Diplomacy & Crisis News

Robert Farley

History,

One of the major "what ifs" of the war.

Here's What You Need to Know: Hitler and Roosevelt believed that war was inevitable, and they were both probably right.

What if Germany had never declared war on the United States during World War II? 

Scholars and analysts have long wondered whether this represented one of the great “what-ifs” of World War II; could the Germans have kept the United States out of the war, or at least undercut popular support for fighting in the European Theater, by declining to join the Japanese offensive?

Was the decision to declare war on the United States, effectively relieving the Roosevelt administration of the responsibility of mobilizing American sentiment for war in Europe, among Hitler’s greatest blunders?

Probably not. Washington and Berlin agreed that war was inevitable; the only question was who would fire the first shots.

At War:

The United States and Germany were at war in all but name well before December 1941.  Since early 1941 (at least) the United States had shipped war material and economic goods to the United Kingdom, enabling the British government to carry on with the war.  American soldiers, sailors, and airmen served in the British armed forces, albeit not in great numbers.  And in the late summer of 1941, the United States effectively found itself at war in the Battle of the Atlantic. The Greer Incident, in which a U.S. destroyer tangled with a German U-boat, served to bring the conflict into sharp focus. 

The Fireside Chat delivered by President Roosevelt on September 11, 1941 made clear that the United States was already virtually at war with Germany:

“Upon our naval and air patrol -- now operating in large number over a vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean -- falls the duty of maintaining the American policy of freedom of the seas -- now. That means, very simply, very clearly, that our patrolling vessels and planes will protect all merchant ships -- not only American ships but ships of any flag -- engaged in commerce in our defensive waters. They will protect them from submarines; they will protect them from surface raiders.

It is no act of war on our part when we decide to protect the seas that are vital to American defense. The aggression is not ours. Ours is solely defense.

But let this warning be clear. From now on, if German or Italian vessels of war enter the waters, the protection of which is necessary for American defense, they do so at their own peril.”

This declaration did not simply apply to U.S. territorial waters. The United States would escort convoys filled with military equipment to Europe with surface ships and anti-submarine craft, firing at will against any German submarines, ships or planes that they encountered.

Moreover, even U.S. ground forces had begun to participate in the war.  In early July 1941, the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps, with Navy support, began deploying to Iceland. The Americans relieved British and Canadian troops who had invaded the island a year earlier.

Why?

In the long run, Hitler (and the rest of the German government) believed that confrontation with the United States was virtually inevitable.  The U.S. had intervened in 1917 on behalf of Russia, France, and the United Kingdom; it was almost certain to do so again.  U.S. behavior in 1941 reaffirmed this belief. Starting the war on German terms, before the U.S. was prepared to effectively defend itself, was the consensus position within the German political and military elite.

And so Germany declared war on the United States not out of a fit of pique, but rather because it believed that the United States was already effectively a belligerent, and that wider operations against the U.S. would help win the war. In particular, the Axis declaration of war enabled an operation that the Germans believed was key to driving Britain out of the conflict; a concerted submarine attack against U.S. commercial shipping.  Although the Kriegsmarine had targeted U.S. vessels in the months and years before Pearl Harbor, it radically stepped up operations in the first months of 1942, launching a major effort just off the U.S. Atlantic seaboard.

The German tactics were devastatingly effective against a U.S. military that lacked good tactics, equipment, and procedures for fighting the U-boats.  For their part, British military and political authorities worried that the German offensive might work, destroying enough shipping to cut Britain’s lifeline to North America. The Royal Navy and Royal Air Force quickly dispatched advisors to the United States in an effort to staunch the bleeding, but 1942 nevertheless proved the most devastating year of the war for shipping losses.  Overall, Operation Drumbeat proved far more successful for the Axis than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

But What If…

If, despite all this, Germany and Italy had somehow managed to avoid an open declaration of war against the United States, conflict would have continued in the North Atlantic. The U.S. would have continued to supply Britain and the Soviet Union with war material, potentially with somewhat more secure lines of supply, especially if the Germans continued to avoid attacks along the Atlantic seaboard.

In the real war, U.S. air, naval, and ground forces made their first decisive contribution in the Mediterranean. Plenty of analysts, now and then, have questioned the strategic logic of the Mediterranean campaign, but in the long run it helped beat U.S. ground and air forces into shape.  If the U.S. had maintained formal neutrality, Operation Torch (the invasion of North Africa) might never have happened, and progress in the Med would have come much more slowly.

U.S. participation in the Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO), designed to destroy German industry and morale and drive the Third Reich from the war, might also have developed more slowly.  Given the limited impact and immense cost of the CBO in its early stages, however, it’s unclear how much of a net impact on the tides of war that this would have made.

A reduced U.S. combat commitment in the Atlantic could have led to a greater effort in the Pacific, although it’s difficult to see what impact that would have made in the first year of the war.  Over time, the U.S. built up an enormous advantage over the Japanese; this would have happened even more quickly with a smaller commitment to Europe. Still, the overwhelming superiority that the U.S. exhibited in 1944 depended on technology, training, and the availability of ships that remained on the slipways in 1942. Schemes to step up the fight in China or in Southeast Asia suffered from immeasurable logistical problems, which the U.S. could not solve until 1944 in any case.

The Final Salvo

Both Hitler and Roosevelt believed that war was inevitable, and they were both probably right.  Restraining the war machine in December of 1941 might have bought some additional time for Germany in the Med and (possibly) in the skies, but would have forced the Kriegsmarine to forego an offensive that it believed could win the war. And in the end, the Americans likely would have joined the conflict anyway, perhaps with less experience, but with greater overall preparation to make a decisive commitment.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is author of The Battleship Book. He serves as a Senior Lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and The Diplomat.

This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Robert Farley

History, World

The Yamato was, with its sister ship Musashi, the largest ship in history - and more agile and heavily armed than the Bismarck.

Here's What You Need to Know: Apart from the Iowas and HMS Vanguard, the Bismarcks and the Yamatos were the two largest classes of battleships ever built.

Can we imagine a scenario in which two titans of World War II, the German battleship Bismarck and the Japanese battleship Yamato, would come into conflict? Difficult, but not impossible. Had the Battle of the Marne gone the other way, Germany might have forced France from the World War I in the early fall of 1914, just as it did in the spring of 1940. Germany and the United Kingdom might plausibly have come to an accommodation on naval armaments that would have left the Reich with a free hand on the Continent in exchange for the security of the British Empire.

Prior to World War One, Germany held extensive territories in the Pacific. A German Empire emerging victorious from the Great War might well have sought to extend those territories, especially in China. Just as Japan chafed against the existence of the British and American empires in Asia, it could well have come into conflict with Berlin.

The Players

Apart from the Iowas and HMS Vanguard, the Bismarcks and the Yamatos were the two largest classes of battleships ever built. Bismarck and her sister Tirpitz displaced about fifty thousand tons, with a speed of roughly thirty knots and an armament of eight fifteen-inch guns in four twin turrets. The Bismarcks carried about nineteen thousand tons of armor, albeit in an archaic configuration by World War II standards. The Yamatos, on the other hand, displaced about seventy-two thousand tons, armed with nine 18.1” guns in three triple turrets and capable of twenty-seven knots. Yamato and her sister carried about twenty-two thousand tons of armor in modern (“all or nothing”) configuration.

We will assume for our purposes that Germany would construct ships akin to the Bismarck and Tirpitz, and then deploy them to the Far East (in a shorter Great War, Germany might well have retained the naval base at Tsingtao). The long-legged German battleships, designed for raiding, would take to Pacific service well. We also assume that they represent the early stages of German fast battleship design, meaning that the more powerful ships will remain in the Atlantic.

The Stage

As the clouds of war gather, Bismarck, Tirpitz, and a collection of smaller vessels (two heavy cruisers, six destroyers) abandon Tsingtao for the German naval base at Truk. With Kido Butai (the Japanese carrier force) engaged elsewhere, the Imperial Japanese Navy assigns HIJMS Yamato and HIJMS Musashi (with a similarly constituted support group) the task of catching and destroying the German ships.

The German squadron has a three-knot speed advantage, which it uses to try to pull away from the Japanese and avoid the engagement. However, the Japanese have a clear geographic advantage; the existence of relatively close bases means that they can station squadrons of older, smaller ships along potential channels of exit. Rather than fight with a collection of older battleships led by HIJMS Nagato, Admiral Lutjens decides to try his luck with the cream of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Lutjens wants to engage before dark, when he knows that the Japanese will have a significant tactical advantage, despite German radar.

The Germans open fire first, when it becomes apparent that they cannot escape the fight. Lutjens decides to attack before Japanese cruisers and destroyers can close into torpedo range; German intelligence is well-apprised of the capabilities of the Type 93 torpedo, designed to destroy and disable capital ships at a distance. Bismarck opens fire on Yamato and Tirpitz on Musashi, with Bismarck scoring an early hit on the Japanese flagship.

Before long, the Japanese begin to reply with their 18.1” guns. Both the Germans and the Japanese have excellent fire control, but the contest is unequal. The fifteen-inch guns of Bismarck and Tirpitz fire at a greater rate than the Japanese guns, but even when they hit, they do relatively little damage to the vitals of the Japanese ships (although they extensively scar the upper works). By contrast, the 18.1” hits begin to do serious damage immediately, plunging into the German ships at great range. Large and with effective subdivisions, neither German ship suffers lethal damage. However, before long both Bismarck and Tirpitz begin to lose speed, cutting off any chance of escape.

The battle between the smaller ships also begins to go the Japanese way. After a flurry of shellfire on both sides, the Japanese ships open up at range with their twenty-four-inch “Long Lance” torpedoes. Three German ships suffer hits, with a cruiser and a destroyer shearing out of line. Japanese gunfire slows the rest of the line, allowing several of the IJN’s support squadron to detach themselves and concentrate on the German battleships.

Increasingly accurate Japanese fire devastates the upper works of the German ships. With their speed advantage gone, the Germans find themselves in a slugging match with far larger, more heavily armored opponents. The Japanese advantages soon tell, and fire from both German ships becomes sporadic and inaccurate. The destroyers Yukikaze and Isokaze brave the secondary armament of the two German behemoths to close within torpedo distance, hitting both targets.

At this point, the situation becomes academic. The German ships lose the capacity to meaningfully engage the Japanese, and are subjected to withering fire from the battleships. Yamato and Musashi (both of which have suffered significant damage to their upper works and secondary armaments) close to point blank range. The remaining Japanese cruisers and destroyers, having disposed of their German counterparts, open up with their own guns and fire their remaining torpedoes. Still, both German battleships remain shockingly resistant to the damage inflicted by the IJN.

Two hours into the engagement, an explosion rocks Tirpitz; the crippled battleship soon capsizes and sinks. The Japanese concentrate their fire on Bismarck, which has slowed to a stop and ceased firing. An eagle eyed Japanese sailor onboard Yamato sees a German officer strike the ships colors, and miraculously, the order goes out across the fleet to cease firing. A boarding party from Yukikaze embarks upon the crippled German ship, followed by damage control parties from the rest of the Japanese squadron.

