Counterfact Issue 4

POLEMOLOGY | WARGAMES | ANALYSIS | COMMENTARY
ISSUE 004
COUNTERFACT
1936: WHAT IF?
THE RHINELAND CRISIS
Terrorism as a Strategy
Britain's & China’s & Japan’s New
Aircraft Carriers
Armata: Russia's Next-Gen Super-Tank
MSRP: $26.00

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INSIDE
ISSUE 04
PUBLISHER
One Small Step Games
EDITOR
Jon Compton
ARTICLES EDITOR
Ty Bomba
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Carmen Andres
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Paulo Vicente dos Santos Alves, Raymond
E. Bell Jr., Jim Bloom, Arnold Blumberg, Jon
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Lupton, Roger Mason, Christopher Miskimon,
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What If? The Rhineland Crisis
by Ty Bomba
What Would Machiavelli tell the Ukrainians?
Compare and Contrast, Part 1
by Ty Bomba
What Would Machiavelli tell Putin?
Compare and Contrast, Part 2
by Ty Bomba
Britain’s, China’s, and Japan’s New Aircraft
Carriers versus the Tern
by Chris Perello & Ty Bomba
Armata: Russia’s Next-Gen Super Tank
by Ty Bomba
Terrorism as a Strategy
by Joseph Miranda
Book Review: The Accidental Superpower
by Ty Bomba
SitReps
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If you would like to submit an article to this
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POLEMOLOGY | WARGAMES | ANALYSIS | COMMENTARY
ISSUE 004
COUNTERFACT
1936: WHAT IF?
THE RHINELANDS CRISIS
Terrorism as a Strategy Within
Psychological Warfare
Britain's & China’s & Japan’s New
Aircraft Carriers
Armata: Russia's Next-Gen Super-Tank
ABOUT THE COVER
Cover art by Jon Compton,
based on a compilation of
historic propaganda posters
from the mid-1930s
2 • COUNTERFACT COUNTERFACT • 3

What If?
BY TY BOMBA
1936: The Rhineland Crisis
PHOTOS: Warsaw during World War II (Bundesarchiv, Bild
146-1989-034-21 / Mensing / CC-BY-SA 3.0); Historical map of
Rheinland 1905; German infantry marching into the Rhineland.
HEXAGON IMAGE BY FREEPIK.COM
THAT THE CRISIS centering around the remilitarization
of the Rhineland by the Germans in
1936 was a watershed in the history of the 20 th
century – a century by then already filled with
watersheds – isn’t disputed by any serious historian.
For example, as one of the main chroniclers of that era,
A. J. P. Taylor, put it: “From that moment, change and
upheaval went on almost without interruption until
the representatives of the [Great] Powers, victorious in
the Second World War, met at Potsdam in July 1945.”
As it was, the crisis wasn’t actually important for
what happened during it – a few German battalions
marched a few miles, all within the territory of their
own country – but for what failed to happen and what
– because of that failure – was then set in motion to
come to fruition at a later time.
Hitler’s rationale for putting the crisis in motion
when he did had been provided for him by the start
of the French ratification process, on 27 February, of
a mutual defense pact with the Soviet Union. Though
it wasn’t made explicit in the title of the document,
there was no doubt as to which nation – Germany
– against which the French and Soviets were allying.
Viewed geo-strategically, with potential enemies on
both sides, Hitler believed he could no longer leave
open the pathway to the crucial Ruhr industrial region.
Even so, German military weakness stemmed from
the fact the 100,000 men of the original (and all-elite)
Reichswehr had, since the reintroduction of conscription
the year prior, been spread all throughout the rapidly
expanding Wehrmacht in order to serve as cadre and
trainers. The new infantry corps, all of which had just
completed a year of training (literally and administratively
conducted at “double-time” over what would
otherwise have been a two-year cycle), were inefficiently
deployed within their training areas. Similarly, though
the first three panzer divisions were in existence, they
were all equipped only with Mark I models – already
obsolete – and had only just begun their own training
as divisional formations.
The remilitarization was therefore conducted entirely
as bluff. The units involved moved across the Rhine
bridges with orders to turn around and withdraw immediately
if the French advanced.
During one of the off-the-cuff monologues that later
came to typify his evening meals taken with his headquarters
staff, on 27 January 1942 Hitler waxed nostalgic
about his 1936 success: “What would have happened
[during the Rhineland Crisis] if anybody other than
myself would’ve been at the head of the Reich! Anyone
[else] you care to mention would’ve lost his nerve…what
saved us was my unshakable obstinacy and my amazing
aplomb! I threatened, unless the situation eased within
24 hours, to send six extra divisions into the Rhineland.
4 • COUNTERFACT COUNTERFACT • 5

PHOTOS: Map of Rhineland; Warsaw during World War II (Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1989-
034-21 / Mensing / CC-BY-SA 3.0); German infantry marching into the Rhineland; B. Joseph
Goebbels, Adolf Hitler und Werner von Blomberg vor dem Staatsakt in der Staatsoper Unter
den Linden im Gespräch (Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-00765 / CC-BY-SA 3.0); a Panzer I tank.
The fact was, I only had four brigades
[available].…A retreat on our
part would have spelled collapse.”
Of course, no retreat was necessary,
and Hitler’s regime didn’t collapse.
The French didn’t advance;
they didn’t even mobilize in order
to be able to threaten to advance.
The cabinet in Paris made that decision
based on military and economic
considerations.
On the military side, it was Chief of the General
Staff Gen. Maurice Gamelin who at first told the
politicians “of course” the French Army could invade
the Rhineland and defeat the Germans there. He was
determined, though, not to go into any such operation
in any way that would allow those same politicians to
blame any difficulties or failures on him or the army.
So the general then also explained that any resultant
fighting would likely turn into a long war against an
enemy who could soon put up to 300,000 men in the
field. That war would in turn mean having to call up
the French reservists.
There had been proposals, ever since the abortive
1923 occupation of the Rhineland over the reparations
issue, to create an elite intervention force within the
larger French Army. It was to have been kept at or near
full mobilization levels all the time, in order for it to be
ready for use in just such a crisis as was occurring. The
political left, however, wouldn’t go along with authorizing
it, for fear some future right-wing government might
just as effectively use that force to intervene against them
as against the Germans. So either the entire army had
to be mobilized or nothing could be mobilized.
Going to full military mobilization would in turn
mean going over to full socio-economic mobilization.
With a national election only weeks away, no one in
the cabinet wanted to contemplate the possible effects
of that.
The Polish and British governments, in separate communications,
and in line with their own alliances with
Paris, offered to help, but only if French territory were
actually invaded by the Germans. A single and preliminary
Anglo-French military staff talk was held but, after
deciding nothing, those officers didn’t convene again
until February 1939.
In line with their offer to the French of the alliance
that had been the proximate cause of the crisis, the
Soviets were willing to come to the aid of the French
without waiting for any German move across the western
border. That intervention could only be carried through,
though, be sending the Red Army into Polish territory.
The Poles, as they would do again in the Czechoslovakian
Crisis of 1938, said they would militarily resist any
such move.
The Finance Ministry then reported the cost of intervention
would force them to take the franc off the
gold standard and let it float. When the US and British
governments, along with the leading financial institutions
in both those countries, were queried as to what
would be their reaction to that, all of them declined
to extend the line of credit that would’ve been needed
in order to head off such a potentially panic-inducing
development.
All that taken together brought up the final question
as to what would be the end goal of such a war. The
posing of that final question was what had prevented
French action ever since their abortive 1923 move into
the Rhineland.
That is, Germany, even after having been defeated in
a new war, would still be there. Further, the only thing
certain about whatever regime replaced the Nazis was
that it, too, would be looking for revenge somewhere not
far down the line. A French invasion and victory could
temporarily stop the strategic clock, but it couldn’t send
it into reverse. Similarly, the extreme solution of breaking
Germany into smaller provincial polities would’ve
also only worked to court later disaster in another form.
That is, there then would’ve been no power in position
to stop what would surely follow: a Soviet move into
Central Eastern Europe. All the various intervention
scenarios put forward were identical, then, in so far as
they all would eventually lead to the same disastrous end.
Even within the context of appeasement – as it was
then understood, and without bringing the historical
hindsight available to us into our judgment about it –
the crisis can be said to have ended more disastrously
than necessary on two counts.
First, because the French proved so irresolute, the
Belgians decided to scrap their 1919 alliance with Paris
and go back to neutrality. That overturned the entire
founding strategy of the Maginot Line, and it set in
place the scenario that would ultimately lead to the
Allied debacle at Dunkirk in 1940. In 1936 the French
couldn’t foresee Dunkirk, but they certainly could understand
their entire geo-strategic position had been
WHAT IF?
HE SEEMINGLY universal consensus – Hitler’s own cronies would’ve
both among the politicians and military men
involved in the crisis at the time, as well as
among the historians writing about it since
– has remained: had the French intervened, the
Nazi regime was finished. For instance, in one
of his postwar interviews while in captivity, Gen.
Heinz Guderian told his French interrogators: “If
you French had intervened in the Rhineland in
1936 we would have been sunk and Hitler would
have fallen.”
Of course, we can never know for certain what
would’ve been the precise details of that fall. Even
so, we can make good guesses as to its parameters.
That is, the Nazi Party would’ve likely broken into
factions, with Hitler either dead or arrested or
fled. The army high command would’ve probably
been the source for the first two (or both) of
those outcomes; though it’s also possible some of
The French
T
turned on him in order to
offer him as a sacrifice from
which something might be
salvaged.
Further, in 1936 the
concentration camps and
regular prisons were still
mostly populated by political
prisoners from the left
rather than the “racial enemies” of
the post-Kristallnacht era. We can safely
imagine those men would soon have been
back on the street, set free after prisoner riots
or perhaps liberated by angry mobs attacking
from without.
In Moscow, Stalin would assuredly come to
understand the opportunity being presented
to him. Even when he inaugurated the era of
6 • COUNTERFACT COUNTERFACT • 7
Gen. Maurice Garnelin

