Diplomacy & Crisis News

David Axe

Security,

To even try to sink an American flattop, you first must hit it. That's not easy.

Here's What You Need to Know: The story starts in 2005.

A Chinese admiral and pundit told a trade-show audience that Beijing could resolve China's territorial disputes by sinking two U.S. Navy aircraft carriers and killing thousands of American sailors.

Rear Adm. Lou Yuan's threat isn't an empty one. The Chinese military has deployed an array of weaponry that it acquired specifically to target American flattops.

But a U.S. Navy test in 2005 proved that even if you hit them, carriers are really hard to sink.

Lou made his provocative comment on Dec. 20, 2018 at the Military Industry List summit, according to media reports.

“What the United States fears the most is taking casualties,” declared Lou, an anti-American author, social commentator and military theorist at the PLA Academy of Military Science.

Sinking just one carrier could kill 5,000 Americans, Lou pointed out. Sink two, and you double the toll. "We’ll see how frightened America is" after losing 10,000 sailors, Lou crowed.

Leaving aside the likelihood of a full-scale war breaking out between the world's two leading military powers and economies, sinking a carrier is easier said than done. History underscores the difficulty of the undertaking.

In 1964 Viet Cong saboteurs managed to damage and briefly sink the former U.S. Navy escort carrier Card while the vessel, then operating as an aircraft ferry for U.S. Military Sealift Command, moored in Saigon.

But the last time anyone permanently sank a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier in combat was during World War II. Twelve American carriers sank during the war, usually following intensive air attacks. The last to sink, USS Bismarck Sea, fell victim to Japanese kamikazes in February 1945.

In subsequent decades, American flattops suffered serious accidents including collisions and fires, but none sank. It's very difficult to sink a buoyant, thousand-feet-long ship that's mostly made of steel.

The U.S. Navy knows this from experience. In 2005, the Navy itself targeted the decommissioned carrier America in order to determine just how much punishment the vessel could withstand before slipping beneath the waves.

"The ship was pummeled by explosions both above and below the waterline," The War Zone reporter Tyler Rogoway explained in 2018. "After nearly four weeks of these activities, the carrier was scuttled. On May 14, 2005, the vessel's stern disappeared below the waterline and the ship began its voyage to the seafloor."

"America stood up to four weeks of abuse and only succumbed to the sea after demolition teams scuttled the ship on purpose once and for all, it's clear that America was built to sustain heavy damage in combat and still stay afloat."

Consider also the carrier-shaped pontoon ship that Iran built as a scale target for a 2015 war game. While small and flimsy compared to a real flattop, the pontoon vessel itself endured an intensive assault. "Iran struck the faux carrier with a barrage of anti-ship missiles, then swarmed it with small boats and then landed commandos on it," Rogoway reported.

Still, the fake flattop apparently remained afloat.

To even try to sink an American flattop, you first must hit it. That's not easy, either. No carrier sails without an air wing with as many as 50 fighter aircraft plus several escorting destroyers, cruisers and submarines. A virtual wall of defensive weaponry surrounds the flattop out to a distance of several hundred miles.

Still, China or another country could attempt to target the carriers with submarines, cruise missiles and ballistic rockets. 

"They will employ multiple systems in order to confuse and overwhelm U.S. defenses," naval historian Robert Farley wrote in 2017. "They will rely on the threat of attack to keep U.S. carrier battle groups as far as possible from the main theaters of operation."

"But the observation that the enemy has a missile or torpedo that can kill a carrier only begins a conversation about carrier vulnerability," Farley continued. "Shooting anything at an aircraft carrier is a costly, difficult operation."

The carrier's attackers could face withering counterfire from the vessel's defenders. "Beyond the monetary cost, launching an open attack against an American carrier strike group, with its own cruisers, destroyers and submarines, is almost certainly a suicide mission."

And if the United States' reaction to the 9/11 terror attacks is any indication, Washington surely would deploy all its remaining military might, including its surviving eight or nine carriers, against country behind the sinking.

"So there are two questions that remain for anyone who thinks they even have a shot at taking down one of these enormous steel behemoths," Farley explained. "Can you do it? And even if you can, is it worth it?"

David Axe served as the new Defense Editor of the National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels War Fix, War Is Boring and Machete Squad.

This article appeared last year.

Image: Flickr / U.S. Navy

David Axe

Security, Middle East

Numerous, cheap mines could slow America's large, high-tech warships.

Here's What You Need to Know: The Islamic republic has the potential to drop thousands of mines in key waters.

In the event of war with Iran, the U.S. Navy’s small, aging force of Persian Gulf-based minesweepers would struggle to locate and disarm Iran’s underwater mines.

The consequences for U.S. military operations, not to mention world trade, could be severe.

Four of the Navy’s 11 1980s-vintage Avenger-class minesweepers sail from Bahrain and, if war broke out, would be responsible for clearing the strategic Strait of Hormuz and other important waterways of mines.

But the Avengers suffer from obsolete equipment and a lack of spending. The minesweepers “routinely need repairs,” one Navy officer told Pro Publica reporters Robert Faturechi, Megan Rose and T. Christian Miller.

The Navy for years has diverted minesweeping funding into the development of multi-mission Littoral Combat Ships. The LCS were supposed to replace the Avengers, but the new ships have proved expensive, unreliable and unsuitable for many of the missions the Navy hoped they would handle.

The sailing branch in 2016 canceled development of a dedicated minehunting robot for the LCS. All the while, the Avengers slowly have rusted away.

“The companies that used to make a variety of spare parts no longer exist,” the reporters added. “A sailor recently aboard one ship said the sonar meant to detect mines was so imprecise that in training exercises it flagged dishwashers, crab traps and cars on the ocean floor as potential bombs.”

Minesweeper USS Devastator with the hull number MCM 6 was non-operational for so long that sailors jokingly referred to her as “Building 6,” since she never moved.

Senior Navy officials have called their mine warfare fleet in the Persian Gulf — a mix of aging ships, high-tech drones and helicopters — “the best and the brightest around,” and a Navy spokesman recently said the minesweeper fleet was “fully capable” of fulfilling its mission of finding and neutralizing mines. The Navy’s underwater drones, the spokesman said, “have a high rate of success,” and the sonar systems on the ships “are very accurate at detecting mines.”

While the spokesman conceded “there are challenges with all older ships, including maintenance and repair” that might make it take longer for the ships to accomplish their mission, he said maintenance problems have “dramatically improved” of late. He noted that as recently as July 6, [2019], all four of the older minesweepers based in the Persian Gulf had been at sea at the same time. (An officer aboard one of the ships called it a “photo exercise” and said it was “extraordinarily rare” to see all four out at once.)

War with Iran could require an intensive demining effort. The Islamic republic has the potential to drop thousands of mines in key waters. “Iran’s arsenal includes a mix of cheaper, older ones that float and blow up on impact, and more sophisticated ones that can be dropped from planes,” Faturechi, Miller and Rose wrote. “They sit on the ocean floor and explode after detecting nearby ships.”  

“We certainly have the ability to do it,” Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said last month about closing the Strait of Hormuz, a critical commercial passageway. “But we certainly don’t want to do it because the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf are our lifeline.”

Sailors in the 5th Fleet’s minesweeping operations said they have watched the escalation of hostility in the Persian Gulf — the downing of drones by Iran and the U.S., masked gunmen rappelling from an Iranian helicopter to seize a British-flagged oil tanker — with a mix of excitement and pessimism. They are eager to contribute but doubt their ability to do so.