With the assistance of the surrendered German crew, the Japanese manage to get the fires and flooding under control. Yamato takes Bismarck under tow until tugs arrive. Although officially taken into IJN service, Bismarck never returns to combat status; the expense and difficulty of refit prove too much for the Japanese. Most of her crew survives the war, however.

Wrap

Although large and capable of absorbing enormous battle damage, Bismarck and Tirpitz simply did not compare favorably with any other navy’s fast battleships. Yamato and Musashi, the largest and most powerfully built ships in history (although perhaps at some disadvantage relative to the American Iowas) utterly outclassed the German ships, and would have defeated them easily.

More importantly, the imperial ambitions of Kaiserine Germany are worth remembering. Both US and Japanese policy in the Pacific in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (particularly the U.S. seizure of the Philippines) kept German regional ambitions firmly in mind. Japan entered the Great War against the Central Powers as a coalition partner; if the coalition had broken up, Tokyo might still have found reason to quarrel with Berlin.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to the National Interest, is author of The Battleship Book. He serves as a senior lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His work includes military doctrine, national security and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money, Information Dissemination and the Diplomat.

This article first appeared several years ago.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Robert Farley

History, Europe

Italy undertook mischief across the Mediterranean.

Here's What You Need to Know: The Italian raid helped demonstrate the potential for special operations forces to have a strategic impact.

Mussolini’s effort to seize control of the Mediterranean had, by late 1941, largely ended in failure. 

The success of the Royal Navy in the raid on Taranto and at the Battle of Cape Matapan had given the British a decisive advantage. Low morale and fuel shortages further limited the effectiveness of the Regia Marina. Yet the Italians still had several modern battleships, along with a few older, modernized vessels. And on the upside, the Royal Navy had lost one of its battleships, HMS Barham, to U-boat attack in late November. In anticipation of war with Japan, additional Royal navy warships were headed to the Far East.

That’s when the Italians decided to get creative. In order to further redress the imbalance, the Italians conceived a daring operation to attack British ships directly. They borrowed a page from their own history in World War I, and managed to knock two British battleships out of the war.

The Plan: 

Italy lacked aircraft carriers, and consequently could not respond in kind to the Taranto attack. But in a previous war, the Italians had developed a weapon that could be just as lethal to battleships as the torpedo bomber. In 1918, days before the surrender of the Central Powers, the collapsing government of Austria-Hungary made clear that it would pass one of its dreadnought battleships, SMS Viribus Unitis, on to the newly created State of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs, a forerunner of Yugoslavia. Italy believed the ship still to be in the possession of Austria-Hungary, and no peace treaty yet existed. In any case, the Italians had little interest in seeing a battleship pass into the possession of what might become a regional rival. Accordingly, a team of divers entered Pula Harbor and attached a mine to the bottom of the battleship. They were quickly captured, and confessed to attaching the weapon without indicating the exact spot of its placement. But the Austrians couldn’t find the mine, which exploded and sank the battleship.

In the late 1930s, the Italians began to assemble a team that would become the scourge of the Mediterranean. Based on experience in the Pula raid and the more recent enthusiasm for spearfishing and underwater diving, Italy began to develop a capability for attacking enemy ships at anchor. This included explosive motorboats, diving equipment, limpet mines, and two-man minisubs known as “human torpedoes.” In 1940, the Regia Marina stood up Decima Flottiglia MAS, a team detailed to conduct raids against Allied facilities.

From the beginning of the war, X MAS (from the Roman number for ten) undertook mischief across the Mediterranean. The raids were dangerous, and depended on a good deal of luck to succeed. Nevertheless, teams managed to cause significant damage in several different ports. Like many special forces units, X MAS was also known for its ideological enthusiasm, in this case fanatic support for the Fascist government of Italy. 

The Attack: 

Scire, a submarine carrying three minisubs, left Italy on December 3. A short while later, Scire picked up six members of X MAS, who would form into three teams of two. On December 19, the attack commenced, with Scire making a submerged approach to Alexandria Harbor. The three torpedoes were released, and Scire retreated an appropriate distance. Their targets were two battleships, the HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Valiant, and an aircraft carrier that was expected to be in port but was absent. After placing limpet mines, the teams would exfiltrate into Alexandria, then make their way to a pre-arranged point where Scire would pick them up with small boats.

Both Queen Elizabeth and Valiant had recently been modernized, bringing them up to the standard of modern battleships. They constituted the core of the British Mediterranean Fleet, especially with more modern units transferred to the Far East. One team successfully attached a mine to the hull of Queen Elizabeth and another team to a large oil tanker (an aircraft carrier could not be found). 

The final team second ran into mechanical problems, both with its breathing equipment and with the torpedo. The two frogmen nevertheless managed to attach a bomb to HMS Valiant, although both members of the team were captured in the process. A scene played out aboard Valiant reminiscent of what had happened in Pola twenty-three years before. The captain of Valiant ordered the Italians confined below decks, where they would be vulnerable to the explosion. Nevertheless, they remained silent until just before the mine exploded.

The mines inflicted severe damage. Queen Elizabeth sank into the mud, although she, fortunately, remained upright. Valiant was seriously damaged but did not come to rest on the floor of the harbor. The tanker Sagona was badly damaged, and in the process of her sinking, a British destroyer also suffered serious damage. The British took elaborate steps to hide evidence of the damage, but Queen Elizabeth took nine months to repair, Valiant six. At a stroke, the Italians had eliminated two of the Royal Navy’s most powerful units from the Mediterranean, at very little cost to themselves. The other four commandos were arrested in the vicinity of Alexandria. 

Parting Thoughts:

By the time the two battleships re-entered service, the balance had tilted decisively in favor of the Allies. Valiant and Queen Elizabeth served for most of the rest of the war in the Pacific, although Valiant fell victim to a dreadful accident in a floating drydock that severely damaged the ship and removed her from active service.

The attack was dramatized in two British and one Italian films. Most of the captured divers were released from custody in 1944, after having decided to fight for the Allied Italian government. Several were active in the post-war Italian Navy, and two of them served in the Italian parliament. The raid helped demonstrate the potential for special operations forces to have a strategic impact, and influenced how both the United States and the Soviet Union thought about special operators after the war.

Dr. Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, teaches at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. He is the author of the Battleship Book and can be found at @drfarls.

This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Kris Osborn

Security, Americas

The Army seeks self-guiding, auto-loading robots empowered to arm combat vehicles and move ammunition from one platform to another quickly while reducing risk to soldiers and coordinating combined joint attacks.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Both air and ground robotic ammunition-carrying drones can extend range and dwell-time for attacking forces, precluding a need to stop, return or pause to rearm. The technology could therefore enable an advancing mechanized force to extend its penetration into enemy forces should initial assaults be met with success. 

The Army seeks self-guiding, auto-loading robots empowered to arm combat vehicles and move ammunition from one platform to another quickly while reducing risk to soldiers and coordinating combined joint attacks. 

The emerging artificial intelligence-centric system seeks to resolve a resupply problem often confronted by attacking forces traveling with finite amounts of ammunition. Furthermore, the need for ammunition, and the pace at which it is needed, is vastly different than it may have been in previous years. 

“The rate of fire is different now compared to autoloaders that existed in the past. We have sophisticated ammo now. The autoloading problem is a really difficult one. We have confidence in our armaments center,” Brigadier General John Rafferty, Director, Long Range Precision Fires Cross Functional Team, Army Futures Command, told The National Interest. 

By referring to sophisticated ammunition, Rafferty may have been citing several emerging high-tech artillery and rocket munitions such as new Excalibur variants. These include “shaped charge” or “shaped trajectory” 155mm rounds able to both course correct and, in some cases, tailor blast effects to meet a specific threat. 

An AI-capable ammunition-carrying robot might instantly know where ammo is most in need and network requests back to supply lines, optimizing the pace of attack and sustaining high op-tempo attack missions. 

Digital auto-loading and artillery systems have been here for many years, going back as far as the Army’s cancelled Crusader platform and Future Combat Systems. Auto-loading and advanced data links are already in the process of arming upgraded Abrams tanks, a combat circumstance which improves the rate of fire, underscoring the need for fast ammunition resupply. 

“We don’t necessarily want an autoloader as much as an improved rate of fire. We have a group of talented people solving hard problems. We are going through the process with small business innovation and Army research,” Rafferty said. 

Robotic ammunition transport will also need to incorporate what Rafferty explained as “trade-offs,” given that munitions of all sizes will need to transport quickly and efficiently, a circumstance requiring light-weight, fast-moving robots. Perhaps some drones can carry heavier loads while others move quickly with smaller cargo-load to meet urgent demands. 

“Some ammo is big and heavy, so we have to make a lot of trades to make sure we have the right space, weight and power to give ourselves many options,” Rafferty added. 

It is even possible that robotic ammunition platforms could help identify the kind of ammunition needed for a particular attack. For instance, perhaps an Abrams tank needs a canister round to shoot many fragments in an array to attack slightly dispersed groups of ground forces. Conversely, if confronting an armored vehicle threat, a robot could organize and deliver High Explosive Anti-Tank rounds to fire upon enemy armored vehicles. AI can also organize sensor information and make nearly instant calculations based on a number of otherwise separate variables such as range, terrain, navigational details and the configurations of enemy targets in relation to a surrounding high-value enemy area. 

Robotic air drones could also be used quite possibly to autonomously deliver ammunition to helicopters or even fixed-wing aircraft engaged in a heavy, fast-paced exchange of fire with enemy forces. Such a scenario would require some kind of automated delivery or intake system, enabling aircraft to accept and integrate ammunition deliveries. In some cases, such as with helicopters, manned crews might be able to receive ammunition. However, it seems automated ammunition reception or intake, responding to a robotic arm delivering ammunition, might greatly expedite the process by virtue of an ability to draw upon accelerated computer processing speeds. 

Both air and ground robotic ammunition-carrying drones can extend range and dwell-time for attacking forces, precluding a need to stop, return or pause to rearm. The technology could therefore enable an advancing mechanized force to extend its penetration into enemy forces should initial assaults be met with success. 

Kris Osborn is the new Defense Editor for the National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University. This article first appeared last year.

Image: Flickr.

Seth J. Frantzman

F-35 KC-46, Middle East

The replacements cannot come too soon given the age of the current fleet of tankers.

Israel has needed new refuelers for its air force for years. Its aging fleet of converted Boeing 707s are sixty years old. Yet these expensive upgrades were put off, along with more F-35 purchases and helicopters, because of a budget battle between the Ministry of Defense and Finance Ministry. There were also questions about how to pay for the warplanes amid U.S. military aid to Israel and a decade-long memorandum of understanding with the US. Israel’s goal is to maintain its “Qualitative Military Edge” over opponents in the region for decades to come. The tankers will join more F-35s, helicopters, air defense systems and other advanced technology.

Now it is official. Israel will procure two tanker jets. The U.S. State Department had approved a sale of up to eight of the advanced aircraft in March 2020. The Israeli Ministry of Defense said a Letter of Offer and Acceptance had been signed. “In addition to the Tankers, similar processes will be launched to acquire a third F-35 squadron, heavy lift Helicopters to replace the CH53 Yasur fleet, advanced munitions and more. The procurement programs are conducted with U.S. Military channels, utilizing Foreign Military Financing (FMF),” Israel says. 

