U.S. Pays High Price for Pakistan Route Cut-Off: Admiral

WASHINGTON — Moving supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan via Central Asia costs three times as much as routes through Pakistan, which Islamabad shut seven months ago in anger, a senior U.S. officer said June 27.
“On the ground, it’s almost three times more expensive to come from the north as it does from Pakistan. More expensive and slower,” said Vice Adm. Mark Harnitchek, director of the Defense Logistics Agency.
NATO now uses an alternative network of northern routes that pass through Russia, Central Asia and the Caucasus.
Transporting a container from the United States to Afghanistan costs about $20,000, he told a group of defense reporters.
But the cost of ferrying cargo to the Pakistani port of Karachi and then over roads to the Afghan border amounts to only a third of that price, he said.
Pakistan imposed a blockade on NATO supply convoys after 24 of its soldiers were killed by mistake in a U.S. air strike in November along the Afghan border.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said earlier this month that the Pakistan border closure costs the United States an additional $100 million a month.
Before the route cut-off, about 30 percent to 40 percent of the fuel used by coalition forces came through Pakistan.
Fuel is now transported over land via the northern routes, while food is flown in on cargo aircraft, he said.
“It was challenging initially and we took a bit of a dip there in terms of days of supply. But now our stocks of food and fuel have never been higher,” Harnitchek said.
The supply routes will be on the agenda when the commander of NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, General John Allen, meets his counterparts in Pakistan on June 27, officials said.
U.S. officials raised expectations in May that a deal was imminent with Pakistan on the reopening of the routes, but no announcement came and Washington withdrew its team of negotiators.
The United States has refused to issue a formal apology over the air strikes, despite appeals from Pakistan.
Amid continued deadlock, the Pentagon on June 27 expressed hope that a deal eventually could be reached on the supply routes.
“I think there is reason for optimism. I think we’re reaching a point in our relationship with Pakistan that suggests that things are settling down a bit,” spokesman George Little told reporters at a Pentagon briefing.
“I think the basis for some kind of agreement on the GLOCs (ground lines of communication) is there and is real and we hope that we reach a resolution,” he said.

Pakistan Responds to Indian Missile Test , Plans to Conduct Her Own

New Delhi: Just days after India successfully test fired its first Inter Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), Agni-V, Pakistan has said that it plans to conduct a long-range missile test.

The neighbour has informed India that it plans to conduct a long-range missile test in the Indian Ocean over the next five days.

Islamabad has asked New Delhi to issue a notice to all commercial airlines to steer clear of the area.

The move by Pakistan comes just five days after India test fired Agni-V to join the elite club of ICBM nations.

Agni-V, the ICBM test fired by India five days ago, is capable of carrying nuclear warheads and will be crucial for India's defence against China. The missile can carry a pay-load of 1 tonne, is 17 m long, 2 m wide and weighs 50 tonnes. After the missile is inducted into India's strategic forces by 2014-2015, India will acquire a strong deterrent capacity against China.

Agni-V can cover entire China, Eastern Europe, North Eastern and Eastern Africa and even Australia if fired from the Nicobar Islands.

Only the permanent members of the UN Security Council - China, Russia, France, the United States and the United Kingdom - have such long distance missiles. Israel, too, is believed to posses ICBMs although there is no official confirmation of the same.

The missile has a range of 5,000 kilometres, a marked improvement over India's current missiles which can hit potential enemy targets over a distance of just 3,500 kilometres.

Americans take China at Word Over North Korea's Sanctions--------------Defense News

WASHINGTON — The United States said April 19 that it believed China’s assurances that it is abiding by sanctions on North Korea after charges that Beijing supplied technology for a missile launcher.

IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly said that U.N. officials are investigating allegations that China violated sanctions imposed by the Security Council after North Korea unveiled the 16-wheel launcher at a military parade.

“China has provided repeated assurances that it’s complying fully with both Resolution 1718 as well 1874. We’re not presently aware of any U.N. probe into this matter,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters.

“I think we take them at their word,” Toner said, adding that he was not aware of specific conversations between the United States and China about the launcher.