The Navy wants by 2020 to decommission three Avengers based in the United States in order to free up spare parts for the right minesweepers sailing from Bahrain and Japan. LCSs are still scheduled eventually to handle some minehunting missions, but the Navy also is experimenting with so-called “vessels of opportunity.”

Under that initiative, sailors embark on transport ships, amphibious auxiliaries or other non-combat vessels and use them as bases for minehunting divers, underwater drones and helicopters.

David Axe served as Defense Editor of the National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels  War Fix, War Is Boring and Machete Squad.

This first appeared in August 2019.

Image: Reuters

David Axe

Security,

The U.S. Marine Corps is practicing a new method of speeding firepower across a war zone.

Here's What You Need to Know: HIMARS packing new missiles could give the Corps a serious and survivable anti-ship capability.

The U.S. Marine Corps is practicing a new method of speeding firepower across a war zone. And that could have big implications for America's military strategy in the western Pacific.

On Dec. 7, 2018, Marines with Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 352 hauled two M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System launchers from Camp Pendleton in California to Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, where a war game was underway.

At least one of the 12-ton HIMARS, a wheeled vehicle that fires a variety of surface-to-surface rockets, rolled off its KC-130J transport, quickly fired a training rocket, then loaded back into the KC-130J for its return flight.

There's a name for the practice of deploying a rocket launcher via aircraft, promptly firing then redeploying. The U.S. Army, which pioneered the method, calls it "HIMARS Rapid Infiltration" or HIRAIN.

Combined with other new tactics and new rockets, HIRAIN could allow U.S. force to quickly position long-range artillery, frustrating an enemy's own movements. The method might even allow American troops to impede China's expansion in the western Pacific.

Beijing considers the string of islands stretching from Japan south to The Philippines -- what it calls the "first island chain" -- to be China's historical sphere of influence. The Chinese Communist Party uses trade deals, diplomacy and the threat of military force to exert influence over the region and, in the event of war, could seize many islands along the chain.

The Pentagon aims to complicate this expansion. While air and sea forces are central to American strategy in the region, ground troops could play a role, too. Retired U.S. Army general H.R. McMaster, who briefly served as Pres. Donald Trump's national security advisor, said he wanted the Army to consider "projecting power outwards from the land."

Janine Davidson, an undersecretary of the Navy under former president Barack Obama, said she tried to "get the Army to sink a ship." The Marine Corps, which possesses many of the same capabilities that the Army does, likewise could sink ships.

Imagine a Chinese flotilla sailing toward some remote island group near Japan or The Philippines during some near-future war. A Marine rocket battery could quickly deploy to one island aboard Marine or Air Force transports and lob a few rockets at the Chinese ships while the transports idled nearby. "After firing each volley, the missile battery would move to a new hide site and await orders to fire again," the California think-tank RAND explained in a 2017 report.

"Fortifying the offshore island chain while deploying naval assets in adjoining waters could yield major strategic gains on the cheap," James Holmes, a professor at the Naval War College in Rhode Island, advised in 2014. "Doing so is common sense."

The Army has practiced parts of the concept in realistic conditions. During the Rim of the Pacific war game in and around Hawaii in July 2018, an Army HIMARS battery struck the decommissioned U.S. Navy amphibious ship Racine with five rockets. An aerial drone provided the coordinates for the 50-mile strike.

Still, an unguided 227-millimeter-diameter rocket with a 200-pound warhead and a 40-mile range -- of which a HIMARS can cary six at a time -- is less than ideal as an anti-ship weapon.

Alternatively, a HIMARS can carry one guided 610-millimeter Army Tactical Missile System with a 500-pound warhead and a 190-mile range. In 2016, the Army began modifying the seekers on some ATACMS in order to improve their ability to hit ships.

The Marine Corps is considering buying a dedicated anti-ship missile for its HIMARS launchers. The Corps proved, in a fall 2018 demonstration in Arizona, that an F-35 stealth fighter can pass targeting data to a rocket battery, improving its accuracy. A Marine F-35B detected a metal container on the ground and passed the GPS coordinates via radio data-link to the HIMARS crew.

HIMARS packing new missiles could give the Corps a serious and survivable anti-ship capability. Adding F-35s could help the rockets strike with greater accuracy. And swiftly moving the launchers by air could protect them from counterattack ... and keep the enemy guessing.

David Axe is the author of the new graphic novels MACHETE SQUAD and THE STAN.

This article appeared last year.

Image: Flickr / U.S. Marine Corps

The damage done to the U.S. reputation may take years to repair.

European allies who regularly clashed with Trump were among the first to applaud the U.S. president-elect on his victory. Now even the president's closest friends abroad are joining in.

Seth J. Frantzman

Security, Middle East

Why are they needed? Think gas deposits.

Israel has been known for its expertise in counter-insurgency and using hi-tech aircraft, like the F-35 jet, to confront enemies across the Middle East. Israel’s power was concentrated on land with its Israel Defense Forces investing in the best air defenses and new combat vehicles. Now that may be changing as Israel takes delivery of its new Sa’ar 6 corvette ships. These four new 2,000 ton vessels, which will be delivered from Germany over the next year, will give Israel new firepower at sea and the ability to protect its emerging gas fields off the coast.

In a recent statement the commander of the Israeli Navy, Maj. Gen. Eli Sharvit: Said that "the mission of defending Israel's exclusive economic zone and strategic assets at sea is the primary security mission of the Israeli Navy. These assets are essential to the operational continuity of the State of Israel, and having the ability to protect them holds critical importance.” The gas exclusive economic zone stretches over an area twice the size of Israel. Gas fields off the coast, near Lebanon and Gaza, both could be threatened by missiles. Israel confronted a surprise missile threat like this in 2006 when Hezbollah targeted the INS Hanit.

More recently reports indicated Hezbollah may have access to the Russian-made Yakhont missile or a variant. The group already has stockpiled some 150,000 missiles and rockets with Iran’s support. It is also developing precision-guided munitions. The threat of missiles at sea is well known, especially after the Houthis targeted ships off the coast of Yemen and after militants in Gaza struck an Egyptian ship in 2015. Anti-ship missiles can pose a major threat to modern navies. During the Falklands war in 1982 Argentinian Dassault-Breguet Super Etendard planes air-launched Exocet missiles that struck several British ships. During the Iran-Iraq war in 1987, the USS Stark was hit by a missile as well.

For this reason, Israel is putting to sea advanced ships with stealth technology and the latest in Israel’s Adir phased array radar, as well as numerous interceptors designed to protect it from missile threats. Many of the combat systems on the Sa’ar 6 ships will be new or recent designs and more than ninety percent will come from Israel’s defense companies. For instance, Rafael Advanced Defense systems reportedly supplies the C-Gem offboard active decoy, which defends against missile threats. Elbit Systems electronic warfare suite will be incorporated along with IAI’s Barak missiles and the sea version of Israel’s Iron Dome. Israel has made rapid advances in all this technology over the last several years, attempting to keep up with the threats emerging from Iran and Hezbollah Lebanon. For instance, Israel announced it had tested a new ship-to-ship missile in September. The missile represented a partnership between IAI and Israel’s research and development division within the Ministry of Defense. At the time Israel said, “the new missile system offers enhanced offensive precision capabilities, has longer range, possesses improved offensive flexibility and is better equipped to engage advanced threats.”

