Diplomacy & Crisis News

The Trojan horse of racism put democracy’s enemies inside its walls.

The process of recovery from the coronavirus pandemic offers the chance to change course, and put humanity on a path on which it is not in conflict with nature, the United Nations Secretary-General said on Monday, urging greater efforts by everyone to protect biodiversity and step up climate action. 

The final big name for Biden’s national security team signals a break with the CIA’s dark past.

The health of the ocean will ultimately determine the survival of humankind on Earth, according to the UN Special Envoy for the Ocean, Peter Thomson. Marking the opening of the International Decade for Ocean Science, the former top Fijian diplomat and General Assembly president, told UN News that a healthy planet is inextricably linked to a healthy ocean.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on the mess Donald Trump is leaving behind.

The epic SolarWinds hack affecting thousands of government agencies and companies could mark the beginning of the end of the open internet.

The designation is part of a flurry of activity by the State Department in the Trump administration’s final days.

Cette recension a été publiée dans le numéro d’hiver 2020-2021 de Politique étrangère (n° 4/2020). Élisabeth Marteu propose une analyse de l’ouvrage de Sylvain Cypel, L’État d’Israël contre les juifs (La Découverte, 2020, 336 pages).

L’essai de Sylvain Cypel, ancien directeur de la rédaction de Courrier international et rédacteur en chef au Monde, dresse l’amer et implacable constat d’une dérive ethniciste et antidémocratique de l’État d’Israël, dont le fonctionnement et la nature politiques seraient devenus « contraires aux intérêts des citoyens juifs israéliens, et aussi à ceux des Juifs en général ».

Dans les Emmurés, l’auteur décrivait en 2006 comment la société israélienne en crise était dans une impasse, le « mur de protection » en étant la manifestation la plus visible. Sylvain Cypel va ici plus loin dans sa critique de la dérive « xénophobe », « tribaliste raciste », « ségrégationniste », « brutale » et « immorale » d’Israël, qui n’affecte plus seulement les Palestiniens – qui sont de toute façon méprisés et traités comme un « peuple terroriste » – mais également les Israéliens juifs eux-mêmes, notamment les militants des droits de l’homme, les journalistes, les intellectuels et opposants de gauche dont la parole est délégitimée au motif qu’ils seraient traîtres à la nation.

Ces voix discordantes sont devenues minoritaires et harcelées par une classe politique et une opinion majoritaire qui ne tolèrent aucune critique et simplifient à l’extrême la réalité sociale. La nation se serait repliée sur l’ethnicité juive et ferait la part belle au fanatisme nationaliste-religieux et au séparatisme juif. À la radicalité idéologique s’ajoutent, selon l’auteur, une ignorance généralisée et une instrumentalisation sans précédent de l’histoire comme de la science, qui feraient le lit de la « banalisation » et de l’« acceptation du pire ». Ce qui pouvait être nié, ou encore jugé tabou par le passé (comme l’expulsion ou l’extermination des Palestiniens) est aujourd’hui clairement énoncé et assumé. Cette dérive identitaire et autoritaire de l’État et de la société israélienne aurait une « odeur de fascisme » qui se traduirait par une chose impensable voici encore cinquante ans : la collusion entre la droite israélienne et l’extrême droite antisémite nord-américaine et européenne autour d’une islamophobie radicale. Or, comme le souligne l’auteur, cette dangereuse évolution ne peut que porter préjudice à Israël, aux Israéliens et aux Juifs. Elle suscite d’ailleurs des critiques et des oppositions. Le président du Congrès juif mondial s’est ainsi opposé à la loi controversée sur l’État-nation du peuple juif. Une partie des Juifs américains manifeste également publiquement sa désapprobation. Ce « renouveau diasporique » se fonde sur une revendication de l’appartenance au judaïsme mais un éloignement vis-à-vis d’Israël, voire une hostilité. Cette dynamique de distanciation, facilitée par l’existence d’un judaïsme réformé propre aux États-Unis (et d’ailleurs non reconnu par les autorités rabbiniques israéliennes) expliquerait en partie le succès du mouvement BDS (Boycott, Désinvestissement, Sanctions) dans les grandes universités américaines ; alors que la communauté juive française au contraire semble soutenir de façon inconditionnelle les dérives de la gouvernance Netanyahou. Pour la sociologue Eva Ilouz, le « renouveau diasporique américain devrait essaimer, mais “la question de l’islam” pose en France un obstacle ». Au final, l’essai documenté de Sylvain Cypel réclame qu’Israël soit considéré comme un pays, un État comme les autres, et soit donc jugé comme les autres à l’aune de ses propres dérives politiques.

Sylvain Cypel

>> S’abonner à Politique étrangère <<

Ghanaian peacekeepers at the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) have been commended for their lifesaving support to a man who was severely wounded during recent violent inter-communal clashes in the north of the country.

In his first major speech of the year, the UN Secretary-General underlined the need for global cooperation to address today’s challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.

A woman was passed over to lead the Pentagon—but it’s the entire country that’s missing out.

Sebastien Roblin

History, Americas

The Navy was caught off guard, but it still managed to win.

Key point: Nothing about this fight went as planned, with the Americans falling into a trap. However, America had six escort carriers in this battle and Imperial Japan had none.

In the pre-dawn glow of October 25, 1944, four tubby TBF Avenger torpedo bombers took off on a routine patrol from the USS St. Lo. She was one of sixteen small escorts carriers in Taskforce 74.4 steaming sixty miles east of Samar island in the Leyte Gulf—protecting the invasion fleet which had landed the 6th Army on Leyte Island to liberate the Philippines after three brutal years of Japanese occupation.

Suddenly at 6:37, Avenger pilots William Brooks reported a nightmarish sight: a powerful Japanese fleet—four battleships, eight cruisers, and ten destroyers—only twenty miles to the west, steaming directly towards the lightly defended carriers.

Twenty-two minutes later, the gigantic 18.1” guns of the battleship Yamato opened fire from over nineteen miles away. The 3,300-pound shells straddled the carrier White Plains, a near miss buckling her hull and tripping her circuit breakers. Shells from the other battleships loaded with green, pink and red dye (to assist in ranging) rained down amongst the unarmored flat-tops.

For only the second time in history, enemy battleships had managed to close within gun-range of aircraft carriers. But in the Battle of Samar, nothing went as expected for either side.

Halsey’s Fatal Mistake

In the four-day Battle of Leyte Gulf, the Imperial Japanese Navy deployed most of its remaining capital ships to counterattack the landing in the Philippines—resulting in the largest naval battle in history in terms of sheer tonnage.

The Japanese planned to lure American surface combatants into chasing the sacrificial Northern force, composed of largely empty aircraft carriers—leaving the Central and Southern forces to ravage an unguarded Leyte beachhead.

Admiral Takeo Kurita’s Central Force included the two largest battleships ever built, the 65,000-ton Yamato and Musashi. However, on October 23, U.S. submarines detected the force and sank two cruisers, including Kurita’s flagship. Then, air strikes from U.S. fleet carriers sank the Musashi on October 24. A shaken Kurita pulled his bloodied fleet out of range.

Assuming the Center Force was dealt with, Admiral William “Bull” Halsey reassigned the fast battleships of Task Force 34 covering the beachhead to assist his 7th Fleet in crushing the Japanese Southern Force in the Battle of Surigao Straits on the night October 24-25.

