If approved, the move would authorize US Special Operations troops to employ Ukrainian operatives to observe Russian movements and counter disinformation.
The Pentagon is urging Congress to resume funding a pair of top secret programs in Ukraine suspended ahead of Russia’s invasion last year, according to current and former US officials. If approved, the move would allow American Special Operations troops to employ Ukrainian operatives to observe Russian military movements and counter disinformation.
A determination is unlikely before the fall. Defense officials are preparing a proposal for lawmakers’ consideration in the coming months, when work begins on next year’s Pentagon policy and funding bill. If successful, these programs could resume as soon as 2024, though it remains unclear if the Biden administration would allow US commandos back into Ukraine to oversee them or if the military would seek to do that from a neighboring country. No American military personnel are known to have operated there since the war began, beyond a small number tasked to the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv.
Congressional officials said it is difficult to predict the outcome, particularly with Republicans split over the vast sums being spent on Ukraine. Others argue that the programs’ relatively small expense — $15 million annually for such activities worldwide — is a bargain compared with the tens of billions of dollars being committed to train and arm Ukrainian forces, and replenish US stockpiles.
Military officials are eager to restart these activities in Ukraine to ensure that hard-gained relationships are not lost as the war wears on, said Mark Schwartz, a retired three-star general who led US Special Operations in Europe when the programs began in 2018. “When you suspend these things because the scale of the conflict changes, you lose access,” he said, “and it means you lose information and intelligence about what’s actually going on in the conflict.”
American commandos, using a similar funding authority, have for many years paid select foreign military and paramilitary units across the Middle East, Asia and Africa, employing them as “surrogates” in counterterrorism operations against al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and their affiliates. Newer surrogate programs, such as those used in Ukraine, are considered a form of “irregular warfare.” They are intended for use against adversaries, such as Russia and China, with whom the United States is in competition, not open conflict.
Link to a Google cached version of the WaPo article
Comment: This WaPo article outlines programs and authorities that I was totally unaware of. Of course I’ve been out of the “game” now for more than a dozen years. There’s no reason for me to be aware of these programs and authorities. Although I think they evolved out of an ever broadening interpretation of “intelligence preparation of the battlefield” activities. That was happening when I was still in federal service. Read the full WaPo article to see what’s been going on in the Special Operations community in the last few years. I’ve also provided a link to a cached version because I think this article is that important.
That’s how Special Forces and other in the SpecOps community plan on handling Ukraine. I’ll now layout how DIA could tackle this. Just remember my knowledge of DIA capabilities and authorities is dated. I see this as a human intelligence (HUMINT) operation in support of the EUCOM Commander. Decades ago we ran legal travelers and resident agents into WTO countries and the USSR. We did the same in Russia and during the 1990’s Balkan Wars. We also ran a host of support agents including couriers and accommodation addresses to service those resident agents. The “we” in this case was primarily Army HUMINT and also Air Force HUMINT. I don’t know if Navy was involved. Back then we were under the “Tatar Yoke” of the DCID 5/1 coordination process. This gave the CIA the ultimate authority over our operations. They could refuse to “coordinate” on anything we proposed, maybe take our most promising leads without so much as a thank you. We still managed to run some good operations.
A few years after that, our Colonel Lang spearheaded a consolidation of service intelligence under DIA. Thus began what was first known as the Defense HUMINT Service. That gave us a lot more clout in the DCID 5/1 coordination process. But slowly after 9/11 and the rise of the Director of National Intelligence, Defense HUMINT took the process further. We received authority to conduct military source operations (MSO) outside the DCID 5/1 process. Our operational approvals were now within DIA or, for more nationally sensitive military operations, up to the Under Secretary for Defense Intelligence level. Interagency coordination finally became a real coordination process. This worked well for the often tactical intelligence collection operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. In my opinion, our collection operations weren’t near as sophisticated in support of CENTCOM as our operations in support of EUCOM were back in the day. But that’s another story.