On November 11, the Israeli Navy will receive the new ship but it will still be in Kiel in Germany where it was laid down at Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems. It will then sail to Israel. Israel’s navy says that “Upon the arrival of the corvette to Israel and after the operationalization and installation of battle systems, of which the vast majority are Israeli-designed systems, INS Magen will start its operational service in the Navy and will lead the defense of the Israeli economic exclusive zone and maritime strategic assets.”

The name of the ship and the program, “Magen,” comes from the Hebrew term for “shield.” This is because the ship is a shield for the gas platforms and off-shore infrastructure Israel is investing in. This will include a new gas pipeline to Cyprus and Greece, according to a recent agreement. It is also part of Israel’s increased role in the eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum, which was established this summer. Israel is increasingly a naval ally of Egypt, Cyprus and Greece. As tensions have increased between Turkey and Greece, Ankara has also laid claim to rights to the Mediterranean stretching to Libya, which puts it astride the potential pipeline. An Israeli ship was harassed by the Turkish navy in December 2019 as Ankara pushed its demands in the Mediterranean. The IDF has assessed that Turkey could be a future challenge and reports in British media have indicated the Mossad also sees Turkey as an emerging threat.

This shift in naval strategy, although it is not tailored to relate to Turkey, gives Israel more eight at sea and a more relevant navy that can operate further from shore. Previously Israel relied on small patrol boats to deal with terror threats from Gaza, as well as a handful of missile boats. It also commissioned a half dozen submarines since the late 1990s. Now Israel will have fifteen surface vessels, the four Sa’ar 6 ships, three Sa’ar 5 ships and eight missile boats. The decision to build the Sa’ar 6 was made in 2013 and represents a major investment in the navy. The last time Israel put new surface ships to sea in such a build-up was in the 1990s. The Sa’ar 6 is supposed to be the backbone of the navy for thirty years. Combined with the Dolphin-class submarines, it will give the Israeli navy the latest technology for naval warfare.

Israel’s navy held a briefing and put out an explainer about the new ships in early November. The navy says that the ships will defend the gas fields up to several hundred kilometers offshore and that they can not only be on station at the rigs for a significant period of time but can also do other missions. “The ability to carry mid-size helicopters, such as the Seahawk: The new Seahawk helicopters that will be used by Sa’ar 6-Class Corvettes will be powerful, and able to operate over long ranges and extended periods of time. In this fashion, the ships will be able to provide a comprehensive defensive envelope.”

The understanding of the threat Israel faces has grown in recent years. Israel once had to confront convention armies, fighting the Soviet-armed Egyptians and Syrians in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the threat shifted more to counter-insurgency. Now the threat has moved to what Israel calls the “third circle,” a term used for Iran. Israel incorporated this understanding into its new Momentum plan. That means Israel is reducing some of its older units, making its armored corps and infantry more “multi-dimensional” and relying on communications, artificial intelligence and algorithms to bring the most amount of information to frontline troops to give them more lethality in times of conflict. That is designed to land a knock-out blow on an enemy.

Israel is also training more with the United States using the F-35, of which Israel is acquiring at least fifty of the advanced aircraft for several squadrons. The goal of Israel’s current operations, called the Campaign Between the Wars, is to reduce the Iranian threat and Iranian entrenchment in Syria and prolong the period before the next war. At sea, that means dealing with potential missile threats from places like Lebanon. Only one missile getting through Israel’s defense net can harm the gas platforms. That necessitated ships of the type Israel is putting to sea, and also knitting them in to Israel’s advanced early warning systems on land. This means confronting “blue water” and “brown water” threats, at sea and closer to land.

Israel receives most of its trade from the sea. It’s two Mediterranean ports, Haifa and Ashon, now account for around 43 percent and 53 percent respectively, with the Red Sea port of Eilat taking in only four percent of the country’s trade. New relations with the UAE and new pipeline deals could change some of that situation. Changing Israel’s strategy meant assigning ships to the three gas fields and taking into consideration that one ship might always be at port or on other missions. It also means having better naval-air connectivity, and multiple layers of defense. This basically means extending the Iron Dome and David Sling and other defense system umbrellas to the sea.

Recent attacks by Iran, such as the drone and cruise missile swarm used to attack Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq in September 2019, point to the kinds of threats that Israel must consider. The Sa’ar 6 will have around 80 personnel on board and Israel is also hoping to have a quarter of the personnel on the new ships be female. In recent years, Israel’s navy increased the number of women in the service. It is thus a technological and societal leap for the country.

The ship was custom-designed so that it has the stealth capabilities and room to install the weapon systems Israel wants. This is an upgrade of existing corvette-class ship models. Many navies today are racing to put to sea better ships, especially as the naval arms race continues in the Pacific and elsewhere. Not all the plans for new types of ships, such as the American Zumwalt-class destroyers or the littoral combat ships like the USS Independence, have proven successful. Israel hopes its updates will be a model that does perform well.

Israel engaged in what I call a “design spiral” to build these ships. That included making sure the payloads, such as the massive radar, could be incorporated. It also meant making it flexible and with a low radar cross-section. It is the boat with the highest firepower per square meter, the Israeli navy says. In the end, I will also have a 76mm cannon as its main gun, along with the missiles it carries. Together the firepower and defenses will be a gamechanger off the coast of Tel Aviv and extending far into the sea.

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. Follow him on Twitter at @sfrantzman.

Image:

For all his flaws, there has never been a better deal-maker on Capitol Hill, colleagues say.

Sebastien Roblin

Security, World

The Pentagon’s F-35 and F-22 stealth fighters, which it has made the lynchpin of its twenty-first century air warfare strategy, simply can’t fly far enough.

Here's What You Need To Remember: To conduct missions over hostile territory for extended time, America's jet fighters need fuel. Conventional tankers are vulnerable to long-range missiles, particularly Russian and Chinese ones. A stealth tanker might be able to avoid this problem.

The United States has devoted billions of dollars to building stealth fighters, stealth bombers, stealth cruise missiles and stealth spy drones. Surely a stealth tanker for refueling aircraft midflight would be an extravagance too much?

However, the concept of a stealth tanker is not as absurd you’d think for one simple reason: the Pentagon’s F-35 and F-22 stealth fighters, which it has made the lynchpin of its twenty-first century air warfare strategy, simply can’t fly far enough.

At first glance, the F-35’s six to eight-hundred-mile range doesn’t seem bad compared to conventional fighters like the Super Hornet or F-16. But those non-stealth designs can carry fuel in in underwing tanks into combat—meanwhile, an F-35 can’t carry those extra lumps of metal under its wings if it wants to preserve its miniscule radar cross-section.

Another problem with the short range of stealth and non-stealth fighters alike is the need to deploy them airbases or aircraft carriers well within range of an adversary’s ballistic and cruise missiles. Conflicts ranging from World War II to Afghanistan have shown that advanced fighters are never more vulnerable than when they are caught on the ground (or a carrier deck). It is virtually a given that in the event of a great power conflict, a terrifying missile barrage would rain down on forward airbases; and just how many airframes would emerge intact from that hail of death is anybody’s guess.

Fortunately, all U.S. jet fighters can be refueled mid-air. But though the modified airliners serving as tankers would strive to stay far away from hostile fighters, they are increasingly at risk to being shot down by very-long range air-to-air missiles like the Russian R-37, which can hit airliner-type targets from 250 miles away. The small numbers of stealth aircraft fielded by Russia or China would also likely concentrate on slipping past fighter screens to destroy the tankers and radar planes supporting them. After all, knock down the lumbering tankers, and you may also effectively strand a bunch of fighters over the Pacific without the fuel needed to return to base.