Reichswehr Order of Battle, 1919-1932
Group Command I (HQ Berlin)
1 st Infantry Division
2 nd Infantry Division
3 rd Infantry Division
1 st Cavalry Division
2 nd Cavalry Division
Group Command II (HQ Kassel)
5 th Infantry Division
6 th Infantry Division
7 th Infantry Division
3 rd Cavalry Division
Army Troops
10 th Armored Car Machinegun Platoon
Wehrmacht Order of Battle, 1936
I - XIII Army Corps
1 st , 3 rd -12 th , 15 th -28 th & 30 th Infantry Divisions
XIV Army Corps
2 nd , 13 th , 14 th & 29 th Motorized Infantry Divisions
XV Army Corps
1 st , 2 nd & 3 rd Light Divisions
XVI Army Corps
1 st , 2 nd & 3 rd Panzer Divisions
Army Troops
4 th Assault Gun Brigade
overturned. Still, they took no steps to dissuade and
win back the Belgians.
Second, due to their refusal to diplomatically acquiesce
to the Italian conquest of Ethiopia (still going
on as this crisis unwound), Italy was also driven out of
the allied camp. Mussolini, who as recently as January
1935 had formally pledged the French and British his
support in preventing any German remilitarization of
the Rhineland or Anschluss with Austria – the “Stressa
Front,” named for the Italian town where the diplomats
met – was moved to make a complete diplomatic turn
around and begin the process that eventually made him
Hitler’s partner in a new world war. CF
SELECTED SOURCES
Shirer, William L. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent,
1934-1941. New York: Tess Press, 2004 reprint of 1941 original.
Tarnstrom, Ronald L. Germany: The Wehrmacht Strikes, 1920-
1942. Lindsborg, KS: Trogen Books, 1989
Taylor, A. J. P. The Origins of the Second World War, 2 nd ed. New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1961 & 2005.
Trevor-Roper, H. R., ed. Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941-1944. London:
Enigma, 2008 reprint of 1953 original.
Martel, Gordon, ed. The Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered,
2 nd ed. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2006 reprint of 1990
original.
“socialism in one country” in 1924, he did so noting he
would abandon it when the time was right. That meant
when Soviet military intervention in European affairs
would be decisive in moving forward the revolution.
It’s hard to imagine the fall of the Nazi regime wouldn’t
have made him believe that moment had indeed come.
The Red Army of 1936 was nothing close to the behemoth
it would become five years later. Even so, the
purges hadn’t yet taken place, and the large mechanized
corps, as well as the world’s first operational paratroop
brigade, all created by Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky to
carry out his blitzkrieg-like “deep operations” doctrine,
would’ve all been available (not to mention what was
even then the world’s largest horse cavalry arm). Even
more, some portion of the German Army would’ve likely
been on the Soviet side.
As to what the fighting itself would’ve looked like, we
can probably best imagine it as what was seen historically
in the Spanish Civil War – only writ much larger
and in far more bloody script. If all ended generally
well for the Soviets in that fighting, we can then also
imagine a settlement of the war in which Stalin ended
up with pretty much the same geo-strategic gains he
got historically in 1945. Of course, within the historic
course of events, he had to pay what we now know was
an existential price – in terms of physical destruction,
as well as crucial losses among the Russian population
in general and its skilled labor component in particular
– to get that victory. Without having had to pay that
toll in blood and treasure, the Soviet victory in World
War II would’ve been a far greater one – with ominous
implications for the course of world events in the decades
that followed.
The lesson presented here by close analysis of the
probabilities is therefore ultimately a simple one: be
careful for what you wish. CF
8 • COUNTERFACT COUNTERFACT • 9

What Would
MACHIAVELLI
Tell the Ukrainians?
COMPARE & CONTRAST | PART I
BY TY BOMBA
HEXAGON IMAGE BY FREEPIK.COM
NICOLLO MACHIAVELLI (1469-1527) was an Italian historian and philosopher.
He’s considered by some to have given birth, in his writings, to what’s become
the academic discipline of political science. Since he wasn’t a ruler himself, that
separation from power gave him a degree of personal disinterest rare in the writings of
his era. In that regard, he advocated the divorcing of governance from all sentimental
and emotional considerations. The sole criterion for judging success was the survival and
aggrandizement of the ruler and, by extension, the polity he oversaw. Not surprisingly,
then, Machiavelli’s name has gone into our vocabulary as an adjective, meaning “cunning,
scheming and unscrupulous, especially in politics or in advancing one’s career.” What
follows is our appreciation of what he would most likely advise the Ukrainians to do in
order to best weather the current crisis.
No War
Given the facts that the population of the Ukraine is 45 million compared to Russia’s
143 million, while the Ukrainian GDP is USD 177 billion compared to Russia’s 2 trillion
– this is a grossly imbalanced contest. As such, it would have to be considered at least
prudent to give the Russians all they want in exchange for immediate and full NATO and
EU membership for the resultant “rump Ukraine” state. That membership would have to
come with a guarantee of Ukrainian sovereignty in the form of the stationing of at least
one multinational combat-ready brigade inside the reduced country, probably at Kiev.
The two northeastern provinces of Chernihvska and Sumska should be used as final
bargaining chips in those negotiations, given up as final “pot sweeteners” to close the
deal if necessary. Beyond those two provinces, the “New Russia” area coveted by Putin
10 • COUNTERFACT Art: Portrait of Niccolò Machiavelli by Santi di Tito; Satellite picture of Crimea,/NASA
COUNTERFACT • 11

is probably not defensible by you in the strategic sense.
Even if you were to thwart the overt Russian military
threat of a takeover there, that would still leave you
with a recalcitrant and potentially hostile ethnic-Russian
population to govern. You don’t have the resources or
the national will to do that by yourself, and there are no
outsiders who will come to your aid in such an effort.
Those areas were actually lost to you when Catherine
the Great initiated the migration of Russians into them
in the 18 th century.
Any peace deal should be negotiated and signed at a
high-profile international conference held in Berlin or
Paris or London. That conference should be staged so
as to evoke images of earlier pivotal moments in the strategic
history of the continent, such as the Congresses of
Vienna and Berlin and the Versailles Peace Conference.
The idea would be to create worldwide notice and certification
of the significance (and hoped for permanence)
of the treaty being signed.
Military base at Perevalne during the 2014 Crimean crisis (Photo Credit: Anton Holoborodko)
stationing of a few of each of your military units in each
other’s territories, should also be negotiated.
Those diplomatic efforts, while admittedly constituting
only slim reeds, should be attempted in recognition
of the fact the Russian military, if not strictly just a
“one trick pony,” is certainly still only a “one trick at a
time pony.” If other threats can be opened against the
Russians, each increment of their power shifted to meet
them is one less increment available for commitment
against you.
Beyond that, in the diplomatic realm, you should seek
to create new alliances within Europe outside the existing
– and largely moribund – NATO/EU structures. Not
since the late 1930s have the governments of the West
been more at a loss as to what to do to halt an aggressor.
If you wait for them to help, it will come too late. The
ideal new arrangement here would be the “Intermarium
Alliance” of all the countries lying between Germany on
the west, Russia on the east, and the Baltic and Black
Seas on the north and south. It was originally proposed
by Poland’s Jozef Pilsudski after the First World War,
but he was unable to overcome those same nations’
mutual hostilities toward each other. Perhaps times have
changed. The fact remains: the conventional military
power available among the countries making up such
an alliance, if used collectively, would be more than
sufficient to block any further Russian aggression short
of atomic war.
In the propaganda realm, if you secretly kept back one
or a few nuclear weapons in the mid-1990s, this would
No Peace
While still trying to move in steps short of open war,
you could take the offensive diplomatically by setting
up Crimean Tartar and Chechen exile governments in
Kiev, and allowing them to agitate from there for their
own anti-Russian national liberation movements. Similarly,
you could enter into negotiations with Turkey and
Azerbaijan aimed at having them increase pressure on
the disputed (with Russia) Nagorno-Karabakh region. A
mutual defense treaty with Georgia, involving the crossbe
the time to bring them out. Announce you will use
them, if necessary, to reverse military defeat only inside
your own borders. Even if you didn’t actually keep any
of those WMD, if you now produced photos of some
well made mockups, no doubt from some secret location
within the mountainous Carpatho-Ukraine, it would at
least have the effect of signaling to the nations of “Old
Europe” and the US just how serious a crisis this has
become. Be willing to trade the missiles (whether real
or not) for a good supply of high-powered NATO antitank
weapons.
If you’re determined to fight to maintain your present
borders, you must do so showing more strategic initiative
than you have so far. Wars are only won on the
offensive. Even though you lack the power to go over to
a full conventional counterattack against the Russians,
you can take limited offensive steps that will unbalance
your opponent. None of the following can be undertaken
without risk, but you already understood that when you
rejected the “No War” policy outlined above.
First, you must recognize that, given the geographic
relationship between the Ukraine and Russia, every
military unit you move to the Donets/Luhansk area,
to fight the rebels there, is the equivalent of putting
those forces into a geo-strategic cul de sac. The eastern
half of your country is like a lion trainer’s head already
stuck into the beast’s mouth. If the Russian lion closes
its jaws, it won’t be against the mass of forces you’re
building up in your far east. Rather, those Russian
jaws will close to the west, coming out of the Crimea,
perhaps in conjunction with an amphibious landing at
Odessa (which, in turn, might itself be supported by a
lunge from Transnistria), and a drive from out of the
far northeast toward Kiev.
To combat the Russians, you need to recognize your
armed forces are effectively divided into two major
groups. The first and – for offensive purposes – the more
critical of the two groups are your airborne, airmobile
and special purpose units: 8 th Special Purposes Regiment,
25 th Airborne Brigade, 79 th Airmobile Brigade, 80 th Airmobile
Regiment and 95 th Airmobile Brigade. Those units are elite
in the sense that they’re well enough trained and armed
to actually take the offensive without thereby automatically
losing their cohesion in the stress of such combat.
Without doubt, then, the Russians’ most operationally
vulnerable area within the siege perimeter they’ve
formed around you is the Transnistria. They presently
have only about 1,500 personnel in that disputed and
12 • COUNTERFACT COUNTERFACT • 13