“I welcome the progress in the procurement plan, which is critical at this point in time. It is a cornerstone of the IDF’s security concept,” said Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz. “I would like to thank our great friend the United States, for supporting the State of Israel on all levels. We will continue to work to complete the agreements that will enable the IDF to fulfill its purpose and to move forward with the missions facing us in the various arenas, near and far, at sea, in the air, on land and in cyberspace.” 

The deal has been in the works for years and in recent weeks there was immense pressure to finalize it and move forward. This is reportedly because of U.S. pressure regarding timing and the production line and because Israel needs these aircraft. There has been talk of “frontloading” the financing. The group JINSA in the United States had recommended this in a report on February 7. Furthermore, there are elections coming up in Israel and the country has been dealing with budget battles for a year due to the seemingly endless elections the country has faced in the last two years. There is also the coronavirus pandemic. Israeli defense companies were at IDEX in Abu Dhabi, a huge defense exhibition this week, but many Israeli members of the companies couldn’t attend because Israel’s airports are closed due to the pandemic. Amid all this, and with Defense Minister Gantz likely out of a job after the elections, the deal was moved forward. 

Over the weekend the head of the Israel Ministry of Defense Mission to the United States, Brig. Gen. (Res.), Mishel Ben Baruch signed a Letter of Offer and Acceptance, Israel said. The two KC-46 tankers will be manufactured by the Boeing Corporation. “In the next phase, two additional tanker aircraft will be acquired, out of a total of up to eight that will make up the future fleet,” Israel’s Ministry of Defense says. “As part of the agreement, the aircraft will be fitted with unique Israeli systems in accordance with the operational requirements of the Israeli Air Force (IAF). The first aircraft delivery is expected by the middle of this decade.”

That means that these aircraft won’t be flying in Israel for years. Yet Israel is facing tensions with Iran and pro-Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah. In addition, other Iranian proxies in Iraq, Syria and Yemen may threaten Israel. Israel also has new relations with partners in the Gulf and is moving forward with kitting out a new advanced warship to guard its exclusive economic zone. On Monday, February 22, Israel’s navy revealed it had recently confronted a threat from the Gaza Strip. This shows how important the tankers are.

On February 18 Israel’s General Staff of the IDF convened a workshop to discuss the multi-year plan dubbed Momentum Israel’s army is going through to prepare for future conflicts. “The workshop, which was held at the Dayan Base in Glilot, presented the implementation progress of the decisions of the multi-year program so far, including increasing the readiness to respond in the first and third circles, improving offensive capabilities, strengthening multi-force cooperation, responding to increasing threats in all theaters, the digital revolution, and preserving the IDF’s intelligence might,” the IDF said. During the workshop, the commanding officers of the Forces and Commands reviewed the progress of the multi-year plan’s implementation, in the light of the operational concept of victory, emphasizing military dominance in current and future combat theaters, Israel noted.

As part of Momentum Israel seeks to utilize advanced aircraft like the F-35 and pair them with the best intelligence, and air defense and other assets. Israel is constantly rolling out new technologies, such as electro-optics for drones, automatic target recognition and “deep learning” artificial intelligence applications for military units. Altogether the big picture is that the KC-46s and other new technology will blend well with Israel’s preparations for this future war. The Defense Ministry says that the new procurement will be crucial to strengthening the Israeli air force and maintaining Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge for decades. This means Israel will push for more F-35s, new helicopters and other “advanced munitions, air defense systems, marine and ground platforms, cyber systems and more.”

Seth J. Frantzman is a Jerusalem-based journalist who holds a Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the executive director of the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis and a writing fellow at Middle East Forum. He is the author of After ISIS: America, Iran and the Struggle for the Middle East (Gefen Publishing) and Drone Wars: Pioneers, Killing Machines, Artificial Intelligence, and the Battle for the Future (Forthcoming, Bombardier Books). Follow him on Twitter at @sfrantzman.  

Image: Reuters.

Robert Farley

History, Europe

Displacing 44,500 tons (standard) and capable of thirty knots, Vanguard was the largest battleship ever built by the Royal Navy, and was only exceeded internationally by the Iowa and Yamato classes. However, many of its foreign contemporaries carried a heavier main armament.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The Royal Navy’s first post–London Treaty battleships were the five ships of the King George V class, which served with honor in every theater of World War II. 

In an effort to take advantage of the superiority of the Royal Navy in World War I, First Sea Lord John “Jackie” Fisher developed a scheme to land British troops in Pomerania, thus directly threatening Berlin and forcing the Germans to withdraw troops from the Western Front. To this end, Fisher authorized design of a group of shallow-draft “large light cruisers” that would carry guns heavy enough to support the landings. HMS Courageous and HMS Glorious would each carry four fifteen-inch guns in two twin turrets, while HMS Furious was expected to carry two eighteen-inch guns in single turrets. The light cruiser designation, incidentally, enabled Fisher to evade government restrictions on the construction of new battlecruisers.

As it happened, the Baltic landings never proved practical, and Courageous and Glorious joined the Grand Fleet as battlecruisers. After the war, the Royal Navy removed the heavy guns and converted all three ships into aircraft carriers, a procedure enabled by the Washington Naval Treaty. All three served in World War II, although only Furious survived the conflict.

The conversions left four twin fifteen-inch turrets lying about, guns that couldn’t be used on new ships because of the Washington Naval Treaty. Gun turrets are among the most expensive and difficult to construct parts of a battleship, however, so they were retained in the hope of future use. The British fifteen-inch/38-caliber gun was regarded as a great success, and suitable for use in later ships.

The Royal Navy’s first post–London Treaty battleships were the five ships of the King George V class, which served with honor in every theater of World War II. The Navy intended to follow these up with the Lions, which would have represented the apogee of British battleship design. Each of the six ships would have displaced 43,000 tons and carried nine sixteen-inch guns in three triple turrets. The Lions would have carried heavier armor than the American Iowa class, with a design speed of twenty-eight knots. However, the war intervened, and the Admiralty determined that smaller ships should take precedence, shifting resources allocated to the Lions to aircraft carriers and antisubmarine craft.

Fortunately, the availability of the four old fifteen-inch turrets meant that a seventh ship, Vanguard, could be completed more quickly than the Lions. Intended for use in the Pacific, the ship would be fast enough to catch and powerful enough to destroy the Japanese Kongo-class battlecruisers. The design went through several evolutions (at one point the Royal Navy declared that the ship would be a replacement for HMS Royal Oak, sunk by U-47 in 1939) before the keel was finally laid in 1941. Work proceeded slowly, incorporating the lessons of the war, and Vanguard was not finally completed until late 1946. It was the last battleship ever launched, although not the last one completed, an honor that would belong to the French Jean Bart.

Displacing 44,500 tons (standard) and capable of thirty knots, Vanguard was the largest battleship ever built by the Royal Navy, and was only exceeded internationally by the Iowa and Yamato classes. However, many of its foreign contemporaries carried a heavier main armament. Vanguard was well armored and an excellent seaboat, but because of its light main battery it likely would have struggled against the Japanese and American super battleships. Visually, its great size made the fifteen-inch turrets look diminutive.

Vanguard saw only limited opportunities for action in the years after the war, but played an important ceremonial role. In 1947 it carried King George VI, Queen Elizabeth and a young Princess Elizabeth on a royal visit to South Africa. Elizabeth had presided over Vanguard’s launching in 1944, the first (but far from the last) such ceremony she would conduct. It was also present at the Coronation Fleet Review of Elizabeth II in 1953. Vanguard spent the rest of its career with the Home Fleet and the Mediterranean Fleet. It was placed in reserve in 1956.

The Royal Navy has rarely demonstrated the same enthusiasm for ship preservation found in the United States. Several of the most storied battleships of the twentieth century (HMS Warspite, HMS Rodney, HMS Queen Elizabeth) were quickly sold to the scrappers after World War II, in part because of the demands of postwar austerity. Four King George V–class ships survived until 1958 before meeting the same fate, leaving Vanguard as the only remaining Royal Navy battleship. Desultory efforts at preservation failed, perhaps in part because of its brief, uneventful career, and Vanguard went to the cutters in 1960.

Vanguard was an idiosyncratic curiosity, but would have filled its role effectively if it had been completed in time. Although not comparable to its contemporaries of modern design and armament, it was a beautiful ship, and well worthy of service to the royal family.

The above is part of an ongoing National Interest series based on Robert Farley’s recent publication, The Battleship Book. The views expressed are his own. (This first appeared several years ago.)

Image: Wikipedia.

Kris Osborn

U.S. Navy Submarines,

Additional attack submarines promise to bring new levels of undersea firepower, drone control, and stealthy reconnaissance technology in the nearer term.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Virginia-class submarines are engineered with “Fly-by-Wire” capability which allows the ship to quietly linger in shallow waters without having to surface or have each small move controlled by a human operator. With this technology, a human operator will order depth and speed, allowing software to direct the movement of the planes and rudder to maintain course and depth.

Many in Congress are hoping the Pentagon receives enough funding to secure the acquisition of more Virginia-class attack submarines on a faster timetable to help offset an anticipated submarine shortage, best leverage the many technical advances contained in the submarine, and optimize the fast-growing execution of undersea reconnaissance missions. 

The House Committee on Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces announced its proposals for the mark-up of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021; the subcommittee recommends the restoration of a second Virginia-class submarine and the required advanced procurement to maintain the two-per-year build rate, as reported by Seapower Magazine. 

Additional attack submarines promise to bring new levels of undersea firepower, drone control, and stealthy reconnaissance technology in the nearer term.

While firepower and attack weapons are naturally still a major area of focus for Virginia-Class submarines, the expanding ISR mission scope made possible by new technologies has provided key inspiration for senior Navy developers and members of Congress who have been working vigorously to increase the size of the attack submarine fleet.

Land weapons, port activities, and other enemy movements in coastal or island areas are more difficult for deeper draft surface ships to access, often complicating surveillance missions – without giving away their position. Surface ships and the drones or aircraft they operate could, in a variety of operational environments, would be more “detectable” to enemy radar and sensors when compared to attack submarines. Given these and other variables, Virginia-class submarines are becoming increasingly critical to clandestine “intel” missions beneath the surface in high-risk areas. 

Virginia-Class submarines are engineered with “Fly-by-Wire” capability which allows the ship to quietly linger in shallow waters without having to surface or have each small move controlled by a human operator. With this technology, a human operator will order depth and speed, allowing software to direct the movement of the planes and rudder to maintain course and depth. The ships can be driven primarily through software code and electronics, thus freeing up time and energy for an operator who does not need to manually control each small maneuver, Navy program managers have told the National Interest.

This technology, using upgradeable software and fast-growing AI applications, widens the mission envelope for the attack submarines by vastly expanding their ISR potential. Using real-time analytics and an instant ability to draw upon and organize vast databases of information and sensor input, computer algorithms can now perform a range of procedural functions historically performed by humans. This can increase the speed of maneuverability and an attack submarine's ability to quickly shift course, change speed or alter depth positioning when faced with attacks.

“The most important feature for maneuvering in littoral waters is the fly-by-wire control system, whereby computers in the control center electronically adjust the submarine's control surfaces, a significant improvement from the hydraulic systems used in the Los Angeles-class,” a 2016 Stanford University “The Future of Nuclear Submarines” paper by Alexander Yachanin writes.