The dilemma is much worse for stealth fighters attempting to penetrate enemy airspace, as the F-35 is designed to do. Contemporary surface-to-air-missiles like the S-400 can already strike less agile aircraft (again, think tankers) up to 250 miles distant using 40N6 missiles. This means conventional tankers simply will have to loiter hundreds of miles back from defended airspace—and even there, will be visible on radar and vulnerable to attack by enemy fighters.

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A tanker with a reduced radar cross section, therefore could neatly address both problems, without having to be every bit as low-observable as a stealth fighter.

Enter the KC-Z

Currently, the Air Force is procuring 179 new KC-46A Pegasus tankers based on the Boeing 767. As it progressively retires its aging fleet of 400 KC-135 and KC-10 tankers, the Air Mobility Command originally planned to phase in another relatively conventional tanker called the KC-Y starting in the 2024s, before finally pursuing a KC-Z stealth tanker.

However, in 2016 General Carlton Everthart told Defense News the Pentagon may scrub the KC-Y in favor of procuring additional upgraded KC-46s and phasing in the KC-Z stealth tankers sooner—though by ‘sooner,’ think procurement beginning in 2035.

Already, there are multiple proposals as to what a KC-Z might look like—and they’re all bizarre enough to resemble the Quinjets from The Avengers movies.

In June 2018, the Air Force Research Lab, based in Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, floated this angular and very bizarre-looking ‘Advanced Aerial Refueling’ concept model at the AIAA forum.

Meanwhile, Lockheed has its own stealth tanker concept model dubbed the ‘Advanced Tanker Concept.’ (photos here and here) that looked ready for filming in Star Wars: Episode IX. Earlier in 2018, the major defense manufacturer lost a competition to produce an MQ-25 carrier-based aerial refueling drone; Lockheed’s proposed flying-wing design emphasized stealth more than other entrants in the competition. The firm has also proposed embedding the stealth tanker’s high-bypass turbofans on the upper surface of the wings, like on the B-2, for cross-section reducing purposes.

However, the proposed designs aren’t pure flying wing, but instead take their cues from the Air Force’s expressed interest in a ‘Blended Wing Body’-type tanker. Rather than crossing a tubular fuselage against the wings, a BWB aircraft seamlessly merges the wings into the fuselage, resulting in a triangular shape. These are also known as ‘Hybrid Wing Body’ designs, as they are not a pure ‘flying wing’ because of the size of retention of a fuselage and tail fins.

A flying wing’s curved wing surfaces are very efficient at generating lift, and its ‘infinite plane’ naturally lend themselves to low radar cross sections as they lack hard, radar-reflective angles. However, tanker aircraft are routinely called upon to do double duty as cargo jets, so a stealth tanker may still need to have a bulged cargo compartment and bay door to serve as a fully capable substitute—the ‘C” in KC-Z stands for ‘Cargo’ after all. Those wouldn’t gel well with a pure flying wing design, which is why extant concepts have been hybrids.

An upside of a stealthy cargo plane is that it could be used for inserting Special Forces operators behind enemy lines—a capability the Special Operations branch has discretely studied for decades—or delivering critical supplies to forward outposts located under the anti-access umbrella of an adversary’s long-range anti-aircraft missiles. Nonetheless, a cargo-carrying stealth tanker design would simply not be as stealthy as a pure flying-wing designed only for aerial refueling.

Another challenge to making an affordable stealth tanker concerns the fact that stealth fighters and bomber achieve their low cross-section partly by incorporating radar-absorbent material (RAM) coatings or panels. However, RAM application significantly increases the operating costs and maintenance requirements of small stealth fighters. Presumably, that cost would be far greater spread out across a huge tanker that needs to fly thousands more hours every years, so a more cost-efficient form of RAM is surely necessary to avoid the $135 to $169,000 per flight hour operating costs of a B-2 stealth bomber.

The Air Force has additional ideas for making its future tankers more survival, including incorporating active protection systems to shoot down incoming missiles—yes, possibly with lasers. Another concept, however, would involve using next-generation radar jammers that employ a cognitive intelligence system to automatically adjust frequencies to keep up with frequency-agile radars. Such jammers could obscure or even misrepresent the position of an aircraft on radar. The Pentagon also would like its next-generation tankers to feature more autonomation to reduce the number of necessary crew and speed up the refueling process.

However, the Air Mobility Command has also expressed openness to a radically different approach to a stealthy KC-Z—taking a page from the Navy’s MQ-25, and deploying small, stealthy unmanned autonomous vehicle.

Stealthy drone tankers might fit with a ‘distributed’ refueling strategy in which multiple drones draw fuel from a large, conventional tanker ‘mothership’ and then zip forward into to provide refueling for stealth fighter in contested airspace. However, such a chain-refueling scheme could crash catastrophically should the un-stealthy mothership tanker be targeted by adversaries. Thus a ‘system of systems’ could also proposed mixing multiple ‘tiers’ of stealthy and non-stealthy tankers.

It’s worth noting there may be simpler, less expensive solution: weaning the Pentagon from its dependency on short-range jets, perhaps by relying more on long-range B-21 stealth bombers or future sixth-generation Penetrating Counter-Air fighter, making greater use of stand-off missiles, or introducing long-range unmanned UCAV stealth drones.

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 in September 2018.

Image: Reuters.

Charlie Gao

Security, Asia

The Navy has a wide variety of modern weapons to find and destroy enemy submarines.

Here's What You Need to Know: Anti-submarine warfare is an art learned in two world wars.

With things heating up in the South China Sea (SCS), much attention has been paid to the ships and submarines that could potentially square off against each other in the region. This ignores a key asset of most navies that is already on the “front lines” and shaping military interactions—Maritime Patrol Aircraft (MPA). Skillful use of these aircraft may determine how an engagement plays out, or it could prevent one from happening in the first place.

MPA have been around almost as long as combat aircraft. Navies quickly realized the potential of aircraft when it came to patrolling the sea, as they could move far more quickly than boats and had the significant advantage of altitude.

But modern MPA use advanced sensors to detect to see far more than what can be seen with the naked eye—Magnetic Anomaly Detectors (MADs) can detect underwater submarines, and radar systems are used to detect ships that might just be specks on the horizon. Infrared/thermographic cameras allow MPA to identify vessels even at night.

MPA can also deploy sonobuoys, floating sensors that either detect noises or send out pings to find submarines. ELINT sensors can detect the radar emissions of enemy MPA or ships. All of these sensors means that MPA are incredibly useful in peacetime as well as wartime.

One way they could deter potential escalation is through detecting potential violations of EEZ or civilian ships in contested waters ahead of time through the use of radar and infrared. Since modern MPA have all-weather detection capability, they can watch for fishing vessels day and night, and give a navy an advanced warning of such violations so they can be headed off before a more violent encounter up close.

MPA also can provide critical information in tracking enemy submarine posture. While this is a more intensive and not “guaranteed” way to track submarines—as the battle between submarine stealth and submarine detection is ongoing—determining the patrol routes and positions of enemy submarines is critical information. Such intelligence may allow nations to avoid potential losses to convoy raiding (if it occurs) and set up anti-submarine warfare plans before the event of war.

In their traditional role in the detection of surface ships, MPA are critically important in the SCS region. Due to the relatively short distances between islands, MPA flying out of Japan or Taiwan could potentially track the movement of ships from base to base in China.

