China’s missile turducken

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PROGRAMMING NOTE: NatSec Daily will be off for Thanksgiving this Thursday and Friday but back in your inboxes — way too full — on Monday, Nov. 29.

Ahead of Thanksgiving, the Financial Times’ DEMETRI SEVASTOPULO revealed that China’s July hypersonic missile test was more than initially thought: It was a weapons turducken.

The launch “included a technological advance that enabled it to fire a missile as it approached its target travelling at least five times the speed of sound — a capability no country has previously demonstrated,” he reported. “Pentagon scientists were caught off guard by the advance, which allowed the hypersonic glide vehicle, a manoeuvrable spacecraft that can carry a nuclear warhead, to fire a separate missile mid-flight in the atmosphere over the South China Sea, according to people familiar with the intelligence. Experts at Darpa, the Pentagon’s advanced research agency, remain unsure how China managed to fire countermeasures from a vehicle travelling at hypersonic speeds.”

So inside China’s new evasive missile is yet another projectile — and it can be launched even as the whole system is hurtling toward earth.

Two points immediately come to mind.

One, the news backs up what Gen. DAVID THOMPSON, vice chief of space operations in the Space Force, said at the Halifax International Security Forum over the weekend: “We’re not as advanced as the Chinese or the Russians in terms of hypersonic programs” and the U.S. has “catching up to do very quickly.”

Two, without seeing the data, it’s really hard to know what that supposed second missile is, what it does and what it’s for. To get a better sense, NatSec Daily reached out to prominent experts to see how they reacted to the news. Each noted that the public needs more information before making a real assessment — there’s still so much unknown — but they still have some (written) ideas about what it all means.

JAMES ACTON, co-director of nuclear policy program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: “If the reports are correct, it’s very impressive technologically. Difficult to assess its strategic/military significance because there’s no public evidence what the ‘missile’ is for. My guess (and this is just a guess) is that the missile is designed to help the glider penetrate homeland missile defenses in one way or another — which the glider could do without such help; indeed, which China’s ICBMs can already do.”

REBECCAH HEINRICHS, senior fellow, Hudson Institute: “China really wants to have the ability to hit our assets with as little warning or certainty for the US about what’s coming. For us I think it means, at least for now: arms control is dead, the idea that our defenses promoted this is dead, and the hope of further cuts to, or diminishing, our own deterrent is dead.”

JOSHUA POLLACK, senior research associate, Middlebury Institute of International Studies: “Based on what’s appeared in FT, this sounds like an astoundingly overdesigned system. It slices, it dices. It’s a floor wax and a dessert topping. I don’t have a clear and convincing idea of why that is. An orbiter that releases (or is also!) a glider that shoots a missile that presumably also sends tweets in flight. Yeah. It’s overkill.”

Straining to grasp China’s leaps in missile technology might be the norm in the years ahead as Beijing proceeds to invest in hypersonics.

“China is expanding its capacity to develop weapons that can be fired from hypersonic missiles,” the Wall Street Journal’s ALASTAIR GALE reported today. “The state-controlled AVIC Aerodynamics Research Institute said it is set to open a new wind tunnel capable of replicating the speeds and high temperatures faced by hypersonic missiles. The new wind tunnel’s roles include testing the ‘separation and release’ of weapons from hypersonic vehicles, the institute said in a news release Sunday.”

The Inbox

A GLOBAL THERAPY SESSION ABOUT AMERICA: Alex spent the weekend in Canada to report on the 2021 Halifax International Security Forum, an annual pro-democracy conference where current and former officials rally to counter autocratic forces.

China and Russia came up often, of course, but the surprise was how often U.S. allies mentioned their concerns about the state of American democracy and Washington’s commitment to global issues.

MALCOLM TURNBULL, Australia’s prime minister from 2015 to 2018, agreed that allies are worried about the United States. “The U.S. is by far the most important of the Western democracies,” he said. “We all have a vested interest in the health of American democracy. So, yeah, I think it is a real concern.”

Even one of the six U.S. senators in attendance, Virginia Democrat TIM KAINE, got the message loud and clear.

“I do feel like there’s no ground for cockiness. Sometimes a little bit of humility actually enables you to make better connections with other nations because we’re not really in a position to lecture,” he said in an interview. “We are in a position to dialogue, share experiences, share best practices, acknowledge areas where we have to work together.”