But Halsey had gambled recklessly. Kurita doubled the Central Force back through the San Bernardino Strait into Leyte Gulf, intending for his capital ships to fall upon the virtually defenseless invasion transports like wolves amongst sheep.

Taffy 3’s Last Stand

All that stood in Kurita’s way was Task Force 77.4, which was divided into three squadrons named Taffy 1 through 3.

Taffy 3 under Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague was closest to Kurita’s fleet. It consisted of six 7,800-ton Casablanca-class escort carriers mass-produced to defend convoys from aircraft and submarines, freeing larger fleet carriers for heavier combat duties. The “jeep carriers” were crewed by over 900 personnel, typically carried 28 aircraft, and could only attain 20 knots (23 mph) at full steam compared to the 30-33 knots of fleet carriers.

Screening the carriers were three 2,000-ton Fletcher-class destroyers and four smaller 1,370-ton Destroyer Escorts—anti-submarine frigates in modern parlance. Their radar-guided 5” guns were fast-firing and accurate, but lacked the range and penetration to duel cruiser and battleships. Their short-range torpedoes, however, could pose a threat.

Sprague immediately appreciated Taffy 3’s peril: the escort carriers were too slow to outrun the Japanese capital ships, and even if they did escape, that would leave the beachhead exposed. His superior, Admiral Thomas Kinkaid, sent multiple requests for reinforcements to Halsey without reply. Chester Nimitz, commander of the Pacific fleet, chimed in “Where is Task Force 34?”

Intentionally or by coincidence, that message ended with the code hash “The world wonders.” The seeming rebuke so incensed Halsey he did not dispatch Task Force 34 until 11:15 AM, hours too late.

To buy time for his pokey carriers to escape, Sprague had his destroyers lay a thick smoke screen (photo here) while the carriers belted eastward into a sea squall, temporarily obscuring his ships from Japanese gunners.

Meanwhile, every available plane was scrambled to harry the Japanese battle force. Combined, Task Force 74.4’s carriers mustered roughly 250 FM-2 Wildcat fighters and 190 Avenger TBM torpedo bombers. However, these were loaded with high-explosive bombs, depth charges and rockets for attacking ground targets and submarines, not anti-ship torpedoes and armor-piercing bombs.

Nonetheless, the swarming warbirds didn’t hesitate to lob anti-submarine depth charges, strafe armored decks with machineguns, and even buzz overhead with depleted weapons in an effort to draw fire away from the vulnerable escort carriers, before landing at Tacloban on Leyte to reload and refuel.

Kurita, meanwhile, released his ships with a “general attack” order to chase down the carriers —a decision which caused the Japanese formations to blunder into each other’s path.

However, Taffy 3’s eastward course was drawing it further away from hoped-for reinforcements. At 7:30, Sprague reluctantly ordered a hard turn to the south. To prevent Kurita’s ships from heading him off, he instructed the escorts to launch torpedo attacks.

Popping in and out of concealing smoke screens, the destroyers Hoel, Hermann and Johnston, and the destroyer escorts pressed the attack against ships many times their size. The self-sacrificing “charge of the tin-can sailors” is described in a companion article.

The destroyer’s sacrifice bought time, but by 8:30 Japanese cruisers had closed within ten miles of Taffy 3’s trailing ships. The closest carrier, Gambier Bay, was struck by 8” shells from the heavy cruiser Chikuma, then battered by Yamato’s huge turrets. Her engines crippled, the carrier was consumed by fire and capsized around 9 AM—the only U.S. carrier sunk by naval gunfire in combat.

The Casablanca-class carriers were only armed with a single 5” gun in a tail “stinger.” This proved perfectly situated to exchange fire with cruisers and destroyer hot on their stern. Though early carriers often carried heavier gun armaments, Taffy 3’s “pea-shooter”-armed flat-tops of were the only to ever engage enemy surface combatants in a gun duel.

The Kalinin Bay was struck by at least fifteen 8” and 14” shells—several of which penetrated clean through her unarmored hull without detonating. In reply, her 5” battery hit two pursuing cruisers and a destroyer. After missing with shellfire, Japanese destroyers launched a volley of torpedoes, but the Kalinin Bay and an Avenger gunned down three “tin fish” seconds before impact.

St. Lo too managed to score three hits on the charging cruisers while sustaining minor damage in return. 5” shells from the White Plains, assumed to have been disabled early in the battle, detonated a Long Lance torpedo on the deck of heavy cruiser Chokai, knocking out her rudder and engines.

By then, Avengers re-loaded with torpedoes and bombs began swooping back into the fight. One dropped a 500-pound bomb that exploded Chokai’s engine room, setting the cruiser ablaze. She was scuttled shortly afterward.

Aerial bombs also detonated a Long Lance on the deck of the cruiser Suzuya, after she had already lost her rudder to torpedoes. A torpedo from another Avenger slammed into the Chikuma, disabling her port screw and rudder. The crippled cruiser was then struck twice more. Both ships were eventually abandoned.

Even the mighty Yamato was forced to break formation to evade incoming torpedoes. Finally, at 9:20, Kurita signaled to begin withdrawing through the San Bernardino Strait. He misidentified the light ships of Taffy 3 to be full-size fleet carriers and cruisers and feared the 3rd Fleet would arrive momentarily.

Kamikaze Debut

Taffy 3’s ordeal was not yet over. At 10:47 land-based Zero fighters laden with 550-pound bombs came barreling towards the escort carriers in the first Kamikaze strike ever attempted. Their leader, 23-year-old Lt. Yukio Seki, had expressed his disapproval of “bleak” Kamikazi tactics to a journalist but insisted he would follow orders.

The carriers’ 40-millimeter flak guns stitched the sky with black puffs of smoke, destroying three Zeroes before they could impact. But Seki smashed his A6M2 into the deck of St. Lo. At first, the carrier seemed likely to weather the new hole in her flight deck but an internal explosion in her hangar full of fuel and bombs tore the ship open, sending her aircraft elevator spinning a thousand feet into the sky (pictured here).

Kalinin Bay was also struck by two kamikazes, losing her smokestack and the port-side flight deck. Three other carriers sustained minor damage.

Consumed by gasoline fires and secondary explosions, the St. Lo slipped under the waves thirty minutes later, her surviving crew having abandoned ship.

Taffy 3’s officers and seamen had skillfully strung along Kurita’s faster and more heavily armed ships on a wild goose chase. The escort carriers’ swarming airplanes were more effective at range than the Yamato’s 18” guns, and even the carriers’ “pea-shooters” gave a surprisingly good account of themselves.

But that victory was paid for with extraordinary acts of sacrifice, with two escort carriers, two destroyers and destroyer escort consigned to the deep waters of the Philippine Trench. 1,583 Americans perished, mostly on the destroyers—five times more casualties than incurred in the Battle of Midway. Around 2,000 survivors waited two days for rescue, many succumbing to shark attacks and exposure.

Kurita’s fleet, meanwhile, limped home, less three heavy cruisers. He could have pressed his attack and likely sunk more ships and ravaged the beachhead, but lingering in the Leyte Gulf would likely have resulted in his force’s destruction. The IJN did not attempt any major offensive operations again for the remainder of the war.

Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This first appeared earlier and is being posted due to reader interest.

Image: Wikimedia

Steve Cimbala, Adam Lowther

Security, The Americas

Although the arms control community is focused on the opportunity to cut the nuclear deterrent, the President has a responsibility to listen, as well, to the expert advice of his uniformed military advisors who must plan for, operate, and deploy nuclear and conventional forces.