North Korea showed off the launcher, carrying an apparently new medium-range missile, as part of national celebrations on April 15 for the centennial of the birth of the regime’s founder Kim Il-Sung.

Quoting an unidentified official, IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly said China could be in breach of the two resolutions approved after North Korea’s 2006 and 2009 nuclear tests if it passed along the vehicle since then.

U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, who heads a panel of the House Armed Services Committee, asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and intelligence chief James Clapper to investigate whether China supplied the launcher’s technology.

In a letter, Turner quoted military specialist Richard Fisher as telling him that the launcher was “very likely based on a Chinese design” and that the technology transfer would have required a green light from Beijing.

“I am sure you agree that the United States cannot permit a state such as the People’s Republic of China to support — either intentionally or by a convenient lack of attention — the ambitions of a state like North Korea to threaten the security of the American people,” the Ohio Republican wrote.

“Indeed, the possibility of such cooperation undermines the administration’s entire policy of investing China with the responsibility of getting tough on North Korea.”

China, which holds a veto on the Security Council, is the main supporter of North Korea, although it voiced misgivings over Pyongyang’s defiant rocket launch last week.

North Korea described the launch as an unsuccessful bid to put a satellite into orbit, but the United States said it was a disguised missile test.

Separately, Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun reported April 18 that China has stopped sending back fleeing North Koreans in retaliation for its ally’s failure to consult Beijing over its rocket launch.

China’s repatriations have triggered wide criticism overseas, with human rights groups saying that North Koreans face imprisonment, forced abortions and even sometimes execution if returned home.

“We obviously hope that the media reports are true,” Toner said.

But the spokesman said the United States could not confirm a change in China’s policy.

“We consistently urge China to adhere to its international obligations as part of the U.N. Convention on Refugees,” he said.

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Obama warns Iran Of Use Of Force-------------Defense News

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Barack Obama reaffirmed his strong backing for key ally Israel on March 4, warning Iran that he would not hesitate to use force, if required, to stop it developing a nuclear weapon.

“Iran’s leaders should know that I do not have a policy of containment; I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And as I’ve made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests,” Obama said in a keynote address to a pro-Israeli lobby group.

The Red Dragon Flexes more muscle ----------------------Defense News

BEIJING — China said March 4 its military spending would top $100 billion in 2012 — a double-digit increase on last year — in a move likely to fuel concerns about Beijing’s rapid military build-up.

The defense budget will rise 11.2 percent to 670.27 billion yuan ($106.41 billion), said Li Zhaoxing, a spokesman for China’s national parliament, citing a budget report submitted to the country’s rubber-stamp legislature.

The figure marks a slowdown from 2011 when spending rose by 12.7 percent but is still likely to fuel worries over China’s growing assertiveness in the Asia-Pacific region and push its neighbors to forge closer ties with the United States.

Li described the budget as “relatively low” as a percentage of gross domestic product compared with other countries and said it was aimed at “safeguarding sovereignty, national security and territorial integrity”.

“We have a large territory and a long coastline but our defense spending is relatively low compared with other major countries,” Li told reporters.

“It will not in the least pose a threat to other countries.”

China has been increasing its military spending by double digits for most of the past decade, during which time its economy, now the world’s second largest, has grown at a blistering pace.

The People’s Liberation Army — the world’s largest with an estimated 2.3 million troops — is hugely secretive about its defense programs, but insists its modernization is purely defensive in nature.

The rapid military build-up has nevertheless set alarm bells ringing across Asia and in Washington, which announced in January a defense strategy focused on countering China’s rising power.

Analysts said the smaller-than-expected increase in spending this year was an attempt by Beijing to ease concerns in the United States and the region about its growing military might.

“It is doubtful whether the message will get across because most countries know that the real budget is at least double the published one,” said Willy Lam, a leading China expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Lam said funding for modernizing the country’s military was not included in the published budget, which mostly covered salaries for defense personnel and maintenance of existing equipment.

Money for research and development of modern weaponry “comes from elsewhere”, he said.

Taiwan-based PLA expert Arthur Ding said the still considerable growth in this year’s budget would push “regional countries to try to build closer ties with the United States”.