On Monday, a report by the Sweden-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance listed the U.S. as a backsliding democracy for the first time. “The United States is a high-performing democracy, and even improved its performance in indicators of impartial administration (corruption and predictable enforcement) in 2020,” ALEXANDER HUDSON, co-author of the report, told the Guardian. “However, the declines in civil liberties and checks on government indicate that there are serious problems with the fundamentals of democracy.”

Read the full story from Alex, ANDREW DESIDERIO and PAUL MCLEARY.

UKRAINE INTEL CHIEF SAYS RUSSIA MIGHT INVADE BY FEB.: Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency chief, Brig. Gen. KYRYLO BUDANOV, says Russia’s 92,000 troops stationed around his nation are preparing to attack by early February.

“Such an attack would likely involve airstrikes, artillery and armor attacks followed by airborne assaults in the east, amphibious assaults in Odessa and Mariupul and a smaller incursion through neighboring Belarus,” Military Times’ HOWARD ALTMAN summarized the general’s comments after an interview. “The attack Russia is preparing, said Budanov, would be far more devastating than anything before seen in the conflict that began in 2014 that has seen some 14,000 Ukrainians killed.”

This is different messaging from that of other top Ukrainian officials. Ukraine’s new defense minister, OLEKSIY REZNIKOV, signaled to the Washington Post last week that he was unaware if Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN had made a decision about a new invasion. Other top Ukrainian officials told reporters in Halifax the same thing over the weekend.

As of now, it’s unclear if Budanov was expressing his own view or if he offered more than he should have. Still, former commander of U.S. Army Europe, retired Gen. BEN HODGES, said the defense intel chief is on to something.

“A very credible assessment...and the Kremlin is banking on Berlin, Brussels, Paris, London, and DC discounting it as a possibility,” he tweeted Monday. “The Kremlin seeks to present Ukraine to the West as a ‘failed state’ and to suppress any willingness by the West to support UKR if invaded.”

Sen. MARK WARNER (D-Va.), the Senate Intelligence Committee chair, today urged President JOE BIDEN in a statement to “work with our allies to demonstrate to Mr. Putin that further actions to destabilize Europe’s security will bring about devastating consequences for Russia’s economy and its further isolation from the civilized world.”

U.S. SANCTIONS 4 ISIS-K MEMBERS: In joint moves Monday, the Treasury Department sanctioned ISMATULLAH KHALOZAI as a “financial facilitator” for ISIS-K in Afghanistan while the State Department designated three members of the group — SANAULLAH GHAFARI, SULTAN AZIZ AZAM and MAULAWI RAJAB — as terrorists for their roles as leaders of the organization.

ISIS and the Taliban have been fighting, especially since the U.S. and its allies withdrew from the country. Meanwhile, the U.S. has prioritized counterterrorism in Afghanistan — hence the heightened pressure on the group.

FLYING TURKEY: The Defense Logistics Agency today released details about its mission to ensure U.S. troops serving around the world can enjoy Thanksgiving this year. This year, service members will enjoy:

— 5,706 whole turkeys
— 59,666 pounds of roasted turkeys
— 99,187 pounds of beef
— 51,994 pounds of ham
— 43,767 pounds of shrimp
— 38,400 pounds of sweet potatoes
— 68,465 pounds of pies and cakes
— 23,461 gallons of eggnog

A DoD news release adds “The planning and preparation for the troops’ holiday meal starts as early as March at DLA Troop Support. Many ingredients for the meals are on hand at prime vendor locations by September, and the overseas locations start receiving high-volume items, like the turkeys and more than 192 tons of trimmings, in October.”

IT’S MONDAY: Thanks for tuning in to NatSec Daily. This space is reserved for the top U.S. and foreign officials, the lawmakers, the lobbyists, the experts and the people like you who care about how the natsec sausage gets made. Aim your tips and comments at [email protected] and [email protected], and follow us on Twitter at @alexbward and @QuintForgey.

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Flashpoints

TWO MISSIONARIES FREED FROM ABDUCTION IN HAITI: Of the 17 members of a missionary group who were kidnapped in Haiti by the 400 Mawozo gang on Oct. 16, two have been freed and are now safe, the Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries said Sunday, per the Associated Press’ HAROLD ISAAC.

The missionary group consists of 16 U.S. citizens and one Canadian, including five children — one of whom is just 8 months old. A local human rights organization said the group’s Haitian driver also was abducted. Christian Aid Ministries said it wouldn’t provide the names of the two people freed or other details about their release.

Isaac reported that the 400 Mawozo gang’s leader “has threatened to kill the hostages unless his demands are met. Authorities have said the gang was demanding $1 million per person, although it wasn’t immediately clear that included the children in the group.”