President-elect Joe Biden recently indicated that he would review the nation’s nuclear deterrence strategy and weapons modernization program, focusing on reducing their role in national strategy. The review will also look to reduce funding for nuclear modernization. Depending on the administration's actions, there is a real risk of compromising the credibility of American deterrence when both China and Russia see the United States as a weakened great power. 

Although the arms control community is focused on the opportunity to cut the nuclear deterrent, the President has a responsibility to listen, as well, to the expert advice of his uniformed military advisors who must plan for, operate, and deploy nuclear and conventional forces.

Undoubtedly, pressure exists within the Democratic party to do anything that seems anti-Trump. Tossing out the Trump administration’s nuclear modernization program would certainly fit that bill, but the Trump plan mostly followed the Obama script in calling for preserving all three legs of the strategic nuclear triad. 

Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review added a nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile, but experts suspected that this was a bargaining chip for future negotiations with Russia. The Obama and Trump administrations also favored replacing aging launch systems with new generations of SLBMs and heavy bombers. Some within the Obama administration favored replacing the 1970s-era Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and others preferred upgrading the existing platforms.   

In our judgment, until the future prospects for nuclear arms control are clearer, the prudent course for the Biden administration would be to maintain all three legs of the strategic nuclear triad and to replace aging systems with modern technology. There is broad support in Congress for this approach.

In passing its version of the Fiscal Year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in December 2020, Congress approved funding for the Columbia class strategic submarines ($4.46 billion); the B-21 Long-Range Strike Bomber ($2.8 billion); the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) to replace Minuteman III ICBMs ($1.51 billion); the Long-Range Standoff Weapon (LRSO) nuclear cruise missile for the Air Force ($444 million); and additional modernization for the existing Trident II SLBM ($1.2 billion).  In addition, Congress also approved an expenditure of about $2.7 billion for nuclear warhead modernization.

Arms control advocates contend that the US can save money and contribute to arms control by downsizing its strategic nuclear triad to a “dyad" of submarine-launched ballistic missiles and bombers. Opponents of ICBM modernization argue that strategic land-based missiles are especially destabilizing because they are vulnerable to first strikes and create unnecessary pressure for a preemptive launch during a crisis. This assertion is untrue and inconsistent with what we know about how the United States operates its ICBM force.

While deriding ICBMs as a Cold War relic, critics never address the fact that America’s adversaries (China and Russia) are focused on the modernization of their own ICBM forces. If ICBMs are relics of a bygone era, why are the Chinese and Russians spending the bulk of their modernization effort on them?

The opponents of ICBM modernization fail to appreciate that the synergy of the American nuclear triad is the key to its survivability and resilience. Each leg contributes to an important set of attributes. In short, ICBMs are responsive. Submarine-launched ballistic missiles are survivable—so long as quantum computing does not eliminate the opacity of oceans. Bombers give an adversary time to contemplate nuclear destruction, encouraging better choices, and support crisis management. Each of these attributes is critical to deterrence stability.

As to the alleged vulnerability of land-based missiles, those very “vulnerabilities” are part of the deterrence calculous that any adversary must account for when considering how aggressive they should act toward the United States. The next generation of ICBMs need not necessarily be based only in silos. Some, or all, might be deployed in mobile platforms on roads or trains, thus increasing their survivability and our ability to wait.

Past efforts to explore these options for ICBMs were faced with opposition in US domestic politics on the grounds of cost and conservation.  On the other hand, if mobility is infeasible, silo-based ICBMs might be better protected by companion small radars and ballistic missile defenses. Reducing an adversary’s probability of killing an American ICBM, even by a small amount, greatly increases the number of weapons required to strike the United States—making the decision even tougher.   

Old debates about nuclear weapons are fast proving antiquated as China is adding an unprecedented threat into the bilateral face-off that was once the purview of Russia and the United States. Hypersonic weapons, quantum computing, robotics, and other technological developments are also dramatically changing the debate. The entire choreography of US nuclear modernization and arms control planning will have to change to address these challenges. 

The canonical nuclear first strike scenario of the Cold War is outdated by advances in military technology and new thinking about strategy. New strike systems, including hypersonic conventional and nuclear weapons, will challenge existing assumptions about stability. Space also looms large as the new "high ground" not only for information warfare but also for kinetic attack.  Future defense planners must assume that a “nuclear first strike” will be preceded by knockout blows against early warning and command and control systems, including those based in space and terrestrial.

Thus, efforts to kill a leg of the triad appear premature and mistaken. The United States needs every tool in its kit for an uncertain future.

Given the uncertainty we face, there are useful steps the Biden administration can take to support the furtherance of peace.  

Useful Efforts

The New START treaty with Russia is set to expire in February 2021. Coordinating treaty-consistent limits on numbers of deployed and other nuclear weapons might lead to reduced expenditures for nuclear modernization, but only if the administration can get the Russians on board.

Extension of the New START agreement should not be controversial. Both countries can modernize their nuclear arsenals, replacing aging systems with new and more reliable systems—all without increasing the number of deployed and nondeployed launchers and weapons. During the notional five-year extension of New START, the door is open for a more extensive agreement to limit strategic nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons of shorter ranges. 

If President Biden is successful in seeing New START renewed, Moscow and Washington could also discuss measures to improve transparency in bilateral military-to-military forums, including de-escalation protocols for avoiding inadvertent clashes between American and Russian forces and their proxies. The United States and Russia could also address the consequences of the expiration of the INF Treaty for strategic stability.

An arms race in conventional weapons of intermediate range (500-5,500km) in either Europe or Asia could raise the likelihood of a large scale conventional war with the potential for nuclear escalation. Working to reduce those prospects is well worth the effort and would serve the prospects of peace far more successfully than eliminating ICBMs.

The United States is facing an unprecedented challenge on two fronts (Russia and China). This challenge is far more dangerous than the Soviet menace of the twentieth century. Reducing the nation's nuclear arsenal's size and capability will not signal China and Russia that we mean no harm. It will signal weakness and weakness is provocative.

American resolve should never be a point of contention. Both China and Russia possess national cultures that respect strength. Thus, eliminating the American ICBM force will have the exact opposite effect as suggested by detractors. They are well worth the security and stability they provide.

This article was first published by Real Clear Defense.

Image: Reuters

Kyle Mizokami

History, Europe

America's Iowa-class battleship would likely wipe out the Bismarck.

Key point: America's battleships were large and powerful. But they also had radar-guided guns.

Despite the vast scope of the Second World War, the navies of the United States and Nazi Germany fought few, if any, direct surface engagements. By the time of America’s entry into the war the Royal Navy had already sunk or neutralized the lion’s share of Hitler’s Kriegsmarine, with only Hitler’s U-boats remaining a substantial German threat.

But what if the UK’s Royal Navy hadn’t been as successful as it was, and the U.S. was forced to hunt down the German Navy’s major surface combatants? What if the Iowa-class fast battleships had been sortied into the Atlantic to square off against their counterparts, the Bismarck-class battleships?

The Bismarck-class battleships were the largest surface ships built by Germany before and during the Second World War. Germany had been prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles to build warships over 10,000 tons, but the Anglo-German Naval Treaty of 1935 implicitly allowed them—though the German Navy was not to exceed thirty five percent the size of the Royal Navy.