strategically isolated region. Their powerful -sounding
“Operational Group Transnistria” actually only consists
of two motorized-rifle (trucked infantry) battalions, a
helicopter detachment and a support battalion. If you
quietly position all five of your elite formations, then
strike with them quickly and by surprise, you should
be able to take the place in 24 to 48 hours. That speed
is essential because, if you fail to overrun the place in
that amount of time, Russian reaction will come in the
form of flown-in reinforcements and perhaps even aerial
strikes against Kiev or other important centers.
Afterward, you should as quickly as possible expedite
the return to Russia of the prisoners you take during the
attack. Resist the temptation to march them through
Maidan Square on their way out of your country. Though
that would provide great “optics,” it would also infuriate
Putin to no good end. In fact, make a media show
of how well you treat the prisoners while they’re being
sent home.
The other major group within your armed forces
consists collectively of every other unit. They’re not
sufficiently armed, nor well enough trained, to take
the offensive against the Russians in any organized, sustained
or otherwise planned way. In particular in that
regard, they lack effective anti-tank weaponry. Accordingly,
they should be deployed in dug-in and fortified
positions within urban areas. Such defenses will cause
the maximum casualties among advancing Russian and
rebel forces.
While such “desperate defenses” can’t by themselves
win the war for you, given the overall balance of forces,
they represent the most effective tactic you have available.
Further, keep in mind, Putin’s manpower pool
isn’t infinite: he too only has so many units capable of
carrying on the offensive. In pitting your lesser against his
greater in this way, you lose relatively little while he will
lose relatively a lot. In line with this approach, you should
fortify Odessa, Mariupol, Melitopol and Kherson, as they
all lay astride the most likely avenues of Russian drives.
Viewed from the strictly military perspective, those
same areas should also be, as quickly and as quietly as
possible, ethnically cleansed of their Russian populace.
The trouble with that move, however, would come from
the fact such operations can’t be carried out “quickly
and quietly” into today’s era of instant social media. The
horrific scenes – even if the deportations were carried
out in a relatively humane way – would then only work
to provide a rationale for immediate and intensified
Russian intervention (again, perhaps by air attack if not
immediately on the ground). Accordingly, you will have
to accept the presence of potential “fifth columnists”
within your fortifications even as your setting them up.
In sum, if you’re determined to try to keep your
country’s present boundaries, you must be prepared for
the reality that you’re going to have bleed – and possibly
bleed copiously – in order to do it. No one from outside
the Ukraine will be willing to risk war with Russia if you
don’t first demonstrate your own willingness to bravely
and in large numbers. Even then the larger issue will
still remain in doubt. CF
What Would
MACHIAVELLI
WHAT FOLLOWS immediately below is, first,
our evaluation of Putin as a ruler and, after the
“Patriot or Charlatan” section, our appreciation
of what Nicollo Machiavelli would most likely advise
Putin to do in order to come out best in the current crisis.
HEXAGON IMAGE BY FREEPIK.COM
Vladimir Putin (Photo Credit: Romanwikip)
BY TY BOMBA
Tell Putin?
COMPARE & CONTRAST
PART 2
Patriot or Charlatan
In the era when monarchial government was the norm,
it was taken for granted every such ruler viewed the fate
of the polity he governed as inextricably mixed with his
own personal wellbeing. For example, when France’s
Louis XIV declared “L’etat, c’est moi,” no one doubted his
sincerity in either the operative or philosophical sense.
In modern times, however, it’s become compulsory to
ask whether leading politicians – especially dictatorial
ones – are actually true believers in the ideology that provides
the basis for their authority. The alternative being a
manipulative charlatan who only uses that empowering
ideology as a convenient tool for his own aggrandizement.
The rationale for asking that question comes from the
desire to better understand the dictator’s true motivations
and, by extension, get an improved – and possibly
predictive – insight as to his true goals and the lengths
to which he’s prepared to go to achieve them. The even
14 • COUNTERFACT COUNTERFACT • 15

larger hope is the better we understand an aggressive
dictator, the more efficiently we can craft effective blocks
to his overreaching.
Sadly, our grasp of human psychology still isn’t great
enough to provide specific and certain answers to that
question. In Putin’s case, in his autobiography (First
Person, published in 2000) he listed the two historic
leaders he found “most interesting,” in order, as Napoleon
Bonaparte and Charles DeGaulle. As for “Russia’s
special path” on the world historic stage, he summarized:
“Russia is a very diverse country, but we are part of
Western European culture. No matter where our people
live, in the Far East or the south, we are Europeans….
We will fight to keep our geographic and spiritual position.
And if they push us away, then we’ll be forced to
find allies and reinforce ourselves.”
Depending on what school of political science or
historical interpretation you favor, you can draw diametrically
opposed conclusions about how best to match
Putin’s expression of Russian nationalism and his fascination
with two of the greatest egos of modern times.
Either way, we can only hope those heading our governments
are able to come to some timely understanding
of the man in the Kremlin. Their final determination
as to whether he’s a sincere Russian nationalist above
all, or just another Bonaparte-style “man on horseback,”
will ultimately frame the response the West can make
to his further aggressions without risking Armageddon.
What follows is our appreciation of what Machiavelli
would most likely advise Putin to do in order to come
out best.
Tic Toc, Tic Toc
Vladimir Vladimirovich, the first thing you must
understand – and keep at the forefront of all your
planning as you go forward from this moment – is that
your time to accomplish what you want is running out.
That’s because the strategic situation is now evolving
unfavorably for you in two ways.
First, the governments of the West, though still not
formulating any directly confrontational policy to counter
you, are becoming more determined to find some
way to stop – rather than just hinder – you. Further,
that growing resolution is being reinforced by the second
unfavorable development: the fallen price of oil is not
only robbing you of the means to finance the larger military
you need, it’s also threatening your ability to keep
in the field the forces you already have. The consensus
among economists is, in continuing along the present
path, you have about a year before the Russian economy
falls into a serious recession, thereby inhibiting your
conventional military capabilities.
Looked at from another angle, however, you can draw
some consolation from the fact the same timeframe also
roughly coincides with the remainder of the Obama
administration. Since he seems operatively (even if not
rhetorically) determined to go into the history books as
the president who only ended wars, and not one who
started any, you can likely count on the continued strategic
paralysis of the country that should otherwise be
providing the leadership of the West in stopping you.
Allies
In your autobiography, you noted that – in any major
struggle with the West – Russia would need allies, and I
believe you are entirely correct in that assessment. Given
the overall state of affairs, there are only two operatively effective
allies potentially available to you: Iran and China.
At the same time, ISIS, though certainly not aligned with
you in the political sense, can – by its mere continued
existence – enhance your own strategic possibilities.
To take the latter “ally” first, I was amazed when, in
the summer of 2014, as ISIS forces broke out of Syria and
swept across much of northern Iraq, you didn’t use the
diversion created by that to get something decisive done
in the Ukraine. I can only imagine that was because your
generals told you they weren’t yet ready to take advantage
of the opportunity being presented, given the fact the
Crimean annexation had only just been completed. Regardless,
such an opportunity, if it presents itself again,
must be made use of: the Westerners are hardly able to
deal with one crisis at a time; there is no way they will
be able to deal with two at once.
Similarly, in that same way, the larger Middle East
situation can provide an even greater distraction. If any
already existing conflict there expands, or if a new one
breaks out, you’ll have a 30 to 60 day window during
which you can do anything in the Ukraine for which
you have the power (and provided you don’t allow Russia’s
involvement in Syria to turn into a quagmire for
you.). If Israel and Iran go to war with each other, you’ll
have a 30 to 60 day window during which you can do
anything in the Ukraine for which you have the power.
All the television cameras and reporters will be in the
Middle East, and everyone will be ignoring whatever is
coming out of Ukrainian social media.
China could also play a similar role by initiating some
naval incident with Japan off its shores, or by getting
North Korea to start something on that peninsula. If
you could get the Chinese, Iranians and North Koreans
all to move at once, that would be sublime.
Ukraine Operations
Around the Ukraine itself, you have several operational
choices. Further, they can even be mixed and
matched based on the degree of strategic freedom the
larger global situation has given you at the time of the
strike. None of these operations is without risk, of
course, but risk is the inescapable reality at the core of
all war-making.
First, you could make use of the Black Sea Fleet to amphibiously
attack Odessa, possibly in conjunction with
a drive south from Transnistria, after you’ve reinforced
the “operational group” you have there with a Spetsnaz
or airborne unit or two. The Odessa operation could
also be supported by an overland drive up the highway
that runs northwest out of the Crimea. Depending on
the resistance you encounter at Odessa, the overland
force could go up the M17 in direct support toward it.
Alternatively, if things move quickly at Odessa, you
could send the force from the Crimea arcing eastward
along route E105 toward Melitipol, with its ultimate
objective in that case being to help another overland
attack from east finally and fully force the Ukrainians
away from the Sea of Azov (which also works to put more
offshore oil and gas under your control while deducting
it from your enemies’ stocks).
Of course, coordinated coastal and amphibious operations
are notoriously difficult and complex. The attraction
comes from the fact the Ukrainians are as yet almost
entirely unprepared to make any kind of serious defense
on their south flank. Even if this operation (in any of its
possible iterations) does bog down short of its ultimate
goals, you will still have picked up more territory from
which the Ukrainians will be unable to dislodge you.
The approaches above are, in effect, merely escalations
within your earlier “opaque war” policy, by which
the Ukraine has been divested of small chunks of territory
one at a time. With each ceasefire, those gains are
kept by you while you center whatever new negotiations
are undertaken on only the situation beyond them. The
next two approaches move forward the overall project to
a qualitatively higher strategic realm (and level of risk).
That is, as you mentioned to the press last year, you
could concentrate a large ground force on the border
between Kursk and Bryansk and drive from there
straight to Kiev in about two weeks. The object would
be nothing less than total regime change: putting in
place a puppet government that would sign a peace
treaty giving you all of New Russia.
Whether that new regime lasted long after the treaty is
signed would be irrelevant, as your forces would quickly
move to occupy the ceded territory, thereby creating an
unshakable reality on the ground. The danger inherent
in the operation would come from the fact that, if it
failed in its goal even just narrowly, you and the entire
offense-capable portion of your military would be left
strung out in an ever more vulnerable situation.
Another bold move would be to temporarily relax
the pressure on the Ukraine in order to concentrate on
taking Belarus. That country’s “army” is even smaller
and more ill-prepared than that of the Ukraine, and the
fools running it aren’t even pleading to get into NATO
or any other Western alliance structure. Even better, if
you take it, there are only 60 km (38 miles) between
your new western border and the Kaliningrad district.
Only two roads run from Poland through that narrow
gap. In effect, by taking Belarus you put a geo-strategic
noose around all three of the Baltic states while also
extending the encirclement of the Ukraine. The only
likely countermove would come from Poland and, even
then, they’d be acting outside the NATO alliance, thus
likely keeping the crisis contained.
Long Term
Of course, none of the strategies I’ve outlined here,
even if swiftly and fully successful, will do anything to
16 • COUNTERFACT COUNTERFACT • 17

