Diplomacy & Crisis News

Mark Episkopos

Russia, arctic

The Northern Fleet announced that it will be hosting a new wave of drills this autumn.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The Northern Sea Route provides commercial ships in the Saint Petersburg area with a greatly expedited form of transit to East Asia through the Bering Sea.

The Onega and Naryan-Mar Grisha III- class corvettes launched torpedo attacks against a notional enemy’s submarine in the White Sea, according to the Northern Fleet’s press office. The Typhoon-class submarine Dmitry Donskoi played the role of the enemy vessel, the Northern Fleet specified. "The warships searched for the submarine using onboard sonars and launched a torpedo attack against it. The heavy nuclear-powered underwater cruiser Dmitry Donskoi operating at a depth of over 100 meters simulated the underwater enemy for the small anti-submarine warfare ships," read the press statement. The dummy torpedoes fired against Dmitry Donskoi were recovered and brought back to base following the exercises. The drills were staged out of the Northern Fleet’s Belomorskaya naval base, located in the Arkhangelsk region of northwestern Russia. The Northern Fleet is headquartered in the Murmansk region’s town of Severomorsk, not far off Russia’s state border with Finland.

The Grisha III class is a line of Soviet-built, dedicated anti-submarine corvettes, six of which are currently active in Russia’s Northern Fleet. The ships boast two RBU-6000 anti-submarine rocket launchers, carrying a total of ninety-six rockets, as well as two standard 533 torpedo tubes and a 9K33 “Osa” surface-to-air missile launcher. The Grisha class has been succeeded by the Steregushchiy corvette class, which is not specifically an anti-submarine vessel but offers a versatile enough armament loadout to serve in that role. The Paket-E/NK system of the latter provides what is an overall more effective solution against submarines, boasting anti-submarine MTT torpedoes with an operational range of up to 10,000 meters. Onega and Naryan-Mar are part of a naval task force that conducted artillery fire exercises against sea and air targets, as well as anti-submarine operations. It is unclear what other ships were included in this task force and how long this ongoing set of exercises will run.

Dmitri Donskoi is the sole remaining Typhoon-class nuclear-powered heavy ballistic missile submarine (SSBN). Laid down in 1976, it held—and by some measures, still retains—the title of the largest military submarine ever built. The Typhoon-class is being replaced by the newer and more capable Borei-class SSBNs, with Donskoi reportedly scheduled to serve through the mid-2020s.

These exercises follow a series of Russian bomber drills conducted earlier this month, which involved Tu-160 and Tu-95MS planes launching cruise missiles during a live-fire session at an Arctic firing range. The Northern Fleet announced that it will be hosting a new wave of drills this autumn, nominally aimed at protecting Russia’s Northern Sea Route. The route provides commercial ships in the Saint Petersburg area with a greatly expedited form of transit to East Asia through the Bering Sea.

Moscow has recommitted to ramping up its Arctic military activity in recent months, with Deputy Chairman of  the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev saying during an earlier session of Russia’s Arctic Commission that Russia “must continue its work on the strengthening of Arctic troops equipped with modern types of armament.”

Mark Episkopos is a national security reporter for The National Interest.

This piece first appeared earlier this year and is being reprinted due to reader interest.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

As the crisis in Afghanistan deepens by the hour, with reports that insurgent forces reached the country’s capital, Kabul, earlier on Sunday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has urged the Taliban and all other parties “to exercise utmost restraint to protect lives and ensure that humanitarian needs can be addressed.”

Mark Episkopos

F-35,

Here's how it dominates every wargame in which it 'fights.'

Here's What You Need to Remember: Whereas earlier Red Flag exercises prioritized survivability, recent sessions have taken steps to incorporate a more diverse set of criteria that include reconnaissance and surveillance, as well as air superiority and strike operations.

Over one decade since its first flight, Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II has earned an extensive and consistently impressive performance record in the most challenging wargames to date.

