Hohe Spannung in Nordafrika. Moskau will Raketen auf Europa richten, indem es sie in Libyen stationiert. Russland will offenbar Raketensysteme auf dem Militärstützpunkt in Sebha, der Hauptstadt des von General Khalifa Haftar kontrollierten libyschen Fezzan, installieren, um sie auf Europa zu richten.
Dies berichtete eine dem Dossier nahestehende Person der „Agenzia Nova“ und gab an, dass sich der Plan bereits in einem fortgeschrittenen Stadium befindet. Sebha, im Süden Libyens etwa 900 Kilometer von Tripolis und etwas mehr als 1000 Kilometer von der italienischen Insel Lampedusa entfernt, ist ein idealer strategischer Punkt, um europäische Ziele mit Mittel- und Langstreckenraketen zu treffen.
Am 12. Mai wurde Abdulghani al Kikli, bekannt als „Ghaniwa“, Anführer der „Stabilitätsunterstützungseinheit“ (DSS), in Tripolis von der Brigade 444 getötet, einer Miliz, die dem Premierminister der libyschen Regierung der nationalen Einheit (Gun), Abdulhamid Dabaiba, treu ist.
Dieser Vorfall löste die schlimmste Gewaltspirale in der libyschen Hauptstadt seit Jahren aus und bot Haftar die Möglichkeit, alle rivalisierenden Milizen zu neutralisieren, nach Tripolis vorzustoßen und die Kontrolle über das ganze Land zu übernehmen.
Die Person, die mit dem Dossier vertraut ist, erklärt: „Haftar rückt zusammen mit seinem Sohn Saddam langsam nach Tripolis vor, um den Flickenteppich der Milizen, die die Hauptstadt verteidigen, zu zerschlagen, Dabaiba festzunehmen oder ins Exil zu schicken, wahrscheinlich nach Istanbul, und die Kontrolle über ganz Libyen zu übernehmen“.
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Even with Russia’s planned military modernisation and build-up, there is no evidence that Putin has the intent to attack a Nato member state. In fact, the Russian leader has assiduously avoided a direct conflict with Nato even as he has expanded operations in Ukraine since 2014. Russia has not attacked shipments of US and European military equipment on their way to Ukrainian forces, has limited missile strikes in Ukraine’s western regions where the risk of an errant missile hitting Nato territory is high, and has refrained from intentional air incursions into Nato airspace near Ukraine’s borders. Given these examples of restraint, it seems unlikely that Putin’s next move would be to start the type of war he has eschewed to this point.
But even if Moscow did launch such a campaign, Europe should be confident in its ability to repel Russian forces, despite its military deficiencies and gaps. If a small country like Ukraine can fight Moscow to a stalemate, despite limited manpower and weapon shortages, Europe fighting as a collective — with many times Russia’s GDP and population — should be able to halt an incursion and drive Putin’s forces back, even without US military support.
Europe has two factors working in its favour: Russia’s military shortcomings and the advantages of defensive warfare. First, the war in Ukraine has revealed the Russian military’s significant weaknesses, including its limited ability to project power over long distances as would be required for an offensive into Nato territory. Second, Ukraine’s battlefield has underscored the advantages that accrue to the defender in modern warfare. In responding to a Russian attack, Europe would be able to exploit these advantages by establishing barriers like minefields and trenches and leveraging drones to make it difficult for an aggressor to advance.
For policymakers in Washington, the bottom line is that even a larger, modernised Russian military does not pose a direct threat to the United States or its interests in Europe, nor does it constitute a challenge that Europe cannot handle itself. The Trump administration should not let Europe’s dire warnings derail its efforts to disentangle itself from continental security burdens or delay its plans to draw down a US military presence in the region. Trump and his advisors should instead move full steam ahead, regardless of changes on the horizon for Russia’s military force.
Jennifer Kavanagh is a senior fellow and director of military analysis at Defense Priorities.