Sloviansk city council under control of armed forces. The masked men are holding Kalashnikov assault rifles (AK-74) and rocket launchers on their backs. (Photo Credit: Yevgen Nasadyuk)
2014 pro-Russia unrest in Ukraine (Photo Credit: Victor Vizu)
improve Russia’s longer-term strategic position. Your
populace will continue to have children at less than
the replacement rate. Their alcoholism rate, among the
highest in the world, will continue to be the single most
common cause of death among 15- to 54-year-olds. Poverty
will grow as the economy – no doubt further crippled by
ever more extensive Western sanctions – will continue
toward total implosion. One your deeper southern flank,
the jihad will continue to gain momentum. In the Far
East the Chinese, still stymied in their quest for strategic
hegemony in the Western Pacific, will likely begin to
consider how much easier it would be to go north into
Siberia, there to get the cheap resources they need. (After
all, they’ll by then certainly be able to count on the fact
no one is going to help you resist them.)
No, none of this will help you or Russia in that larger
and longer-term sense. It surely will, however, put you near
the top of history’s list of most interesting people. CF
18 • COUNTERFACT COUNTERFACT • 19

photo 2
photo 1
HMS Queen Elizabeth in the final
stages of fitting out in Rosyth. Both
the QE and her sister ship, HMS
Prince of Wales, are smaller than
US super-carriers and carry half as
many aircraft.
new
Britain’s, China’s, & Japan’s
AIRCRAFT
CARRIERS
VS
TERN
the
BY CHRIS PERELLO & TY BOMBA
China’s Liaoning, purchased from Russia, departing port for sea
trails. Two more ships are planned; the second likely will be a
Chinese-built copy of Liaoning. The third may be another ski-jump
ship, but there are indications the Chinese are studying the feasibility
of building a straight-deck carrier like the US Navy’s flagships.
photo 3
One of Taiwan’s new “carrier killer” corvettes, designed and built to
sink the Liaoning at a fraction of that vessel’s cost. Similar ships are
HEXAGON IMAGE BY FREEPIK.COM
AIRCRAFT CARRIERS have been the premier
symbol of naval power projection for the
last 75 years, just as dreadnought battleships
were for the preceding half-century. In addition to a
certain credibility in naval circles, possession of a carrier
indicates both the ability and intention to conduct
offensive over-the-horizon operations.
Carriers are, on the other hand, prohibitively expensive:
billions to build, billions more to equip with the
latest aircraft, and still more billions to build the required
support and escort vessels. They’re also incredibly
vulnerable, being little more than floating storehouses
of highly combustible fuels and ordnance. Most navies
therefore scaled back or eliminated carriers altogether
during the last few decades, leaving the US Navy’s dozen
or so super-carriers (90,000 to 100,000 tons, 80-plus
aircraft) as the last vestiges of the old order – until now.
India and France each have a carrier, Italy has two,
and China has acquired the first of an intended flotilla
of them. Great Britain is the latest to reenter the field.
The Royal Navy has long since fallen from its era of its
global preeminence, and its high command appeared
to have accepted its reduction to a regional naval power.
A 2007 Defense Ministry paper, however, postulated
a renewed need for carriers as both a coercive and a
deterrent force.
There has also been speculation that the recent
indication next-generation fracking technologies will
transform the waters around the Falkland Islands into
an oil and gas treasure trove have been a motivator. In
that regard, the British may suddenly find they have a
renewed need for this kind of power-projection vessel.
The HMS Queen Elizabeth is the first of two resultant
new ships, both scheduled to be operational by the
end of this decade. The HMS Prince of Wales will follow
soon after.
At 78,000 tons and 920 feet long, the QE is 30,000
tons lighter and almost 200 feet shorter than the latest
US carriers, while carrying barely half the aircraft. In lieu
of the catapults preferred by the US Navy, the British
well within the budget limitations of even local powers, certainly of any
20 • COUNTERFACT COUNTERFACT • 21
Persian Gulf, South American, South Asian or Southeast Asian nation.

photo 4 photo 5 photo 6 photo 7 photo 8
HEXAGON IMAGE BY FREEPIK.COM
ship, like most other non-US carriers, features a ski-jump
flight deck for takeoffs. The jump deck is substantially
less expensive and complicated, but itself takes up considerable
deck space, and so limits the number of aircraft
that can be on deck at any time. The new ship also lacks
the two-angled deck used by US carriers, which enables
simultaneous launches and landings.
That relative lack of flexibility and volume in flight
operations isn’t seen as a major drawback, as the two
new carriers will still outclass any military a British fleet
is likely to encounter outside of Europe. The real question
is just where outside Europe a British fleet is likely
to go. The recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan employed
several Coalition (read: US) carriers, but land-based
air was more plentiful. Any war in Europe would be
dominated by land-based aircraft in numbers dwarfing
the 40 to 50 planes on the QE and PW. Recent British
solo expeditions, like those to the Falklands in 1980
and Sierra Leone in the 1990s, were handled with ease
by much less expensive VTOL and helicopter-equipped
light carriers like HMS Invincible.
Future expeditions of that type will face a more hostile
environment than before. The proliferation of supersonic
(and soon hypersonic) cruise missiles, fast attack
craft, and drones make it easier than ever to overwhelm
even the most sophisticated defenses. Safe operations
in the littoral region of even a minor local power may
be impossible for a lone carrier task group.
Considerable political wrangling has taken place in
the UK since the ships were approved. Cost overruns
during construction have delayed acquisition of their
air groups, and that cost may work to abort the commissioning
Prince of Wales. On the other hand, with more
than $6 billion already invested, the Royal Navy will
push hard for the funds needed to complete the project.
Whether the British will see any kind of return on their
investment won’t be known for many years.
The Japanese, meanwhile, with their new Izumo- and
Hyuga-class “helicopter destroyers” (DDH), are looking
to gain maximum operational flexibility from one
type of design. That is, though both those classes are
presently only configured – as their type-designation
suggests –for helicopters, both are also capable of being
converted to deploy with the VTOL F-35B next-gen
fighter when that variant becomes readily available.
(Interestingly, Izumo is an area in Japan traditionally said
to contain the gateway to hell and, which, in turn has
always been kept closely guarded by the people of that
locale. Hyuga is probably best translated idiomatically
as “all-seeing eye.”)
Meanwhile, in the one navy on the planet that actually
counts – the US – the latest development in this
area comes from a DARPA project called “Tactically
Exploited Reconnaissance Node” (or “TERN” – see
illustration 11). The goal they’re moving toward with
TERN is to have every ship in service big enough to
do so – everything from frigate on up – to have a UAV
vertical takeoff and landing platform mounted on its
main deck. In that way TERN would, once fully implemented,
give the USN a fleet-wide aerial intelligence,
surveillance, reconnaissance and combat capability.
Not only will such a diffuse – but in aggregate still
awesomely powerful – approach to naval airpower
decrease, and potentially eliminate, the need for giant
“fleet carriers,” it likewise reduces the need to maintain
relatively vulnerable overseas land airbases to support
the ships at sea. With all major combatant vessels effectively
turned into aircraft carriers, whatever’s needed in
the way of planes of various types can be hauled along
spread throughout the fleet or task force. At the same
time, on the defense, TERN will make it impossible
for a USN operation to have its combat power crippled
through the loss of one or a few key ships.
All that’s raised to yet an even higher level of significance
when it’s realized the F-35, now coming on
line in several variants, is likely to be the last of the US
military’s “next-generation” piloted
planes, both for budgetary (up to
$337 million per plane) and technological
reasons. For example, when serious
discussion moves to the idea of having to
put fighter pilots into gel-filled cockpits just
to enable them to survive the high-g stresses
that will be inherent in the operation of the next
next-gen aircraft, you know the idea of the piloted
jet fighter has reached its culmination point.
All this goes to indicate that – just as it was with
the dinosaurs – the last of the fleet carriers will be the
most dramatic looking and largest ever deployed. That
dramatic and impressive appearance won’t, however,
change the fact they are indeed becoming the naval
CF
equivalent of dinosaurs.
22 • COUNTERFACT COUNTERFACT • 23
photo 9
Photo 4 - 10: At a recent Chinese conference on naval planning, this model (Photo 4)
of an imagined future super-carrier was put on display without further comment. That
was enough. Despite the fact many naval analysts believe the very concept of aircraft
carriers is becoming obsolete, they clearly still dominate the public’s imagination
in regard to all things naval. The Chinese portion of the internet was soon flooded
with images generated by private artists (Photos 5 through 10) of what might best be
termed “future Chinese super-duper carriers.” We’re showing only a small sampling
from that flood of imagery.
Photo 11: An artificially assembled photo comparing the sizes of the Japanese Navy’s
Izumo- and Hyuga-class “helicopter destroyers” (DDH) with a US Nimitz-class fleet
carrier.
Photo 12: An illustration from a recent DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency) official press release on the subject.
photo 10
photo 11
photo 12