The U.S. Navy’s 2018 “Commander’s Intent for the United States Submarine Force,” writes - “We are uniquely capable of, and often best employed in, stealthy, clandestine and independent operations……. we exploit the advantages of undersea concealment which allow us to: Conduct undetected operations such as strategic deterrent patrols, intelligence collection, Special Operations Forces support, non-provocative transits, and repositioning,” the Navy strategy document writes.

Virginia-class subs are armed with Tomahawk missiles, torpedoes, and other weapons able to perform a range of missions; these include anti-submarine warfare, strike warfare, covert mine warfare, ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance), anti-surface/ship warfare and naval special warfare, something described as having the ability to carry and insert Special Operations Forces. Future Virginia-Class submarines provide improved littoral (coastal waters) capabilities, sensors, special operations force employment, and strike warfare capabilities.

Kris Osborn is the new Defense Editor for the National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Master's Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University. 

This first appeared in June 2020 and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Flickr.

Robert Farley

Security, Asia

By the end of the decade, the balance of power (and the strategic landscape) may look very different.

Here's What You Need to Know: With luck and skill, Washington and Beijing will avoid war, even in 2030. But it behooves planners in both countries to take seriously the possibility that conflict might ensue.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the United States appear ready to plunge off the precipice of a trade war. This war could have far-ranging effects on the economies of both countries, as well as the future of the global economic order. But as of yet, it does not seem likely to involve the flight of actual bombs and missiles. While the U.S. and China have a variety of minor conflicts, none rise to the level of a casus belli.

But things could change over the next decade. Conflicts that now seem remote can take on urgency over time. As China’s relative power increases, the United States may find that small disputes can have big consequences. China, on the other hand, may see windows of opportunity in America’s procurement and modernization cycle that leave the United States vulnerable.

By 2030, the balance of power (and the strategic landscape) may look very different. What would the War of 2030 between China and the United States look like?

How Would War Begin?

The core of the conflict remains the same. China and the United States might well fall into the “Thucydides Trap,” however misunderstood the ancient Greek historian may be. Chinese power seems to grow inexorably, even as the United States continues to set the rules of the global international order. But even if the growth of Athenian power and the concern this provoked in Sparta really was the underlying cause of the Peloponnesian War, it required a spark to set the world aflame. Neither the PRC nor the United States will go to war over a trivial event.

We can imagine a significant threat to a U.S. ally, whether it be Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK), India, Taiwan, or perhaps the Philippines. The seeds of conflict between China and all of these countries have already been planted, even if they never bloom. If a militarized conflict developed between the PRC and any of these countries, the United States would almost invariably be drawn in. A war involving India and the PRC would undoubtedly carry the greatest stakes, threatening to bring not only the United States into the fray, but also Pakistan and Russia. But war between China and Japan could also have catastrophic consequences. We should also remain open to the prospect of significant strategic changes, such as rivalry between the ROK and Japan that leads to a militarized dispute that then leads to a confrontation involving China and the United States.

What New Technologies Would the Combatants Employ?

While the field of battle will depend on the cause of conflict, we can expect that the crucial theaters of war will be the East and South China Seas. This will place an emphasis on the air and naval capabilities of each country, granting that the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps have worked hard on developing ways to contribute to the ensuing “multi-domain battle.”

There is every reason to believe that the military balance will shift in China’s favor over the next twelve years. This does not mean that China will have an advantage, but, compared to the status quo, time favors the PRC. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is growing faster than the United States Navy (USN), even if the latter can find its way to 355 ships. In addition, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) is modernizing faster than the United States Air Force (USAF), even as F-35s and B-21s come online.

However, both sides will also field traditional technologies in significant numbers. China could very well have four aircraft carriers by 2030, most likely two Liaoning-type STOBAR carriers and two conventional CATOBAR carriers. Although the United States will still have more (including its fleet of assault carriers), and while the U.S. will enjoy qualitative superiority, China could potentially achieve temporary local superiority at the onset of the conflict. China will also deploy submarines and surface ships in large numbers- without the need to spread naval forces around the world. The USN will still have an advantage, but that advantage will be increasingly marginal.

With respect to aircraft, the United States Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps will all field F-35s in significant numbers. The Air Force will also have access to B-21 Raider stealth bombers, as well as its legacy bomber fleets. China will field more J-10s and J-11s, bringing its fleet up to par with America’s legacy force of F-15s, F-16s, and F/A-18s. The J-20 should be available in numbers, along perhaps with the J-31, if the PLA decides to buy. China’s modernization program won’t be quite enough to bring it up to U.S. standards by 2030, but the PLAAF will close the gap, and will have the advantage of plentiful bases and the support of enormous numbers of ballistic, cruise, and anti-aircraft missile installations.

The most significant difference by 2030 will likely be the explosion of unmanned vehicles that accompany, and often replace, existing manned platforms. Innovation in this area remains high-paced, and so it’s difficult to predict precisely what platforms will take center stage, but it is likely that aerial, naval, and undersea drones will conduct much of the fighting, both against each other and against manned platforms. These drones will depend on access to vast systems of reconnaissance and communication, systems that both sides will attempt to disrupt from the opening hours of the conflict.

No War But Cyber War?

Socially, economically, and militarily, China and the United States are both deeply wired, and deeply dependent upon cyber-connectivity. A significant disruption of that connectivity could have catastrophic effects. But some analysts of cyber-conflict have argued that just as U.S. and China have become more dependent on the internet, the structures that undergird connectivity have become more resilient and less susceptible to disruption. A useful analogy here is with the robustness of the industrial systems of the earlier 20th century; while German industry suffered heavily under Western bombing, it did not collapse like many expected, largely because a sophisticated system has multiple internal redundancies that cannot easily be undermined. By contrast, the less sophisticated Japanese economy suffered much more significant damage from blockade and bombing. Complexity, in other words, does not necessarily imply vulnerability, and we cannot assume that as economies become more digital that they will necessarily become easier to attack.

But this hardly means that the war won’t have a cyber-component; rather, digital combat will likely involve the military side more than the civilian side. Both the U.S. and China will undertake every effort to uncover and disrupt the connections that hold together the reconnaissance-strike complexes of either side, trying to blind their foe on the one hand, while also trying to see through the enemies eyes. The side that best coordinates cyber-attacks with “real-world” military operations may carry the day in the end.

How Will the War End?

Much has been written of late with respect to how a U.S.-China war might end. Without a firm grip on the specific casus belli associated with the War of 2030, it is difficult to assess how far each side might be willing to push. It seems extremely unlikely that China, even by 2030, could possess conventional capabilities that could permanently threaten U.S. industrial and warmaking capacity. On the other hand, it is increasingly hard to imagine a scenario in which the United States could fatally undermine the PRC, granting that defeat might cause a lasting political crisis. Victory will depend on which side can destroy the primary fielded forces of the enemy, either through decisive assault or through attrition.

A blockade probably isn’t the answer, either. While China’s energy consumption will likely increase by 2030, the PRC’s ability to remedy that strategic vulnerability may also increase. The construction of additional pipelines with Russia, in addition to the development of alternative sources of energy, will likely give the PRC enough slack to ride out any conflict with the United States. Unless the trade wars instigated by the Trump administration undermine the entire global economic system, the biggest pain for China will involve a collapse of its foreign trade.

In any case, ending the Sino-American War of 2030 would require careful diplomacy, lest the war become only the first stage of a confrontation that could last for the remainder of the century.

Conclusion

For almost four decades, many analysts suggested that war between the United States and the Soviet Union was inevitable. Despite a few close calls, it never happened. It is entirely possible, perhaps even likely, that China and the United States will not again find themselves in armed conflict. Then again, it’s worth thinking about how the balance of capabilities between the two countries could shift over time, and how windows of opportunity for either might emerge. With luck and skill, Washington and Beijing will avoid war, even in 2030. But it behooves planners in both countries to take seriously the possibility that conflict might ensue.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to the National Interest, is author of The Battleship Book. He serves as a Senior Lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and The Diplomat.

This article first appeared several years ago.

Image: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kaila V. Peters

Rachel Bucchino

Politics, Americas

Every four years there are complaints about which states vote first in the primaries.

The Democratic-controlled Nevada Legislature introduced legislation last week that would alter the presidential primary calendar and bump Nevada to be first in line for the nation’s nominating contest in 2024.

The bill also moves to eradicate the state’s caucus process and change its vote to a primary that would be held on the second-to-last Tuesday in January of presidential election years, putting direct threats on Iowa and New Hampshire’s generational roles of being the first states to vote in the presidential nomination process. The Democratic effort will likely see approval and be signed off by Gov. Steve Sisolak (D), but the Democratic National Committee will ultimately decide which state goes first in the nomination process—a verdict that will probably not be fully decided for another year.

Democrats lined up behind the initiative, including former Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, who has been pushing for the change for more than a year, argue that Iowa and New Hampshire don’t reflect the diverse electorate due to the states’ large white population. Moreover, they argue that Iowa botched its handling of the 2020 caucuses—a process that took a week to determine who won.

“Well if you look at Iowa and New Hampshire and you look at how Joe Biden did in those two states—he took fourth and fifth in those two states. Iowa and New Hampshire are not representative of the country. There’s no diversity. So it’s unfair, in my opinion, to have those as the first two primary states because it really gives the wrong impression of what the country is all about,” Reid told The New York Times.

And beyond racial diversity, Reid argued that there’s a strong presence of union membership among Nevada voters compared to Iowa and New Hampshire voters, adding that “the West is now heavily populated and is taking over being the center of our country.”

Reid went on to say that South Carolina should be another early state in the election process, even though Nevada and South Carolina are already among the First Four states posted on the primary calendar.

Democrats outside of Iowa and New Hampshire have echoed Reid’s concerns, as they’ve suggested that presidential candidates should redirect their focus from those traditional early states to a more diverse population in states like Nevada and South Carolina.

“The general case against Iowa and New Hampshire is that they do not represent the present or future of the Democratic Party. They are both overwhelmingly White in the party that is relying heavily on the votes of Latinos and African Americans,” Dave Peterson, political science professor at Iowa State University, said. “Iowa faces other challenges because the caucus system is somewhat archaic and can limit participation.”

Nevada and South Carolina are also small enough in terms of population size, so a presidential candidate can efficiently and easily compete there.

The Nevada legislation posed a real warning for Iowa and New Hampshire political operatives in what could develop into turmoil over the 2024 presidential primary calendar. Tom Perez, the former DNC chair, has voiced support for the change, contending, “this is the Democratic Party of 2020. It’s different from the Democratic Party in how we were in 1972. And we need to reflect that change. And so I am confident that the status quo is not going to survive.”

But key players haven’t gone public over the issue, including President Joe Biden and DNC Chair Jaime Harrison.

In early February, White House press secretary Jen Psaki insisted that it was “too soon” to cover the outline of which states will vote first for the next presidential primary but said they are “all great states” and that the White House’s initial focus is not the primary calendar. It’s important to note, though, that Iowa and New Hampshire, states that Biden ranked in fourth and fifth place, respectively, didn’t deliver him the nomination for the party. Democrats see Biden’s nomination in South Carolina—along with Rep. James Clyburn’s (D-S.C.) endorsement—as the victories that ultimately ramped up his national support to be the party’s 2020 nominee.