Conceived in the mid-1970s, Red Flag is widely regarded as the US Air Force’s (USAF’s) premier aerial combat exercise. Held in ten to twelve annual installments that are spread between the Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada and Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, the two-week exercises involve as many as one-hundred aircraft tested in accurate training conditions. Whereas earlier Red Flag exercises prioritized survivability, recent sessions have taken steps to incorporate a more diverse set of criteria that include reconnaissance and surveillance, as well as air superiority and strike operations.

The F-35A’s major Red Flag debut came in 2017, shortly after the fighter was declared as having reached initial operational capability (IOC). Thirteen F-35 pilots from the 388th Fighter Wing’s 4th Fighter Squadron went up against advanced anti-air threats, including enemy air defenses and air-to-air fighters. The results were unambiguous. The F-35’s dominated the notional enemy, achieving a kill ratio of fifteen to one whilst scoring direct hits with twenty-five out of twenty-seven inert weapons dropped. This, despite the fact that the goal was less to test the F-35’s combat prowess than its ability to act as a “quarterback in the sky” for other friendly aircraft. Here, the results were equally as unambiguous: the F-35’s proved their ability to act as a force multiplier for older fourth-generation aircraft like the F-16, utilizing their sensor fusion suite to give legacy aircraft what one pilot called a “god’s eye view” of the battlefield. “Situational awareness is king,” added Col. David Lyons, commander of the 388th Fighter Wing. “Everybody’s SA is improved when the F-35 is on the battlefield.”

Nor was it a one-off, with the 4th Fighter Squadron replicating similarly impressive results during Red Flag’s 2019 exercises. The F-35’s were integrated into a larger “Blue Force” and pitted against a sixty aircraft-strong “Red Force” of “equally capable” fighters while subjected to a constant stream of communications jamming and GPS denial attacks.

"Even in this extremely challenging environment, the F-35 didn’t have many difficulties doing its job," said Col. Joshua Wood, 388th Operations Group commander. “That’s a testament to the pilot’s training and the capabilities of the jet.” As with the 2017 exercises, F-35 pilots raved about the fighter’s survivability and sensor fusion capabilities. “With stealth, the F-35 can get closer to threats than many other aircraft can. Combined with the performance of the fused sensors on the F-35, we can significantly contribute to the majority of the missions,” said 1st Lt. Landon Moores. “As this aircraft matures, we continue to see it be a significant force-multiplier in a threat-dense environment,” he added. “Red Flag was a success for us and has made our younger pilots more lethal and more confident.”

Beyond Red Flag, the F-35 has proven itself in region-specific exercises. A recent series of wargames found that the imminent Block 4 revision of the F-35 is one of the few fighters capable of meaningfully contributing to US efforts to counter a full-scale Chinese invasion of Taiwan, widely recognized as one of the most difficult potential scenarios facing the U.S. military today.

The large body of data gathered from Red Flag and other recent exercises could not be any clearer: even in highly demanding battlefield circumstances, the F-35 continues to meet and exceed USAF’s expectations.

Mark Episkopos is a national security reporter for The National Interest.

Image: Flickr

In a new chapter for Afghanistan, women are particularly vulnerable.

Mark Episkopos

Russia, Eurasia

The TOS-1’s multiple launch rocket system boasts a firing range of only up to 3.5 kilometers and can cover an area of two hundred by four hundred meters, cementing the weapon’s role as a fire support platform for infantry and heavy armor.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The Buratino was succeeded in 2001 by the more advanced TOS-1A, bringing a vastly expanded range of six thousand kilometers, revised launching tubes, and a slew of chassis upgrades. Despite their somewhat niche battlefield role, the TOS-1 and TOS-1A have proven to be fairly popular export products

Decades after its introduction, the TOS-1 remains one of the deadliest conventional weapons systems in Russia’s rapidly expanding arsenal. 