So how would DIA do the HUMINT collection mission in Ukraine? For starters we’d establish one or more collection detachments in Poland and maybe elsewhere operating under official cover. We’d set up whatever liaison teams and communications support teams that were necessary. We’d spot and assess our potential assets, recruit and train them and run them into the target areas as resident agents and legal travelers. Rather than relying on couriers, accommodation addresses, dead drops and secret writing, we’d make much heavier use of modern technical communications (smart phones) and encryption apps. Maybe we’d employ separate commo agents for those resident agents in especially sensitive positions. Those agents would use dead drops and brief exchanges to pass encrypted data to each other. In the CENTCOM AOR, we made heavy use of principal agents running their own small networks and spotter-assessor agents. We didn’t do much of that in Europe. I can see them being used in Ukraine. And one more thing. Speak the damned language. Don’t do everything through interpreters.
So that’s how I would do this as a HUMINT collection mission rather than as a special operations irregular warfare mission. I think my plan would be an easier sell to Congress. But I’m just a retired old man now. For all I know, DIA is already doing this. I’m sure they’re not sitting on their asses on what is now called Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling.
I know. I’ve thrown out a lot of inside terms. We can go over them in the comments as needed.
TTG
The real issue is not so much capabilities as it is the authorities. I worked oversight for this community at OSD up until 3 years ago and there are plenty of avenues within SOCOM’s portfolio so that is really not the issue. Many of these capabilities have been exercised as part of potential Russin invasion scenarios of the Baltic states, and even then there were issues with authorities despite that they are NATO members.
TTG,
It appears that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine should provide a treasure trove of insights into Russian army strategies, tactics, weapon systems performance, command & control, etc.
I assume the DIA and other US military intelligence are gathering a ton of info for analysis. With drones flying all over the battlefield there must be terabytes of video and other sensor data.
So far, at least on the ground, Russia seems to be continuing the old Soviet style of overwhelm the enemy force with bodies and artillery. Casualties be damned because by then the battle is over. That can’t be too good for morale in the Russian army.
Morale? Morale? The Russian soldier will do as he is told. He always has. No reason to think anything has changed.
Czar Nicholas believed that to be true as well, until it wasn’t.
“So far, at least on the ground, Russia seems to be continuing the old Soviet style of overwhelm the enemy force with bodies and artillery. Casualties be damned because by then the battle is over.”
So it’s the old “They just threw bodies at us” get out?
That was incorrect during WWII. The myth that the Russians won by throwing masses of poor quality and poorly generaled troops up against numerically inferior opponents has long since been demolished. It derives from German Generals getting their memoirs in first and not wanting to admit that they were out-generaled and didn’t sort out their logistics properly.
Interestingly, I’ve recently seen it asserted that the other reason usually advanced for German failure – that Hitler interfered too much – isn’t that solid all the time either.
But to the present day. The SMO. The Russians are husbanding their troops like nobody’s business. It’s because they are determined not to take unnecessary casualties that it’s unlikely we’ll see any “broad arrow offensives” of the sort talked about so much. Or not until Ukrainian resistance is considerably diminished. If the Poles or the 101st were to join the fray things might be different, but not otherwise
The accounts of Russian “human waves” are fictitious. We hear them because we take Ukrainian accounts as gospel and ignore the facts. And the Western politicians and journalists are already looking to save face. Instead of admitting that this war was never going to be won – which was all too obvious at the start – they can say “We only lost because of inexhaustible supplies of Russian manpower.”
Complete nonsense, as are the other excuses we see prepared. “The Euros didn’t pull their weight” is one. Forgetting that the Euros never had any weight to pull anyway and all knew it.
Or, “We had to pack it in in case the Russians went nuclear”. When all knew the Russians had no intention of going nuclear and no need to either.
The Colonel’s allowed me to put forward a minority view on the rights and wrongs of this war. But move away from that and look at the war from a purely military point of view. This was the most irresponsibly and incompetently run war in modern Western history. A complete and utter shambles. I don’t blame the American military for that. They were asked to do stupid things by stupid people and had no choice otherwise. But the stupid people who told them to do that should not be allowed to escape responsibility by putting out nonsense like “They just threw bodies at us.”
Just a note, if that’s OK, on WWII. From Pritt Buttar’s book “Retribution. The Soviet reconquest of central Ukraine 1943”, I take the message that Stalin, or maybe the Stavka, had two choices at that particular time.
