Pointless Posturing Update

(Roosevelt said something about walking softly and carrying a big stick. Indeed. Old, but gotta love F-14s)

The pointless posturing of our title is by the Iranian regime. So it seems the Iranians backed down, and then having backed down, told the US Navy that it couldn't operate it's aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf (or, if you want to annoy the Iranians, the Arabian Gulf - isn't language funny.)

The US Navy gave Iran a stern ignoring. Quelle surprise.

And it will carry on until the Iranians need another external mini-crisis for internal political pressures. At least President Obama doesn't have to (although the GOP do, it seems). 

Good going USN.

Umm, not the 1st of April yet...

 

(We are here. Infidels are here, here and here. Apostates over there. Good. Points? Questions?)

Those kray-zee Iranians.

Just when Christmas television looked like getting everyone down, up popped the comedy act that is North Korea* to entertain us with their choreographed grief (though believe me, if I were living in Pyongyang, I'd have cried and wailed with the best of them just in case someone decided that I had been insufficiently upset and felt that a little reeducation was in order.)

Not to be outdone by their former colleagues in the Axis-of-Evil, Iranian Admiral Habibollah Sayyari says it would be "very easy" for his navy to shut down the Strait of Hormuz (SoH) if the nasty west (and especially the nasty EU led by the confounded British, whose hand is behind everything bad in the Islamic Republic, I'm reliably informed) has the temerity to impose oil sanctions on Iran for its repeated violations of the NPT, which the IAEA noted in their 18 Nov 11 Resolution. And here's a nice piece from the good people at APM's Marketplace - they do a great daily podcast, too.

Excellent, certainly a move that's all about the spirit of the season, and likely to bring everyone together and allow us all to get along better and all of that. 

But is it feasible?

(Ah. Rather narrow then.)

The strait is about 34nm across at it's narrowest point, and more importantly, the commercial traffic goes through the two 2nm corridors marked on this helpful map. And given the major Iranian naval base at Bandar Abbas is nice and close, in principle Iran's two naval arms - IRIN and the IRGC(N) - could make a stab at "closing" the SoH if they so chose. However, this overlooks a couple of things.

First, legality. Such a blockade would be illegal (states have the right to peacefully sail through straits worldwide) - something established in customary international law and in the 1948 ICJ Judgement in the Corfu Channel case - unless it was an act of war. An Iranian declaration of war against the rest of the world seems somewhat unlikely, and so in the absence of a UNSCR allowing for Iran to close the SoH (inconceivable), then the Iranians would be acting illegally.

Second, actual capability. Does Iran really want to take on the US Navy and her allies in a shooting match in the SoH whether on the water or from shore based missile and artillery batteries (or both?)? I can't see it - the Iranians could get lucky and cause some damage to naval vessels escorting oil tankers or patrolling the Straits - but the risk of retaliation sinking the rest of your fleet (or worse, starting a broader war) is such that you'd have to be nuts to try it. And this blog (at least) doesn't think that the Iranian regime irrational - more than anything else, it is solidly focused on it's own survival.

So, nothing to see here - let's all get back to the Christmas specials on telly. But not a clever move by the Iranians, and I suspect, not one that they're going to enact, irrespective of their domestic posturing.

Finally, in the spirit of goodwill to all men, in the unlikely event that this does kick off, please don't ask the Royal Navy how many spare ships it has to send out to help out in the SoH. You may get an answer similar to asking the RAF how many maritime patrol aircraft they can quickly send. Seen from here, the choices made in SDSR 2010 are looking less clever by the month.

*As long as you don't live in it or near it, clearly.

UK's nuclear future: Beyond Trident

Vanguard-class SSBN - one of the UK's four current SSBNs

Part 2 of 3

In which we look at the options..


Current Position

Today, somewhere at sea, one of four Royal Navy Vanguard class nuclear powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs in Navy-speak) is currently busy avoiding detection, carrying 48 warheads on 12 Trident II D-5 SLBMs. Having at least one UK SSBN at sea ready to fire has been maintained since 1968, so-called Continuous At-Sea Deterrence (CASD), a very proud record for the RN. Indeed, mathematically the RN required 5 SSBNs to achieve CASD, so achieving this with four SSBNs for more than 40 years is from a technical and operational perspective very commendable - well done them.