Beginning in the 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union took an increasing interest in fuel-air explosives (FAEs). An FAE is a two-charge weapon that disperses a chemical cloud; that cloud is then ignited, causing a devastating blast wave in a wide radius. FAEs detonate the air. Thus, they are most effective in enclosed spaces where they can turn the tactical advantage of reinforced structures like bunkers and tunnels into a lethal weakness.  

The U.S. military deployed FAEs during the course of the Vietnam War. Not to be outdone, the Soviet military got to work on its own version of a thermobaric weapons system. Introduced in the 1980s, the TOS-1 Buratino “heavy flamethrower system” is built from the T-72 main battle tank chassis. It can carry two types of 220-millimeter rockets, split between incendiary and fuel-air explosive warheads. The name Buratino—a nod to the long-nosed Pinocchio character—refers to the system’s protruding thirty-tube launcher unit, capable of unleashing a full salvo in up to fifteen seconds.

The TOS-1’s multiple launch rocket system boasts a firing range of only up to 3.5 kilometers and can cover an area of two hundred by four hundred meters, cementing the weapon’s role as a fire support platform for infantry and heavy armor. What this means, in practical terms, is that TOS-1 groups can devastate enemy fortifications within a relatively large area in a short time span.

Death by TOS-1 salvo is an eminently unpleasant experience. Depending on a person’s proximity to the detonation, the overpressure and subsequent combustion from the blast wave can inflict significant damage to internal organs, as well as broken bones, ruptured eardrums, blindness, suffocation, and loss of consciousness in the victim’s last moments.

The TOS-1’s destructive firepower was first laid bare in the latter stages of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and, again, during the Second Chechen War. The latter is a particularly jarring case of FAEs being used in dense, urban environments, obliterating entire swathes of the Chechen capital, Grozny, and costing numerous civilian lives in the process.  

The Buratino was succeeded in 2001 by the more advanced TOS-1A, bringing a vastly expanded range of six thousand kilometers, revised launching tubes, and a slew of chassis upgrades. Despite their somewhat niche battlefield role, the TOS-1 and TOS-1A have proven to be fairly popular export products. The Iraqi army has used these weapons against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militants from 2014 to 2017. TOS-1s were likewise used by the Syrian military against anti-government forces during the Syrian Civil War, with unconfirmed reports indicating that at least one such system was destroyed by rebels in 2016. More recently, video footage has emerged of Azerbaijan’s military allegedly launching TOS-1A salvos against Karabakh separatists during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War. Saudi Arabia has recently purchased a batch of TOS-1A units as part of a larger $3 billion deal with Russia.  

A further TOS revision, the TOS-2 Tosochka, was first spotted during Russia’s Kavkaz-2020 exercises. The weapon, which is currently undergoing trials, reportedly boasts further firing range upgrades and automated targeting protocols. 

Mark Episkopos is a national security reporter for the National Interest. This article is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Wikipedia.

Mark Episkopos

F-35,

The state-of-the-art  F-35 program has made major strides in reducing costs over the past decade, and there are even more encouraging signs on the horizon.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The long-term figures are unambiguous: Lockheed Martin has consistently driven down the F-35A’s flyaway cost between serial production batches.

As the US Air Force (USAF) charts acquisition plans into the coming decades, an unmistakable trend emerges for the country’s most advanced fighter jet: the state-of-the-art  F-35 program has made major strides in reducing costs over the past decade, and there are even more encouraging signs on the horizon.

The debate over costs runs usually across two primary metrics: flyaway and sustainment costs. The flyaway cost is simply the price of producing a single additional model. As its name suggests, this is a marginal cost figure that excludes sunk expenses like research and development. Meanwhile, the sustainment cost refers to the price of operating a piece of hardware, including manpower, maintenance, system improvements, materiel, and more. These two figures are not strictly related, capturing different aspects of the expenses associated with an aircraft. When considered in conjunction, they can offer a comprehensive picture of how much it costs to produce and fly an F-35.

