U.S. Pacific Fleet Head Warns of Tactical Missteps

HONG KONG - The U.S. 7th Fleet commander said Nov. 9 he was not worried about a major conflict in Asia but about small incidents with unpredictable consequences in areas such as the South China Sea.
Vice Adm. Scott Swift said military-to-military dialogue between Washington and Beijing was taking place at the highest levels of command and both sides shared a desire to minimize tensions.

"I think we are in a very positive place with China and the vectors are moving in the right direction," he told reporters in Hong Kong, where the George Washington aircraft carrier was making a visit. "We need to be as transparent as we possibly can."
But he said areas such as the potentially resource-rich South China Sea, where several countries including China have territorial and maritime claims, required greater cooperation to avoid dangerous flare-ups over minor incidents.
"In general terms I'm concerned about any tactical trigger with strategic implications," Swift said.
Swift said the Association of Southeast Asian Nations had made "significant progress" in encouraging dialogue between the rival claimants to the sea, which stretches off China's southern coast into vital sea lanes.
"There's not much that keeps me up at night, and I'm not worried about a major conflict breaking out anywhere in the region," he said. "I do have concerns about a specific brush-up that could result in a tactical miscalculation, but I think rapid compromise will prevail and those incidents will be appropriately adjudicated at the diplomatic level."
Swift's visit to Hong Kong, the autonomous southern Chinese harbor city formerly ruled by Britain, comes as Washington talks up Asia's strategic importance to the United States.
In his first trip to the Asia-Pacific region since taking over at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said last month that the United States wanted to strengthen its presence in the Pacific.

China-Pakistani military drill not targeted at India

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- File Photo

BEIJING: Brushing aside New Delhi media’s frenzy over joint anti-terrorism exercise, the Ministry of National Defence here has dismissed Indian reports that China and Pakistan are holding a joint military exercise to put pressure on New Delhi, and said the anti-terror drill is not targeted at any third country.
According to the annual exchange plan between China and Pakistan’s militaries, the two armies will hold the ‘Friendship 2011′ joint anti-terror exercise near Islamabad, The China Daily quoted the Information Office of the Ministry of National Defence.
“This is the first joint drill of the two armies this year and is not targeted at any third nation. It is aimed at enhancing the capability of the two militaries to handle non-traditional security threats and launch joint anti-terror activities,” the office said in a written reply.
The two-week exercise will begin on Nov 16, it said.
Fu Xiaoqiang, an expert on South Asian studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, while rejecting the report accused the Indian media of basing such reports on “hearsay evidence”.
“They always wear blinkers to examine China cooperation with Pakistan.
For example, we all know there are many Chinese experts and engineers in Pakistan working on large projects. It is the Indian media which linked that with security issues,” he said.
Premier Wen Jiabao suggested that the Indian media should stop overplaying security issues and make more positive efforts to improve bilateral relations, when he visited the country last year.
The premier said that, in recent years, there has been no conflict in the China-India border area.
“But the border issue has been hyped as a rather serious problem.”

Afghan soldier turns gun on Australian troops, wounds three

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An Afghan soldier shot and wounded three Australian and two Afghan troops . — Photo by AFP

KABUL: An Afghan soldier shot and wounded three Australian and two Afghan troops in southern Afghanistan, the third such surprise attack against Australians in the past five months, officials said on Wednesday.
The shooting comes after a string of attacks by “rogue” soldiers and police, or by insurgents who have infiltrated security forces.
Such attacks are especially damaging as the Afghan National Army (ANA) tries to win public trust before Afghan forces take full responsibility for security nationwide.
Foreign combat troops are due to leave Afghanistan at the end of 2014.
The ANA soldier opened fire with a grenade launcher and an automatic weapon from a position overlooking a patrol base in Uruzgan province late on Tuesday, Australia’s Defence Force commander David Hurley said.
The Australian soldiers sustained wounds that were not life-threatening but serious, while the two Afghan soldiers also shot at the base were in a satisfactory condition, Hurley and a spokesman for the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan said.
The Afghan soldier fled the scene in an army vehicle, Hurley said. ISAF said a search for him was still underway.
Tuesday’s shooting followed a similar attack less than two weeks ago in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, when an Afghan soldier shot and killed three Australian soldiers and an Afghani interpreter.
In May, an Afghan soldier killed an Australian service member who had been mentoring the Afghan army, ISAF said, an attack which also took place in Uruzgan province.
The Afghan soldier was later killed when he refused arrest, ISAF said.
The latest shooting prompted the Australian Greens political party to renew their call for Australia to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, where it has around 1,500 troops.
But Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who made a surprise visit to Kabul in the past week, said Australia would stick with its military commitments in Afghanistan.
“As distressing as these incidents are, as dreadful as these incidents are, our mission in Afghanistan does need to continue,” Gillard told reporters in Melbourne.
“Training is pivotal to that mission and our purpose in Afghanistan is to deny Afghanistan as a country in which terrorists can train to wreak violence around the world.”
In September, an Afghan guard employed by the US embassy opened fire inside a CIA office in Kabul, killing an American contractor.