Basic MPA surveillance radars like the Seaspray 5000 have publicized ranges of around 200 nm. The more advanced AN/APS-115 and AN/APS-137D(V)5s mounted on Japan, and Taiwan's P-3C MPA undoubtedly have better performance. Even with a 200 nm range, an MPA flying over the East China Sea could easily track ships moving south along China's coast.

This could yield significant strategic intelligence on the development and deployment of Beijing’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). In addition, the ELINT suite onboard these aircraft could provide insight into the capabilities of Chinese radars.

However, MPA still face considerable limitations from the human component. Crews get tired and need to be rotated out, and MPA—like other aircraft—are expensive to fly and operate. Therefore, the future will see navies using UAVs to accomplish the MPA mission, assisting manned MPA and also surveying without them independently.

The U.S. Navy has already made significant steps in this direction with the acquisition of MQ-4C Triton UAVs, which can augment the P-8A in surveillance and patrols. As multiple UAVs can accompany a single manned aircraft, the amount of area patrolled can increase drastically with the integration of UAS, bringing even more benefits.

Most militaries in the region appear to have recognized the importance of MPA in securing their maritime borders. While not in the SCS, Japan's Defense Forces have one of the best MPA fleets, the star of which is their purpose-built Kawasaki P-1, which boasts advanced sensors and even artificial intelligence to reduce the crew workload.

Taiwan is also no slouch, acquiring twelve American P-3C Orions MPA in 2017. Other militaries in the region (such as Vietnam, Singapore, and the Philippines) field lighter MPA, mostly converted civilian light propeller planes as opposed to heavier purpose-built aircraft. While these converted aircraft are sufficient for tracking surface ships, purpose-built aircraft are far superior for tracking submarines, due to features like the extended tail on the P-3C, which houses the magnetic anomaly detector.

China's premier MPA is the Y-8Q, which is a rough analog to the P-3C in function. Like the P-3C it has a distinctive tail boom for detecting submarines, and a powerful surface search radar in a radome under the cockpit.

Charlie Gao studied political and computer science at Grinnell College and is a frequent commentator on defense and national-security issues.

This article first appeared in August 2018.

Image: Reuters

War Is Boring

Security, Europe

Moscow made a good investment when it created the Su-27.

Key point: The Su-27 is a fast interceptor that can find American bomber planes and threaten them. In fact, they've been doing just that to keep NATO on its toes.

On June 9, 2017, examples of all three of the U.S. Air Force’s heavy bombers — the swing-wing B-1, the stealthy B-2 and the lumbering B-52 — gathered in international air space over the Baltic Sea for a rare photo-op with allied fighters and patrol planes.

They had a surprise visitor. A Russian air force Su-27 Flanker fighter sidled up to the U.S.-led formation and flew alongside long enough to appear in multiple photos. A few days prior, an Su-27 intercepted a B-52 over the Baltic.

This first appeared earlier and is being republished due to reader interest.

The Su-27 was apparently one of seven Flankers that fly from Kaliningrad, Moscow’s Baltic enclave, sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland and geographically separate from the rest of Russia.

The Kaliningrad Flankers are arguably the busiest—and most dangerous—Su-27s anywhere in the world.

They patrol over the Baltic, intercept NATO and neutral spy planes in international air space and, on occasion, harass the rival planes so aggressively that they have no choice but to flee.

If any Russian warplanes end up causing an international incident in the tense Baltic region, it will likely be the Kaliningrad Su-27s.

Over the Baltic on Oct. 3, 2014, an Su-27 with the numeral 24 on its nose in red paint flew so close to a Swedish air force Gulfstream spy plane—around 30 feet, according to Combat Aircraft’s Babak Taghvaee—that the Swedish crew could clearly identify the Russian jet’s weapons, including four R-27 and two R-73 air-to-air missiles.

In June 2017, Russia’s defense minister Sergey Shoigu was flying to Kaliningrad when a Polish F-16 intercepted the minister’s transport plane. A pair of Su-27s — likely from the enclave — intervened.

A few days later, an apparent Kaliningrad Su-27 with the nose code Red 93 flew so close to a U.S. Air Force RC-135 spy plane that the Pentagon formally complained.

While for many decades opposing air arms have routinely intercepted each other’s planes in international air space, NATO and Swedish authorities have grown increasingly concerned over Moscow’s actions in the Baltic region.

Russian aerial activity in the Baltic region has been on the rise for years — and escalated sharply following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2014. Fighters from NATO and neutral countries have intercepted Russian planes on hundreds of separate occasions since then.

“We have seen examples of the actions of air power that can be perceived as more aggressive than what we’ve seen in a long time,” army general Sverker Goranson, then Sweden’s top officer, told a Swedish news outletin 2014.

In June 2014, Kaliningrad Su-27s again flew within 30 feet of a Swedish spy plane. The Su-27s have also tangled with Swedish Gripen fighters and French Mirage jets. The Flankers have repeatedly intercepted, and occasionally endangered, American RC-135s.

In July 2014, an RC-135 was presumably monitoring electronic signals from the Russian enclave when at least two of the resident Su-27s—which as of 2014 included three Su-27SM3s, one Su-27P and an Su-27S, among others—vectored for an intercept.

Something about the Flankers’ behavior frightened the American aircrew. The RC-135 turned and ran—straight into Swedish territory. “The U.S. aircraft was directed towards Swedish air space incorrectly by U.S. personnel,” the Pentagon’s European Command said in a statement.

Five months later in September 2014, the Kaliningrad Flankers—which the Russian air force detached from the 6972nd Aviation Base in Krasnador, just north of the Black Sea—took part in a massive exercise that tested the Kremlin’s ability to reinforce Kaliningrad with scores of extra warplanes and hundreds of paratroopers.

War games have become commonplace off Kaliningrad. In July 2017, Russian and Chinese warships conducted mock naval combat off Kaliningrad. And Russia staged parts of its sprawling Zapad exercise in Kaliningrad in September 2017.

Russian Flankers have also escorted heavy bombers conducting mock attack runs on European countries—although it’s not entirely clear that those Su-27s came from Kaliningrad.

This first appeared earlier and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

Kyle Mizokami

Security, Asia

New Delhi has two dangerous neighbors to keep an eye on.

Key point: India has worked hard to modernize its forces and that includes getting aircraft carriers. Can it really compete with Beijing?

India occupies one of the most strategically important locations in the world. A short distance from the Persian Gulf, Central Asia and Southeast Asia, India has been an important hub for ideas, trade and religion for thousands of years.

That geographic positioning has its disadvantages. India is faced on two sides by powerful, nuclear-armed countries it has fought wars with—China and Pakistan.

India’s most formidable rival is China, with whom it fought a short, sharp border war with in 1962. China’s growing military has transformed it from a mainly ground-based threat to a multifaceted one with powerful assets in the air, at sea and even in space.

India’s second most powerful rival is Pakistan, which was also part of the British Raj. India and Pakistan have fought four wars since 1947, and frequently appear on the verge of a fifth.

Complicating matters for India, the two countries are allies. Advances in military technology mean India’s large reserves of manpower are no longer as useful as they once were, and India will need to favor the former over the latter if it wants to match—and deter—Chinese and Pakistani forces.

AH-64D Apache Longbow Block III Attack Helicopter

Indian selection of the AH-64D Apache as its future attack helicopter is a prime example of technology over manpower. The Apache’s versatility means that it will be able to do everything from engage tank formations in a conventional war to hunt guerrillas in a counterinsurgency operation.