The first was to box clever and to tackle the problem by encirclement or gradual advances. The second was to go all out to clear the Nazis out as quickly as possible. On the grounds that they were doing a lot of damage and the sooner they were got shot of the better.
Stalin went for the second option. One hell of a series of battles. The Germans putting up an accomplished and determined resistance. Horrendous casualties,
This time round the Russians are boxing clever. Different sort of war entirely. Not forgetting that in WWII the Russians were up against an implacable foe who quite certainly wasn’t going to be negotiated with. But this time round the Russians spent a good deal of the earlier phase SMO trying to get negotiations with the Ukrainians coming to something.
So no massive manoeuvres leading to massive casualties this time. More of a penny pinching approach with the casualties correspondingly low.
It was odd reading that Buttar book. Same region I’d been following the fighting in in 2014/2015. Same terrain, though now often heavily built up. Same names, allowing for “Stalino” and so on. And there was a sort of “third time round” feeling, reading it, having followed, as best I could, the fighting in 2022 as well.
EO –
I haven’t read Buttar’s Retribution. I’ll get a copy. But from your description and the reader reviews on Amazon and elsewhere it appears to contain much of Vasily Grossman’s reporting on the war in the Ukraine. Does Buttar reference his sources?
Also you should consider that the Red Army that Buttar writes about in that book consisted of 30 to 40% Ukrainian troops. Including many commanders. It was probably on the high end at 40% during the Battle of Kursk and the advance west afterwards by the 1st Ukrainian Front (aka the Voronesh Front). The other 60 to 70% that liberated Ukraine (and further) contained a large percentage of non-Russian troops from the Caucasus, Kazakhs, Uzbekis, and other ‘nationalities’.
And in the North, the liberation of Belarus was similarly stacked with non-Russians. It included not only Ukrainians and Belarusians, but also Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, and an entire Army of Poles. That entire offensive was commanded by a Pole, Konstanty Rokossowski, who was also one of the geniuses of the battles of Moscow, Stalingrad, and Kursk.
EO,
The level of battle casualties, especially Russian battle casualties, don’t come close to those of WWII. However, the Russians are not fighting smart. They adjusted well last summer taking advantage in their overwhelming advantage in artillery to slowly grind away at Ukrainian defenses. They’ve largely abandoned that approach, probably due to shortages in ammunition and working artillery pieces rather than a conscious effort to abandon that approach. Improving Ukrainian capabilities also helped force that abandonment. Around Bahkmut, poorly trained convicts and mobiks took the place of the diminishing artillery support. Casualties increased accordingly. At Vuhledar, a combined arms approach was again tried but met with disaster. Now poorly supported infantry assaults are being tried still with no success. There’s no cleverness involved.
Prigozhin recently predicted Russian can conquer all of Donetsk and Luhansk in one and half to two years with these tactics. That’s optimistic. Sure Russia can absorb a lot more losses. WWII proves that. However the WWII experience also proves Ukraine can absorb a lot more losses. This could go on for years.
I do suspect, TTG, the Russians are drawing the Ukrainians into the meat grinder as per Surovikin. As for duration, I don’t trust Prigozhin any further than I could throw him.
On a wider issue, and something I’d never really thought of before, isn’t modern conventional warfare getting impossible? I don’t know about the Chinese but apart from them the only countries up to this combined arms warfare are Russia and America.
There are, in reality, no front lines any longer. The generals tucked away in the rear, or the politicians telling them me what to do, are as liable to get knocked out as the men they send forward. So too the troops in the rear. Unless they lived dispersed any modern war would be nothing more for them than a sequence of Yavorivs.
Now we have Scholz and Stoltenberg bragging about how they’re going to put 300,000 on the Russian border. One day. When they’ve got themselves organised.
Those two heroes couldn’t organise a spelling bee. Not so it worked. The difference between you and me is that you’re living in a country with a military and I’m living on a continent that is, as General Kujat says, wide open to anyone who cares to walk in.
And no longer is it the case that the Americans will take care of all that. What they have in Europe at the moment isn’t enough to defend the place by a long chalk.
That’s why we in Europe ought to be thinking about a defence policy for when this is all over, which it will be long before Prigozhin’s one and a half to two years. Unless Biden’s got any more rabbits to pull out of the hat and that’s unlikely barring nuclear.