There are attempts from both sides of the aisle, however, to modify the primary calendar nearly every election cycle, according to experts.

“There is a discussion about the nomination calendar every cycle,” Peterson said. “The results of the 2020 cycle only heightened this as Biden did quite poorly in Iowa and New Hampshire before turning things around in South Carolina. That makes it harder for the first two states to effectively argue that they should stay the first in the nation.”

Douglas W. Jones, Iowa caucus expert and associate professor of computer science at the University of Iowa, said that arguments to change the nominating calendar occur “every four years.” He added, “Complaints range from ‘Iowa and New Hampshire are not representative’ to ‘Super Tuesday is a travesty’ to ‘nobody should be able to seal their nomination before the final primary.’”

And some experts have insisted that states like Iowa are more diverse than what voters think.

“Nevada and South Carolina were moved into the First Four contests to ensure that the earliest states were more representative of the country as a whole. When one looks at the demographics of the four states as a group, they are fairly representative of the country, including being geographically representative,” Karen M. Kedrowski, director of Iowa State University’s Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics, said. “While the demographics of Iowa don’t lie, they also don’t reflect the racial diversity of several urban centers, a growing Latino population, and an increasingly diverse economy. Iowa is more like the rest of the nation that it’s given credit for.”

In Iowa and New Hampshire, political operatives have started to prepare their defense of the war that’s expected to take place, as Iowa’s state Democratic Party chair, state Rep. Ross Wilburn, told Politico that he is “prepared to do whatever it takes to keep Iowa first in the nation.” New Hampshire’s secretary of state, Bill Gardner, also lined up behind Wilburn’s defensive rhetoric, pleading that neither party’s committee will determine when the state will vote, Politico reported.

“The status of the primary was not given to New Hampshire by the parties,” Gardner told the publication, referring to a state law that forces New Hampshire to have a primary at least seven days before a “similar election” in another state.

Iowa, too, has a similar law, but it must hold its caucuses at least eight days before another state’s nomination.

It’s unclear when Biden or the DNC will come down on either side of this intra-party calendar division, since no public statements have been released on the issue.

Rachel Bucchino is a reporter at the National Interest. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report and The Hill.

Image: Reuters.

Robert Farley

History, Europe

ron Duke was a well-designed ship, capable of outgunning its German (if not its American) counterparts.

Here's What You Need To Remember: HMS Iron Duke and its sisters perfectly captured the “super dreadnought” concept; their large guns, tripod masts and balanced appearance made them look both stout and deadly. Iron Duke seemed singularly well named for its role as flagship of the Grand Fleet, although it is odd that the greatest collection of Royal Navy capital ships was led by a ship that took the name of a British Army commander.

HMS Iron Duke was the second battleship named after the Duke of Wellington. The first, scrapped in 1906, had the distinction of ramming and sinking HMS Vanguard, another Royal Navy battleship. The second Iron Duke was the name ship of the last class of dreadnoughts to enter Royal Navy service prior to the beginning of World War I. It and its sisters were considered “super-dreadnoughts,” an ill-defined term that distinguishes the second generation of dreadnought battleships from the first. Generally speaking, super-dreadnoughts avoided wing turrets, carrying guns in the centerline with super-firing turrets. Most super-dreadnoughts carried weapons heavier than twelve inches (although this varied from country to country), and had more advanced armor schemes. However, no one has successfully established a clear definition for the distinction.

Laid down in 1912, Iron Duke was commissioned in March 1914. It displaced twenty-five thousand tons, and carried ten 13.5-inch guns in five twin turrets. Its secondary armament, deployed in single casemates, consisted of twelve six-inch guns. Like most Royal Navy battleships of the era, it could make twenty-one knots. Iron Duke was a well-designed ship, capable of outgunning its German (if not its American) counterparts, and serving as the basis for the even more heavily armed Chilean battleship Almirante Latorre. The Iron Dukes were the third four-ship class of super-dreadnought (following the Orions and the King George Vs), and represented a staggering acceleration of peacetime naval construction on the part of the United Kingdom. The Royal Navy, mindful of its competition with Germany, would commission twenty-two super-dreadnoughts between 1912 and 1917, plus another half-dozen battlecruisers. Only U.S. aircraft-carrier construction in World War II can compare with this level of productivity.

HMS Iron Duke became flagship of the Grand Fleet upon its creation in August 1914. Iron Duke carried the flag of Adm. John Jellicoe, who had been promoted by Winston Churchill to command at the beginning of the war. Jellicoe’s job was to not lose the war, and the way to do that was to avoid being destroyed by the German High Seas Fleet. Given that the German fleet was smaller than the Grand Fleet and was limited geographically, this was an achievable task. Jellicoe understood that numerical superiority was key to victory in modern naval engagements, and steadfastly refused to allow the Royal Navy to meet the High Seas Fleet in detail. Consequently, the Grand Fleet spent most of its time conducting gunnery and seamanship drills, punctuated by the occasional sortie to try to catch the High Seas Fleet in the open.

The only genuinely productive sortie of this sort came in late May 1916, when Iron Duke served as Jellicoe’s flagship at the Battle of Jutland. At the head of the British line, it inflicted serious damage on the German battleship SMS Konig, as well as several smaller ships. The German prey escaped in the night, however, and Iron Duke returned to Scapa Flow as the Navy became mired in controversy. The failure to destroy the High Seas Fleet, despite obvious British advantages, took a severe toll on public and elite impressions of Admiral Jellicoe. Jellicoe was eventually “promoted” out of the command of the Grand Fleet, and replaced by David Beatty. The crew of Iron Duke didn’t care for the new admiral, so Beatty moved his flag to Queen Elizabeth. The rest of Iron Duke’s World War I career was uneventful.

The Washington Naval Treaty culled the world’s battleship fleets, but Iron Duke survived the first cut of 1922. It served extensively in the Black Sea and in the Mediterranean, helping to manage the fallout of the Russian Civil War and the Greco-Turkish War. The Royal Navy investigated a modernization scheme in the late 1920s, but expected the pending London Naval Treaty of 1930 to further reduce the number of allowable battleships. Instead of a modernization, Iron Duke was demilitarized, losing most of its armor and much of its armament. It served as a gunnery training ship for the rest of the 1930s, and was an accommodation ship at the beginning of World War II. In October 1939, long-range German bombers struck Scapa Flow, and damaged it badly enough to force a grounding. A March 1940 raid inflicted additional damage, and Iron Duke would remain in place for the balance of the war. In 1948 Iron Duke was sent to the breakers.

HMS Iron Duke and its sisters perfectly captured the “super dreadnought” concept; their large guns, tripod masts and balanced appearance made them look both stout and deadly. Iron Duke seemed singularly well named for its role as flagship of the Grand Fleet, although it is odd that the greatest collection of Royal Navy capital ships was led by a ship that took the name of a British Army commander. Its type was of so little use by World War II that the Royal Navy made no effort to restore it to frontline service, as it would have suffered badly under the guns of modern German, Japanese and Italian warships.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is a Visiting Professor at the United States Army War College. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government

Image: Wikipedia

Michael Peck

History, Asia

The North Koreans nearly managed to seize the entire peninsula.

Here's What You Need to Remember: If the only lessons of Task Force Smith was that inexperienced soldiers with poor training and equipment do poorly on the battlefield, or that a nation shouldn’t let its army lapse into decay, these would be mere clichés. The real lesson is what happens when the U.S. military commits to a conflict totally different from what it has prepared for.

In July 1950, North Korea defeated the United States Army.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. In the summer of 1950, America was still savoring the glow of absolute victory in World War II. There was the Soviet threat, to be sure, and a Communist bloc swelled by the massive addition of China in 1949. But the United States still had the bomb, and the B-29s to carry the bomb, and the world’s most powerful navy besides. There was great certainty that the next war would be an atomic conflict waged by the Air Force and Navy, with the Army reduced to a clean-up crew for occupying the rubble.

Eager for normality after four years of exhausting total war, the American public also wasn’t in the mood for a large, expensive conventional army. So the Army of the late 1940s saw its budget trimmed, live-fire training restricted and basic training cut to as little as eight weeks (compared to ten or more weeks today). This was especially of the U.S. Army occupation forces in Japan, who had a soft job overseeing a remarkably docile Japanese population.

Unfortunately, there was nothing soft about the seventy-five thousand North Korean soldiers who crossed the thirty-eighth parallel on June 25, 1950. Many of its soldiers were veterans who had fought with Mao in the Chinese civil war, and they were well equipped with Soviet-made tanks, artillery and even fighters and bombers that initially gave North Korea control of the skies. Much like the Iraqi army faced by ISIS or the Afghan army fighting the Taliban, the U.S.-trained South Korean army disintegrated.

Backed by a UN mandate to use force (made possible by the Soviet envoy foolishly boycotting the vote), the United States began dispatching troops to save South Korea from conquest by Kim Il-sung’s troops. Naturally, the first to arrive were occupation troops airlifted from nearby Japan. By July 1, American combat boots were on the ground, in the form of Task Force Smith—a scratch force commanded Lt. Col. Charles Smith that was centered around two understrength rifle companies from the Twenty-First Infantry Regiment of the Twenty-Fourth Infantry Division. The scratch force had just over four hundred officers and men, plus a few 105-millimeter howitzers from attached artillery battalion. It had no tanks, no close air support and poor communications. Instead of the latest antitank rocket launchers, most of its tank-killing firepower consisted of 2.36-inch bazookas that hadn’t even been able to destroy German tanks five years before. Some of Task Force Smith’s offices and NCOs had seen action in World War II, but most of the troops were inexperienced.

Dispatched north to halt the North Korean advance, Task Force Smith dug in near the town of Osan. On the morning of July 5, a column of North Korean T-34/85 tanks from the 105th Armored Division attacked in what would be the first U.S. ground action of the Korean War.

What happened next seems inevitable in hindsight. The U.S. howitzers had HEAT antitank rounds, but only a few, and too few to stop the North Korean tanks from overrunning the American positions. The tank assault should have been repulsed by Task Force Smith’s bazookas, except that the rockets couldn’t penetrate the armor of the Soviet-made vehicles.

At the same time, Task Force Smith also faced encirclement by North Korean infantry. Smith decided it was time to withdraw. “The plan was for an orderly leap-frogging withdrawal, with one platoon covering another,” said one account. “Under heavy enemy fire, the poorly-trained American troops abandoned weapons and equipment in sometimes precipitous flight. Not all of them had received word of the withdrawal, and it was at this point that the Americans suffered most of their casualties.”

The Americans lost about eighty men killed and wounded, and about the same number captured—or almost half of Task Force Smith. North Korea suffered about 130 casualties, plus four tanks destroyed or immobilized. The American sacrifice had delayed the North Korean advance—but only for a few hours. Six years before, the U.S. Army managed to stop Hitler’s SS panzer divisions at the Battle of the Bulge. In July 1950, the Army was a speed bump.