The heavily armed, fast-moving Apache can counter a number of land-based threats to India, sensing enemy armored vehicles with its mast-mounted millimeter-wave radar and destroying them with Hellfire missiles, Hydra-70 anti-armor rockets and a 30mm chain gun. The helicopter can also detect insurgents under heavy cover using its thermal imaging sensor and engage them with anti-personnel rockets or the 30mm chain gun.

Unlike other attack helicopters, the Apache has a proven combat record, destroying armor in Iraq and decimating Taliban hiding in the hillsides of Afghanistan.

INS Vikramaditya Aircraft Carrier

Commissioned in November 2013, INS Vikramaditya is India’s newest aircraft carrier and the only aircraft carrier that calls the Indian Ocean home. In the event of war, Vikramaditya will be used to blockade Karachi, Pakistan’s largest port, or sever China’s economic lifeline to the Persian Gulf and beyond.

Vikramaditya is 282 meters long and displaces 44,000 tons, making her about 20 percent smaller than China’s aircraft carrier Liaoning. Unlike Liaoning, however, she is a fully operational carrier, with an air wing capable of executing air superiority, anti-surface, anti-ship and anti-submarine warfare. The carrier air wing is expected to consist of twenty-four MiG-29K or Tejas multirole fighters and ten anti-submarine warfare helicopters. India has ordered forty-five MiG-29Ks.

Vikramaditya will operate as the centerpiece of a full carrier battle group, protected by the new Kolkata air-defense destroyers. A further two carriers of indigenous designs are planned, bringing India’s total carrier force to three.

BrahMos Anti-Ship Missile           

A joint Indian-Russian project, BrahMos is a short-range supersonic cruise missile capable of being launched from a wide variety of platforms. BrahMos is one of the most advanced missiles in the world, capable of hitting targets on land and at sea with precision. The versatility of BrahMos means it could equally target enemy ships and terrorist training camps with ease.

A ramjet propels BrahMos to speeds of up to Mach 3, or 1,020 meters a second. The anti-ship version is a so-called “sea skimmer,” flying just over the wavetops to give enemies as little as 35 seconds’ warning time.

Depending on the variant and method of launch, BrahMos is armed with a 440-660 pound penetrating high explosive warhead and has a range of 186-310 miles.

The combination of speed and hitting power makes BrahMos a particular concern to the Pakistani Navy, whose surface ships lack adequate area air defenses. Even the Chinese Navy will find BrahMos formidable, as it would face the daunting prospect of a Mach 3 missile threat launched by aircraft, coastal defense batteries, destroyers and submarines.

Su-30MKI Fighter

One of India’s newest fighters is an updated design dating back to the late 1970s. An evolution of the Su-27 Flanker, the Su-30MKI has been extensively upgraded, and the result is a long-range, twin-engine fighter with a powerful radar and amazing twelve hard points for the attachment of weapons.

The Su-30MKI’s air-to-air armament includes R-73 infrared guided missiles and R-77 and R-27 radar-guided missiles. Of particular interest is the upcoming Novator K-100 “AWACS killer” missile, capable of engaging targets at up to 300 to 400 kilometers. Against targets on the ground, the Su-30MKI can employ laser-guided bombs, Kh-59 standoff land-attack missiles and the BrahMos missile.

The Indian Air Force has 200 Su-30MKIs air superiority fighters in service with another seventy-two on order. A portion of the IAF’s Su-30MKI force has been modified by Israel for the strategic reconnaissance role.

INS Chakra Nuclear Attack Submarine

India’s first nuclear attack submarine, INS Chakra, started life as a Russian Navy submarine funded to completion by the Indian Navy in return for a ten-year lease.

Based on the Soviet Union’s Akula II class, Chakra displaces 8,000 tons, making it more than twice as large as any of India’s German-made Type 209 or Russia Kilo class submarines. It can sustain a speed of 30 knots submerged and can dive to a depth of 520 meters. The submarine has eight submarine tubes enabling it to launch regular homing torpedoes, Kh-55 “Granat” cruise missiles, and “Shkval” supercavitating torpedoes, capable of traveling at 220 knots to ranges of 15 kilometers.

As a nuclear submarine, Chakra will be able to spend prolonged periods underwater, making it difficult to detect. During wartime, the advanced submarine will go after high value targets, such as Pakistani submarines (possibly carrying nuclear-armed cruise missiles) and Chinese submarines, destroyers, aircraft carriers and submarines.

Kyle Mizokami is a writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and The Daily Beast. In 2009 he co-founded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch. This first appeared earlier and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

James Holland

Security,

Why much of what you think about World War II is wrong. 

Here's What You Need To Remember: Germany, on the other hand, was very under-mechanized but had a vast army, which meant it was dependent on horse-power and foot-slogging infantrymen. As a result of so many German men at the front, their factories were manned by slaves and POWs, who were underfed and treated abominably, and whose production capacity was affected as a result.

The Second World War remains an enduringly fascinating subject, but despite the large number of films, documentaries, books and even comics on the subject, our understanding of this catastrophic conflict, even seven decades on, remains heavily dependent on conventional wisdom, propaganda and an interpretation skewed by the information available. 

In my new book The War in the West: Germany Ascendant 1939-1941, first in a three-volume history, I am challenging a number of long-held assumptions about the war, many of which are based on truth by common knowledge, rather than through detailed and painstaking research.My Damascene moment came some years ago when I was being given a tour of the Small Arms Unit at the British Staff College at Shrivenham. I was glancing at a German MG42, known as a “Spandau” by the Allies. “Of course, that was the best machine gun of the war,’ I commented, relaying what I’d read in many books.

“Says who? Says who?” retorted my guide and head of the unit, John Starling. In the next few minutes, he proceeded to deconstruct everything I thought I knew about this infamous weapon: that its phenomenal rate of fire caused massive problems of over-heating, that it was widely inaccurate (for which having since fired one, I can now vouch), that is was incredibly expensive to manufacture, massively over-engineered and lacked certain simple additions that would have made its handling so much easier. The men supporting this weapon not only had to carry vast amounts of ammunition to feed this thirsty beast, they also had to lumber around six spare barrels because of its readiness to over-heat. And each barrel bore multiple inspection stamps. “Which were,” John told me, “an utter waste of time in the middle of total war.”

I was gobsmacked, but this visit led me down an entirely new line of research, and one that was equally revelatory. I began to realize that almost everything the Germans made was over-engineered, from the tanks to gas-mask cases to the field jacket of the lowly landser. Eventually, in the German military archives in Freiburg in the Black Forest, I found a memo from early December 1941, signed by Hitler, in which was the line, “From now on, we have to stop making such complete and aesthetic weapons.” In other words, up to that point, they had been consciously doing so. Needless to say, his instruction was not followed; those all-metal, finely-designed-yet-cumbersome and utterly pointless cylindrical gas-mask cases were made right up to the end of the war, while still to come was the Panther tank, not to mention the Tiger, with its Porsche-designed six-speed hydraulically controlled semi-automatic pre-selector gear-box, as complicated and sophisticated as it sounds and entirely unsuitable for front-line combat or use by poorly-trained young drivers. The transmission on a U.S.-built Sherman tank was a robust four-speed manual, simply made in vast numbers. America built 74,000 Sherman hulls and engines; Germany built just 1,347 Tigers.

Studying such things in detail meant I was now looking at the operational level of war. Any conflict — or business for that matter — is understood to be conducted on three levels. The first is the strategic — that is, the overall aims and ambitions. The second is the tactical: the coal face, the actual fighting, the pilot in his Spitfire or man in his tank. And the third is the operational — the nuts and bolts, the logistics, economics and the supply of war.