HEXAGON IMAGE BY FREEPIK.COM
PHOTO 3
RUSSIA’S NEXT-GEN SUPER-TANK
ARMATA
What It Tells Us About the Future of Mechanized Warfare
BY TY BOMBA
PHOTO 3B
PHOTO 1 PHOTO 2
PHOTO 2A
LATER THIS YEAR the Russian Army will begin to deploy the first two-dozen of its new nextgen
super-tank, the Armata (“gun” in archaic 14 th century Russian), with 120 to be fielded
by 2018. The Armata “tank” is actually a multi-variant vehicle that will ultimately appear in
six forms: main battle tank (MBT), infantry fighting vehicle (IFV), heavily armed and
armored personnel carrier (APC), self-propelled artillery (SPA), and two kinds of support
vehicles (see photos 1, 2 & 2a).
Taken altogether, the Armata vehicle family is projected, by 2035, to fully replace all the armored
fighting vehicles currently in service in the Russian military: T-62, T-70, T-80 and T-90 tanks along
with the entire BMP series of infantry fighting vehicles. That will mean a total production run of
around 40,000.
The MBT has a 125mm cannon as its main weapon. That’s been the standard Soviet/Russian tank
gun since the late 1960s, but a big difference here, at least when the Russian Ministry of Defense
first began talking up the tank last year, was to have come from the fact the Armata’s gun was to sit
in an unmanned turret (see photo 3). Its two-man gun crew was then also supposed to be housed in
a separate compartment within the main body of the tank behind the turret. The rest of the crew
was also compartmentally separated from the fuel and ammunition stocks. As it turned out, how-
24 • COUNTERFACT COUNTERFACT • 25

HEXAGON IMAGE BY FREEPIK.COM
PHOTO 4
PHOTO 6
PHOTO 8
PHOTO 5
PHOTO 9
ever, that unique (and complex) configuration has been
abandoned for a conventional layout (see photo 3b).
That’s earlier unique configuration had been intended
to enhance crew survivability. In turn, that was
thought to be an important consideration because the
Russian Army is transitioning from a mostly conscript to
a fully professional volunteer force. It wasn’t important
enough, though, to trump the much higher per-vehicle
cost.
The entire series of vehicles is also being engineered
so as to perform well in arctic weather. Western analysts,
looking beyond the current Ukraine crisis, take that as
a clue as to where those in the Kremlin see the global
strategic nexus moving: as climate change uncovers more
and more natural resources above the Arctic Circle, the
Russian military is being oriented so as to be able to
make the most of those emerging opportunities.
As major new weapons systems go, the cost of each
Armata, at around USD 5 million, isn’t unprecedented,
but it is – especially when the larger program is considered
– becoming prohibitively so in the current world of
falling oil prices. For example, just to get the originally
PHOTO 7
called for 2,300 of the MBT variant there’s a price tag
of USD 9.2 billion. The larger six-variant program is
projected to run as high as USD 300 billion. As one
Russian officer involved with the program put it, the
program wouldn’t be any more expensive if the vehicles
“were made entirely of gold.” That IS expensive – the
current 2035 program completion date was originally
set for the late 2020s; however, the costs forced a production
slowdown in order to spread out the spending
over a further decade.
In contrast, the US Army’s MBT, the Abrams, is
scheduled for its last variant upgrade in 2018. After that
there are no future MBT anywhere on US military drawing
boards. That hasn’t been the case since late 1930s,
but no one in the Pentagon seems worried.
To understand that lack of urgency, you need to
understand an earlier aborted line of weapons development
has recently begun making a huge comeback.
That is, the US military is at long last entering the age
of truly “mechanized infantry” (MI). That’s not the MI
of the last century, in which soldiers in cloth uniforms
rode into battle in APC and IFV; rather, it’s the MI of
individually armored soldiers wearing full protective
and strength-enhancing body suits.
That vision of future war was introduced into popular
culture in Robert Heinlein’s classic science fiction
novel Starship Troopers back in 1959. It was, however,
introduced as a concept in military engineering 40
years before that, when some former British soldiers,
survivors of the First World War’s western front trench
deadlock, actually originated the concept of individually
armored infantrymen as a way to try to ensure such a
bloody stalemate never reoccurred.
The technology of the 1920s was inadequate to the
task, however, and nothing was accomplished beyond
the ultimately dead end development of the so called
“tankette” (see photo 4). Tankettes were, in effect, oneman
tanks, but they were too small, under-armored and
under-gunned, to function effectively as such. At the
same time, they were much to cumbersome and slow to
allow the infantrymen riding in them to function with
the speed and agility needed for tactical combat. By the
start of the Second World War, all those vehicles still
in service were relegated to nothing more than supply
hauling duties behind the lines.
As mentioned above, during
the past 10 years that original MI
concept has made a comeback,
enabled by the rapid advances
taking place in cyberization. As
a result, the US military is currently
in various stages of testing
several MI armored suit variants
(see photos 5, 6 & 7). The signs are all good that, this
time, the MI is going to truly come into its own. The
soldier in photo 8, for instance, is shown easily hefting
containers weighing 700 lbs. each.
The first full-suits are scheduled to be deployed late
this decade. They promise to transform the US infantry
into literal “fighting machines” that, when aggregated
into small units like fire teams and squads, will easily
have the combat power of an MBT. At the same time,
they’ll be more easily transportable, more tactically
adaptable and agile, and much less expensive to field.
Beyond 2020, the suits currently in the concept stage
(see photo 9) will make each infantryman into a deadly
21 st century equivalent of the long ago Medieval age’s
armored knights.
In short, MBT are today’s weapon system equivalent of
battleships in the late 1930s – they both look great, and
are easily the most powerful representatives of their types
– but they’re also about to be outclassed by an emerging
new weapon type. In the 1930s that was aircraft carriers
replacing big-gun dreadnaughts as the navy’s capital
ships. In the 2020s it will be true MI replacing the tanks
as the army’s premier combat arm. CF
26 • COUNTERFACT COUNTERFACT • 27

TERRORISM AS A
STRATEGY
BY JOSEPH MIRANDA
Theory
The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 have set the stage for much of US defense
policy over the last 14 years. The US and its coalition partners are engaged in various
military operations worldwide, with the most visible are in the Middle East while numerous
other missions have been conducted as far afield as the African Sahel and the
Philippines. There have also been various security measures pursued within the United
States to secure the homeland against terror attacks. The question is: why does terrorism
produce a reaction such that a global war has been launched against it?
Terrorism can be considered a form of “psychological warfare” (PSYWAR). That’s an
older military term for propaganda and other operations intended to have a political
impact on the enemy. Today the more common term is “information warfare” (or “infowar”),
but the term PSYWAR still gets directly to the core of the matter. Ultimately,
it is about perceptions, and they often go beyond the political aspects of propaganda
to involve deeply seated impulses, often irrational.
Most PSYWAR in turn consists of non-violent methods of “agitprop” (shorthand for
28 • COUNTERFACT COUNTERFACT • 29
IMAGE BY FREEPIK.COM

“agitation and propaganda”. “Agit” are the media used
to arouse the masses to action; “prop” being ideological
indoctrination (though the terms are often used interchangeably).
Agitprop is within the framework of the laws of war,
while terrorism is outside that framework. That’s because
the latte usually involves attacks by forces not operating
openly under arms, and against civilian targets.
Terror has always been a weapon of war. In modern
times, terrorism saw a renaissance during the Cold War,
when two general types of terrorist tactics evolved. First
there were groups that used it as one of many weapons
of war: such as the Viet Cong and the urban guerillas of
South America as well as various rightwing Latin American
“death squads.” They used terror to demoralize their
foes, as well as to show the strength of their insurgency
(or would-be government surrogate).
A common term was “propaganda of the deed.” For
example, a revolutionary cadre might assassinate an
abusive landlord or police official in order to gain the
support of the local population. The objective wasn’t
simply military, but political-psychological—to show the
enemy’s system was vulnerable, and to encourage the
populace to resist. Those types of attacks also had the
advantage of disrupting the enemy infrastructure.
One reason for employing terrorism was to gain and
exploit media attention and to disseminate the insurgent
message. For example, the Nicaraguan Sandinistas seized
the National Palace in 1978 and used that incident as
a way to have their manifesto spread via the media,
as well as demonstrating the weakness of the Somoza
government—the former for political effect and the latter
for its psychological effect. That paid off, with more
Nicaraguans looking to the Sandinistas for leadership in
the growing insurrection, which eventually won in 1979.
Another type of insurgents saw terrorism as their
primary weapon. Their objective was to make terror by
itself affect major change in the overall political system.
They wanted inspire the public to rise in revolution, or
at least create major political changes by committing
singular acts that caught the imagination. That approach
is sometimes referred to as the “focus” tactic, since it
concentrates the entire revolutionary effort on singular
acts of terrorism.
Practice
That was indicative of European radical organizations
– such as the Red Army Faction, the Weathermen in
the US, and certain Palestinian groups. Typical attacks
included hostage-taking and bombing of prestige targets.
There was a period in the late 1960s to mid-1970s when
that form of terrorism appeared to be working—and its
success was in large part due to psychological factors.
That was a time that saw a general collapse of Western
society’s will to fight wars to victorious conclusions, evidenced
by the collapse of home front morale in France,
Portugal and the US during the Algerian, Angolan and
Vietnam Wars (respectively). Terrorists exploited that
mainstream world-weariness by conducting spectacular
acts such as airline hijackings.
The failure of Western leadership in that era was
also political, insofar as those elites were unwilling to
take decisive actions to defeat the terrorists. To give one
example, there was a general inability to give orders to
military forces to crush terrorists for fear of killing civilians
being held by them. That was contradictory in that
many of those same governments remained willing to
use massive military force in conventional operations
that caused far greater collateral damage.
That failure of will was also organizational-technical,
owing to a lack of forces and equipment suited to fight
terrorism. Terrorism was, in current jargon, a form of
“asymmetric warfare,” engaging on a front in which
opposing government forces were incapable of fully
engaging.
The terrorist advantage turned around for two reasons.
One was the political will to resist began to return
in Western countries, in large part owing to their publics
becoming fed up with their nations being stymied by
small groups of extremists.
It was also on organizational-technical turnaround: terrorist
counteraction forces and tactics were set in place.
Part of that was in sharing intelligence information,
thereby allowing for effective attacks against the terrorists’
own infrastructure. Part of that was in increasing routine
security procedures to make it difficult for terrorists to
smuggle weapons and bombs aboard planes and into
public buildings.
All that was in turn partly due to the creation of special
operations forces (SOF) capable of fighting terrorists on
their own level (for example, the US Delta Force, Germany’s
GSG9, and various Commonwealth SAS units).
Aside from the specialist training, those forces had gear
allowing for enhanced surveillance of terrorists during
incidents, and which could also be utilized to eliminate
terrorists with a minimal loss to civilians. The turning
point came with the Israeli Entebbe operation on 4 July
1976, in which it was demonstrated terrorism counteraction
forces could deploy globally to eliminate a threat.
Tactically, terrorists found it increasingly difficult to
conduct actions through to completion. More critically,
by demonstrating governments could react decisively and
gain tactical ascendancy during terrorist incidents, those
governments rallied public morale.
Again, it was psychological factors at work. People
want to go with a winner. They will give lukewarm support
at best to an indecisive government, and may even
abandon it altogether. Thus the Entebbe operation and
its follow-ons showed that, by backing the government,
one could be on the winning side.
30 • COUNTERFACT COUNTERFACT • 31