With that restriction out of the way, Germany immediately began construction on the Bismarck-class battleships. Two ships, the Bismarck and Tirpitz, were planned. The ships were 821 feet long and displaced up to 50,000 tons fully loaded. Twelve high-pressure boilers powered three turbines, giving the ship a top speed of 30.1 knots. Three FuMo-23 search radars could detect surface targets at more than thirteen miles.

The Bismarck class had eight fifteen-inch guns, each capable of hurling an armor piercing, capped round up to 21.75 miles. The 1,764-pound killer shell traveled at 2,960 feet per second out the bore, faster than the bullet of a high-powered rifle. At 11 miles, it could penetrate 16.5 inches of armor, or roughly to the horizon at sea level, although it could theoretically hit targets much further.

Both battleships were heavily protected, with 12.5 inches of steel at the main belt, 8.7 inch armored bulkheads, and 14.1 inches of armor on the main gun turrets. The eight guns were installed in four turrets of two guns each. This spread the battleship’s main armament out among more protected turrets, increasing their survivability in a gunfight.

Overall, the Bismarck class was an impressive combination of firepower, speed, and protection.

The Iowa-class battleships were the most powerful battleships built for the U.S. Navy. Four ships: Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri, and Wisconsin were built. Each was approximately 861 feet long and weighed 52,000 tons. Eight water boilers connected to General Electric steam turbines propelled the battleships along at a speedy 32.5-knot maximum speed.

Iowa had nine sixteen-inch guns. Each Mark 7 gun could launch a 2,700 pound armor piercing shell 11.36 miles to penetrate 20 inches of steel plate—and even farther to a lesser penetration. In addition to search radar, the Iowas had Mk 13 fire control radars, allowing them to engage targets at extreme ranges and at night. The Mk 13 had a theoretical range out to 45 miles, and could even spot where the Iowa’s errant rounds landed, making aiming corrections much easier.

The Iowas too were heavily armored, with 12.1 inches at the main belt, 11.3-inch bulkheads, and an amazing 19.7 inches of armor on the main turrets. The ship’s vital combat information center and ammunition magazines were buried deep in their armored hulls.

Now, on to the battle. It’s 1942, and the new American battleship Iowa has been rushed into service to hunt the Bismarck. Bismarck, her sister ship Tirpitz, and other large German combatants have made the Atlantic too dangerous to send convoys across, something the United Kingdom desperately needs.

A fast battleship designed to operate alongside aircraft carriers, Iowa can cover a lot of ocean. Operating alone, she detects Bismarck—also operating alone. The duel is on.

Despite the Bismarck’s well-trained crew, good design and powerful weapons, Iowa has one technological innovation the German battlewagon doesn’t: radar-directed main guns. Iowa can fire much more accurately at longer distance targets. This allows Iowa to “out-stick” the Bismarck, which must close to within visual range for its fire control systems and procedures to work effectively. While Bismarck would avoid a nighttime duel, Iowa would welcome it—and its 2.5-knot advantage in speed means it can force a night battle if it wants to, chasing Bismarck down before sunrise.

Iowa’s combination of the Mk 13 fire control radar and Mk 7 shells means it can fire first, hit first, and hurt first. While Bismarck’s armor protection and distributed firepower could help ensure it lasts long enough above the waves to damage Iowa, it’s unlikely could save itself, damaging the American battleship enough to make it break off the attack.

Iowa wins.

The larger context of the battle—the U.S. Navy being forced to take on the German Navy—would have had serious repercussions for the Pacific theater. Germany was, after all, considered the primary threat, with Japan second and Italy third. A more powerful German Navy (or weaker Royal Navy) would have had second order consequences for the Pacific, delaying the Solomons campaign, including the invasion of Guadalcanal, the Battle of the Coral Sea, and even the Battle of Midway.

U.S. Navy planners in the Pacific, still overestimating the value of battleships, could have been less daring in their absence and fought a holding action until late 1942 or 1943. Had things been different we might think of America’s initial war against the Axis as taking place in the Atlantic and not the Pacific, the Marines hitting the beach in Iceland and not Guadalcanal, and the cataclysmic battle between the battleships Bismarck and Iowa.

Kyle Mizokami is a defense and national security writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in the Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and the Daily Beast. In 2009 he cofounded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch. You can follow him on Twitter: @KyleMizokami. This first appeared earlier and is being posted due to reader interest. 

Image: Reuters.

Sebastien Roblin

Security, Asia

The new generation of hardware is coming.

Here's What You Need to Remember: To avoid the earlier dramatic failure of “super programs” like the Future Combat System, the Army plans to adopt off-the-shelf solution where possible, and operationally test numerous projects before deciding which merit the funding to ramp up to full-scale development and production.

The U.S. Army is at a crossroads as the Pentagon is reorienting itself to fight a capable great power opponent after nearly two decades focused on counter-insurgency conflicts.

Russia poses a traditional land-power challenge for the U.S. Army with its large mechanized formations threatening the Baltics, as well as formidable long-range ballistic missiles, artillery and surface-to-air missiles.

By contrast, a hypothetical conflict with China would focus on control of the sea and airspace over the Pacific Ocean. To remain relevant, the Army would need to deploy long-range anti-ship-capable missiles and helicopters to remote islands, allied nations like Japan and South Korea and even onto the decks of U.S. Navy ships.

Almost all the Army’s major land warfare systems entered service in the 1980s or earlier. Five ambitious programs to replace aging armored vehicles, artillery and helicopters consumed $30 billion only to fail spectacularly.

Thus, in 2017 the Army formed eight cross-functional teams led by brigadier generals to rapidly cost-efficiently develop a new generation of hardware. These far-reaching modernization initiatives are collectively called “the Big Six.”

1. Long-Range Precision Fire (Artillery)

The U.S. Army was famed for its lavish, rapid and accurate use of artillery support during World War II. However, in recent conflicts, the U.S. military has increasingly relied on air strikes using precision-weapons over artillery barrages.

But on-call air support would be far from given when facing a peer enemy possessing formidable air defenses. In fact, long-range missile and artillery strikes might be needed to destroy air defenses, “kicking in the door” for air power.

Thus the Army’s top priority is “Long Range Precision Fire.” a half dozen projects seeking to enable accurate ground-launched strikes against targets dozens or hundreds of miles away.

To begin with, the Army seeks to further upgrades its tank-like 1960s-era M109 Paladin self-propelled howitzers with long-barreled Extend Range Cannon boosting regular attack range to forty-three miles, and possibly even ram-jet -assisted shells extending range to eighty-one miles.

The artillery branch’s other mainstay, the truck-based M270 and smaller M142 Multiple Rocket Launcher Systems, will receive extended-range rockets doubling reach to ninety-three miles. Moreover, their capability to launch a single large, 180-mile range ATACMS tactical missile will be replaced with two smaller Precision Strike Missiles with a range of 310 miles that can hit moving targets (ships).

Following the killing of the INF treaty, the Army furthermore is developing two even longer-reaching weapons: a hypersonic missile with a range of 1,499 miles, which could prove extremely difficult to defend against and boast deadly anti-ship capabilities, and a gigantic Long Range Strategic Cannon supposedly boasting a range of one thousand miles.

2. Next Generation Combat Vehicle (Armor)

The Army’s second priority is to replace its increasingly vulnerable and underpowered M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. In 2018, the Army decided to proceed with improving the Bradley’s power train but canceling replacement of its turret.

Instead it seeks an Optionally-Manned Fighting Vehicle (OMFV) capable of carrying larger squads, a thirty- to fifty-millimeter automatic cannon (the Bradley has a twenty-five-millimeter gun), and new missiles and active protection systems. Current competitors include the Raytheon/Rheinmetall Lynx, the General Dynamics Griffon III and the BAE CV-90 Mark IV.