The British submarine's 48 warheads are independently targetable, which makes an SSBNs nuclear payload both highly survivable and enormously destructive. As detailed in SDSR, the UK's warhead stockpile will decline from 225 warheads today to no more than 180 by mid-2020s, and the total number deployed at any one time will decline to 40 warheads on 8 missiles. The UK claims that this is in line with the UK's commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NNPT).

The Vanguard class entered service in the early 1990s, and were designed for a 25-year life. Given a nine-year life extension programme as currently anticipated, the submarines will need replacement from 2028. Building nuclear submarines is a complicated business, meaning that the UK needs to make a decision no later than late 2015; helpfully, this is immediately after the next election (May 2015), which allows the Conservative Lib-Dem coalition to avoid a divisive decision on the future of the UK nuclear weapons programme; the Tories want a like-for-like replacement of Trident, and the Lib-Dems do not, but what the Lib-Dems do advocate is not entirely clear. Some, like the out-going Labour Government want to reduce the SSBN fleet to 3, making CASD probably impossible to maintain, others favour a cheaper cruise missile on existing attack submarines (SSNs) or aircraft, and yet others advocate getting out of the nuclear weapons game altogether. I'll use the NAO's 2008 Trident Replacement study and the House of Commons library's papers for the policy and the numbers.

What, then, are the UK's options? Fear not, we'll return to the UK's needs in part 3.

UK Options
Ignoring impossibly expensive options, like building a full nuclear triad of land and submarine based missiles and manned bombers, there are five main options. First, like-for-like replacement of Trident, maintaining CASD. Second, limited Trident replacement not including CASD. Third, nuclear tipped cruise missiles either from attack submarines or from aircraft. Fourth, air dropped bombs. Fifth, no fielded capability, but with a breakout capability whereby the UK could have a an air-dropped bomb in 12 - 24 months.

(No, not no to cruise. No to nuclear cruise - conventional cruise is much too useful to be jeopardised).

We can reject the third option immediately - nuclear armed cruise missiles. This is because the UK's existing cruise missiles - Tomahawk from submarines and Storm Shadow from Tornado aircraft - are useful in their different roles, and though each were designed to have an optional nuclear payload, it would be extremely dangerous to have both conventional and nuclear tipped versions of the same cruise missiles.

Why?

Simple: if you're on the receiving end of a cruise missile attack, and you cannot tell whether the missiles are conventionally or nuclear armed, then the incentive is to assume you're about to get nuked and therefore fire your nuclear missiles off. This is called the "signalling problem" and actually makes the world materially less stable. Consequently, the UK should not invest in nuclear cruise missiles for as long as it has conventionally armed cruise missiles. And it will for a long while as conventional cruise missiles are very useful.

Option One: Like for Like Replacement, maintaining CASD
Replacement - with four SSBNs and 12 - 16 missile tubes, each containing an upgraded Trident II missile, and mounting four independently targeted warheads. These could be based at Faslane as now, or to save some money, move them to Devonport, Plymouth or Portsmouth, closing HM Naval Base Clyde, Faslane. Likely bill - £20bn for the submarines, £100bn or so over 30 years for the whole system to 2045.

Option Two: Smaller replacement, breaking CASD
It is suggested that the UK could make do with three - or possibly only two - SSBNs, by electing not to have CASD. This would see SSBNs in port or at sea for training, and sortied for deterrent patrols at a time of heightened tensions. The level of savings is unclear, and it provides no guaranteed survivability against a first strike. This option also has signalling problems as the fact that an SSBN was put to sea in a time of tension could be interpreted as a major escalation.


Option Four: Free Fall Air Dropped Bombs
A return to Britain's starting point in the nuclear weapons arena, this option would see the RAF - and possibly the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm (FAA) off the carriers in future - using manned aircraft dropping free-fall nuclear bombs. In the short to medium term this would from Tornado strike aircraft or from multirole Typhoons, and in the longer term the Joint Strike Fighter. This would be considerably cheaper than the SSBN option as it would be an additional role for existing aircraft used primarily in other roles, but would be much less survivable from a surprise first strike, could require forward basing rights to strike targets at intercontinental ranges, and compared to an SLBM, aircraft are significantly easier to attack en route to target.

Option Five: Exit the nuclear club
If the UK does not need to have nuclear weapons, then it would be considerably cheaper to exit the nuclear club and retain a breakout capability at Aldermaston. This would mean the ability to fabricate existing designs on air-dropped nuclear weapons with 24 months notice, and in the meantime the scientists and technicians could be put to work in disarmament verification and cooperative threat reduction.