WOMEN’S TENNIS ASSOCIATION STILL WORRIED ABOUT PENG: The Women’s Tennis Association isn’t satisfied with Chinese tennis star PENG SHUAI’s video call Sunday with THOMAS BACH, the president of the International Olympic Committee, per Reuters’ BRENDA GOH. “This video does not change our call for a full, fair and transparent investigation, without censorship, into her allegation of sexual assault, which is the issue that gave rise to our initial concern,” a WTA spokesperson said.

After alleging on Nov. 2 that China’s former Vice-Premier ZHANG GAOLI had sexually assaulted her, Peng disappeared from public view. But the editor in chief of a Chinese state-run media outlet posted a video Sunday of Peng at a youth tennis tournament in Beijing, and a Chinese Foreign ministry spokesperson said today that Peng has attended public activities recently.

The WTA spokesperson said that while “[i]t was good to see Peng Shuai in recent videos … they don’t alleviate or address the WTA’s concern about her well-being and ability to communicate without censorship or coercion.”

The uncertainty about Peng’s welfare is one of several factors prompting American officials to reconsider the United States’ level of participation in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. Last week, Biden said he was weighing a diplomatic boycott of the games, which would still allow American athletes to compete.

State Department spokesperson NED PRICE today said the U.S. is “closely monitoring” Peng’s situation.

Keystrokes

RANSOMWARE LOOMS OVER HOLIDAY SHOPPING: Retailers scrambling to fulfill customers’ Black Friday and holiday purchases have another challenge to face: ransomware.

“In the past year, retailers have increasingly found themselves battling ransomware gangs. Sophos Labs estimates that retail was the most-hit sector in 2020, tied with education, with 44 percent of organizations struck. And heading into Black Friday, the cyber risk assessment company BitSight estimated in a report this morning that about 60 percent of the retail sector is at a ‘heightened risk’ of ransomware attacks because of poor cybersecurity practices, including slow patching of vulnerabilities,” our own SAM SABIN reported in Weekly Cybersecurity.

“Given the economy overall is recovering from Covid impacts, this is an even more important shopping season than there probably has ever been,” said SIMON JELLEY, general manager and vice president of product at the cybersecurity firm Veritas Technologies.

Sabin notes that cyber problems around the holidays are a growing concern. “Malware has long been a Black Friday and Cyber Monday concern. In 2019, security threat researchers at SonicWall Capture Labs estimated that 129.3 million malware attacks were deployed during the week of Thanksgiving, a 63 percent increase from the year before,” she wrote.

The Complex

3 FINALISTS FOR MDA HYPERSONIC INTERCEPTOR CONTRACT: And then there were three.

Defense News’ JEN JUDSON reported over the weekend that the Missile Defense Agency named three finalists to design a hypersonic missile interceptor: Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.

“The interceptors are intended to counter a hypersonic weapon during its glide phase of flight, a challenge as the missiles can travel more than five times the speed of sound and can maneuver, making it hard to predict a missile’s trajectory,” she wrote. “The interceptors will be designed to fit into the U.S. Navy’s current Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense destroyers. It will be fired from its standard Vertical Launch System and integrated with the modified Baseline 9 Aegis Weapon System that detects, tracks, controls and engages hypersonic threats.”

“We are pleased to have these contractors working with us to develop design concepts for the GPI,” Rear Adm. TOM DRUGGAN, MDA’s Sea-based Weapon Systems program executive, said in a news release. “Multiple awards allow us to execute a risk reduction phase to explore industry concepts and maximize the benefits of a competitive environment to demonstrate the most effective and reliable Glide Phase Interceptor for regional hypersonic defense, as soon as possible.”

On the Hill

NDAA-LAYED: Our friends over at Morning Defense (for Pros!) note that the must-pass, usually bipartisan, typically crisis-free National Defense Authorization Act is once again delayed on the Hill.

The Senate’s NDAA is on hold until after Thanksgiving, after a deal to vote on 19 amendments fell through late last week.

Next up: Senate Democrats have moved to cut off debate and lined up procedural votes for when they return next week. But an agreement will need to be struck to move forward with amendments. Otherwise, the Senate might have to pass the NDAA with little debate on senators’ proposals.

Making the cut: It wasn’t all bad news: 58 uncontroversial amendments did get included in the bill, including a proposal by Sen. TAMMY DUCKWORTH (D-Ill.) to establish a 16-member commission to review the Afghanistan war and withdrawal.