The separate Mobile Protected Firepower program seeks a fast and air-transportable light tank. Currently, a dozen 105-millimter gun-equipped M8 Bufords with scalable armor are set to compete versus Griffin II tanks armed with 120-millimeter guns.

The Army has also begun procuring turretless Bradleys to serve as Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle, replacing old M113 APCs in support roles such as combat engineering, utility transport, ambulance duty, command post, and mortar carrying. And some of its wheeled Stryker APCS are receiving “Dragoon” turrets with thirty-millimeter cannons and Javelin anti-tank missiles to give the lighter vehicles a fighting chance versus enemy mechanized forces.

The Army is also installing Trophy and Iron Fist Active Protection Systems on Abrams and Bradley tanks. These detect incoming missiles and jam or shoot them down before impact. As long-range anti-tank missiles have destroyed hundreds of tanks in Middle Eastern wars, including Saudi-operated Abrams, APS could significantly improve survivability.

3. Future Vertical Lift (Aviation)

Helicopters are essential for battlefield and operational mobility—however they are also expensive, relatively slow (150–200 miles per hour), short-ranged and vulnerable to enemy fire.

The Army is looking ahead to a radical new “Future Vertical Lift” system to eventually replace its over two thousand Blackhawk medium transport helicopters and its heavily armed and armored Apache gunships.

Two innovative flying prototypes are competing. The Bell V-280 Valor is a tilt-rotor aircraft: it can rotate its engines from a helicopter to an airplane-like configuration. The likely more complex and expensive Valor would boast greater speed (320 miles per hour) and range.

The Sikorsky SB-1 Defiant is a compound helicopters with two counter-rotating blades atop each other and pusher rotor. The Defiant likely is better at helicopter-style low-speed maneuvers—at the expense of speed and fuel efficiency.

The Army also retired its last OH-58 scout helicopters in 2015, only to discover that Apache gunships were a poor replacement. As a result, the Army is searching for an agile scout helicopter separately from FVL.

4. Network

The Army would like a brand-new unified, field-deployable Command, Control, Communication and Intelligence (C3I) network tying together its land-warfare systems.

The last attempt to field such a network, called WIN-T, was cancelled after $6 billion in spending due to its vulnerability to electronic-and cyberwarfare. In 2014, the Army observed how Russia forces extensively jammed, hacked and geo-located Ukrainian command-and-control nodes—and even targeted them with lethal attacks.

The Army intends to buy as much of the software off-the-shelf as possible to avoid spending years and dollars building a new system from the ground up. The new network needs to be standardized yet modular, transportable, and cybersecure.

A separate “Assured Position Navigation & Timing” team is developing redundant navigational aids so that ground forces smoothly function under GPS-denied circumstances, particularly by using ground or air-deployed “pseudo-satellites.”

5. Air & Missile Defense

In the last half-century, air supremacy courtesy of the U.S. Air Force has reduced the demands on the Army’s ground-based air defenses, which have been heavily downsized. However, new threats posed by swarming drone attacks and proliferating cruise and ballistic missiles have made re-building the air defense branch a huge priority.

The Army is currently focusing on “Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense”—vehicles accompanying frontline troops to shoot down low-altitude threats. The Army plans to field 8 x 8 Strykers armed with Stinger and Hellfire missiles, anti-drone jammers and thirty-millimeter cannons. It’s also interim procuring Israeli Iron Dome missile systems, the munitions from which may eventually be adapted to Multi-Mission Launcher.

The Army is also developing a vehicle-mounted 100-KW laser that could be used to cost-efficiently burn drones out of the sky.

For longer-range air defense, rather than develop new missiles, the Army is spending billions to improve its existing Patriot and THAADS systems by tying together their dispersed radars and fire-control systems into an Integrated Air & Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS) network.

6. Soldier Lethality

Close-combat infantrymen account for only 4 percent of the army’s personnel but have suffered 90 percent of the casualties in conflicts since 2001. The “Soldier Lethality” initiative is divided in two teams.

One focuses on improving “human” factors using more realistic training simulators, and retaining experienced NCOs and officers through better perks and incentives.

The other team plans to procure “Next Generation” assault rifles and light machine guns—likely using the 6.5-millimeter Creedmoor round, which is deemed to have superior penetrating power versus body armor. The Army also is devising an infantry “Head’s Up Display” with integrated (and improved) night-vision, tactical data and targeting crosshairs.

Implementation

The Army is killing or curtailing 186 older programs and procurements, including down-sizing CH-47F heavy transport helicopters and JLTV Humm-Vee replacement orders, to ensure the Big Six’s 31 initiatives receive a targeted $33 billion in funding through 2024.

To avoid the earlier dramatic failure of “super programs” like the Future Combat System, the Army plans to adopt off-the-shelf solution where possible, and operationally test numerous projects before deciding which merit the funding to ramp up to full-scale development and production.

Time will tell whether the Army’s new, seemingly more agile approach will dodge the bullets that have taken down prior modernization efforts.

Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This article first appeared two years ago and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: U.S. Department of Defense

Michael Peck

History, Europe

Here is one of the more interesting Cold War stories.

Key point: Not every spy missions goes right and drones can do the wrong thing. This is the tale of a spy plane that flew itself straight into enemy hands.

In November 1969, the U.S. Air Force sent Russia an early Christmas gift.

It was a sleek flying machine that bore an uncanny resemblance to the SR-71 Blackbird spy plane.

The American generosity was purely unintentional. The aircraft was actually a cutting-edge drone dispatched on a mission to photograph Communist Chinese nuclear sites. And the drone did what it was supposed to until it failed to turn around, and kept on going north into Siberia before crashing.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Russia paid the skilled aircraft designers at Lockheed the highest compliment: they tried to copy their work.

The drone in question was the D-21. With its graceful delta wings, the D-21 resembled a miniature SR-71, which was no coincidence given that they were products of Lockheed’s famed Skunk Works, the originator of many an amazing secret project. In fact, the D-21 was originally designed to be mounted and launched from the tail of an SR-71, itself famous for its Mach 3 speed and its 85,000-feet maximum altitude.

The D-21 was conceived in the mid-1960s as a solution to the problem of spying on the Soviet Union. Soviet surface-to-air missiles, like the one that downed a U-2 over Russia in 1960, were making photo missions over Communist territory more hazardous. The SR-71 could fly high and fast enough to be safe, but why risk a manned aircraft and its pilot when a robot could do the job?

The idea was for the D-21 to be mounted atop an M-21, a specially modified two-seat SR-71, according to documents recently declassified by the National Reconnaissance Office. After completing its mission, the drone would eject its film canister, which would be snatched in mid-air by a C-130 transport. But launch problems, including an accident that crashed the launch M-21 and killed one crewman, saw the B-52H as the new launch vehicle for the improved D-21B.

Unfortunately, the project didn’t work out as planned. There were four D-21B flights, carried by B-52s launched from Guam. Their target was Communist China, specifically China’s nuclear test site at Lop Nor. All of them failed. Out of the last three, mid-air recovery failed to recover film canisters from two of them, which crashed into the Pacific on the flight out, while one drone crashed in China.

It is the fate of the first mission, in November 1969, that’s interesting. The D-21B crossed into China – and kept going into the Soviet Union, where it crashed.