The long-term figures are unambiguous: Lockheed Martin has consistently driven down the F-35A’s flyaway cost between serial production batches. Lot 1 is estimated to have a per-model cost of around two hundred million dollars; with Lot 5, the price dropped all the way down to around $100 million per model. Lot 12 saw the cost come down to $82.4 million and, as of Lot 14, the per-model cost now sits at $77.9 million. For a sense of scale, consider that the F-35 now not only has a markedly lower flyaway cost than the less advanced F-15EX (which is typically quoted at around $85-90 million) but is also cheaper than competing foreign fighters like the Eurofighter Typhoon. Indeed, the F-35 remains in high demand among US partners: Saudi Arabia, Spain, Qatar, Greece, the Czech Republic are among those that have expressed import interest in recent years.

“We really haven’t seen any sort of diminishing interest,” said Bridget Lauderdale, Lockheed Martin’s new F-35 program head. “As the jet performs — and frankly as, for example, our European partners are able to operate together and see the power and the strength of the capabilities on the platform and particularly as they are interoperating in their missions — we are seeing a stronger conviction around what this means to the security of their individual nations and to the effectiveness of the alliances.” Lauderdale added that “the airplane is doing its job and selling itself.”

The F-35 has been or is being purchased by over a dozen U.S. allies, helping the American defense industry to secure a foothold in the lucrative and increasingly competitive high-end jet fighter market. Meanwhile, the consolidation of US allies around a single fighter platform is a major boon for the principle of interoperability that sits at the heart of NATO’s international military infrastructure.

Sustainment outlays, too, have seen a steady decline, with the fighter’s cost per flight hour dropping by 23% over the past four years. The F-35’s current cost per flying hour sits at $36,000, a sharp reduction from  $44,000 in fiscal year 2018. Through further logistics optimizations, Lockheed Martin seeks to drive that figure all the way down to $25,000 by 2025.

Significant progress has been made, but the good news doesn’t end here. As the F-35 program matures and expands, Lockheed Martin will be in a position to continue leveraging economies of scale and refining its supply chains. This will drive the fighter’s costs down even further in coming decades, giving the Pentagon and the American taxpayer rising value throughout the F-35’s roughly fifty years of projected service.

Mark Episkopos is a national security reporter for The National Interest.

Image: Flickr

The United States evacuates its embassy while diplomats and aid officials brace for a new humanitarian catastrophe.

Si elle veut encore exister en l'an 2000, l'Europe de l'électronique doit consentir des investissements lourds et faire des paris risqués. Absents de plusieurs domaines-clés, ses industriels devront tenter de sauter une génération de produits, voire plusieurs, et parfois acheter des compétences (...) / Intégration régionale, Japon, Technologie, Électronique - 1991/06

Authoritarians around the world are perfecting the art of seeming more powerful than they are.

A community-led project to manage some 28,000 tonnes of plastic waste and prevent 5,000 tonnes from ending up in the ocean is being supported by the UN in one of the most popular tourist attractions in Viet Nam.

Europe’s poster child for pandemic dysfunction can now teach other countries how to beat the disease.

“Social responsibility and sustainable profit” can go hand in hand according to the chief of Thailand’s government pension fund. The UN, and some of the biggest players in the Thai economy, are working together to support efforts by the country’s finance and banking institutions to speed up the South East Asian country’s transition to a net zero carbon economy.

The United Nations is working to support rescue and relief efforts in Haiti following a powerful earthquake that reportedly left hundreds dead, with perhaps even more injured and missing, and caused massive damage in the south-western part of the country.

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UN Human Rights Council-appointed experts expressed deep concern on Friday over Israeli military interference in the work of a well-known, independent Palestinian child rights organization, in the occupied West Bank.

The UN Secretary-General on Friday called on Taliban militants to “immediately halt” their offensive against Government forces and return to the negotiating table in good faith, “in the interest of Afghanistan, and its people.”

Despair elides the progress made over the last two decades.

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