The Senate also tacked on annual intelligence policy legislation to the NDAA, as well as amendments shifting weapons funding. That includes an effort from Wisconsin’s senators to authorize $109 million for the Army to purchase heavy tactical trucks built by Oshkosh, and a proposal by Sens. ROGER WICKER (R-Miss.) and Kaine to boost R&D for undersea warfare by $11 million.

Broadsides

“I AM NOT A VICTIM”: Last Friday, the RAND Corporation’s SAMUEL CHARAPwrote an op-ed in POLITICO Magazine saying America’s approach to stopping Russian incursion of Ukraine isn’t working. Instead, he proposed a different policy: Pressure Kyiv to broker a diplomatic deal with Moscow over territory Russia captured.

“For Putin, the use of force is not an end in itself; if he can get some of what he wants without war, he likely will take it. If Russia does not pull back following Ukraine’s concessions, there would at least be a stronger Western consensus in support of Kyiv against Moscow — and the concessions themselves could be undone,” Charap wrote.

This led to some strong backlash from former officials and experts on — where else? — Twitter. “I am amazed by all these pro-Putin characters in Washington who know little or nothing about Russia & even less about Ukraine. They call for Western appeasement with Russia & agitate against Western sanctions against Russia & military support for Ukraine. They are all wrong,” tweeted ANDERS ASLUND, a former Atlantic Council senior fellow who advised the Russian government from 1991 to 1994.

“[N]ot only is the piece in question unabashed appeasement, but it is built upon lies and distortions,” TOOMAS HENDRIK ILVES, the former president of Estonia, piled on.

NatSec Daily called Charap to get his view on the vitriol. “We ought to be having a discussion about the substance,” he said. “People want to engage in personal attacks” over an “emotionally charged issue.” In Charap’s mind, America’s options to stop Russia are limited and the administration is left only with “unsavory choices.”

Despite the backlash, Charap insists “I am not a victim.” The majority of people who’ve reached out to him since his piece was published — those who agreed and disagreed — did so respectfully and substantively, he said.

(For transparency’s sake, Alex is on-record about how he feels: “Debate the argument. Don’t smear the person making it.”)

Transitions

— FASEEH MANGI was appointed Bloomberg News’ Pakistan bureau chief. Previously, he reported for The Express Tribune.

What to Read

— LEE KEATH, The Associated Press: “Jobs lost, middle class Afghans slide into poverty, hunger”

— NEKTARIA STAMOULI, POLITICO Europe: “How Athens became the unexpected hub for Afghan women”

— SHELBY HOLLIDAY, The Wall Street Journal: “An Inside Look at the U.S. Strategy in Guam as China Stockpiles Missiles”

Tomorrow Today

— The Atlantic Council, 8 a.m.: “How to Build Independent Media in Ukraine — with MYROSLAVA BARCHUK, BRIAN BONNER, MELINDA HARING, YEVHEN HLIBOVYTSKY and SEVGIL MUSAIEVA”

— The Center for Strategic and International Studies, 9 a.m.: “Beyond COP26: Just Transitions — with SALIEM FAKIR, CHANTAL NAIDOO and KARTIKEYA SINGH”

— Chatham House, 9 a.m.: “China’s Development Project in MENA — with TIN HINANE EL KADI, STELLA HONG ZHANG, SOPHIE ZINSER and SANAM VAKIL”

— The Center for Strategic and International Studies, 11 a.m.: “The Future of the Organization of American States — with LUIS ALMAGRO and RYAN C. BERG”

— The Hudson Institute, 12 p.m.: “AUKUS: A Model for Other U.S. Allies and Partners? — with BRYAN CLARK, JOHN LEE and HENRY SOKOLSKI”

— The Atlantic Council, 12:30 p.m.: “Book Launch: American Kleptocracy — with MELINDA HARING, BEN JUDAH, PAUL MASSARO, CASEY MICHEL and MICHAEL SALLAH”

— The Wilson Center, 1:30 p.m.: “Illegal Detentions and Human Rights Issues in Eastern Ukraine: A Conversation with STANISLAV ASEYEV — with EMILY COUCH, MYKHAILO MINAKOV, MATTHEW ROJANSKY and MARIA TOMAK”

Have a natsec-centric event coming up? Transitioning to a new defense-adjacent or foreign policy-focused gig? Shoot us an email at [email protected] or [email protected] to be featured in the next edition of the newsletter.

And thanks to our editor, Ben Pauker, who shoots off his edits at Mach 5 speed.