Iranian Warships Headed Home Via Suez

TEHRAN - Two Iranian warships that entered the Mediterranean last month, sparking an outcry from Israel, have passed through the Suez Canal back into the Red Sea, naval commander Rear Adm. Habibollah Sayari said March 5.
"The flotilla ... has completed its mission successfully in the Mediterranean Sea and has returned to the Red Sea transiting through the Suez Canal," the official news agency IRNA quoted Sayari as saying.

It was the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution that Iranian warships had entered the Mediterranean, and Israel described the move as a "political provocation."
The frigate Alvand and supply ship Kharg passed through the Suez Canal on Feb. 22 and docked two days later at the Syrian port of Latakia.
Sayari did not say when the warships began their return journey, but said it took them "10-12 hours to transit" the canal. He said the flotilla conveyed a message of "peace and friendship to friendly countries."
Israel, which considers Iran its biggest threat after repeated predictions by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of its demise, put its navy on alert during the flotilla's mission.
Analysts say the deployment was an attempt by Iran to project its clout in the region at a time when anti-government protests sweeping the Arab world from Casablanca to Cairo are shifting the regional balance of power.
The Suez Canal Authority said last month that ships of any nationality can pass through "as long as the country is not in a state of war with Egypt."

N. Korea Wants South to Return Captured Boaters

SEOUL - North Korea on March 5 made a fresh demand for the repatriation of all 31 citizens whose boat drifted into South Korean waters, warning inter-Korean relations would be otherwise seriously affected.
The latest message carried by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency came a day after the North refused to accept 27 of the 31, insisting that Seoul also hand over four others who want to live in the South.

"The South Korean authorities are forcing the detained guiltless inhabitants to separate from their families by appeasement and pressure," it said in a notice sent to the South on March 5.
"If the South Korean authorities do not comply with [North Korea's] just demand, it will seriously affect the North-South relations and the South side will be held wholly accountable for it," it said.
The North Koreans were on a fishing boat which drifted across the Yellow Sea border in thick fog on Feb. 5.
After almost a month the South said it would hand over 27 but announced that two men and two women would be allowed to stay as they had requested.
In a message late March 4, the North demanded the unconditional repatriation of all 31, according to Seoul's unification ministry, whose officials had been waiting in vain at the border village of Panmunjom to hand over the 27.
A ministry spokesman has said the South would try to contact North Korea again early next week to send the 27 home across the border.
The communist state late March 3 accused the South of "despicable unethical acts" and said the group on the boat had been held hostage in a bid to fuel cross-border confrontation.
Seoul's Unification Minister Hyun In-Taek told parliament the four had been allowed to stay in the South in respect of their wishes.
The four include the 38-year-old boat captain, who apparently feared punishment if sent back and decided to stay when he saw how different life in the South is, the newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported.
Relations have been icy since the South accused the North of torpedoing the corvette Cheonan in March 2010 near the disputed Yellow Sea border, killing 46 lives. Pyongyang denies the charge.
In November the North shelled a South Korean island near the border, killing two South Korean Marines and two civilians.

China's Defense Budget Hits Record $91.5B

TAIPEI - China has announced a 12.7 percent increase in its annual defense budget to a new high of $91.5 billion, up from $78.6 billion in 2010 and a return to the double-digit growth recorded through most of the 2000s. Last year's increase was 7.5 percent. China's defense budget rose from $27.9 billion in 2000 to $60.1 billion in 2008.

China says part of the reason for its increasing military budget is to improve living standards for “grass-root units.” Above, People’s Liberation Army soldiers patrol the streets of Urumqi, Xinjiang province, in July 2009. (File photo / Agence France-Presse)

China overtook Japan in 2007 and the United Kingdom in 2008 in defense spending and is now second only to the U.S.

U.S. defense analysts have accused China of hiding its actual budget, which over the past few years could be well over $100 billion annually.
"There is no such thing as a so-called hidden military expenditure in China," Li Zhaoxing, spokesman for the Fourth Session of the 11th National People's Congress, said at a March 4 news conference announcing the budget.
Li said the bulk of this year's spending would go toward moderate improvements in armament, training, human resource development, infrastructure and living standard improvements for "grass-root units." The new defense budget accounts for only 6 percent of China's total budget, he said.
"I think Li is right on the explanation of the rise of the new military budget," said Zhuang Jianzhong, vice director of the Center for National Strategy Studies at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Commodity prices have been rising rapidly, and wages and subsidies are comparatively low compared with Western military personnel, he said.
Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu, director-general, Strategic Studies Department, National Defense University, echoed the explanation. Military salaries are trying to keep pace with rising inflation as the Chinese economy continues to expand, he said.
China's military also has to meet the demands of educating and training personnel as the military takes on more international responsibilities, such as piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden and continued involvement in U.N. peacekeeping operations.
As an example, Zhuang cited Chinese military involvement in the evacuation of Chinese citizens from Libya and downplayed critics who suggest China's military is planning foreign expeditions. China has no "intention to expand or invade or station military overseas," he said.
There is also an argument that the military wants more respect from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Richard Fisher, vice president of the Washington-based International Assessment and Strategy Center, said the CCP lives in fear of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). The party leadership needs to increase the pay of its officers, "lest the current galloping inflation and resulting social discontent wash over to the PLA."
Party power would "collapse if the PLA were to wake up some day and 'vote' against it," which "reflects power, but also fear."
Not everyone is buying the "inflation" and "salary increases" argument for a nearly 13 percent increase in the defense budget.
"Given an inflation rate of about 4 percent, that is an 8 percent real increase," said Richard Bitzinger, a former U.S. intelligence analyst, now a senior fellow with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore.
"While it may be a bit less than the average annual growth rate of the past 15 years, it is still up from last year and seems consistent with China's continued emphasis on putting considerable resources into building up its military," he said.
"If we applied a purchasing power parity deflator to the yuan, it would be at the very least double the size of the Chinese defense budget."
Transparency remains an issue not only in China's defense spending, but also with China's stated capabilities and intentions, said Andrew Erickson, a China defense specialist at the U.S. Naval War College.
"Even the most basic data on service budgets remain unavailable to foreign researchers," he said. "China's military capabilities are clearly growing, but its intentions - at least beyond asserting control over its territorial and maritime claims, to include Taiwan - remain somewhat unclear."
Erickson pointed to expensive efforts by China's military for force modernization, including the recent unveiling of the stealthy J-20 fighter, the outfitting of the former Varyag aircraft carrier and development of the Dong Feng 21D anti-ship ballistic missile.
Also, Beijing's strategic goals "simply do not necessitate the military resources that Washington requires to fight two wars and maintain a global presence," he said.
Although China is expanding its global presence and is now conducting its first military operations in the Mediterranean evacuating Chinese citizens from Libya, it is still far behind the U.S. in global reach and responsibilities.
One explanation for China's return to double digit military spending increases is that the CCP leadership "needs to increase spending because many programs, like aircraft carriers and nuclear missile submarines, are entering their expensive procurement phases," Fisher said.

