more than a half-century ago the Germans were running the ovens at full steam, the French were happily and actively collaborating, and that the Dutch shipped off a higher percentage of their Jews to the gas chambers than any other country in Western Europe. So much for that historic tolerance.

I personally don't care if the Dutch ban burkas. I think that it is not a terribly unreasonable action, though it is one that would be difficult to implement in the U.S. The security rationale is not senseless; terrorists can hide behind the face mask. More than that though, rationalizations aside, the veiling of women in Islam is a form of subjugation that is contrary to principles in the West. There is no reason that Western societies should not be offended by the practice, and in such circumstances it is justifiable to ban the practice, at least in public forums.

Ultimately, the West will have to balance its own desire for openness and freedom with Islam's need for the opposite. In being open to other cultures Western nations are not under an obligation to commit suicide, though it sometimes it appears that Western leftists believe that this is a moral obligation--though not in their lifetimes--at least not in their lifetimes in their particular country. So it is okay to excoriate Israel for defending itself, and the U.S. too, and the Dutch for imposing a fashion ban in the liberal precincts of the leftist West. A paper like the Post, which prides itself on it's aggressive reporting and openness can blast a Danish newspaper for printing cartoons featuring Mohammad, the standard politically correct line.

In this case the Dutch are simply correct. I really do favor liberal Dutch social policies, and I also see nothing wrong with a nation with Holland's values banning the public display of burkas. If it is too much for some Muslims they can always move somewhere more accommodating--like Saudi Arabia.

The Russian Arms Bazaar

jkeiler — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 08:01:00 -0700

Russian SU-30 fighters destined for Venezuela

This site Mosnew.com has an article about Israeli proof of Russian supply of sophisticated ...

Israel and Exit Strategy

jkeiler — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 08:18:00 -0700

In "Israeli Warplan Had No Exit Strategy" the Washington Post's Scott Wilson presents a straightforward but not very incisive partial ...

Hard Times for the IDF

jkeiler — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 09:38:00 -0700

Abandoned IDF vehicles from the Jerusalem Post report.

The Jerusalem Post has a shocking article from a reporter who found ...

France, Italy and Lebanon Join Hezbollah in New anti-Israel Front

jkeiler — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 08:52:00 -0700

The Israeli government continues to tout the Lebanon War as a victory on the basis of to things: that the ...

Is Korean Bomb Test a Good Thing?

jkeiler — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 08:49:00 -0700

There are two unpleasant possibilities arising out of North Korea’s nuclear test yesterday. First is that the Koreans ...

Hezbollah's Phony "Surprise"

jkeiler — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 07:24:00 -0700

"Inside Hezbollah, Big Miscalculations" a report in today's Washington Post, describes Hezbollah's supposed surprise at the level and intensity of Israel's ...

Bad Signs of Things to Come in Lebanon

jkeiler — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 08:02:00 -0700

This picture proportedly shows to IDF special forces soldiers near a French UN Leclerc MBT. Whether this photo was taken ...

Borat

jkeiler — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 06:53:00 -0700

The funniest thing I've seen in a long time is Boratmovie.com, the official website for the forthcoming Borat movie. It includes Borat's recent press conference outside the Kazakstan embassy in Washington, rebuttals to accusations that he is really a Jewish comic called Sasha Baron Cohen, and many different clips from the forthcoming film. If you navigate through the site you will also find a clip of the hit country music song "Throw the Jew Down the Well."

Crazy DA

jkeiler — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 10:16:00 -0700

There are few things worse than an angry, ambitious, overly aggressive prosecutor, and that apparently is what the unfortunate folks ...

More a Grimace than a Smile

jkeiler — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 09:37:00 -0700

At the recommendation of an Art History student I watched "Mona Lisa Smile" this weekend. Only because I like and ...

Military Justice in Iraq

jkeiler — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 07:56:00 -0700

I disagree with frequently with the reporting in the Washington Post, but generally they have done a pretty fair job ...

Correcting Mistakes

jkeiler — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 08:42:00 -0700

A number of recent articles (unfortunately I don't have links to them any longer) have commented on Hezbollah Chieftain Hassan ...

Pope Apologizes--Sorta

jkeiler — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 12:06:00 -0700

Pope Benedict Ex Vee Eye kinda, sorta apologized for his basically innocuous and obscure remarks about Islam in an academic ...

Racist Survivor: Episode 1

jkeiler — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 18:33:00 -0700

The first episode of Racist Survivor on CBS was incredibly, unbelievably bad, and so hilariously funny and good. The producers, ...

What's 200 Multiplied By Zero?

jkeiler — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 08:44:00 -0700

The military likes to claim that its legions of JAG lawyers and elaborate rules of engagement are "force multipliers" which in the long run enhance the national ability to wage war. So I guess it was a real force multiplier when the Army turned down an attack on about 200 Taliban guerrillas packed together in a tight formation last July, with the group in an aerial gunsight, because the devout were attending a funeral. Apparently, the ROE prohibit such attacks. Now those hundreds of guerrillas can go out and kill more American and NATO soldiers, and probably have done so. The military didn't even want the news out of the called-off attack. So how exactly is this a force multiplier, and how does the military arrive at such idiotic judgments?

Alien Watch

jkeiler — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 12:03:00 -0700

A schematic view (not even close to scale) of our solar system (top) and a "hot Jupiter" system with a water-rich earth-like planet (third from star).

This is an interesting article on the possibility (probability) that a common but odd (to us) type of solar system may harbor a high percentage of water-rich earth-like planets. Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post poo-poos the piece as just so much scientific speculation based on computer modelling--and really he is right. But so what?

The speculation is hardly aimless and based on sound science. The type of system involved, a so-called "hot Jupiter" system has proven to be quite common in among stars that have extra-solar planets in orbit. These systems have gas giants, like Jupiter, orbiting very close to the parent star. Initially, it was thought that such bizarre a system would not be conducive to forming earth-like planets but the new study suggest that this is wrong. Such systems may well have earth-like planets harboring a lot of water orbiting in a habitable zone. That means the odds of detecting extra-terrestial life have gone up. Watch out for the UFOs.

"Human Rights" Hypocrites at It Again

jkeiler — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 11:43:00 -0700

The latest hypocritical and stupid attack on Israel is coming from the UN and so-called human rights groups over the...

Nasrallah Admits He Wants Olmert to Stay in Power

jkeiler — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 14:35:00 -0700

Hezbollah chieftan Hassan Nasrallah, evidently annoyed by Israeli Prime Minister Olmert's idle and silly boasts about forcing the former underground while the latter continues to fecklessly muck up Israeli policy in the fresh air, responded in an interview yesterday, confirming something I have been saying for a long time, to wit: that Nasrallah is pleased that his "oops I made a mistake speech" helped Olmert. This comes from report in Haaretz:

He [Nasrallah] added that he knows Olmert is making use of his statement that Hezbollah would not have kidnapped the two soldiers had it known this would result in war. "I don't mind that Olmert is benefiting from this. If we have to choose between a foolish prime minister and another who is strong and capable, we prefer that the fool remain," he said.

Shocking Baby Suri!!!!!!

jkeiler — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 14:17:00 -0700

Of course, as the entire world is aware by now, I was the first person to publicly out Lance Armstrong ...

The IDF's APC Problem

jkeiler — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 13:49:00 -0700

An IDF M-113 that appears to be on its way out of Lebanon in 2000. Few if any appeared ...

Examining Israel's Traditional Military Strengths--Now

jkeiler — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 07:40:00 -0700

In an article in the Jerusalem Post (“Why Israel Wins Wars”), analyst Barry Rubin, proposes to debunk much of the ...