So, some options. In part 3, we'll look at the UK's needs and make recommendations.

Stuxnet: Implications of Weaponising Cyberspace?

(Ahmadinejad tries the old Jedi mind-trick: "These are not the enrichment centrifuges you're looking for....")

A couple of weeks ago, the NY Times published a remarkable article on the apparent use of an advanced computer virus allegedly developed by US and Israeli computer scientists designed to specifically target and destroy Iranian uranium enrichment centrifuges at Natanz, by targeting the Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) control systems.

Over on OpinoJuris Professor Duncan Hollis of Temple Law School followed this up with a discussion of whether Stuxnet constitutes the use of force in violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter or an “armed attack” giving the victimized state a right of self defence under Article 51 of the Charter. Interestingly, Hollis suggests that Stuxnet falls under Article 41 of the Charter, and therefore could be legal as the UN Security Council has authorised limited sanctions.

Ignoring the small point that Article 41 explicitly requires Security Council authorisation, and that it is far from obvious that a Stuxnet attack on Natanz is covered by the applicable UNSCRs, Stuxnet raises a series of very interesting international law questions - and specifically Law of Armed Conflict questions over what constitutes the use of force in the networked era.

What is the appropriate basis for determining whether or not there has been an armed attack under Article 2(4)? There is an extensive literature on this, and on the related question of the pre-emptive use of force; however, there is little to guide on us on Stuxnet. My preference is that the definition of an armed attack is by definition somewhat fluid in all but the mental elements - the specific intent of the attacker is to achieve an effect on the target, which is usually, but not limited to, destruction, damage or degradation.

On this reading, what matters is the intended effect on the target, irrespective of the of the method used. Presumably the attacker will use the method most likely to be effective at the minimum cost to him/herself - if this is a bomb dropped by an aircraft so be it, or if it is a computer virus that spins nuclear centrifuges to destruction, then what matters is the intention of those creating and releasing the computer virus.

If true, and this is a developing area of the law, then State Responsibility doctrine applies, and the right of self-defence also applies if a State developed and deployed this virus, or sheltered a non-State actor which did. Therefore, if Stuxnet did operate as claimed, targeting only specific Siemens controllers clustered in groups of 984 as in Natanz, though it is an undoubtedly massive technical achievement, it was also intended to cause the effect of slowing the Iranian enrichment programme through causing technical malfunctions of Natanz's centrifuges causing them to self-destruct - and would therefore meet the effect's based doctrine of an armed attack.

The implications of this are vast. First, if the NY Times article is accurate, then the US and Israel have conducted an armed attack against Iran, which has the legal right to defend itself. Consider the outcry if Iran responded by attacking US Navy ships in the Persian Gulf, or lobbed a missile at the Israeli nuclear facilities at Dimona? But faced with the reverse scenario of Iranian hackers successfully interdicting a critical element of the US or Israeli nuclear programme, I'm sure that the US and Israel would take the view that this constituted an attack, and would not rule out a forcible response.

Second, the State Responsibility doctrine relating to non-State actors is going to be much harder to enforce in cyberspace than in the physical world. It was straightforward to how in 2001 that Al Qaeda were based in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan: the camps were physically there, and the Taliban in effect admitted that Bin Laden et al were in territory that they controlled. This acceptance provided the legal mandate for the use of force against the Taliban who were held responsible for the actions of the AQ leadership.

However, consider the position of a group of disaffected hackers in the UK who were able to create a Stuxnet style virus which destroyed the electricity grid in China. Not sponsored by the UK Government, it is quite possibly the UK would have no idea that they were operating from UK territory. If this were an armed attack, either the UK itself would take on responsibility for the action of the non-State group (hardly appealing), find and suppress the organisation (likely to be difficult) or would have to submit to Chinese actions against the hackers on UK soil (as the UK was unwilling or unable to stop them - also unattractive.) If nothing else, this possibility raises the possibility that States will want to have better information about who is doing what on their territory, raising further challenges for civil liberties.

Finally, western infrastructure is heavily, and increasingly, dependent on automation through SCADA controllers: it is much more efficient to have a computer opening and closing valves and controlling power grids than using a telephone to call an engineer in the middle of the night. Consequently our societies are intrinsically more vulnerable to this sort of attack than those which are less technologically advanced with fewer integrated control systems.

So Stuxnet marks a legal watershed as well as a technical triumph. What follows will be very interesting to watch as the law attempts to catch up with the technological advances.

And I wonder if I've just found a PhD topic?