Senate Democrats Introduce Spending Bill

The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee introduced a spending bill March 4 that would fund the Pentagon through Sept. 30, but comes up short of what Defense Secretary Robert Gates says is needed.
The Senate bill funds defense at $672 billion, which includes $158 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. This represents a $17.3 billion cut to the president's request for defense spending for 2011.

The $514 billion base budget is far below the $540 billion Gates has said the Pentagon would need to operate.
The bill does not fund an alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The administration has repeatedly said it does not need the G.E.-Rolls-Royce-built engine.
In addition, the bill cuts $9 billion across operations and maintenance accounts due to "programmatic adjustments, historic under-execution and unsupported requests for civilian personnel increases," according to a committee statement.

German Defense Secretary Sacks State Secretary

BONN - One day after coming into office, Germany's new defense secretary Thomas de Maizière sacked Walter Otremba, one of the two permanent state secretaries.
Under de Maizière's predecessor, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Otremba, 59, had been responsible for the restructuring of the Bundeswehr. He headed the commission that designed the plan for changing the leadership structure of the military and the defense department.

In his March 4 announcement, de Maizière said reforms would continue, but said he would pause for a thorough assessment of the situation before making any decisions.
A department spokesman gave no reasons for Otremba's transfer to a temporary retirement, and said a successor would be named soon.

EADS Won't Protest USAF Tanker Pick

EADS North America will not protest the U.S. Air Force's decision to award a $35 billion aerial refueling contact to Boeing last week, senior company officials announced March 4.
The announcement clears the way for the Air Force to begin buying KC-135 replacements after more than a decade of trying to get the program off the ground.

Ralph Crosby, chairman of EADS North America, told reporters that while the company still believes it offered a better aircraft, it would not contest the service's selection of a smaller Boeing offer.
"After meeting with the Air Force and the Department of Defense, and evaluating the information they provided to us in their debriefing, EADS North America has decided not to protest the KC-X contract award," he said. "Our reasoning is simple: The acquisition architecture for this procurement ... was quite mechanistic and mathematical. The outcome was decided by price, and Boeing's offer was at a lower price than ours."
The company made the announcement during a briefing with reporters at the National Press Club in Washington. On Feb. 24, the Air Force announced it had chosen a tanker variant of the Boeing 767 to be its KC-X aircraft.
Sean O'Keefe, president and CEO of EADS North America, said the company believes it offered an "incredibly aggressive, very, very solid proposal."
Still, Crosby said the Air Force did not fully answer all of the company's questions during a debrief earlier this week.
"In this case, the debriefing was very brief," he said.

U.K. May Slash Hawk Advanced Trainers By One-Third

LONDON - Britain may cut its fleet of Hawk T2 advanced training aircraft by nearly one-third following last year's government decision to slash the number of combat jets flown by the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy.
Eight, maybe more, of the new BAE Systems jets could be disposed of without ever having been used for training pilots, industry executives here said.

"The requirement is for about 20 aircraft, but we are looking at how we might keep other T2s occupied by offering training to foreign governments as part of the Military Flying Training System program," one executive here said.
A Ministry of Defence spokesman said he could provide no details on possible T2 cuts as the department continues to explore a number of options. He dismissed suggestions the aircraft could be used to update the Red Arrows aerobatic team from the current T1 Hawk.
The previous government ordered 28 of the Hawk Advanced Jet Trainers, known as the T2 in RAF service, in a controversial 450 million-pound ($733.5 million) deal with BAE, in part to keep the aircraft in production.
Now, with deliveries of the new glass cockpit version of the Hawk almost complete, focus is switching to exactly how many trainer jets and pilots will be needed after the Strategic Defense and Security Review last year axed the Harrier GR9 fleet and heavily reduced Tornado GR4 numbers.
Further cuts to the Tornado fleet are possible as the MoD attempts to nail down spending plans for fiscal 2011, which will require another round of heavy capability and program reductions to bring the department's budget into balance.
One MoD insider said the number of fast-jet pilots emerging from the training pipeline next year could be between 30 percent and 40 percent lower than the usual output.
Just how serious the pilot cuts are was illustrated last week when Defence Secretary Liam Fox announced that 170 of the 514 pilots already in the training pipeline would be dropped. The bulk of the reductions are expected to fall in the fast-jet pilot sector.
The cuts were part of a redundancy program that will see RAF personnel numbers fall by 5,000 over the next four years to about 33,500.
Army and Navy cuts are due to be detailed early next month. Some 17,000 military personnel are expected to be made redundant.