In the grand scheme of things, the battle wasn’t a major disaster. The casualties were only a drop in a Korean bucket that eventually consumed fifty-four thousand American dead. U.S. troops had fled the battlefield, but they had also done that at Bull Run and Kasserine Pass. It wasn’t the first time that “inferior” Asians had humbled American forces, as the survivors of Pearl Harbor could attest. Two months later, it was turn of Kim Il-sung’s army to disintegrate after MacArthur’s landing at Inchon.

If the only lessons of Task Force Smith was that inexperienced soldiers with poor training and equipment do poorly on the battlefield, or that a nation shouldn’t let its army lapse into decay, these would be mere clichés. The real lesson is what happens when the U.S. military commits to a conflict totally different from what it has prepared for. It is an issue still with us today, as America ponders its strategy in a world where China is powerful, Russia is resurgent, terrorists run amok and nonstate actors like ISIS field armies with advanced weapons. America doesn’t have the resources to be powerful everywhere all the time, which means the Pentagon will have to make assumptions about the nature of war and how best to prepare for it. Will it be high-tech or low-tech? Big war or small war? Conventional warfare or guerrilla campaign? Remember that China and Russia must also make their own assumptions.

It’s a guessing game, but real people will pay the price.

Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on Twitter. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Kris Osborn

Security, Americas

Quickly sharing data to the right units and commanders is critical in wartime.

The U.S. military excels at acquiring intelligence, but central command and boots on the ground engaged in combat operations often run into technical bottlenecks when trying to share that mission-critical data over single beam terminals, such as parabolic antennas and other outdated infrastructure.

The U.S. Army, Air Force and Navy are conducting a series of ongoing key trials of cutting-edge satellites and terminals in a concerted effort to break through communications hurdles in an increasingly adversarial world. High-powered connectivity delivers a real competitive edge in battle.

During a recent live fire mission as part of the Army’s Project Convergence exercise in Yuma, Arizona, troops leveraged new low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellites to gain access to real-time targeting data. And while new satellite constellations will be launching new communications capabilities into LEO, medium-earth-orbit (MEO), and high-earth-orbit (HEO) over the next few years, the defense sector is equally focused on the ground.

Without next-gen ground infrastructure—advanced terminals like Isotropic Systems’ patented multi-beam antenna—new constellations will fall short of satisfying the intense demand for high-speed warfighter connectivity.

The Department of Defense’ Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) has tested the ability of the Isotropic Systems’ optics-based platform in extreme sea-like conditions with plans to ultimately unlock high-powered bandwidth aboard next-generation naval vessels.

The evaluation trials are measuring the effectiveness of the low-profile, high performance, affordable and customizable antenna to support multiple links over multiple frequencies of satellite capacity, covering S-, C-, Ka-, Ku, X-, and Q-band connectivity.

The Army, through the U.S. Defense Department’s innovative Defense Experimentation Using

Commercial Space Internet (DEUCSI) program is also reviewing Isotropic Systems’ optical beamforming antenna and its ability to simultaneously link with multiple SES satellites in GEO and MEO orbits.

Satellite operator SES led a group of space investors, including Boeing HorizonX Global Ventures, the UK Space Agency, and west coast deep-tech fund Promus, in a $40 million fundraising wave aimed at accelerating the commercial readiness of Isotropic Systems’ unique antenna.

“Isotropic Systems is extremely well positioned to unlock a new age of high-powered, multi-orbit connectivity with our next-gen multi-beam antenna,” said John Finney, Isotropic Systems Founder and CEO. “Our unique, cost-effective terminal solution has attracted world-class investment support as well as unprecedented interest and demand across a widely diverse spectrum of end users—including warfighters and military operations around the world.”

The antenna’s ability to enable the U.S. Army and other armed forces to deliver intelligence data at the tactical edge by leveraging commercial and military satellites over a single platform has former Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy already considering the newfound possibilities.

“It’s expeditionary warfare, connecting any sensor to any shooter. The goal is to bring all war engagement information together through command and control and synchronize data to get it to the right assets. We are looking at how we can use satellites to enhance the speed of targeting,” McCarthy told reporters.

The biggest user of satellite capacity in the world, the U.S. Army is exploring new ways to more effectively and efficiently utilize both existing and new capacity coming online.

“As new constellations are launched and join existing constellations in the years to come, our technology allows the military and government agencies to leverage all of the satellites that best fit their needs and unleash the full potential of the global satellite ecosystem using a single, integrated terminal,” noted Finney.

Maj. Gen. John George, Commander of Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, watched over the Army’s live attack experiments in the Arizona desert late last year. He noted the significance the new generation of connectivity will have on U.S. warfighter capabilities and national security as a whole. He told Warrior that high-speed satellite connectivity is increasingly being networked with ground terminals and antenna processing information in a much more comprehensive way at much faster speeds.

“LEO satellites, being much closer, dramatically reduce the latency that is inherent in satellite communication. They increase the throughput for more data. With the smaller form factor we can get more points of presence on the battlefield closer to the tactical edge,” an Army engineer explained to reporters at Project Convergence.

The commercial arrival of Isotropic Systems’ multi-beam antenna in 2022 aligns with crucial Pentagon plans that call for improved connectivity and resiliency. The connectivity will be delivered over a network of satellites leveraging multi-orbit capabilities used to pass targeting data and communications in real time across the battlespace or government enterprise.

The Isotropic Systems antenna transmission draws upon a first-of-its-kind beamforming optical lens, engineered to simultaneously send precise beams to multiple satellites—using only select system circuitry. That’s a real advantage over phased arrays that require fulltime circuitry use and far more power.

While new, advanced constellations in space are garnering most of the headlines, an impressive lot of space investors and the U.S. military are focused on equally game-changing innovations in ground infrastructure.

“Our antenna is just as cutting-edge as the next generation of constellations and reusable rockets,” said Isotropic Systems’ Finney. “The defense sector has been very pleased to see firsthand the impact our optics-enabled multi-beam antennas will have in the field, and our most recent fundraising wave will only help to accelerate our roadmap to commercial production of this transformational ground game.”

Kris Osborn is the defense editor for the National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

Image: Reuters.

Mark Episkopos

Security, Europe

The S-70 Okhotnik-B is a heavy stealth combat drone that pairs with the manned Su-57 stealth fighter.

New details have emerged concerning Russia’s mysterious Su-57 companion drone.

Test pilot Evgeny Frolov, who “controls the [drone] system from the ground,” gave a far-reaching interview to prominent Russian news network Russia 1 late this month. Frolov confirmed prior reports that the S-70 Okhotnik-B is a heavy stealth combat drone that adheres to the “loyal wingman” concept, acting in full conjunction with Russia’s fifth-generation Su-57 air superiority fighter. Frolov went into depth on Okhotnik-B’s battlefield role, explaining that the drone is designed as a natural extension of the Su-57’s combat capabilities. The drone shares the same artificial intelligence-powered command network as the Su-57 to which it is attached, tracking and targeting enemy units automatically without any need for manual inputs on the part of the pilot.

The current iteration of Okhotnik-B offers some level of redundancy through overlapping manual systems, including an LCD status display. Frolov clarified that the serial production version of Okhotnik will be fully autonomous: “this system will be fully automated in the future, it will likely not have these [manual] control features, and manual handling will likely not be present.” Frolov’s interview puts to rest long-standing speculation concerning Okhotnik’s design concept, confirming that it is intended for autonomous operation without any manual backup systems.

Okhotnik-B sports a flying-wing design and is powered by either a single AL-31F or AL-41F engine. Boasting a composite materials construction and radar-absorbent coating, the drone is being built to offer superior stealth performance. The full extent of Okhotnik-B’s stealth capabilities remains to be seen; as previously argued by The National Interest’s Kris Osborn, there are some subtle design cues that Okhotnik—with its relatively sharp and angular design—may underdeliver in the low-observability performance department. Nevertheless, Okhotnik’s prototype airframe may very well see stealth-oriented design improvements as the drone moves further along in the production cycle on its way to becoming a full-fledged serial product.

Precise performance details remain elusive, though current reporting notes that Okhotnik-B has a top speed of up to 1,000 kilometers per hour and range of just under 6,000 km at full payload capacity. While it’s unclear exactly what armaments Okhotnik-B’s will carry in its internal bays, it appears that the combat drone can leverage its offensive capabilities to strike in situations deemed too high-risk for its accompanying Su-57. Its most valuable role will likely be that of reconnaissance, utilizing its extensive suite of onboard sensors to feed the Su-57 information in real-time through datalink. It could feasibly extend the Su-57’s battlefield awareness, providing targeting information to help cue its long-range R-37M missiles.

It was reported earlier this month that three more Okhotnik units are under construction, with unspecified improvements made to the drones’ communications system and airframe. Frolov’s commentary comports with prior reports that the Okhotnik drone is currently being tested in a “partially autonomous” mode, with fully autonomous flight trials slated for the near future. Formally unveiled at Russia’s ARMY 2019 defense exhibition, Okhotnik-B is scheduled to enter service in 2025.

Mark Episkopos is the new national security reporter for the National Interest.

Image: Reuters.

Stephen Silver

Dish Network, Americas

The cord cutting across American cable continues to gain steam.

Dish Network, in fourth quarter earnings announced Monday, announced another drop in subscribers, losing a net 133,000 subscribers in the fourth quarter. The company had lost 194,000 subscribers in the same quarter the year before.

As of the end of the quarter, Dish had 11.29 million pay-TV subscribers, of which 8.82 million were Dish TV subscribers and 2.47 million were Sling TV subscribers. At the end of the third quarter, Dish had 11.42 million subscribers and Sling had 2.46 million, indicating that Dish lost many subscribers in the fourth quarter while Sling added a small number.

Dish had added 116,000 subscribers, most of them on Sling TV, in the third quarter. The company also said that its retail wireless net subscribers decreased by about 363,000 in the fourth quarter, after they lost 212,000 in the previous quarter.

There was better news for the company in terms of profit, as the company reported net income of $733 million in the fourth quarter, compared with $389 million in the fourth quarter the year before.

The company beat analyst expectations for the quarter, posting revenue of $4.6 billion in the quarter, per Deadline.

In December, Dish announced a price increase for its main plans on the Dish TV service, by $5 each. The company also announced a $5 price increase on the main Sling plans, although only for new customers, although in keeping with the company’s pledge last summer to not raise prices on existing customers for a year, Sling did not raise prices for existing customers.

Also in the quarter, Dish settled a weeks-long dispute with Nexstar that blacked out channels in 160 markets, for the largest blackout of its kind in history.

The company has been pivoting towards the 5G business, having acquired Boost Mobile last year for $1.4 billion. Dish has also long claimed that an eventual merger with satellite rival DirecTV was inevitable, but Dish does not appear to be a factor in negotiations AT&T has been having talks with various parties about acquiring a large stake in that satellite service.

“Our Pay-TV business strategy is to be the best provider of video services in the United States by providing products with the best technology, outstanding customer service, and great value,” the company said in its 10K report, also released Monday. “We promote our Pay-TV services as providing our subscribers with a better ‘price-to-value’ relationship than those available from other subscription television service providers.”

“We have historically been viewed as the low-cost provider in the pay-TV industry in the United States. With our DISH TV services, we are currently focused on our brand promise ‘Tuned into You’ and a message of Service, Value and Technology. For example, for certain new and qualifying customers we guarantee our pricing for certain programming packages and equipment for a two-year commitment period.”