The author is one of the “experts” at Defence Priorities, a staunchly far-Right think-tank founded by supporters of Sen Rand Paul and bank-rolled by the Koch brothers (the money-men for a wide variety of far-Right causes). The article reflects, unsurprisingly, the isolationist philosophy of Trump and MAGA. Withdrawal of the USA from all links to Europe is one of the key policies pushed by these people. Of course the author wants to down-play the threat to Europe posed by Putin, as a way of justifying US disengagement from NATO: see – there is no threat so US support isn’t needed. Besides, staying engaged would under-cut Trump’s pathetic fantasy that Putin is just another strong man (like himself) with whom a deal can be made. These isolationist views are not limited to Europe, by the way, but apply more or less globally. Let’s build Fortress America and to hell with the rest of the world!
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„Die Anzahl der Taurus, die von Berlin nach Kiew geschickt werden können, beträgt technisch gesehen 150 Taurus“, sagte eine westliche Geheimdienstquelle gegenüber La Stampa.
Die Bestände der meisten westlichen Langstreckenraketen, die an die Ukraine geliefert wurden - im Wesentlichen handelt es sich um Storm Shadow und Atacms - sind derzeit fast erschöpft, so der Osint-Analyst Kirill Mikhailov, der den Transport und die Konfiguration dieser Raketen in der Ukraine verfolgt hat.
Eine Hundertschaft Taurus könnte den Krieg erheblich verschärfen und die Russen unfähig machen, voranzukommen. Die Suche nach Frieden durch militärischen Druck, während Trump zwischen Beschwichtigungen gegenüber Freund Wladimir und vagen Drohungen mit neuen amerikanischen Sanktionen schwankt.
Bislang hatte Scholz' Berlin die an Kiew gelieferten Waffen auf eine Reichweite von weniger als 70 Kilometern begrenzt. Deutschland verfügt über rund 600 Taurus KEPD 350-Raketen, die vor allem von den Tornado IDS-Flugzeugen der Luftwaffe eingesetzt werden, wobei die Integration mit dem Eurofighter Typhoon noch nicht voll funktionsfähig ist.
Berlin hat jedoch auch angekündigt, im Jahr 2024 600 neue Taurus Neo-Raketen anzuschaffen. Die geplanten Investitionen belaufen sich auf 2,1 Milliarden Euro, die ersten Lieferungen sind für 2029 vorgesehen. In westlichen Geheimdienstkreisen gelten die Taurus als die besten Raketen in Bezug auf Richtungssteuerung und Genauigkeit, dank des fortschrittlichen Lenksystems (einschließlich GPS, aktivem Radar und Trägheitsnavigationssystemen).
Dies würde es ihnen ermöglichen, kritische Infrastrukturen, Kommandozentralen, Waffendepots und russische Militärstützpunkte mit extremer Wirksamkeit und einer sehr geringen Abfangquote zu treffen. Die russische S-400 könnte in der Tat einige Raketen abfangen, aber die Taurus ist so konzipiert, dass sie aufgrund ihrer geringen Flughöhe und ihrer Manövrierfähigkeit (Unterschallgeschwindigkeit, etwa Mach 0,85, fliegt aber in geringer Höhe, um dem Radar zu entgehen) sehr schwer abzufangen ist.
Taurus sind auch für Bunker oder befestigte Kommandozentralen tödlich: Dank ihres starken Gefechtskopfes und ihrer Submunition können sie Strukturen zerstören, die mit konventionellen Waffen normalerweise nur schwer zu treffen sind. Aber sie wären auch ein politisches Zeichen: dass es Europa endlich ernst ist mit Moskaus täglichen Massakern an der Zivilbevölkerung in der Ukraine. Kreml-Sprecher Dmitri Peskow hat gesagt, dass diese Entscheidungen, sollten sie getroffen werden, gefährlich wären. Sicherlich. Für Russland.