Almost every narrative history of the war ever published almost entirely concentrates on the strategic and tactical levels, but gives scant regard to the operational, and the result is a skewed version of events, in which German machine guns reign supreme and Tiger tanks always come out on top.

Studying the operational level as well, however, provides a revelatory perspective. Suddenly it’s not just about tactical flair, but about so much more. Britain, for example, decided to fight a highly mechanical and technological war. “Steel not flesh” was the mantra and that’s why the British had a small army, yet still ensured it was 100-percent mechanized. They also developed a vast air force and built a staggering 132,500 aircraft during the war — and that’s 50,000 more than the Germans. Until the start of 1944, the priority for manpower in Britain was not the army or navy or even air force, but the Ministry of Aircraft Production. Well-fed men and women were kept in the factories.

Germany, on the other hand, was very under-mechanized but had a vast army, which meant it was dependent on horse-power and foot-slogging infantrymen. As a result of so many German men at the front, their factories were manned by slaves and POWs, who were underfed and treated abominably, and whose production capacity was affected as a result.

And if the ability to supply war was key, then in the war in the West, it was the Battle of the Atlantic that was the decisive theater. Yet Germany built a surface fleet before the war, which could never hope to rival Britain or France and in doing so neglected the U-boat arm. Despite sinking substantial amounts of British supplies in 1940, it was still nothing like enough to even remotely force Britain to her knees. In truth, there were never enough U-boats to more than dent the flow of shipping to Britain. In fact, out of 18,772 sailings in 1940, they sank just 127 ships, that is, 0.7 percent, and 1.4 percent in the entire war.

Suddenly, rather than appearing like David against Goliath and backs-to-the-walls amateurs as is so often depicted, Britain emerges once again as a global super-power in command of the largest trading empire the world has ever seen, while Germany, despite impressive victories on land early in the war appears to be woefully under-resourced and flagrantly squandering what supplies it could call upon. What’s more, after the initial glut of conquest booty, the occupied territories swiftly became a drain and burden that had to be manned and which proved a further drain on precious resources. The words “Teutonic” and “efficiency” usually go together; in the Second World War, nothing could have been farther from the truth.

Image: Reuters.

David Axe

Security, Asia

There's one region where mass-takeoffs are an important military procedure: the Korean Peninsula.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The air force maintains three F-16 squadrons and an A-10 squadron in South Korea and two F-15 squadrons in Japan. Additional squadrons, almost certainly including F-35 units, would join them during a crisis. An air campaign targeting North Korea would require 2,000 sorties per day, U.S. military officials told Air Force magazine.

On Nov. 19, 2018, two U.S. Air Force wings in Utah launched thirty-five F-35 stealth fighters in a short span of time.

The air force lauded the display as evidence of America's overwhelming military might. At least one critic dismissed it as a publicity stunt.

In fact, there's one region where mass-takeoffs are an important military procedure: the Korean Peninsula. Ironically, that's the one region where the Trump administration is deliberately limiting the flying branch's authority to organize large-scale warplane-launches.

The November group-takeoff, which the air force calls an "elephant walk," involved F-35As from the 388th and 419th Fighter Wings at Hill Air Force Base. The active-duty 388th and reserve 419th train air force F-35 pilots.

The 388th's 34th Fighter Squadron, whose F-35s have the latest Block 3F software, also has a front-line role. In late 2017, it became the first air force F-35 unit to deploy overseas, to Japan.

At the time of the elephant walk—the first for the F-35—the Utah wings possessed around forty F-35s. The wings are on track to receive a combined seventy-two F-35s by 2019.

The Hill stealth fighters took off one at a time in roughly 30-second intervals. In just a few minutes, the wings launched as many F-35 sorties as they normally do in a full day of routine training.

"Exercising with multiple squadrons of F-35s can demonstrate our ability to defeat potential adversaries wherever they may arise," Maj. Caleb Guthmann, the 34th Fighter Squadron's assistant director of operations, said in a statement.

But Valerie Insinna, a reporter for Defense News, echoed a more cynical sentiment when, on Twitter, she described the elephant walk as "cool" but "very choreographed."

“Call me when they fix all the ALIS problems and then we'll talk,” Insinna added, referring to the F-35's buggy Autonomic Logistics Information System, a computer network for the type's maintainers.

In a March 2018 congressional hearing, Lt. Gen. Jerry Harris, the air force's deputy chief of staff for plans, programs and requirements, said it cost around $50,000 to fly one F-35 for an hour. That's roughly twice what an F-16 costs for an hour in the air.

In fact, elephant walks significantly contribute to the readiness of American and allied squadrons in South Korea and nearby countries.

In the event of war with North Korea, U.S. and allied forces plan to quickly target the roughly 13,000 artillery pieces that Pyongyang has massed along the Korean demilitarized zone. In the early hours of a war, that artillery likely would bombard Seoul, which lies just 25 miles south of the DMZ.

"A serious, credible threat to 25 million [Republic of Korea] citizens and approximately 150,000 U.S. citizens living in the [Greater Seoul Metropolitan Area] is also posed from its long-range artillery," U.S. Army general Vincent Brooks, head of U.S. Forces Korea, told a U.S. Senate committee in March 2018.

The air force maintains three F-16 squadrons and an A-10 squadron in South Korea and two F-15 squadrons in Japan. Additional squadrons, almost certainly including F-35 units, would join them during a crisis. An air campaign targeting North Korea would require 2,000 sorties per day, U.S. military officials told Air Force magazine.

By comparison, the allied air war over Iraq and Kuwait in January 1991 averaged 1,200 strike sorties per day, according to statistics compiled by David Deptula, a former air force general who is now an analyst for the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in Virginia. The U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria averaged just fifteen strikes per day, according to Deptula.

The roughly 100 U.S. F-16s and A-10s in South Korea and Japan—and any F-35s that deployed in time for the first day of fighting—likely would be the first to hit North Korean artillery. And they'd have to launch fast to save lives in Seoul.

There is a reason that the 7th Air Force in South Korea and Japan has organized more elephant walks than most air force commands have done. "The threat here on the peninsula is very real, and countering that threat needs to be in the forefront of our minds," Col. William D. Betts, then-commander of the 51st Fighter Wing in South Korea, said in 2017.

But the Korea elephant walk is an endangered species. The 7th Air Force has conducted most of its mass-takeoffs, which require intensive planning and maintenance efforts, under the auspices of the annual Vigilante Ace exercise.

In 2018 the Trump administration suspended Vigilant Ace as a concession to North Korea, hoping that Pyongyang in turn would suspend its nuclear-weapons program. North Korea has continued to develop its nukes.

The air force organized elephant walks in South Korea in 2016 and 2017 but not in 2018. The suspension of large-scale exercises with South Korea hasn’t created "immediate" concerns about combat-readiness, Pacific Air Forces commander Gen. Charles Brown said in November 2018. But it could cause "difficulties" if it continues.

There's nothing preventing air force squadrons that aren't in South Korea, including Hill's F-35 units, from practicing mass takeoffs. These same squadrons might deploy to the Korean Peninsula during wartime, in which case their elephant walks would amount to more than an expensive public relations exercise.

They'd be preparation for the kind of sudden, overwhelming violence a new Korean war would require.

This first appeared in 2018.

Image: DVIDShub.

Michael Peck

History, Asia

While senior U.S. naval commanders were aware of Taranto and the danger posed by torpedo attack to Pearl Harbor, actual improvements to Hawaii's defenses were buried under memos and reports that meandered through the naval bureaucracy.