US Army soldiers assigned to the 203rd Combat Engineer Battalion, Missouri Army National Guard (ANG) use a tracked excavator to remove tons of rubble and debris as rescue workers
search for victims at the United Nations (UN) Office of Humanitarian Coordinator Building in Baghdad, Iraq, after a truck bombing destroyed much of the building.
The US air raids against Libya in 1986 were another
example of a successful terrorist counteraction operation.
The objective wasn’t simply to retaliate against the
Gaddafi regime for its involvement in terrorist attacks in
Europe; it also showed the US could – and would – take
decisive action using conventional armed forces.
While terrorists still conducted attacks after the
1970s, they were increasingly unable to be politically
decisive insofar as they failed to achieve strategic goals
(changing government policies) or even just tactical
ones (by those involved surviving the incident itself).
The terrorists had been engaged on their own grounds
and they were defeated by the governments they’d once
freely targeted.
The expanding spectrum of counter-terrorist operations,
especially against terrorist infrastructure, gave
counteraction forces an asymmetrical advantage. The
terrorist support structure could be knocked out while
government forces—once the political will had been set
in place—were seen to be increasingly resilient.
Further, terrorist organizations often alienated their
own base by attacking popular targets such as Italy’s Aldo
Moro, whose kidnapping and assassination by the Red
Brigades led to a backlash against the terrorists. The
popular perception of them went from freedom fighters
to criminals. Without that wider infrastructure of
sympathetic journalists and activists, political ascendancy
for terrorist operations was lost.
Throughout the 1990s the concern among security
forces was that of a “spectacular” – a single large action
that would become a true “game changer” via its size
and destructive power. Some speculation also began to
be floated about the eventual terrorist use of a weapon
of mass destruction (WMD).
War on Terror
The attacks of 11 September 2011 proved a major
turning point. While the term “war on terror” (WoT)
had been used before, it was suddenly became a true war
with the US and its allies launching major conventional
and unconventional operations globally. It also had
an immense psychological effect, akin to that of Pearl
Harbor, the sinking of the Maine, and the Alamo, etc.
Public support solidified behind the US government,
both domestically and internationally, such that a multinational
military effort could be made against Al Qaeda
and Taliban bases in Afghanistan.
Of course, the war wasn’t against “terror” as such.
Terrorism is a tactic, a means to an end. The war was
fought against specific organizations and networks that
were engaged in terror operations against the US and its
allies, with Al Qaeda being the publicly acknowledged
primary target. Thus the psychological factors rebounded
worldwide against those labeled “terrorists.”
One point for speculation has ever since been: was
the WoT inevitable? Was there some way the 9/11 attacks
could’ve been executed such that they demoralized
– rather than galvanized – governments? The targets
hit – the New York City World Trade Center and the
Pentagon – were global centers for US financial and
military operations. Regardless, the 9/11 attacks, in US
military parlance, were “decapitation attacks,” but ones
that failed in that they created an immense blowback
against the perpetrators. The attacks created a new determination
to fight against terrorism without any time
or geographic limitations.
As always, psychological aspects are important. For
example, the intensified security regime at airports (to
“prevent another 9/11”) have involved massive intrusions
into personal privacy and violation of rights against unreasonable
search and seizure. Those post 9/11 measures
are far in excess of the measures enacted in the 1970s,
when the number of terrorist attacks against airliners
were much larger.
Each terrorist attack, no matter how absurd in itself,
becomes a trend setter for the next wave of airport security
measures. Thus, the “shoe bomber” led to the new
routine of travelers having to remove their shoes as a kind
of pre-boarding ritual; while the attempts to use liquids
to create an explosive device led to an end to various
containers being brought aboard aircraft.
For all the official policy statements about a “war”
on terror, those new security measures turned counterproductive.
Effectively, airport security became a matter
of reacting to the enemy’s last attack, as opposed to
anticipating new avenues of approach, thus ceding the
terrorist the initiative
It gets back to the psychological dimension. If people
believe the last kind attack represents the current threat,
they will create psychological conditions in which they
believe their safety will be secured by defending against
it. It’s what’s termed in some analytic circles the “Black
Swan Effect” — the exceptional incident receives the attention,
not the routine.
The reality is, if terrorists want to launch an attack,
there are any number of tactics they can employ. Some
examples: set up in a house along the flight path to an
airport and firing a MANPAD (man portable surface
to air missile) at airplanes taking off or landing; or use
automatic weapons to open fire on the long lines of
travelers waiting to go through airport security; or use
truck bombs in major bridges and tunnels providing
ingress/egress to a major city. They can all work to
paralyze a metropolis both tactically (by shutting down
traffic) and strategically (by creating a psychological reaction
demanding all traffic be stopped and searched for
bombs, creating massive traffic tie ups).
All that assumes a rational response to terrorism.
Again, though, people and governments can also be motivated
by irrational impulses. In the prevailing climate,
it’s actually more important to feel safe than to have an
effective long-term strategy. While the US government
has been solidifying security measures at airports, it
has effectively opened its borders to mass immigration.
There are numerous reports of transnational criminal
cartels and gangs establishing themselves in US cities.
They routinely take terroristic actions against their own
rivals and civilians who might get in their way. Yet operations
against them aren’t on the horizon, given the
obsession with the airports and the belief that eliminating
individual terrorist cadre overseas via drone attacks
will provide a decision.
Charlie Hebdo & ISIS
It’s within that context we can look at the attack on the
Parisian office of Charlie Hebdo magazine. First, the spontaneous
outpouring of support for the journalists seems
heartening. It’s a public demonstration the peoples of
Europe and America won’t cave in to terrorists. At the
same time, a contradiction is obvious: many Western
governments routinely censor or otherwise persecute dissident
writers, artists, politicians and individual citizens
under Orwellian laws concerning “hate speech.”
We can look among the victims there such people as
actress and animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot, commentator
Mark Steyn, parliamentarian Geert Wilders,
artist Dan Park, and even a housewife like Emma West.
Obviously, more names can be added from across the
political spectrum, including both indigenous Europeans
and new immigrants. (As well as the cowardice of various
US institutions of higher learning in suppressing
the publication of cartoons on themes similar to that
of Charlie Hebdo.)
From the other end of the spectrum there was the case
of Anders Breivik, whose 2011 armed assault against a
Norwegian government office and a leftist youth camp
32 • COUNTERFACT COUNTERFACT • 33

esulted in several dozen deaths. Breivik had a definite
political agenda, as given in his online manifesto, and
like the terrorists of the 1960s and 1970s, he attacked
visible symbols of the governing elite whom he accused
of betraying their own people.
What makes his attack unique was that it was carried
out by a single assassin, and apparently one who didn’t
have any infrastructure behind him—though the Internet
gave him a forum for his political manifesto. Thus,
“propaganda of the deed” took on a dimension to which
the earlier wave of terrorists aspired but had difficulty
in achieving. Terrorists no longer have to seize government
buildings or hijack airliners, they simply have to
act. The globalization of information and media means
a single terrorist can now be both a tactical force and an
agitprop infrastructure.
What all that indicates is current national defense policies
are increasingly unable to deal with actual threats.
Rather, they’re dealing with popular fears, often acerbated
by a media system that chases ratings as opposed
to facts. Real threats are allowed to go by the board, while
symbolic actions that give the appearance of strength
come to the fore. Thus the deaths of senior-ranking Al
Qaeda operatives are reported as victories in the WoT,
with no evaluation of whether such actions bring with
them any strategic advantage.
That approach falls apart when a enemy arises who
can’t be dealt with by symbolic actions. A case in point
is the Islamic State (ISIS), which has expanded throughout
Syria and Iraq since 2014. In part, their advance is
owing to them having first laid the groundwork for it in
a network of underground operatives who prepared the
way for the fighters to seize cities. ISIS also exploits a
strategy of terror, such as public executions of prisoners.
That terror has created a reaction against them, including
some US airstrikes and moves to shore up the Iraqi
armed forces. Even so, their strategy of terror continues
to work in the Islamic State’s favor, as evidenced by the
increasing numbers of recruits joining its ranks—and not
just from the Middle East, but also from Europe.
Of course, there’s nothing surprising about that once
one recalls the psychological dimension of people wanting
to go with a winner. They identify with hyper-alpha
male personalities because, by doing so, they enhance
their own status and self-image. There’s also the practical
dimension of the Islamic State providing its followers
with much in the way of loot and prestige by allowing
them to pillage their way through major cities—something
which has been understood as a motivator for a
certain kind of volunteer for armies since civilization
began.
What all that suggests is, were ISIS fighters to be
faced with decisive counteraction, their entire movement
might soon disintegrate. The dilemma is in creating
the psychological conditions in a coalition fighting
against them to commit the force necessary to generate
that type of decisive victory. The type of warfare that
requires means “boots on the ground.” The US defeated
various Iraqi insurgents during the decade following the
Coalition victory over Saddam Hussein in 2003—that
was a protracted struggle in which ground forces took
precedence over high-technology weaponry.
Could NATO countries engage the Islamic State on
that level? It needs to be noted the military forces of
ISIS aren’t overwhelming. They don’t deploy the aerial
and armored armadas NATO boasts. Of course, they
have a considerable underground infrastructure that
facilitates their operations – which again refocuses on
the psychological dimension.
An interesting new factor comes from the development,
now that terrorism is escalating to the level of
quasi-conventional operations, democratic governments
still seem incapable of mustering the political will to
deal with them even within that relatively simpler type
of warfare. Perhaps Western powers have, in the last two
decades, come to overly rely on small numbers of SOF
operators and high-tech weaponry, and not enough on
creating politically strong conventional armed forces.
As the new century unfolds, only the US still seems
politically capable of deploying multi-division forces to
overseas theaters of operations.
That may portend a growing new trend. Though the
Russia of Vladimir Putin has proven capable of using
a combination of conventional and unconventional
military forces, backed by a spectrum of infowar and
cyberwar, to gain national objectives in the Caucasus
and Ukraine, the West is increasingly paralyzed.
The impact of globalization, and the ideology of
multiculturalism prevalent in the European Union,
also need to be considered. Globalization is increasingly
being seen as bringing on the de facto establishment of
transnational political and economic agencies to rule
over nation states. Within that kind of framework, can
an outlook of multiculturalism be effective in mobilizing
the political will to fight for what are increasingly seen
as only Western ideals?
As long as enemies can effectively use a combination
of terror, infowar and victorious military actions, they
will have the psychological ascendency. Than, in turn, is
the front that’s always proven decisive in war. CF
34 • COUNTERFACT COUNTERFACT • 35