Which is why the politicians ought now to be thinking about Macron’s suggested “New European Security Architecture”. Because the one we’ve got at the moment is manifestly inadequate.
To think about that, they’re going to have to start thinking about the security demands the Russians put forward in late 2021. I’ve just got a feeling that after Ukraine is dealt with, the Russians’ll be coming back to those.
EO,
It is a fine thing Colonel Lang welcomes your view here because you are a ‘frightfully decent’ writer.
Russian forces are still not as thoroughly trained as Western forces, too much central control from Moscow and no unit command flexibility in the field. This is an irresponsibly run war and it can stop when Putin leaves Ukraine which he won’t do. “The Russians are husbanding their troops like nobody’s business. It’s because they are determined not to take unnecessary casualties that it’s unlikely we’ll see any “broad arrow offensives” of the sort talked about so much”. I don’t buy this. The Kremlin seems to place no value in their front line soldiers as far as training and equipment go. Minimally trained men amount to little more than a ‘peasant army’. They are expendable.
Eastern Ukraine means one thing to Ukraine—their future. The same region means one thing to V. Putin—his survival.
Whitewall – they have had problems, certainly more than advertised. For instance, I gather that coordination between the LDNR forces and Russian artillery doesn’t seem to have been as good as it should have been. I don’t know whether that’s been put right yet.
But apparently they’re quick to learn from mistakes. They have to be. For us in the West, we see this war solely as a matter of assisting a small country in resisting aggression from a larger. But for the Russians, they now see it as a straight war between them and the combined West.
So they see it as a war for their survival. “Existential”. The future of the current Russian administration does of course depend on its outcome, but for most Russians now so does their own.
And our politicians shoot their mouths off too much. We know that’s just bluster, but how does a Russian feel when he hears such as Panetta say this. “: “It is a proxy war with Russia whether we say or not … we have to be sure we are providing as much weaponry as possible … the way you get leverage is by, frankly, going in and killing Russians. That is what the Ukrainians have to do. We have to continue the war effort … Because this is a power game.”
The full interview doesn’t sound as aggressive as that. But it’s not an interview that’s going to make any Russian feel conciliatory.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2022-03-17/u-s-is-in-a-proxy-war-with-russia-panetta-video
And Borrell, Stoltenberg, Macron, Baerbock, Johnson, say worse. After the breakdown of the Istanbul peace talks this is a war the Russians can’t afford to lose. It’s not as big a deal as that for most Americans. And the Euros no longer count.
As you intimate, Colonel Lang has been most generous, and TTG, in allowing me to put forward a contrarian and to many a distasteful view. But never mind contrarian views. In straight military terms this was never a war with any prospect of success unless the sanctions war had worked. The sanctions war hasn’t. So whatever one thinks of the rights and wrongs of it all, it’s time to walk away
“Opponents argue that Russia might construe the programs’ reactivation as a provocation and respond by broadening the scope of its war. One official familiar with the talks on Capitol Hill said that, for this reason, the Pentagon will struggle to win over skeptical lawmakers.”
This of course sounds like a smart move on our part. What I don’t get is why this proposal is given to the Wapo to print it for all the world to see. Unless of course that is the goal concerning some actors. Also late this year into 2024 seems like a long time in a war that just may come to a head by late summer.
Whitewall,
I’m also surprised this is all out there. But we do want transparency in our government. The article says they interviewed 15 current and former government officials. The sources included Congressional and Defense officials. But the Pentagon, White House and the Senate/House Armed Service Committees did not comment.
I still think approaching this as a run of the mill HUMINT collection activity is better as a SpecOps irregular warfare activity. We were running agents into a shooting war in the Balkans and no one I know had any doubts about what we were doing.
Perhaps some other govt entity were trying to head off the SOCOM program. Or someone was trying to prove relevance, and wanted to overcome interagency resistance by leaking.
Jimmy_w,
That thought crossed my mind. The CIA is not all that happy with the increasing independence of Defense HUMINT. Now they have SpecOps HUMINT collection out there vying for more Congressional attention and funding.
https://twitter.com/brianroemmele/status/1624441356126146566?s=21
I’m not sure where this is all leading. It seems to me the level of capabilities to manipulate the public, especially their emotions is growing to unprecedented levels. How will societies act in an era of mass and sustained information deceit by their own government and their ruling elites?