“This proved to be of great interest to the Soviet aircraft industry, as it was a fairly compact machine equipped with up-to-date reconnaissance equipment and designed for prolonged reconnaissance flights at high supersonic speeds under conditions of strong kinetic heating,” write Russian aviation historians Yefim Gordon and Vladimir Rigamant. “Many leading enterprises and organizations of the aircraft, electronic and defense industries were commissioned to study the design of the D-21 together with the materials used in its construction, its production technology and its equipment.”

The result was the Voron (“Raven”) project to develop a supersonic strategic reconnaissance drone. The Voron would have been launched by a Tu-95 or Tu-160 bomber. After separation, a solid-fuel booster would have accelerated the drone to supersonic speed, at which point the ramjet would have kicked in, according to Gordon and Rigamant. The craft would then follow a pre-programmed flight path using an inertial navigation system. Once the unmanned aircraft returned to base, the film canister would be ejected and land by parachute, after which the drone itself would land.

But much like manned reconnaissance aircraft, the Voron idea fell victim to the advent of spy satellites that could soar over foreign territory without fear of being shot down. Another advantage is that satellites would not crash-land and have their secrets recovered by the enemy, as happened to the D-21.

But at least no one can accuse the Soviets of being ungenerous. In the mid-1980s, Ben Rich, a Lockheed engineer who worked on the D-21, recalled being given a metal panel by a CIA employee. It was a piece of the D-21 that had crashed in Siberia, and which had been recovered by a shepherd. The piece was returned by a KGB agent.

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

Image: Wikimedia.

Sebastien Roblin

Security,

Not all A2AD systems are as technically mature and operationally effective as they are made out to be.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Undeniably, A2/AD weapons can threaten large areas and will likely shape operations in the regions where they are present. However, they cannot “shut down” access to a region by themselves, and their threat can be mitigated through appropriate planning using existing technologies and tactics.

On March 7, 2019 defense analysts from the Rand Corporation told a panel, “In our [war]games, when we fight Russia and China, blue [the U.S. and its allies] gets its ass handed to it.”  The scenarios were defenses of the Baltics and Taiwan from invasions by Russia and China, respectively.

In both cases, Russia and China leveraged long-range cruise and ballistic missiles to sink U.S. ships hundreds of miles away at sea, destroy forward air bases that short-range F-35 stealth fighters depend upon, and interdict airspace against non-stealth aircraft.

The huge ‘bubbles’ of interdicted space generated by such ‘anti-access/areas-denial’ weapons (or A2/AD) impede a U.S. counterattack long enough for locally superior attackers to overwhelm defenders in the region.

However, just a few days earlier the Swedish Defense Research Agency (FOI) released the report ‘Bursting the Bubble?’, described in this earlier article by The National Interest’s David Axe. It arrived at a very different conclusion:

“Much has in recent years been made of Russia's new capabilities and the impact they might have on the ability of NATO member states to reinforce or defend the vulnerable Baltic states in case of crisis or war. On closer inspection, however, Russia's capabilities are not quite as daunting, especially if potential countermeasures are factored in. In particular, surface-to-air missile systems currently create much smaller A2/AD bubbles than is often assumed...Experiences from Syria also raise questions about the actual capabilities of such systems in combat…Anti-ship and anti-land systems pose a greater threat but, here too, countermeasures are available.”

In FOI’s view, A2AD is an overhyped buzzword leveraged to create an excessive sense of vulnerability—intimidating potential adversaries before the match even begins.

Back in 2016 the U.S. Navy apparently came to a similar conclusion—practically banning the term ‘A2/AD’ in its internal strategy documents on the grounds that the term ceded adversaries too much credit by conflating ability to threaten a space with successfully controlling it.

How can the same premises lead to such dissimilar conclusions? In fact, many of the analysts’ insights on the strengths and limitations of A2AD strategy can be reconciled.

There are different correlations of forces in Baltic Sea and the Western Pacific Ocean.

The Swedish study understandably focuses on the Baltics, while the Rand panelists also referred to potential conflict with China in the Western Pacific. However, China has a more dominant military posture in East Asia than Russia does in Europe. Furthermore, despite starting technologically behind, Beijing has demonstrated a greater capacity to sustainably develop and deploy advanced systems.

Russia wins when it adversaries fail to counter-mobilize.

Rand’s pessimistic projections regarding a Russian invasion of the Baltics date back to 2016.  However, its wargames have tended to pit a mobilized Russian invasion force against un-mobilized NATO forces. However, it’s questionable that Russia could spend weeks massing the forces necessary for an invasion without detection and some counter-mobilization by NATO, particularly given capabilities of modern surveillance systems. ‘Strategic surprise’ can be achieved—but is harder than ever before.

FOI, for its part, argues that NATO should simply deploy more troops in Eastern Europe to deter Moscow. Many of Russia’s anti-access capabilities in the Baltics center around its exclave in Kaliningrad, which itself could be made quite vulnerable, surrounded as it is by Polish territory.

Not all A2AD systems are as technically mature and operationally effective as they are made out to be.

The Swedish report points out that Russia’s S-400 surface-to-air missile system (also in service in China) has yet to actually receive its vaunted 250-mile range 40N6 missiles. Furthermore, very long-range interceptions are only viable against large, slow aircraft (think tankers, cargo planes and AWACS radar planes) flying at high altitude. ‘Pushing back’ vital support planes is still useful, but agile war planes may only become vulnerable within a few dozen miles of a SAM site.

Another intimidating new technology, anti-ship ballistic missiles, has only been tested against naval targets a few times, and never in combat

On the other hand, cruise missiles and short-range land-attack ballistic missiles have seen extensive combat employment in the last half-century, blasting Middle Eastern cities and sinking Royal Navy ships in the Falklands. Land-based missile transporters have proven easy to conceal and difficult to hunt down.

The FOI study also points out that short-range air defense systems like the Pantsir-S have repeatedly failed to stop U.S. cruise missile barrages and constant Israeli air strikes.

A2AD systems can’t see as far as they can shoot.

A 40N6 missile (when and if it enters service) may threaten aircraft up to 250 miles away. A DF-21D may be able to sink a carrier a thousand mile away.

However, neither missile batteries’ organic fire control radars can realistically acquire targets that far over the horizon due to the curvature of the Earth. Both would need to cue targeting data by networking with remote AWACS radar and maritime patrol planes, drones, surveillance satellites, and distant land and sea-based radars.

Forming such a ‘kill-chain’ is doable—but it’s technically challenging task that requires practice and is vulnerable to disruption at any point in the chain. For instance, the surveillance and communication assets could be destroyed, or their communication links to firing platforms jammed.

Both China and Russia, however, are assembling the surveillance capabilities to form kill chain, however, by expanding its satellite surveillance assets and deploying new airborne radar planes.

‘Threatening’ an area doesn’t have to mean ‘denying’ it.

In recent conflicts, U.S. air and naval forces have benefited from technological ‘offsets’ allowing them to bombard adversaries from afar at virtually no risk to return fire. For example, the U.S. did not lose a single warplane to enemy fire in its 2011 intervention against Libya.

However, when combating a peer adversary, Western forces may simply have to accept higher degrees of risk in order to complete their missions. In other words, A2/AD systems may take out some ships or aircraft, but not necessarily impose high enough costs to defeat operations in a region before they are neutralized.

For example, during World War II land-based bombers posed a deadly anti-access threat to warships that passed within their range. However, that didn’t prevent Allied naval forces from taking what lumps they had to when evacuating troops at Dunkirk and Crete, or conducting amphibious landings in Dieppe, Sicily and Normandy.