IMAGE BY FREEPIK.COM
BOOK REVIEW
Reviewed by
Ty Bomba
The Accidental Superpower by Peter Zeihan
This is far from a perfect book, but it is an interesting, thought
provoking and important one. The subtitle indicates why: The Next
Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder. At
a time when predictions of ultimate American decline abound – so
much so they’re now generally presented as nothing more than common
wisdom – Zeihan takes a different tack. He maintains three
factors are now coming together to guarantee the US will maintain
its preeminent place on the global stage.
The first – our unassailably superior geo-strategic position on the
planet – is the same one that initially bootstrapped us toward preeminence.
The salient features within it are: 1) more naturally occurring
miles – 17,600 – of navigable waterways than the rest of the world put
together; 2) the largest contiguous area of temperate zone cropland –
the Midwest – anywhere on the planet, and all of it within easy reach
of those navigable waterways; 3) we’re the only power with major ports
and population centers on both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
That first advantage allows savings in the transportation of bulk
goods by more than an order of magnitude over the cheapest land
transport, which in turn frees lots of capital for investment in other
areas. The second advantage means we can’t be effectively blockaded,
even if some enemy countries’ navies were to take control of the world
ocean. At the same time, again due to all the navigable waterways, the
inland cities in the Midwest are effectively also oceanic
ports. The last factor works to give us equally easy access
to the globe’s two great trading areas outside the US:
East Asia and Europe.
The second overarching factor is the advent of hydraulic
fracturing (“fracking”) oil and gas technologies,
which are presently reestablishing North America as
the world’s largest producer of those resources. That
status is projected to remain in place for the next 30
or so years.
The third major factor is the soon-to-arrive perfecting
of 3D manufacturing (“printing”) technologies. Each
new generation of those super machine tool (which are
now arriving about every two years) is more efficient
than the one before it. As the costs of the process –
mostly in energy consumption relative to the older
forms of manufacturing – continue to decline, 3D will
cease to be a type of manufacturing and simply come
to represent all that is manufacturing. To cap off all
that, North America is becoming less dependent for all
resources, goods and services originating in geographic
areas exclusive to it.
Taken altogether, those trends mean the US need no
longer care about policing the world. We were, in fact,
only really concerned with that, in the period between
1945 and now, because promoting free trade around
the planet was in turn the most cost effective way of
maintaining a (relatively) peaceful imperium. Even so,
it was our allies who needed to be propped up in that
regard more so than us. We now no longer need any of
that. Like no other power at any time in history, we are
now free to pick and choose our wars.
Without having been proclaimed as the new world
view in Washington, the changed reality is nevertheless
already being played out. For example, the Middle East is
today in a greater state of turmoil than at any time since
the 1970s. Even so, there are no lines at American gas
stations; airliners aren’t being crashed into our cities’
skyscrapers, and the trend in Congress is to call for the
further downsizing of our military. Meanwhile, China
has to exert a large part of its military resources simply to
try to secure control of the waters just off its coast, and
Russia is straining to retake a borderland that, for over
two centuries, was until recently its own breadbasket.
On the downside, Zeihan gives great credit to superior
German culture and economics as factors crucial in helping
that country overcome its many future geo-strategic
weaknesses and concerns. At the same time, he gives no
weight at all to the negative effect Turkey’s pre-modern
cultural bent is likely to have on hampering what would
otherwise be an easy geo-strategic comeback for it across
the non-Israeli portion of its region.
Even more weirdly, Israel isn’t mentioned anywhere
in the book except for a single-page entry in the index
(and, when you turn to that page, the word “Israel”
does not in fact appear there, only a reference to the
1973 Yom Kippur War). I first noticed that amazing
omission when I got to the end of Zeihan’s discourse
on Iran, all of which he presented without any mention
of that nation’s bellicose policy toward the Jewish state.
Similarly, the words “Palestine” and “Zionism” are also
absent from the book.
At the same time, he’s written what has to be the
most optimistic appraisal of Uzbekistan’s prospects ever
put on paper since the time of the Great Khan. He’s
also convinced there’s no good resolution to the US
“war on drugs,” neither in continued prohibition nor
in decriminalization, which I believe is simply to ignore
the resolution model provided by the earlier ending of
alcohol prohibition.
Last, the numerous maps in the book are awful – an
undecipherable mélange of grays on grays. Fortunately, if
you go to the author’s website (zeihan.com/maps), you’ll
find downloadable and easily readable color versions of
those same maps. Again, though, none of that is told
to you anywhere in the book; it was just a fortuitous
discovery I made after deciding to poke around online
to try to find better maps to go with the book’s text.
Taken altogether then, I recommend this book to all
with an interest in strategy, geography and the interaction
between the two. Despite the books several omissions
and weaknesses, what is included in it will give you no
end of things to think about and discuss. CF
36 • COUNTERFACT COUNTERFACT • 37

SITREPS
/ sit • rep /
noun informal
a report on the current military situation in a particular area
SITREP 1: Russia’s New APC Has
PlayStation Controls
Russia’s new Kurganets-25 amphibious armored personnel
carrier has a control console modeled after that
of the PlayStation video game system. (The designation
refers to the 25 th numbered project from the Kurgan
Machine-Building Company, located in the southwestern
Siberian town of that name,
with “kurgan” by itself meaning
“mound” in English.)
The advantages the company
claims for that approach are –
above all – cost savings. That’s
become particularly crucial
given the already infamous
overruns involved with the
creation and manufacture
of the APC’s counterpart
next-gen tank, the Armata.
Those vehicles are starting
to roll off Russian assembly
lines with per-unit price tags
that wouldn’t be any higher
if they were entirely made out
IMAGE BY FREEPIK.COM
of gold. So the savings inherent in using off-the-shelf and
already proven technology to fit out the APC’s control
systems will be significant.
Second, the millennial generation males of Russia –
as they are over much of the planet – tend to come into
the military already well versed in how to use video game
consoles. That will save significant time in training the
recruit drivers to full proficiency.
Third, the interior space saved by going with a wheelless
controller, rather than a convention steering wheel
or differential track levers, though not huge, is still a
consideration. The interior of the vehicle has to be able
to hold a three-man crew while carrying eight heavily
loaded riflemen as passengers.
SITREP 2: China Has Won the
“Battle of the Nine-Dash Line”
Eighty percent of the world’s total of sea-transported
oil goes through the South China Sea. Of course, that
means the area is of international significance. At the
same time, however, within that total about 60 percent
of China’s oil imports transit the area. In the minds
of those ruling from Beijing, that means their nation’s
interests in the waterway trump all others.
During the past two years, then, while the various
regional nations with claims to portions of the sea
(Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Taiwan, the Philippines),
as well as the US, have done little more than engage in
the diplomatic equivalent of handwringing, the mainland
Chinese have fortified seven of the Spratlys and an
equal number of the Paracels
(a.k.a. the “Amphitrite
Group,” after the
French warship that
claimed them for that
country in the mid-19 th
century).
The idea the increasingly
strident talk from
the affronted nations is
going to get the Chinese
to roll back their claims,
or disassemble their military
engineering, is a
non-starter. Beijing has
already declared Sansha
Island (previously Woody
Reef) to be a “prefecture city,” which will henceforth
maintain a provincial “people’s congress” of 60 members
and a central committee of 15.
At the same time, the People’s Liberation Army has
created a division-level “garrison headquarters” on Sansha,
and it fields an estimated 6,000 military personnel
across the two island groups. Airfields large enough
to accommodate fourth-generation Su-27 and Su-30
fighter aircraft have been built, along with hardened
revetments to protect the planes on the ground. On
the naval front, Sansha now has docks large enough to
service frigates and destroyers. Last, signals intelligence
communications intercept stations have been set up all
around the Chinese-claimed area.
Unless the West is prepared for a military confrontation
with China – which it’s clearly not, neither
militarily nor morally – it’s time to admit the “Battle
of the Nine-Dash Line” has been lost. The thing to do
now is take the steps necessary to make it clear to the
communists they won’t be allowed to move east of it.
SITREP 3: US Camouflage Uniforms
In 2004 the US Army adopted combat uniforms
bearing what was called the “Universal Camouflage Patter”
(UCP). It proved a failure insofar as post-adoption
studies showed its computer-generated grays-on-gray
design actually made the soldiers wearing the uniforms
easier to see than if just one of those shades had been
chosen for the entire ensemble. That was due to an
optical effect called “isoluminance,” in which the brain
38 • COUNTERFACT COUNTERFACT • 39