Shoot first, trust later?
Sam
I personally think that historians will look back on the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 as the turning point for America – and not in a good way. I think that, going forward, we will not only see the US government carrying out more and more IO operations against its own people but various factions (Democrats and Republicans at the most granular level) will use these capabilities to advance their partisan agendas. The IO operations that the government carried out against Americans to get them to embrace the vaccine are just the beginning. It is all downhill from here, I fear.
Seems to me that Ukraine’s SBU and their Special Group is already doing this quite well. Why duplicate it? Why give the dwarf in the Kremlin a propaganda bonanza? (Not that he needs an excuse – his SVR and other Kremlin propagandisti spend a huge effort in funding bullshit on the internet and on video, courting journalists, distributing bogus conspiracies.)
Better IMHO that we use those HUMINT resources in or near places like Transnistria, South Ossetia, the former Soviet -stans in central Asia. Or perhaps use them in the ethnic Republics in the RF far east: Buryatia, Yakutia, etc, or even Defense Minister Shoigu’s Tuva homeland.
“Better IMHO that we use those HUMINT resources in or near places like Transnistria, South Ossetia, the former Soviet -stans in central Asia. Or perhaps use them in the ethnic Republics in the RF far east: Buryatia, Yakutia, etc, or even Defense Minister Shoigu’s Tuva homeland.”
Leith – worth stopping and thinking about that. If we had it done to us, there are very few countries in the West where large and disaffected minority communities couldn’t be used similarly against us, and to devastating effect.
EO,
Here’s three: Antifa, BLM, LGBT…
Whoa Fred. Sounds like you are worried all those crossdressers and rugmunchers are going to pull off a guerrilla war movement in Orlando. No way. But I can picture Putin trying to fund it.
Leith,
While it is true the Democrats run the city of Orlando I’m sure they didn’t need Putin’s money to get elected. They had, and continue to have, a patronage army with plenty of Gov./NGO remittances to help them in that regard. They’ll get even more as the current Republican Hitler, who replaced the previous holder of that title, is now governor instead of the gay crack addict former mayor of Tallahassee who was last seen face down and drugged out in a hotel room where, unlike Marion Barry, he was definitely not ‘set up’. He did that to himself. That was the ‘best and brightest’ the left had to offer in terms of leadership for the people of this state.
I always like your insights Fred. Although I’m still LMAO about your brigades of AR-15 armed sodomites staging a coup. Maybe we better ship them all to Mother Russia before they get wind of your idea and take up arms.
LMAO.
Another “secret” in the media.
The deep state is as incompetent as it is corrupt.
Lifer drones exposing “secrets” for their own self-importance.
Then there’s NORAD, another dimwitted outfit burning tax money to let China violate US airspace.
TV,
Is this really a secret or just something not widely known? Here’s the unclassified memorandum directing the program for “Support of Special Operations for Irregular Warfare.” I’m sure there are plenty of things done under this program that are classified
https://irp.fas.org/doddir/dod/dtm-18-005.pdf
Your comment “Speak the damn language” sparked a memory – I had a German professor in undergrad who graduated with a degree in German and native fluency, and then got drafted during Vietnam. The Army did one smart thing, and stuck him into an intelligence specialty, and then one really dumb thing, and sent him to Vietnam to be an interrogator. He didn’t speak a word of Vietnamese, and so he had a translator. But the translator was foreign national and therefore not allowed to sleep on base, which meant that he lived in an apartment off-base…and every night the Viet Cong sat down with him and had a long discussion about just what talking points were to be emphasized during the interrogations the next day. You can’t blame him for following their instructions carefully…
For the second half of his enlistment he actually did end up in Germany, which I think worked out better. He said that all the big macho guys they caught cracked immediately upon interrogation – it was the little old lady cleaning women snarfing stuff out of garbage cans who were incredibly resistant. He said they would just sit there and cry, and never tell him anything, no matter what he asked them.