Here's What You Need To Know: The prelude to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor occurred two years earlier in the small Italian port of Taranto. 

“This was Lt. Takeshi Naito, assistant air attache at the Japanese embassy in Berlin. The implications of those sunken battleships were not lost to him.”

It was the hour before midnight when the battleships slept.

Snug in their harbor, cocooned behind layers of anti-aircraft guns and searchlights, the Italian fleet lay peacefully unaware of the fate droning towards them.

Through the dark skies came waves of aircraft lumbering under the weight of the torpedoes they carried. The date was November 11, 1940, the place was the southern Italian port of Taranto, and the battle that ensued that night was the prelude to the Japanese raid at Pearl Harbor.

In the fall of 1940, Britain was in trouble. France had fallen, Nazi Germany ruled Western Europe, and the British Empire stood alone. To make matters worse, Mussolini's Italy had entered the war. Though weaker than Germany or Japan, Italy had a priceless advantage: it was situated in the middle of the Mediterranean, athwart the sea routes to the Suez Canal and the vital island of Malta, which the British needed to supply as a thorn in Axis supply routes to North Africa. To avoid Italian naval and air forces, British convoys would have to forgo the direct route into the Mediterranean through the Straits of Gibraltar, and sail all the way around Africa to come up through the Suez Canal.

The Royal Navy rightfully reckoned itself superior to the Italian Regia Marina. Fortunately, so did the Italians. Though the Italian fleet was smaller, the Royal Navy was badly overstretched guarding against a possible German amphibious invasion, watching for sorties by German surface raiders against Atlantic convoy routes, and battling the German U-boat menace. The Italian Navy was often accused of timidity, but they had some reason not to risk their precious and irreplaceable ships in a big Jutland-like naval battle. Like the German High Seas Fleet in World War I, they could stay in port, only sallying forth -- covered by land-based aircraft in Italy -- to pounce on an exposed British force.

Nonetheless, if the Italian fleet wouldn't come out to fight, then the British -- in time-honored Royal Navy tradition -- would take the fight to them. After December 7, 1941, the idea of aircraft carriers striking a fleet in harbor seemed obvious. But just a year before, aircraft carriers were still a new and relatively untried weapon. Still, the British were studying a torpedo strike on Taranto by carrier-based aircraft as early as 1938.

Compared to the six aircraft carriers and 400 aircraft with which Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the forces that Britain could muster for Operation Judgement seemed but a child's version of a carrier task force. The Royal Navy committed just the carrier Illustrious, two heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and five destroyers. The Italian fleet at Taranto comprised six battleships, nine heavy cruisers, seven light cruisers and 13 destroyers. Had they intercepted the British flotilla, the outcome would have been a slaughter.

The Fleet Air Arm -- the flying fist of the Royal Navy -- also seemed a joke. The Illustrious would launch just 21 aircraft, and these were Fairey Swordfish-- nicknamed "the Stringbag." Obsolete two-man biplanes that looked like First World War leftovers, they plodded through the air at about 140 miles per hour. Yet they could fly low and slow to accurately drop torpedoes, as they did to cripple the German battleship Bismarck.

The British struck by night, when the vulnerable Swordfish could avoid Italian fighters that would easily swatted them from the skies. The Illustrious launched two waves of 12 and nine aircraft apiece, with half carrying a single torpedo each, and the remainder armed with flares to illuminate the ships and armor-piercing bombs to strike them. Not only did the British achieve surprise, they also had a lucky break: the Italians had laid some nets in the harbor to catch torpedoes, but the torpedoes weren't long enough to reach the seafloor, allowing the torpedoes to slip under them.

As one of the British aviators later recalled:

 “We turn until the right hand battleship is between the bars of the torpedo sight, dropping down as we do so. The water is close beneath our wheels, so close I am wondering which is to happen first — the torpedo going or our hitting the sea — then we level out, and almost without thought the button is pressed and a jerk tells me the ‘fish’ is gone.”

The attack began just before 11 p.m., and concluded around midnight. The British lost two aircraft, with two crewmen killed and two captured. But those mere 21 aircraft and a handful of torpedoes (the bombs did no damage) sank or damaged three battleships. Three battleships were torpedoed. The Conte di Cavour partly sank to the harbor bottom and never returned to service. The Caio Duilio was saved only by running her aground, as was the Littorio, whose hull had been punctured by three torpedoes.

For the price of just two aircraft, the Italian battleship force had been devastated. Just as important, the Italian Navy had taken a blow to its already fragile morale and aggressiveness. The Italians got their revenge later, when frogmen riding midget submarines planted limpet mines that badly damaged two British battleships docked at the Egyptian port of Alexandria on December 19, 1941. Nonetheless, in the autumn of 1940, when Britain seemed down and out, the Royal Navy demonstrated who ruled the waves.

However, the real significance of Taranto was to come later. “Several days after the Taranto raid, almost unnoticed in the confusion and destruction, a slight figure in an unfamiliar uniform studied Taranto harbor intently, inquiring about depths and distances, making careful notes,” according to the book The Attack on Taranto: Blueprint for Pearl Harbor.

“This was Lt. Takeshi Naito, assistant air attache at the Japanese embassy in Berlin. The implications of those sunken battleships were not lost to him.”

One problem with assessing Taranto is that there is a tendency to blame Italian inefficiency for the disaster, even though no one else had ever experienced such an attack before. Nonetheless, if Taranto supposedly reflected some peculiarly Italian failing, what was the excuse of the Americans?  Why didn't the U.S. learn from the Taranto raid that aircraft carriers could destroy a fleet in a port, namely Pearl Harbor?

Indeed, a U.S. Navy observer, Lieutenant Commander John Opie, was aboard the Illustrious to witness the Taranto strike, and he lost no time in reporting back what he had learned, including that the Royal Navy now favored aircraft-delivered torpedoes over bombs. Yet while senior U.S. naval commanders were aware of Taranto and the danger posed by torpedo attack to Pearl Harbor, actual improvements to Hawaii's defenses were buried under memos and reports that meandered through the naval bureaucracy. Opie's request to visit Pearl Harbor and pass on his Taranto experience was ignored. In fact, the Navy opted not to install anti-torpedo nets at Pearl Harbor on the ground that the waters there were too constricted to allow, and too shallow for torpedoes to run without hitting the bottom.

The Imperial Japanese Navy, and eight U.S. battleships sunk or damaged, would soon prove those decisions wrong.

Michael Peck is a frequent contributor to the National Interest. This article first appeared several years ago.

Image: Reuters.

The UN human rights chief called on Friday for the de-escalation of violence and military clashes across parts of Ethiopia, urging all those involved to “engage in a genuine, inclusive and credible dialogue to solve any differences through peaceful means”.

Ahead of elections in Myanmar on 8 November, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has stated his hope that the vote would help advance “inclusive sustainable development” across the country. 

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues evolving, the world must “take all opportunities to learn and improve the response as we go”, the UN health agency chief said on Friday.     

Eight new animated characters on a mission to protect the planet, have been pressed into service by the UN to empower children worldwide and boost the drive towards sustainability by 2030. 

The trail of devastation left by Typhoon Goni in the Philippines, runs straight through some heavily populated areas – including places where COVID-19 cases are high, and where returning migrants are concentrated - UN agencies reported on Friday.  

People in four food insecurity “hotspots” inside Burkina Faso, northeastern Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen, need help urgently to avoid sliding into famine, UN humanitarians said on Friday.