Counter-measures against A2AD strategy and technologies already exist.

The Rand analysts argue the U.S. military could address its weaknesses versus anti-access weapons by re-allocating roughly $24 billion of its roughly $700 billion annual budget to existing systems. In their view, sacrificing funding for, say, one or two carriers, makes sense if it pays for capabilities that make the remaining nine floating airbases much more survivable.

Basically, the analysts think the U.S. needs a larger supply surface-strike missiles to threaten enemies at long range; and a much larger capacity to defend against incoming long-range missiles with counter-missiles.

In other words, fight fire with fire and water.

Naturally, greater numbers of long-range, high-capacity launch platforms are desirable.

On the offense side, promising new long-range strike weapons include the LRASM anti-ship missile, the stealthy JASSM-ER cruise missile and the Army’s multi-faceted Long-Range Precision Fire program. On the defense side, the Army’s maneuver short-range air defense program and the Navy’s SM-3 and SM-6 offer promising force protection capabilities.

Taking the analysts’ conclusion together, one can arrive at a more nuanced understanding of the challenges posed by anti-access weapons. Undeniably, A2/AD weapons can threaten large areas and will likely shape operations in the regions where they are present. However, they cannot “shut down” access to a region by themselves, and their threat can be mitigated through appropriate planning using existing technologies and tactics.

Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This article first appeared two years ago and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters. 

For people living off-grid in remote villages in Laos, solar energy offers a clean, sustainable way to bring electricity for all, and the promise to transform their lives.

Sebastien Roblin

Security, Americas

The U.S. Navy’s placid-looking E-6 Mercury, based on the 707 airliner, seems particularly inoffensive, but that is a lie.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The E-6 platform should remain in service until 2040 thanks to a service-life extension program and continual tweaks to its systems and radios. While the Mercury has demonstrated its usefulness as an airborne communication hub for supporting troops in the field, the airborne command post will be considered a success if it never has to execute its primary mission.

In a military that operates Raptor stealth fighters, A-10 tank busters, B-52 bombers and Harrier jump jets, the U.S. Navy’s placid-looking E-6 Mercury, based on the 707 airliner, seems particularly inoffensive. But don’t be deceived by appearances. Though the Mercury doesn’t carry any weapons of its own, it may be in a sense the deadliest aircraft operated by the Pentagon, as its job is to command the launch of land-based and sea-based nuclear ballistic missiles.

Of course, the U.S. military has a ground-based strategic Global Operations Center in Nebraska, and land-based transmitters for communicating with the nuclear triad. However, the E-6’s sinister purpose is to maintain the communication link between the national command authority (starting with the president and secretary of defense) and U.S. nuclear forces, even if ground-based command centers are destroyed by an enemy first strike. In other words, you can chop off the head of the U.S. nuclear forces, but the body will keep on coming at you, thanks to these doomsday planes.

The E-6’s basic mission is known as Take Charge and Move Out (TACAMO). Prior to the development of the E-6, the TACAMO mission was undertaken by land-based transmitter and later EC-130G and Q Hercules aircraft, which had Very Low Frequency radios for communication with navy submarines. Interestingly, France also operated its own TACAMO aircraft until 2001, four modified Transall C-160H Astarté transports, which maintained VLF communications with French ballistic-missile submarines.

The first of sixteen E-6s entered service between 1989 and 1992. These were the last built in a very long line of military variants of the venerable Boeing 707 airliner, in particular the 707-320B Advanced, also used in the E-3 Sentry. Bristling with thirty-one communication antennas, the E-6As were originally tasked solely with communicating with submerged Navy submarines. Retrofitted with more fuel-efficient CFM-56 turbojets and benefiting from expanded fuel tanks, the E-6A could remain in the air up to fifteen hours, or seventy-two with inflight refueling.

To use its Very Low Frequency radios, an E-6 has to fly in a continuous orbit at a high altitude, with its fuselage- and tail-mounted VLF radios trailing one- and five-mile-long wire antennas at a near-vertical attitude! The VLF signals can be received by Ohio-class nuclear ballistic-missile submarines hiding deep underwater, thousands of miles away. However, the VLF transmitters’ limited bandwidth means they can only send raw data at around thirty-five alphanumeric characters per second—making them a lot slower than even the old 14k internet modems of the 1990s. Still, it’s enough to transmit Emergency Action Messages, instructing the ballistic-missile subs to execute one of a diverse menu of preplanned nuclear attacks, ranging from limited to full-scale nuclear strikes. The E-6’s systems are also hardened to survive the electromagnetic pulse from nuclear weapons detonating below.

Between 1997 and 2006, the Pentagon upgraded the entire E-6A fleet to the dual-role E-6B, which expanded the Mercury’s capabilities by allowing it to serve as an Airborne Nuclear Command Post with its own battle staff area for the job. In this role it serves as a backup for four huge E-4 command post aircraft based on the 747 Jumbo jet. The E-6B has ultra-high-frequency radios in its Airborne Launch Control system that enable it to remotely launch land-based ballistic missiles from their underground silos, a task formerly assigned to U.S. Air Force EC-135 Looking Glass aircraft—yet another 707 variant. The E-6’s crew was expanded from fourteen to twenty-two for the command post mission, usually including an onboard admiral or general. Additional UHF radios give the E-6B access to the survivable MILSTAR satellite communications network, while the cockpit is upgraded up with new avionics and instruments from the 737NG airliner. The E-6B can be distinguished in photos by its additional wing-mounted pods.

The Mercury’s abundant communications gear allows it to perform nonnuclear Command, Control and Communications (C3) operations as well. For this reason, E-6s have at times been deployed to Europe and the Middle East to serve as flying C3 hubs. For example, VQ-4 was deployed in Qatar for three years from 2006 to 2009, where it relayed information such as IED blast reports and medical evacuation requests from U.S. troops in Iraq who were out of contact with their headquarters.

Two Navy Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadrons currently operate the E-6: VQ-3 “Ironmen” and VQ-4 “Shadows,” both under the Navy Strategic Communications Wing 1. These have their home at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, but also routinely forward deploy out of Travis AFB in California and Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland. At least one E-6 is kept airborne at all times. E-6s on the submarine-communication mission often fly in circles over the ocean at the lowest possible speed—for as long as ten hours at a time. Those performing the nuclear command post mission typically remain on alert near Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. The E-6’s nuclear mission has also made its operations occasional fodder for conspiracy theorists and foreign propaganda outlets.

The E-6 platform should remain in service until 2040 thanks to a service-life extension program and continual tweaks to its systems and radios. While the Mercury has demonstrated its usefulness as an airborne communication hub for supporting troops in the field, the airborne command post will be considered a success if it never has to execute its primary mission. The heart of nuclear deterrence, after all, is convincing potential adversaries that no first strike will be adequate to prevent a devastating riposte. The E-6s are vital component in making that threat a credible one.

Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring.

This first appeared in December 2017. It is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Wikipedia.

Sebastien Roblin

Game of Thrones,

The Game of Thrones episode "The Long Night" features the last stand of a fantastical medieval army against an implacable horde of White Walker zombies led by the chilling undead Night King.

Here's What You Need to Remember: However, effective fighting forces learn from defeats and mistakes and institutes necessary reforms. Jon and Daenerys’ would do well to ensure their forces all act cohesively towards a common strategy; deploy their cavalry, infantry and artillery in a mutually-supporting manner; commit more effort to building defense-in-depth; and establish effective means to communicate between their air and ground forces.