China has similar aims in global shipping and resource access, including in the Arctic, where melting sea ice is creating opportunities for expanded maritime transport and energy exploitation, especially along the Northern Sea Route (NSR) off Russia’s coast. China seeks access to the Arctic’s potentially vast natural resources, including oil, gas, and minerals, even though China is not among the eight Arctic countries that control territory in the region. Beijing seeks to normalize more direct and efficient maritime shipping routes to Russia and other Northern Hemisphere areas, as a way to fuel its economic growth and energy security and reduce its dependence on Middle East energy. China has gradually increased engagement with Greenland mainly through mining projects, infrastructure development, and scientific research projects. Despite less active engagement right now, China’s long-term goal is to expand access to Greenland’s natural resources, as well as to use the same access as a key strategic foothold for advancing China’s broader and economic aims in the Arctic.
Some forecasts indicate China’s technology sectors will account for as much as 23 percent of its gross domestic product by 2026, more than doubling since 2018. In addition to private funding, the PRC government is investing hundreds of billions of dollars in priority technologies, such as AI, microelectronics, and biotechnologies, in pursuit of its self-reliance goals.
China almost certainly has a multifaceted, national-level strategy designed to displace the United States as the world’s most influential AI power by 2030. China is experiencing a boom in generative AI with the rapid emergence of a large number of PRC-developed models, and is broadly pursuing AI for smart cities, mass surveillance, healthcare, S&T innovation, and intelligent weapons. Chinese AI firms are already world leaders in voice and image recognition, video analytics, and mass surveillance technologies. The PLA probably plans to use large language models (LLMs) to generate information deception attacks, create fake news, imitate personas, and enable attack networks. China has also announced initiatives to bolster international support for its vision of AI governance.
China has stolen hundreds of gigabytes of intellectual property from companies in Asia, Europe, and North America in an effort to leapfrog over technological hurdles, with as much as 80 percent of U.S. economic espionage cases as of 2021 involving PRC entities
The PLA has the capability to conduct long-range precision-strikes with conventional weapons against the Homeland’s periphery in the Western Pacific, including Guam, Hawaii, and Alaska. China has developed a range of ballistic and cruise missiles with conventional payloads that can be delivered from its mainland as well as by air and sea, including by nuclear-powered submarines. China may be exploring development of conventionally-armed intercontinental range missile systems, which, if developed and fielded, would allow China to threaten conventional strikes against targets in the continental United States. The PLA will continue to pursue the establishment of overseas military installations and access agreements to project power and protect China’s interests abroad. Beijing may also pursue a mixture of military logistics models, including preferred access to commercial infrastructure abroad, exclusive PLA logistics facilities with pre-positioned supplies co-located with commercial infrastructure, and bases with stationed forces, to meet its overseas military logistics needs.
If Beijing believed that a major conflict with Washington was imminent, it could consider aggressive cyber operations against U.S. critical infrastructure and military assets. Such strikes would be designed to deter U.S. military action by impeding U.S. decision-making, inducing societal panic, and interfering with the deployment of U.S. forces
China’s approach to and role in global biological, medical, and other health-related global priorities present unique challenges to the United States and the world The COVID-19 pandemic that ultimately led to the death of more than one million Americans—and multiples more worldwide—began in China, which Beijing still refuses to acknowledge. China’s strict censorship and repression of free speech prevented doctors treating the earliest of patients in Wuhan from warning the world of a far more serious contagion than Beijing wanted told, slowing the world’s preparedness and response. To this day, Beijing refuses to fully cooperate with the rest of the international community trying to definitively pinpoint the precise cause of the disease so it can head off and prepare for any new disease.
China has eclipsed Russia as a space leader and is poised to compete with the United States as the world’s leader in space by deploying increasingly capable interconnected multi-sensor systems and working toward ambitious scientific and strategic goals. China has achieved global coverage in some of its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) constellations and world-class status in all but a few space technologies.