simplifies an overabundance of detailed visual data into
one aggregated mass.
The stopgap solution was to issue a hurriedly devised
new pattern called “MultiCam,” which was subsequently
issued to most of the troops going to Afghanistan. Meanwhile,
further designs were being continually evaluated
in what the army calls the “CIE,” or “Camouflage
Improvement Effort,” and on which it’s spent over 5
billion USD during the past decade.
That’s why, when you view news videos of US troops
in field, they often have on different-appearing uniforms
even within the same unit. That mix-and-match was
authorized in order to make allowance for all the variant
color and structural schemes that have been issued.
At one time MultiCam was going to be officially adopted
as the new universal pattern, but the army was
unable to agree on a suitable licensing agreement with
the privately owned company that holds the patent on
the design. In July 2015, then, the army designated yet
another scheme, which was designed in one of its own
research centers, as the official new pattern, calling it
the “OCP,” or “Operational Camouflage Pattern.”
This has all become even more complex an issue
because, as of 2014, legislation from congress has called
on all the service branches to adopt one shared form
of combat uniform. Naturally, the other uniformed
services aren’t satisfied with the army created OCP.
Even further, all the US combat uniforms in service
during this century have had one common complaint
from those wearing them: the crotch seams tend to rip
open when under stress.
SITREP 4: Lockheed-Martin SR-72
Depending on which source you believe, the Lockheed-Martin
SR-72 (Surveillance Reconnaissance) aircraft
is codenamed “Blackbird 2” or “Son of Blackbird”
(both of them after its famous SR-71 predecessor), or
maybe its the “Blackswift.”
Further – and, again, depending on who you site –
an opera-
tional prototype already exists,
or one will exist by the start of
2018 (or 2023), or an entire
super-secret “black squadron”
of them already exists.
The one thing pretty much
all the sources agree on is that
the plane’s “turbine-based,
combined-cycle, scramjet engines” will give it a top speed
of Mach 6 (4,000 mph).
Pretty much everyone also agrees the one thing that
might kill this bird before it’s hatched – unless, of
course, it is already hatched – is the fact progress is being
made so fast on unmanned drone aircraft (see next Sit
Rep), these much more expensive piloted planes (due to
having to engineer them so as to keep their pilots and
passengers alive) may negate the need for them.
Top photo: The Boeing X-51A Waverider.
Bottom photo: The USAF official concept art for its HSSW
SITREP 5: Boeing X-51A Waverider
In contrast to the SR-72, the Boeing X-51 Waverider
is verified to have existed (four of them), and it’s also
certain those aircraft satisfactorily completed their testing
program. The capstone in that regard was a worldrecord
hypersonic flight of 230 nautical miles at Mach
5.1 in a little more than six minutes.
The design and development torch has now passed to
the High Speed Strike Weapon (HSSW) program which
is intended to have deployable hypersonic missiles, along
with hypersonic reusable drone and (possibly) piloted
aircraft, supplied to the US military in large numbers
starting in 2023.
SITREP 6: The Growing Israeli
Dolphin-2 Class Submarine Flotilla
When discussion takes place in Western media about
the possibilities for an Israeli strike against the Iranian
nuclear infrastructure, it usually revolves around the
difficulties inherent the idea of an air force attack flown
in at long distance directly from bases in Israel. The
seeming adoption of that approach has been reinforced
by exercises conducted by the Israeli Air Force,
notionally practicing for it by flying into the
Mediterranean out to distances equal to those
that would have to be crossed in the opposite
direction during the real thing.
That may all just be geo-strategic dissimulation
and legerdemain, as there’s now another option
available to the Israelis. Their navy has recently
taken delivery of the fourth (of six ordered) Dolphin
2 class of diesel powered submarines. Those boats
have an unrefueled range of 8,000 nautical miles, and
they’re able to carry a mix of up to 36 conventionally or
nuclear-armed cruise missiles with ranges of 900 nautical
miles. In short, an Israeli strike (either first or second)
can now come from the far south in the Indian Ocean,
as well as out of the west.
Below: A Dolphin 2 photographed soon after the Israeli Navy took delivery.
Right: A Dolphin-2 under construction in the Kiel shipyard.
SITREP 7: The US Army’s
“Cheetah Robot”
The “Cheetah” robot, designed at MIT with US Army
funding, can presently reach speeds of up to 28 miles
an hour, can cross rough terrain under, and is silent
while doing so because it’s powered by electric motors.
The idea is to eventually use such robots to enhance
squad-level carrying capacity, maneuverability and –
Top: This is where the Cheetah is headed. Middle: This is today’s Cheetah.
Bottom left: 1942’s Tiger. Bottom right: 1937’s Mk II Lynx.
ultimately – combat power. The present model is
controlled remotely by human operators; the goal
is autonomous models that operate on their own
internal programing.
It may seem like a science fiction fan’s dream to
think those developments will take place any time
soon. Here’s a comparison: in 1937 the world’s most
advanced operational tank was Germany’s Panzer
Mark II “Lynx”; five years later it was the Mark VI Tiger.
SITREP 8: The Growing Role of
Special Operations Forces & Robots
in Militaries Around the World
As background consider that, in 1935, the largest fully
mechanized formations were the German Army’s panzer
divisions and their equivalently sized Soviet mechanized
“corps.” At that time, serious debate concerned finding
the optimum number of horse-mounted troops to mix
in with the vehicular units and whether anyone beyond
unit commanders needed on-hand two-way radios.
The official Lockheed-Martin artwork depicting the SR-72.
40 • COUNTERFACT COUNTERFACT • 41

Five years later the first fully mechanized
army – Panzergruppe Kleist –
proved decisive in spearheading
the conquest of western Europe,
and there was a two-way radio in
everyone of its vehicles. Soon
afterward that kind of full
mechanization and radio use
became the standard for all
modern armies. Foot-slogging
and horse-drawn formations, as
well as landlines, went the way
of the bow and arrow and smoke
signals.
Today the US military has some
70,000 special operations forces (SOF)
personnel. Within that amorphous multiservice
grouping, the first division-equivalent headquarters
was just recently stood up. Globally, fully 60
nations – from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe – now deploy
Western-style SOF units. The personnel in such units
are, without exception, the most highly trained and best
motivated soldiers in their nations’ militaries. Further,
those same units are also the natural test
beds for the first wave of combat robots
that have now moved from the laboratory
to the battlefield.
For example, when the US military
entered Iraq in 2003, it had
three unpiloted drone aircraft at
its disposal and no ground robots.
Today the corresponding figures
are 7,000 and 2,100, deployed in a
total of about 15 different models.
Just as the massive drafteemanned
mass armies of the late-
World War II and Cold War eras
supplanted their non-mechanized predecessors,
so too are smaller, super-elite
and increasingly robot-armed formations moving
army structures into yet another reformation. By midcentury
it will no longer be a question of how many
combat robots should be mixed in with the human
SOF; rather, it will be a question of how many – if
any – humans should actually be directly involved in
frontline tactical combat. CF
Brigade Combat Team Kandahar
COMPONENTS
Rulebook
Example of Play
Designer’s Notes
One 22” x 17” Mounted Game Board
170 Double-Sided Die-Cut Markers
118 Double-Sided Die-Cut Counters
50 Joint Ops Cards
24 Objective Cards
24 Chaos Cards
Four Six-Sided Dice
2
12 and Above
2 to 4 Hours
WWW.OSSGAMESCART.COM
Copyright MCSGroup © 2013
Copyright One Small Step © 2015
42 • COUNTERFACT COUNTERFACT • 43
Complexity
Level
Solitaire
Suitability
ONE SMALL STEP

Folio Series
Reporting for Duty
The first eight games in One Small Step's new Folio Series of games
are now available. These games come complete with a pocket folio,
a game map, a set of die-cut playing pieces, and in some cases,
playing cards. Rules and charts & tables are also included. All you
need to supply is a die.
Vol. 1, Shining Path by Brian Train: The Sendero Luminoso
insurgency against the government of Peru, 1980-1995. Guerrilla
fronts and cadres engage in a vicious insurgency against the
government's corrupt and untrained security forces. Chrome
includes narco-terrorism, the MRTA (a rival guerrilla movement), and
United States support.
Vol. 2, Green Beret by Brian Train: 1964-5 in the Central
Highlands of Vietnam in the period before the first United States
Army and Marine units arrived to bring the war into a new phase.
Montagnard tribesmen of the Civilian Irregular Defense Groups,
raised, trained, and advised by Special Forces A-teams, try to
prevent the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army from controlling
the population and opening supply routes to the coast.
Vol. 3, Kandahar by Brian Train: A game on the conflict in this
province of southern Afghanistan, 2008-10. Players take the role of
regional commanders striving for the resources to allow them to earn
Victory. Players will find themselves in the position of having, if they
wish to continue to get high levels of support, to follow courses of
action that are maybe not the most effective in opposing the enemy
but are more valued by their superiors. When you run out of support,
the game ends and the war continues (but with a different regional
commander)!
Vol. 4, Operation Whirlwind by Brian Train: A simulation of the
situation in Budapest in November 1956. The Soviet-imposed
Communist government of Hungary has fallen. Newly inaugurated
President Imre Nagy has declared an end to the one-party system
and threatened to pull out of the Warsaw Pact. The Soviet
government cannot allow this defection and launches "Operation
Whirlwind," a military intervention in Hungary to restore order
culminating in a desperate battle in the streets of Budapest.
Vol. 5, Lone Jack (American Civil War) by Richard Dengel: Both
sides saw the other as "invaders," so the fight quickly escalated to
one of extreme violence. The fight seesawed up and down the main
street of Lone Jack, and when the rebels fired the Cave Hotel, a
Yankee stronghold, their advantage appeared decisive. Foster now
wheeled his only two artillery pieces forward, blasting the gray attack
with double-shotted canister.
Vol. 6, Middle Creek (American Civil War) by Richard Dengel: In
a fight that largely determined the fate of eastern Kentucky, two
small armies clashed along the swollen tributary of Middle Creek. An
officer of some promise, Humphrey Marshall, generaled the CSA. A
relative unknown commanded the USA by the name of James A.
Garfield.
Vol. 7, Battle of the Atlantic by Gary Graber: With the British and
French entrance into World War II on September 3, 1939, the
German Kriegsmarine moved to implement strategies similar to
those used in World War I. Unable to challenge the Royal Navy in
regard to capital ships, the Kriegsmarine began a campaign against
Allied shipping with the goal of cutting off Britain from the supplies
needed to wage war.
WWW.OSSGAMESCART.COM
44 • COUNTERFACT
Vol. 8, Fall of Berlin by Gary Graber: Starting on 12 January 1945,
the Red Army breached the German front as a result of the Vistula-
Oder Offensive and advanced westward as much as 40 kilometers a
day through East Prussia, Lower Silesia, East Pomerania, and
Upper Silesia, temporarily halting on a line 60 km (37 mi) east of
Berlin along the Oder River. When the offensive resumed, two Soviet
fronts (army groups) attacked Berlin from the east and south, while a
third overran German forces positioned north of Berlin.