The Game of Thrones episode "The Long Night" features the last stand of a fantastical medieval army against an implacable horde of White Walker zombies led by the chilling undead Night King.

It also showcases a series of terrible command decisions made by its protagonists, Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen, squandering their forces lives in poorly thought-out gambits.

These episodes of military ineptitude may be one of the TV show’s most believable attributes, reflecting real-world military disasters. As such, a battle featuring a zombie horde and fire-breathing dragons offer surprising insight into classic errors in battlefield command.

Failing to Act Cohesively Against the Enemy’s Center of Gravity

Carl von Clausewitz, the grandfather of modern Western military theory, wrote in On War that it was vital to identify and strike at the enemy’s “center of gravity”—that is, “the hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends.”

That ‘center of gravity’ varies based on the nature of the adversary—it could be an enemy capital, a charismatic leader, or a strategically-deployed army.

In the episode prior to the battle, Jon and Daenerys correctly identified the Night King as the center of gravity, as the White Walkers have no will to fight (or ability to remain animate) without their leader. However, so long as the Night King lives, he can replenish his army’s losses extremely quickly and cheaply by reanimating the dead.

Unfortunately, Jon and Daenerys’s battle plans are incoherent. They employ their dragons to personally hunt the Night King, but commit the rest of their troops to fighting a conventional defensive action predicated on the Night King evading their dragons and entering an ambush on the ground. Thus, they fail to ensure their forces are all acting upon the center of gravity with a common strategy.

Allowing Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery to Act Without Mutual Support

The humans at Winterfell field a balanced combined-arms forced including infantry, cavalry, artillery and air support. Such a force has tools to deal with virtually any situation—if its elements work in concert.

However, the defenders of Winterfell fail to coordinate their separate arms, and each is defeated in turn without support from the others.

The battle begins with a charge of the Dothraki cavalry. On its face, this is understandable: cavalry is most effective when it can maneuver and build up momentum over open ground.

However, charging cavalry—or their modern equivalent, tanks—headlong into strong enemy forces is frequently ill-advised.

Yes, the shock of an assault may overwhelm poorly-trained conscripts or a weakly defended sector of a frontline, potentially breaking through and spreading panic into the rear.

But if assaulting a strong position, cavalry or armored forces are likely expend their shock effect without achieving a breakthrough—and soon find themselves outnumbered and surrounded by counter-attacking foes.

For example, early in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, unsupported Israeli tanks barreled into ambushes by Egyptian infantry armed with long-range anti-tank missiles and suffered devastating losses. These ambushes could have been avoided with proper reconnaissance and support from infantry and artillery.

Incredibly, Winterfell’s defenders fail to dispatch outriders to scout out the disposition of the approaching White Walkers. However, given that Jon knew the White Walkers are incapable of panicking and had limitless reserves, he could have guessed that a cavalry charge would fail to achieve decisive effects.

Instead, the Dothraki should have been deployed on the flanks, forcing the Night King to either split his forces to chase after them, or expose his own flanks to Dothraki hit-and-run attacks. The cavalry’s superior mobility would allow them to avoid getting stuck in unwinnable fights, and strike when and where their enemies are vulnerable.

The deployment of the catapults in front of the infantry, where they are immediately overrun, is also perplexing. As indirect-fire weapons, they do not require line-of-sight to their targets. Had they been arrayed behind the frontline, they could have continued blasting holes in the White Walker ranks for a prolonged period.

Poor Coordination of Air Support

Close Air Support (CAS) is crucial to Jon and Daenerys’s plan to defending Winterfell, and indeed we see the dragon’s fire devastate White Walker ranks.

But ultimately, dragon-based CAS operations fail to achieve decisive effects. Why? Jon and Daenerys are confronted with problems that have long frustrated military pilots: it’s hard to identify targets on the ground when flying thousands of feet above the battlefield—particularly at night and in inclement weather conditions. Likely, Jon and Daenerys’ strafing runs were particularly curtailed for fear of friendly fire incidents.

Low-visibility conditions were worsened by a blizzard conjured by the Night King, just as modern militaries employ electronic warfare to fog radar and communication links.

Hovering close to the ground to get a better picture of the action, meanwhile, exposes Daenerys’ dragons to attack, just as low-and-slow flying aircraft become vulnerable to numerous short-range air defense weapons.

Winterfell’s ground troops lack Forward Air Controllers to signal when and where air support is needed. Even Ser Davos’ pre-arranged signals to summon a dragon-strike go unheeded. For their part, Daenerys and Jon fail to use their mobility to perform reconnaissance overflights and facilitate command and control of their dispersed ground forces.

Enemy counter-air operations undertaken by the Night King on his zombified-dragon also disrupt Winterfell’s aviation. Since the first air battles of World War I into the modern age of stealth fighters, the side which detects its adversaries and attacks first is far more likely to prevail in aerial battle. Daenerys’ dragons struggled to locate their adversary, and eventually climb to very high altitudes seeking a spotting and energy advantage, as higher altitude can be converted into speed by diving.

This comes at the expense of maintaining situational awareness of events on the ground.

Ultimately, the air-to-air action proves inconclusive—a favorable outcome for the Night King, as Winterfell’s forces depend more on air support than his own do. Daenerys should have devised better means to coordinate with her ground forces. Rather than chase after an elusive enemy, she should have dedicated one dragon to CAS while another flew escort above, forcing the Night King to engage her in the air or suffer losses on the ground.

Inadequate Defense in Depth

The most successful ploy employed by Winterfell’s defenders is the flaming, stake-filled trench used to impede the Wight Walker’s advance. Eventually, however, Walkers sacrifice themselves to breach this obstacle.

But why wasn’t the initial line of human infantry deployed behind the trench—breaking the White Walker’s charge, and allowing the small numbers traversing the obstacle to be individually dispatched? And why didn’t Winterfell’s defenders build a dozen such trenches, each impeding the horde’s momentum and sapping its strength, while giving infantry multiple defensive points to fall back to?

The Soviet Red Army used similar tactics at the Battle of Kursk to defeat qualitatively superior German forces. Anticipating an attack by elite Panzer divisions, the Soviets spent weeks building layers of defensive fortifications consisting of minefields, anti-tank ditches and obstacles, and concealed anti-tank gun batteries and machinegun nests. These defensive “belts” extended ninety miles deep.

The German armored juggernaut would smash through one fortified gauntlet at significant cost, only to be confronted with another line a few miles further back. Each assault cost more time and casualties to secure, bleeding away any momentum the offensive might have achieved.

Daenerys and Jon’s leadership at the battle of Winterfell is decidedly lackluster—though perhaps understandably so, given the unconventional capabilities of their adversary and their own force’s lack of experience with combined-arms warfare.

Real armies lacking recent combat experience often stumble in their first major actions, such as the U.S. Army’s early World War II debacle at the Kasserine Pass, or the Russian Army’s disastrous tank assault into Grozny in 1994-1995.

However, effective fighting forces learn from defeats and mistakes and institutes necessary reforms. Jon and Daenerys’ would do well to ensure their forces all act cohesively towards a common strategy; deploy their cavalry, infantry and artillery in a mutually-supporting manner; commit more effort to building defense-in-depth; and establish effective means to communicate between their air and ground forces.

That all sounds like quite a tall order—and it is, both for real world commanders and the heroes of a fantasy saga.

Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This article first appeared two years ago and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.