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Image: Reuters.

Stephen Silver

Israel Coronavirus, Middle East

Their public vaccination campaign has gone well, although there are complaints about Jerusalem not yet offering the vaccine to all Palestinians.

Throughout the vaccine stage of the coronavirus pandemic, many eyes have been on the nation of Israel.

Israel has suffered three waves of the pandemic, which have also coincided with political turmoil. No government had yet been formed following the early March elections prior to the start of the pandemic in Israel, and while a National Unity Government was formed in May, another election—Israel’s fourth since 2019—is set for March 23.

The nation suffered some major outbreaks and was also struck by the British variant of the virus.

In recent months, Israel has embarked on an ambitious vaccination program, one that has had observers watching closely. If a small country with a small population can vaccinate a large percentage of its population, and do it relatively quickly, it will likely have lessons in how successful vaccination programs can work.

There have been many indications that Israel’s vaccine rollout is working.

“Good news from Israel. Researchers are seeing signs that COVID-19 vaccines are helping to curb infections and hospitalizations among older people, almost 6 weeks after shots were rolled out in that group,” Nature reported in early February. “Close to 90% of people aged 60 and older in the country have received their first dose of Pfizer’s 2-dose vaccine so far. Now, data collected by Israel’s Ministry of Health show that there was a 41% drop in confirmed COVID-19 infections in that age group, and a 31% drop in hospitalizations from mid-January to early February.”

“What we see here are early and very encouraging signs that the vaccine is working in the population,” Florian Krammer, a virologist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, told Nature.

As of Sunday, per Times of Israel, 4.3 million Israelis had received at least one vaccine dose, and three million had received both, out of a population of nine million.

There was more good news for Israel’s vaccine-fighting efforts in a preliminary study specifically about the Pfizer Inc./BioNTech SE vaccine.

According to Bloomberg News, the study says those vaccines were “89.4% effective at preventing laboratory-confirmed infections,” based on the data in Israel. The Israeli government has said that the Pfizer shot in 99 percent effective.

That study also showed that the Pfizer vaccine “may also prevent asymptomatic carriers from spreading the virus.”

“The pace of the Israeli vaccination roll out is indeed very [impressive],” Dr. Hagai Levine, an epidemiologist at Israel’s Hadassah Hospital/Hebrew University, told The National Interest. “In several weeks, the vast majority of people at risk were vaccinated. We already see how effective is the vaccine in real life in prevention of morbidity and mortality among vaccinated by more than 90%.”

“This is an important issue globally and locally, to see if we can reach elimination rather than control,” Dr. Levine said. “At any time point, we should be aware of the possibility of new variants, with lower effectiveness of the vaccine. Good ongoing surveillance and public health infrastructure is essential.”

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that following the vaccination effort, Israel has “lifted restrictions on most commerce and public activity, opening malls, markets and museums.”

So, what can the United States learn from Israel’s experience in dealing with the virus?

“Universal community health coverage is highly effective and efficient,” Dr. Levine said. “We have a great system of semi-public preventive and community health system. Be prepared, be flexible approach is very good.”

Of course, there’s one other aspect of Israel’s vaccine efforts that’s also gotten a great deal of attention. Israel has been criticized, since the start of the vaccination effort, for not offering to vaccinate the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The Times of Israel said that all citizens of Israel proper, including Jews and Arabs, have been offered the vaccine, as have Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

But that offer has not been extended to Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza. The Palestinians in those areas have received some vaccines from international efforts such as Covax. Israel last week temporarily blocked a shipment of Russia’s Sputnik vaccine to the Gaza Strip, before ultimately allowing it.

The controversy was referenced in an instantly controversial Saturday Night Live Weekend Update joke over the weekend, in which anchor Michael Che joked that “Israel is reporting that they’ve vaccinated half of their population, and I’m gonna guess it’s the Jewish half.” Che has been asked to apologize for the joke by the American Jewish Committee, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and Israel’s ambassador to the United States.

Israel agreed earlier this week to vaccinate 100,000 Palestinians who regularly cross into Israel for work, the Washington Post reported. Those shots, the Post said, will be administered at “ad hoc centers set up along the line dividing Israel from the West Bank.” That agreement was reached following what was described as a rare meeting between Israeli and Palestinian officials in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The debate, per The New York Times, is over who is ultimately responsible for providing health care in occupied territory.

“To Israel’s critics, international law obligates Israel to give Palestinians access to vaccines comparable to what it offers its own citizens,” the Times said in an analysis. “But supporters of Israel’s policies contend that the Palestinians assumed responsibility for health services for their population when they signed the Oslo Accords in the 1990s.”

“We want everyone in the area to be vaccinated, but the Palestinian Authority is the party responsible for providing for the health of Palestinians,” Yoav Kish, Israel’s deputy health minister, said, according to the Times. “Our responsibility is to vaccinate our own population.”

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Image: Reuters.

Bonnie Kristian

Security, Asia

Cooperation and diplomacy are an important part of the complicated U.S.-Chinese relationship.

President Joe Biden anticipated having “a whole lot to talk about” with Chinese president-for-life Xi Jinping, he said in a CBS interview shortly before their first call since Biden took office.

In a few brief lines in that interview, Biden sketched his stance toward China, which his administration has named as the most significant threat to U.S. security moving forward. “I’ve said to [Xi] all along that we need not have a conflict,” he said, describing the Chinese leader as smart and tough but undemocratic. “But there’s going to be extreme competition. And I’m not going to do it the way that he knows, and that’s because he’s sending signals as well. And I’m not going to do it the way [former President Donald] Trump did.”

There’s much to like here—but also a worrisome aggressive turn. Lacking Trump’s habit of superlatives, Biden’s description of Xi was diplomatic without giving praise the autocrat does not deserve. And far more important than this personal style, of course, is Biden’s aversion to conflict between the United States and China.

The president is here rejecting dire forecasts of a Thucydides trap, the notion that war is nearly inevitable when a rising power is perceived to challenge an extant great power’s dominance. Biden’s right to dismiss that fallacy at the outset of his term. It will be difficult for Washington to navigate Beijing’s rise, for “China has shown a desire for greater economic interdependence abroad, to protect its own internal security, and control a relatively small sphere of influence,” as Richard Hanania has argued at Real Clear Defense. But “this is the behavior exhibited by all major powers,” Hanania continues, and China “has shown little appetite for the kinds of military investments that would allow it to project its power globally.” As Biden himself said, competition need not mean conflict.

But will Biden’s own policies steer us through that often-narrow strait? That’s much less obvious. The phrase the president used—“extreme competition”—is juvenile (is the competition in question a snowboarding tournament?) and vague. It’s also clearly antagonistic, maybe even dangerously so.

Biden’s comments elsewhere reinforce that impression: He wants to work with U.S. allies to “pressure, isolate, and punish China,” he said last year, and in December he indicated he’d keep the Trump administration trade war on China intact for the time being, despite its harm to American taxpayers generally and farmers specifically. He chose a secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who has backed sanctioning China in an (almost certainly futile) attempt to change its governance of Hong Kong. Indeed, Biden campaigned as a China hawk, and “extreme competition” is far more in that vein than the restraint toward which he nodded in the comment about needless conflict.

A more prudent perspective came—somewhat surprisingly, but welcome—from Blinken in his own interview earlier this month. “There’s no doubt that China poses the most significant challenge to us of any other country, but it’s a complicated one,” he said. “There are adversarial aspects to the relationship, there’s certainly competitive ones, and there’s still some cooperative ones, too.”

This has a nuance “extreme competition” lacks. It acknowledges the obvious, namely that the U.S.-China relationship is rivalrous and will include clashes (perceived and actual) of national interest. But Blinken’s mention of cooperation is not to be missed.

A zero-sum approach to engagement framed entirely around competition will not only harm China’s interests. It will also harm the interests of the United States. This trade war—let alone a more expansive antagonism—has hurt America’s economy and complicated U.S.-China relations, undoubtedly exacerbating the course of the coronavirus pandemic. Continuing to prosecute it is not rebuilding U.S. industry. It is making Americans pay an additional, regressive tax on consumer goods while raising tensions with China instead of lowering them.

If Biden truly wants to pursue a new course with Beijing, engaging differently than Trump did and differently than Xi expects, the task at hand is not “extreme competition,” which sounds like Trump-era escalation just barely warmed over. U.S. policy toward China should rather center on honest but pragmatic diplomacy which neither downplays the Xi regime’s brutality nor makes empty demands Beijing will not concede without a war America realistically will not fight. Mutually beneficial trade—which is cooperative as much as competitive—should continue, while U.S. military build-up in close quarters with the Chinese military should not.

There will always be some competition between the United States and China. But extremity in great power relations is reckless, unserious, and should not be our goal.

Bonnie Kristian is a fellow at Defense Priorities, contributing editor at The Week, and columnist at Christianity Today. Her writing has also appeared at CNN, NBC, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and Defense One, among other outlets. 

Image: Reuters.

Debra Cagan, Andras Simonyi

Russia, Eastern Europe

Energy is used by Russia as a political weapon to gouge, dissuade, and suppress countries and populations from their own aspirations. With Nord Stream 2, that will include much of Europe.

The Biden administration is understandably attempting to repair what it perceives as damage done to relationships with some of America’s closest European allies. But there is a cost, often substantial, to pleasing one's allies when there is no clarity of reciprocity. New rumored arrangements to protect Germany and others in the EU from U.S. sanctions on the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline will be pocketed by those governments which now will be even more convinced that doing business with Russia—and for that matter, China, the EU’s latest go-at-it-alone venture—will have no negative impact on their relations with the United States. There is only one victor of this arrangement designed to sanitize Nord Stream 2: Vladimir Putin. The loser, transatlantic relations.

The supposition behind all of these attempts to “fix” this relationship is that the Biden administration must issue a huge mea culpa for the recent mistakes and insults to Germany, and backing off of sanctions would sound just the right note. They are unfortunately buttressed in their view by those within the United States who believe Germany, and by extension Russia, merits if not an apology then a pass under the guise of alliance relations. But the U.S. relationship with Germany is stronger than a disagreement over a single issue. Sanctions are not, nor should they be, viewed as an irreparable point of contention.

While alliance unity is often important, allies are never going to agree on everything. Democracies debate, argue, and make decisions on what is best for one’s own national security and economic interests and sometimes those decisions do not comport with one's allies. And that is the way it should be. It would be foolhardy to suggest that countries only have policies that are designed not to hurt the feelings of their allies. No democracy operates this way.

What is truly naïve’ is the wishful thinking on the part of the Europeans who after repeatedly getting embarrassed and harassed by Moscow still believe an energy deal with Russia makes sense. There are many in Germany, and certainly a number of EU countries, who remain vociferous opponents to the pipeline. The opponents are clear-eyed about the long-lasting political damage Nord Stream 2 will cause between Western and Central European members of the EU, and between the United States and the EU. Recently, a prominent member of the European Parliament from Central Europe pleaded for the United States to keep the sanctions intact.