Counterspace operations will be integral to PLA military campaigns, and China has counterspace-weapons capabilities intended to target U.S. and allied satellites. China already has fielded ground-based counterspace capabilities, including EW systems, directed energy weapons (DEWs), and antisatellite (ASAT) missiles intended to disrupt, damage, and destroy target satellites. • China also has conducted orbital technology demonstrations, which, while not counterspace weapons tests, prove its ability to operate future space-based counterspace weapons. China has also conducted on-orbit satellite inspections of other satellites, which probably would be representative of the tactics required for some counterspace attacks.
Russia
(A few select snippets)
Regardless of how and when the war in Ukraine ends, Russia’s current geopolitical, economic, military, and domestic political trends underscore its resilience and enduring potential threat to U.S. power, presence, and global interests. Despite having paid enormous military and economic costs in its war with Ukraine, Russia has proven adaptable and resilient, in part because of the expanded backing of China, Iran, and North Korea. President Vladimir Putin appears resolved and prepared to pay a very high price to prevail in what he sees as a defining time in Russia’s strategic competition with the United States, world history, and his personal legacy. Most Russian people continue to passively accept the war, and the emergence of an alternative to Putin probably is less likely now than at any point in his quarter-century rule.
Russia has shown it can navigate substantial economic challenges resulting from the ongoing drains of the war, Western cost imposition, and high inflation and interest rates, for at least the near term by using financial and import substitution workarounds, maintaining low debt, and continuing investments in the defense-industrial base. Russia’s economy remains the fourth largest in the world (based on GDP at purchasing power parity).
The war in Ukraine has afforded Moscow a wealth of lessons regarding combat against Western weapons and intelligence in a large-scale war. This experience probably will challenge future U.S. defense planning, including against other adversaries with whom Moscow is sharing those lessons learned.
Moscow will contend with long-term challenges such as troop quality and corruption, and a fertility rate below what is needed for replacements, but its investments in personnel recruitment and procurement should allow it to steadily reconstitute reserves and expand ground forces in particular during the next decade. Nevertheless, the war in Ukraine will be a drag on those efforts as long as it persists. Moscow will have to continually balance resource allocation between large-scale production of equipment to sustain the war with modernization and recapitalization efforts.
Russia’s advanced cyber capabilities, its repeated success compromising sensitive targets for intelligence collection, and its past attempts to pre-position access on U.S. critical infrastructure make it a persistent counterintelligence and cyber attack threat. Moscow’s unique strength is the practical experience it has gained integrating cyber attacks and operations with wartime military action, almost certainly amplifying its potential to focus combined impact on U.S. targets in time of conflict.
Russia continues to train its military space elements and field new antisatellite weapons to disrupt and degrade U.S. and allied space capabilities. It is expanding its arsenal of jamming systems, DEWs, on-orbit counterspace capabilities, and ASAT missiles designed to target U.S. and allied satellites.
Russia is developing a new satellite meant to carry a nuclear weapon as an antisatellite capability. A nuclear detonation in outer space could cause devastating consequences for the United States, the global economy, and the world in general. It would harm all countries’ national security and commercial satellites and infrastructure, as well as impair U.S. use of space as a driver for economic development. • In February 2022, Russia launched a satellite, which its Ministry of Defense claimed at the time was for testing on-board instruments and systems under the influence of radiation and heavy charged particles.
While Russia’s S&T ecosystem has been constrained in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow continues to deploy nascent AI applications on and off the battlefield and has deepened technical cooperation with partners such as China in support of long-term R&D goals. Moscow’s use of AI to augment military operations probably will further hone Russian tactics and capabilities in the event of future conflicts with the United States or NATO allies. • Russia is using AI to create highly-capable deepfakes to spread misinformation, conduct malign influence operations, and stoke further fear. Russia has also demonstrated the use of AI-enabled antidrone equipment during its ongoing conflict with Ukraine. • Russia’s few domestic microelectronics manufacturers have only mastered production of chips down to the 65nm level and has goals of mass producing 28nm chips by 2030, significantly behind global leaders.