Taiwan Hawkeye Aircraft Head to U.S. for Upgrade

TAIPEI, Taiwan - Taiwan has sent two early warning aircraft for upgrading in the United States and will send two more as part of an arms deal that upset U.S. ties with Beijing, media and the air force said Nov. 8.
The island's air force confirmed that two U.S.-made E-2T aircraft, which have served the island's air force for 15 years, are being upgraded in the United States and are scheduled to be sent back before the end of the year.

Another two of the planes were transported to the southern Kaohsiung harbor early in the morning under tight security, the state Central News Agency said. The air force declined to comment on that report.
Analysts say all four E-2Ts will be upgraded to the Hawkeye 2000 configuration, which further reduces warning time if the Chinese were to launch an air attack on the island.
The upgrading was part of a $6.5 billion arms sale agreed with Taiwan in 2008. The sale also included advanced interceptor Patriot missiles, Apache attack helicopters and submarine-launched missiles.
Ties between Taipei and Beijing have improved markedly since Ma Ying-jeou of the China-friendly Kuomintang party came to power in 2008 on promises of boosting trade links and allowing more Chinese tourists to visit the island.
But Beijing still sees the island as part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary, even though Taiwan has governed itself since 1949 at the end of a civil war.
China has repeatedly threatened to invade Taiwan should the island declare formal independence, prompting Taipei to seek more advanced weapons, largely from the United States.

U.S. Senate Panel Targets Counterfeit Electronic Parts

The U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee is planning to crack down on counterfeit electronic parts, which more often than not originate in China and eventually make their way to U.S. military weapon systems.

Raytheon notified the U.S. Navy on Sept. 8 that counterfeit transistors had been found on a night vision or FLIR system used on the Navy's SH-60B helicopters. If the FLIR system were to fail, the Navy said the helicopter would be unable to conduct su (GETTY IMAGES)

The committee, led by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., released the results of a months-long investigation on Nov. 7. As part of the investigation, committee staff traced the DoD supply chain back to its start for more than 100 counterfeit parts and found that 70 percent of them originated in China.