“I think the regional countries will be really concerned about that,” Ding told AFP.

“China has to explain and try to convince the regional countries why they need such a high growth rate.”

Tokyo has repeatedly questioned Beijing’s military intentions. A Japanese government-backed report last month warned that Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea could soon be replicated in neighboring waters.

China lays claim to essentially all of the South China Sea, where its professed ownership of the Spratly archipelago overlaps with claims by Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Brunei and Malaysia.

Beijing and Tokyo also have a long-standing dispute over an uninhabited but strategically coveted island chain known as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese, which lies between Japan and Taiwan in the East China Sea.

The two sides have occasionally clashed diplomatically over the issue, most notably in late 2010, when Japan arrested the captain of a Chinese fishing vessel near the island chain after a collision with its coastguard.

China began revamping the PLA — the former ragtag peasant force formed in 1927 by the Communist Party — in earnest after a troubled 1979 incursion into Vietnam, when the neighbors vied for influence over Southeast Asia.

New Floating Bases For U.S. Navy------Defense News

Decades after the idea was broached for a floating, mobile base to support operating forces in the Persian Gulf, the concept has suddenly shifted into high gear, and a sense of urgency is driving both new U.S. ship construction and conversion of an existing vessel.

A new Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB) is mentioned almost in passing within the Pentagon budget briefing document made public Jan. 26. Development funding will be provided, the document said, for a new AFSB “that can be dedicated to support missions in areas where ground-based access is not available, such as countermine operations.”

Elsewhere, under “industrial base skills,” the documents noted that, “for example, adding the afloat forward staging base addresses urgent operational shortfalls and will help sustain the shipbuilding industry in the near-term and mitigate the impact of reducing ship procurement in the” budget.

What is all this verbiage code for?

“This fulfills a long-standing requirement from U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), going back to the Tanker Wars of the late 1980s,” said Capt. Chris Sims, a spokesman for U.S. Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk, Va.

Sims was referring specifically to a recent decision to modify the amphibious transport dock ship Ponce — which had been scheduled to be decommissioned March 30 — into an interim AFSB able to support minesweeping MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopters.

The ship will be operated jointly by active-duty Navy officers and sailors, and by government civilian mariners employed by Military Sealift Command (MSC) — a hybrid crew similar to those used on the Navy’s two submarine tenders and the command ship Mount Whitney.

Beyond the conversion, though, the Navy now plans to build at least one, and possibly two, AFSBs.

U.S. Navy officials would not publicly confirm the new construction, but sources confirmed the service plans to modify the Mobile Landing Platform (MLP) design to take on the AFSB role.

Three MLPs have been funded for construction at the General Dynamics National Steel and Shipbuilding (NASSCO) shipyard in San Diego. The ships are large, 765-foot-long vessels able to float off small landing craft, tugs or barges.

For the AFSB role, a fourth MLP hull would be modified with several decks, including a hangar, topped by a large flight deck able to operate the heavy H-53s in the airborne mine countermeasures role.

But the AFSB will also be able to carry Marines, support patrol and special operations craft, and fuel and arm other helicopters.

The ship is expected to be requested in 2014.

Sources also said the Navy might be considering modifying the third MLP to the AFSB mission. Construction of that ship, funded in the 2012 defense bill, is being negotiated between NASSCO and the Navy.

Conversion of the Ponce, meanwhile, is proceeding with alacrity. MSC issued requests for proposal (RFPs) on Jan. 24 to upgrade and refit the ship. Bids are to be submitted by Feb. 3, with work to begin in mid-month. The RFPs state that sea trials are to be carried out in mid-April.

The work includes upgrading the ship’s navigation systems, bringing habitability up to MSC standards and general refurbishment. No flight modifications are planned at this time, said MSC spokesman Tim Boulay.

Fleet Forces Command also has begun solicitations for 50 Navy personnel to help man the ship in its special mission role.

The Ponce had returned to Norfolk from its final cruise Dec. 2, and crewmembers had already begun the inactivation process when the order came down to keep the ship running.

Use of the ship, Sims said, was “seen as an opportunity to fulfill that longstanding CENTCOM request.”