This caught my eye,
since my last comment also linked to a post that pointed out that network security suffers from a lack of funding for cost centers – which is a function of bean counter capitalism, and apparently bean counter governance too. Per the Colonel’s last book, Humint is sadly under funded by this country. 15 million $ eh. For the want of a nail …
which opens the three letter boys up to criticism like knowing a Russian invasion is imminent but not knowing the Russian military can’t actually pull it off. The lads probably did, which begs the questions…
There’s a lot of that stuff here. Who knows, some of the questions might be classified too.
Glory to Zelensky! One day after warning there are communists in the state department, whoops so old news; One day after warning Russia! is going to destroy Moldova and would you look at that the government that was in is now out and the ‘national security advisor’ is now going to be running the place. And he’s Pr0-EU! just like the person who just resigned. It gets better:
” last month, Sandu accused Russia of using the energy crisis and spiraling costs to “bring instability to Moldova,” …. “The country of 2.5 million people, which was 100 percent dependent on Russian gas before the invasion of Ukraine,”
“The government’s collapse on Friday comes just days after Gavriliţa met with European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels to take stock of Moldova’s EU membership prospects. ”
https://www.politico.eu/article/moldova-government-resign-pro-european-union-natalia-gavrilita/
I wonder how much of our money Zelensky and the EU are going to give them.
Fred
A few measly billions should be enough to make them turn their country into a battlefield. It worked for Ukraine.
Wiz,
I think this is more about getting that nation’s physical assets and policy in hand to shore up the ECB, which Christine Lagarde is running so efficiently. I notice Samantha Power is now set to use USAID money, ok our money, to fund NGOs in Hungary, which isn’t towing the neocon/European union line. Sanctions are crippling Russia though, just like the usual suspects keep telling us.
Fred,
I think Victoria Nuland just wants to hand pick the next prime minister of Hungary. And hand out cookies.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11746903/Putins-marine-brigade-5-000-men-destroyed-brutal-battle.html
I remain confounded by the performance of the Russian army in their war against the much smaller and less equipped both in quality and quantity Ukrainian army. Why have so many analysts and pundits claimed for years that Putin commands a near peer military relative to the US military? Should anyone take them seriously any more?
Regarding secret Pentagon programs, the other day Sy Hersh published a piece alleging that the US & Norway blew up the Nord Stream pipelines.
Here is another piece trying to debunk Sy’s theory. An interesting read.
https://oalexanderdk.substack.com/p/blowing-holes-in-seymour-hershs-pipe
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11750383/Chairman-Joint-Chiefs-Mark-Milley-says-Russia-LOST-war.html
These are pretty strong words from Milley. Dunno what he knows?
Sam,
I also see accompanying stories about the West not being able to provide the Ukrainians with enough ammunition to kill the hundreds of thousands of Russians coming their way. Maybe Milley knows the truth about the logistical situation. I hope he knows what he’s talking about and not just spewing brave words.
TTG,
Since there’s no penalty in what one says, it could be quite possible he’s just mouthing off whatever is convenient for the moment.
In any case we’ll only know after the next offensives have gone some distance what the reality is on the battlefield.
I’ve been waiting for this type of comment on the pending Russian offensive. Media reports are all over the place about has it really begun in earnest or is it coming. Then media does the ‘horse race’ scenario where the question is a matter of enough ammo and armor or not. Next Gen. Milley pronounces Russia has lost the war already and is only throwing men away for its own ‘Mad Ivan’ reasons. Our Sec. Def. pretty much backs Milley and is confident Russia is done.
Ukraine may have too little armor and ammo at the moment OR they may be well enough stocked for now and this is a sand bag via press and Western military brass. To the Western Mind, yes Russia has lost. To the Eastern Mind, just the opposite.
Whitewall,
I wouldn’t call this Russian offensive pending. We’re several weeks and several thousands of dead Russians into it. The media just now happened to catch onto it.
TTG, Sam
I’ve linked below an interesting interview with a Ukrainian colonel, commander of the 45th Separate Artillery Brigade.
According to him, the ratio of Western to Ukrainian and Soviet weapons in his brigade is 50/50.
He also says that the percentage of 155s being used is ten times higher than 152s.
If you add this two together, looks like the ammo problem is pretty serious.
https://wartranslated.com/pravda-com-ua-interview-ukrainian-colonel-oleh-faydyuk/