"Nearly 20 percent of the remaining cases were tracked to the U.K. and Canada - known resale points for counterfeit electronic parts from China," a background memo from the committee said.
According to a January report from the Commerce Department, counterfeit electronics in the defense industry are on the rise. In 2005, there were 3,868 incidents detected, compared with 9,356 in 2008, according to the report.
Levin and McCain want the Pentagon to better enforce laws that protect the DoD supply chain, but they also admit those laws don't go far enough.
The Senate panel is considering adding language to the defense authorization act for 2012 that would hold contractors responsible for the costs of replacing a part that is discovered to be counterfeit, Levin said at a Nov. 7 press briefing.
Levin said that under cost-plus contracts it is difficult to make the contractor pay for a replacement part unless the government can prove the contractor bought the part knowing that it was counterfeit. Today, the multimillion-dollar price tag of replacing these parts more often falls to the government and the taxpayer, he said.
He would like to see the Pentagon use fewer cost-plus contracts and more fixed-price ones, where bargaining above the negotiated price is limited. Levin said this could help motivate companies to take stronger steps to avoid buying counterfeit parts.
The life of a counterfeit electronic part is long, with many stops along the way. It often begins as electronic waste, shipped from the United States and the rest of the world to Hong Kong. From there, the raw material makes its way to China, where it is broken down, "burned off of old circuit boards, washed in the river, and dried on city sidewalks," according to the Senate report. Part of this process includes removing any indentifying marks, including date codes and part numbers.
Once the old part is made to look brand new, it is shipped to the Chinese city of Shenzhen, which Levin described as the "epicenter" of counterfeit electronics. There, the part can be sold openly in the markets or on the Internet.
From China, the counterfeit part makes its way through the DoD supply chain, often passing through four or five subcontractors before a prime contractor has integrated it onto a weapon system.
The committee found that the Defense Department is particularly vulnerable to counterfeit electronics, because the life of a weapon system long outdates the production of a specific commercial electronic part.
"An electronic part may be manufactured for two years, while a defense system it is used on may be in service for more than two decades," according to the Senate report.
Quoting the director of DoD's Microelectronics Activity Unit, the Senate report says, "The defense community is critically reliant on a technology that obsoletes itself every 18 months, is made in unsecure locations and over which we have absolutely no market share or influence."
During the Nov. 7 press briefing, committee staff highlighted three examples of counterfeit parts making their way into and through the DoD supply chain.
In the first instance, Raytheon notified the U.S. Navy on Sept. 8 that counterfeit transistors had been found on a night vision or FLIR system used on the Navy's SH-60B helicopters. If the FLIR system were to fail, the Navy said the helicopter would be unable to conduct surface warfare missions using Hellfire missiles.
The committee traced the transistors back to Huajie Electronics in Shenzen. From there, the part passed through five different companies before it got to Raytheon.
The second example involved the Air Force's C-27J aircraft, for which L-3 Communications is the prime contractor.
On Sept. 19, L-3 told the Air Force that 38 video memory chips installed on the plane's display units were suspected to be counterfeit. Again, the part originated in Shenzhen with a company called Hong Dark. From there, it was sold to Global IC Trading Group, which sold them to L-3 Displays, a business unit of L-3 Communications.
According to the Senate investigation, L-3 first learned that Hong Dark was the source of counterfeit parts in October 2009.
"In total, the committee identified nearly 30 shipments, totaling more than 28,000 parts from Hong Dark to Global IC Trading Group that were subsequently sold to L-3," the report says.
The final example the committee gave to reporters was on the Navy's P-8A Poseidon, a Boeing 737 airplane that has been modified to include anti-submarine capabilities.
On Aug. 17, Boeing alerted the Navy program office that an ice detection module contained a "reworked part that should not have been put on the airplane originally and should be replaced immediately."
After a failure of that subsystem on the flight line, BAE Systems, which makes the ice detection modules, discovered many of the system's parts were not new.
This time, the committee traced the part to A Access Electronics in Japan, a company affiliated with A Access Electronics in Shenzhen. The company in Japan sold it to Abacus Electronics in Florida, which wired payment to a bank in Shenzhen. Abacus sold the part to Tandex Test Labs, which BAE had hired to "source the parts and screen them for signs of counterfeiting," according to the Senate report.
The Senate committee staff found that Tandex screened the first 50 and sent the remaining 250 to BAE without inspecting them.
In the case of the C-27J and the P-8A, the committee found the companies in question did not notify the government early enough about the suspected parts.
The Senate committee is schedule to hold a hearing on the subject Nov. 8, when three different panels of witnesses will testify, including the head of the Missile Defense Agency and several industry officials.

Export Rules for U.S. Military Aircraft Proposed

The Obama administration has released new draft rules for the export of U.S. military aircraft and associated parts, taking one more step in its ongoing reform effort.
In July, the White House introduced draft rules that outlined how the administration plans to move items off the U.S. Munitions List (USML), which is administered by the State Department, and onto the Commerce Control List (CCL), overseen by the Commerce Department.

Items on the USML - from aircraft to generic parts and components - are all subject to the same controls. However, the CCL's controls are tailored to what the item is and where it is being exported.
This summer, the Obama administration also released details for the first category - Category VII: tanks and military vehicles - as a test case to demonstrate how such transfers could take place.
The Nov. 7 announcement about aircraft is the second category to be released, while the administration continues to work out the transfer details for the remaining categories. Military aircraft and associated parts make up category VIII of the USML.
The Aerospace Industry Association, a leading advocate for export control reform, described the announcement as a "major milestone in the ongoing effort to control more appropriately exports to our allies of sensitive technology.
"The proposed revisions to Category VIII replace vague regulatory language with greater specificity for items remaining on the USML and the creation of new, stronger controls for items moved to the CCL - a proposal that AIA made early in the Obama administration," a statement from the aerospace lobby said.
The draft rules will now be open to a public comment period during which the White House will accept feedback from industry and Capitol Hill.

Austria Reinstates Sacked Chief of General Staff

VIENNA - The Austrian army's chief of general staff, who was dismissed in January after criticizing reform plans for the army, will be reinstated, the defense ministry said Nov. 7.
Defence Minister Norbert Darabos had relieved General Edmund Entacher after he criticized a plan to scrap compulsory military service.

But an appeals commission within the chancellery ruled Nov. 7 that Darabos's arguments for the dismissal were insufficient and quashed the decision, the ministry said in a statement. Darabos had said he sacked Entacher because the army chief of general staff had publicly "undermined (his) confidence."
In an interview with the weekly magazine Profil, Entacher had questioned whether Austria had enough funds or enough applicants to be able to conscription and create a professional army.
"From a legal point of view, my arguments about a loss of trust were obviously insufficient," Darabos said Nov. 7.
But he insisted: "For me, the need for army reforms is not open to discussion." The Austrian army has shrunk dramatically since the fall of the Iron Curtain, and politicians have struggled to define its new role.