Only a small portion, perhaps as little as 12–15 percent of Russian gas will stay in Germany. Germany imports more than one-third of its gas supplies from Russia. But it is unclear in light of lessening manufacturing demand and conversion to renewables how much German consumption will grow, or more likely decrease. German businesses associated with the pipeline stand to earn substantial profits as the entry point provider and originating transit country for Russian gas. For Germany, as opposed to Russia, “shockingly” this is less about geopolitics and more about money.

One can be forgiven for wondering how this massive import of Russian gas makes sense when the European Union recently announced far-reaching decarbonization goals for 2030 and 2050? In fact, the European Union is adopting legal and policy tools to reduce greenhouse gases from the gas sector under a new legislative package. While supposedly targeting at all gas imports, the United States is getting special attention. This past week President Emmanuel Macron added his support to Nord Stream 2 “in a sign of solidarity with Germany.” Yet in what can only be termed hypocrisy, a few months ago a French company (a Nord Stream 2 investor) was forced to cancel a deal with an American LNG supplier citing environmental and climate concerns.

U.S. gas producers of LNG, a commodity critical to European energy security, have stepped up their efforts aiming at zero methane emissions, decreasing flaring, and radically cutting their CO2 footprint to meet what will undoubtedly be new U.S. guidelines and the EU’s present and future stringent criteria. None of that seems to matter for Russia’s gas production, which is neither “clean” nor transparent.

Such an arrangement would appear to be even more implausible in the broader context of the overwhelming bipartisan Congressional vote for sanctions and the recent climate statements made by the Biden administration about the future of America’s hydrocarbon industry. It would seem unfathomable that President Biden would sign onto an arrangement with Europe that grants Russia precisely what this administration has suggested it does not support for American companies and workers.

Energy is used by Russia as a political weapon to gouge, dissuade, and suppress countries and populations from their own aspirations—a practice it has honed to a fine art. Nord Stream 2 is no longer just about Ukraine, if it ever was. It is about Russia’s goal of monopolizing Europe’s gas market from the Baltics to the Balkans, and if countries like Ukraine and Belarus get caught in this forward march, so much the better.

Russia already controls about 40 percent of the European gas market, which will only increase with the completion of Turk Stream, Russia’s foray into Turkey, Bulgaria, and the Balkans. When and if both Nord Stream 2 and Turk Stream are completed, almost 70 percent of all global Russian fossil exports will be sold to the European market.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline is anathema to energy diversity and security of the European Union. Instead of focusing on the so-called unfairness of these U.S. sanctions, the question we should be asking is why key members of the EU are intent on underwriting the Russian economy. As Russian opposition activist Aleksei Navalny contemplates his next arraignment in his prison cell, he is surely puzzled why his life is worth less than a “business” transaction.

Debra Cagan is the Distinguished Energy Fellow at the Transatlantic Leadership Network. She served as a senior career official with the Departments of State and Defense.

Ambassador Andras Simonyi (PhD) is a Strategy Analyst in Washington and host of the "Leadership in our Time" webcast at George Washington University. He is the former Hungarian Ambassador to NATO and to the United States.

Desmond Lachman

economy, United States

With Janet Yellen now embarked on an overly expansive budget policy course, and with U.S. government bond bears now coming out of hibernation, is there a chance of a financial crisis on the horizon?

While serving as Bill Clinton’s political advisor, James Carville famously remarked that if he were ever to be reincarnated he would like to come back as a bond trader. By this, he meant that he would like to wield the great power that Wall Street bond traders do over policymakers when they make wayward economic policy decisions.

With Janet Yellen now embarked on an overly expansive budget policy course, and with U.S. government bond bears now coming out of hibernation, it will likely not be long before Yellen experiences the full force of James Carville’s wise remark. 

This would seem to be especially the case considering that Yellen is engaging in her budget experiment at a time that the world is experiencing an everything asset and credit market bubble of epic proportions. It also does not help that the bubble is premised on the assumption that U.S. interest rates will stay ultra-low forever.

Signs that the bond vigilantes are coming out of the woodwork appear to be in plain sight. Since January this year, when the Democratic Party gained control over the Senate, 10-year U.S. government bond yields have increased by some 50 percent to around 1.4 percent—their highest level in the past two years. Meanwhile, the market now expects inflation over the next five years to average 2.1 percent a year, which would be above the Federal Reserve’s inflation target. 

The bond vigilantes are coming out of the woodwork because they fear that the passage of Joe Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion budget stimulus would almost certainly result in rising inflation later on this year. In this respect, they share Larry Summers’s view that—especially coming on top of the December 2020 $900 billion bipartisan budget stimulus—the Biden stimulus is far too large in relation to the estimated amount by which current U.S. output is falling short of its potential level.

The bond vigilantes also seem to be fazed by the fact that at the same time that the United States would be engaging in massive budget stimulus, it would also be experiencing unusually easy monetary policy conditions courtesy of the Federal Reserve. It seems to be a particular market concern that over the past year the U.S. broad money supply has grown by some 25 percent.

The return of the bond vigilantes would be coming at a most dangerous time for the U.S. economy, in that it would be occurring at a time during which the world is experiencing an everything asset and credit market bubble. It is not simply that today’s U.S. equity valuations are at lofty levels last seen on the eve of the 1929-stock market crash—it is also that very risky borrowers, especially those in the emerging market economies, can raise money at interest rates not much higher than those at which the U.S. government can borrow.

Today’s global everything bubble is premised on the assumption that U.S. interest rates will remain indefinitely at their currently ultra-low levels. A real risk of the Biden stimulus proposal is that it could force long-term U.S. interest rates to rise as inflation fears put the wind in the bond vigilantes’ sails. As in the past, rising interest rates could prove again to be the trigger for the bursting of today’s everywhere bubble.

It would be a mistake to underestimate the potential U.S. and global financial market fallout from the bursting of today’s everywhere bubble. This would particularly seem to be the case considering how much more pervasive and larger today’s bubble is than was the 2008 U.S. housing and credit market bubble.

In 1981, French President Francois Mitterrand was forced by a large-scale market sell-off to make a humiliating and abrupt U-turn from his overly progressive economic policy agenda. If Joe Biden wishes to avoid the same fate, he would do well to scale back his $1.9 trillion budget stimulus proposal to a level that would not be perceived as posing a real inflationary threat to the U.S. economy.

Desmond Lachman is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He was formerly a deputy director in the International Monetary Fund's Policy Development and Review Department and the chief emerging market economic strategist at Salomon Smith Barney. 

Stephen Silver

Economics, Americas

If true and a deal were concluded, it would propel the streaming retail and giant to even greater heights.

DirecTV is in a great deal of flux in relation to who’s going to own it going forward, with an auction taking place over the last several months to determine who will purchase a stake of the satellite service from AT&T.

It’s not clear who’s going to emerge from that process, but after that will come the question of who takes over the DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket package.

Sunday Ticket is the NFL’s out-of-market game package, in which fans can pay extra money to gain access to all NFL games, and not only the ones that are televised locally in their own market.

Since Sunday Ticket launched in 1994, it’s been exclusive to DirecTV, and as served as a major selling point, both for individuals and for bars and restaurants, to subscribe to DirecTV. Jon Taffer, the future host of the reality show “Bar Rescue,” has been credited with inventing the idea of DirecTV, when he was running a bar in Chicago back in the early 1990s.

It’s widely believed that DirecTV’s current exclusive contract with the NFL expires after the 2022 season, and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has indicated that he would like to see a change in how Sunday Ticket works.

Now, a new report indicates that a favorite has emerged for the package.

According to Streaming Media Blog, Amazon has emerged as the leader to become the new Sunday Ticket host, although talks remain early.

“It’s well known that the current NFL deal with DIRECTV (AT&T), which runs through the 2022 season, will not be renewed. This makes sense since AT&T is trying to sell off the DIRECTV business and I’m told the NFL no longer wants the restrictions that come from distributing the package via satellite, which is completely outdated, as is the current streaming experience,” the report said. “Multiple people I spoke with said that while talks are still in the early stages, Amazon looks to be in the lead for the new digital direct-to-consumer offering of what is currently branded NFL Sunday Ticket.”

Amazon is already in business with the NFL, with a deal to stream Thursday night games, and also had an exclusive deal to stream one NFL game that was not available anywhere else. Amazon is also available in much of the world, which is also important to the NFL.

The story went on to argue that most of the other companies mentioned as potential partners would make less sense than Amazon does. A Sports Business Daily report last year indicated that interested suitors for Sunday Ticket included Amazon, ESPN, Comcast, and the sports streaming service DAZN.

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Image: Reuters.

Peter Suciu

Security, Europe

Moscow hopes that this advanced weapon system will catch the eye of potential buyers.

Russia is taking its advanced Antey-4000 anti-aircraft missile system on the road for the first time, and is apparently seeking to spur international interest for future exports of the long-range platform. Last week, the Russian-based manufacturer of the platform, Almaz-Antey, announced that the air defense system would be demonstrated at the IDEX 2021 international Arms Show in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

“For the first time at a foreign exhibition, the company will present information materials on the Antey-4000 long-range anti-aircraft missile system as a follow-up of the Antey range of products,” the company’s press office said in a statement as reported by Tass. “The system has received new air target fighting capabilities: its potential has been expanded in terms of the range, altitude and speed of striking targets.”

The Antey-4000 is the export version of the S-300V4 anti-aircraft missile system, and it was developed as an air defense platform to protect vital administrative, industrial and military installations while its tracked chassis allows for the system to be mobile enough to travel on rugged terrain. It can also be employed in military formations in a range of theaters of military operations.

The platform is comprised of a 9A83M-2E launcher, a 9A84M-1E launcher-loader vehicle and 9M83ME and 9M82ME surface-to-air missiles, as well as transport and launch containers. It was first presented to the public at last year’s Army-2020 International Military and Technical Forum, which was held outside of Moscow in August. The primary improvement of the Antey-4000 over the prior Antey-2500 and S-300VM systems was reported to be the enhanced engagement envelope for all targets engaged by the system.

The Russian-based defense contractor also announced it would demonstrate an upgraded version of the Strela surface-to-air missile system.

“Compared to its predecessor, the Sosna anti-aircraft missile system features a doubled target striking range and a tripled ammunition load, higher stealth properties of its use and a completely automated target tracking and striking system,” the press office added.

Other Almaz-Antey hardware that could be making the trek to the UAE will reportedly include the S-400 ‘Triumf,’ S-300PMU2 ‘Favorit’ and Buk-M2E air defense systems. The company will also demonstrate models of its Viking, Tor-M2E, Tor-M2K and Tor-M2KM surface-to-air missile systems in their stationary and mobile versions; the Palma shipborne anti-aircraft artillery system; and the Komar turret mount for Igla man-portable air defense systems. The Russian state-owned defense contractor—which was created via a merger of the Antey Corporation and NPO Almaz and unified some of the national military enterprises—also indicated that it would provide new information on it products that were designated for naval air defense, including Rif-M and Shtil-1 shipborne air defense systems.

Almaz-Antey is headquartered in Moscow and is the world’s eighth-largest defense contractor. It reported sales of $9.125 billion in 2017 and given that it has increased exports of its popular platforms including the S-400 ‘Triumf,’ those revenues have likely seen a sharp increase in recent years.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He regularly writes about military small arms, and is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com.

Image: Reuters.