Diplomacy & Crisis News

When talking about the dos and don’ts of taking on the Special Operations Assessment and Selection courses that the military has to offer, there are a ton of opinions out there, and I feel, a lot of misconceptions as well. This is particularly true when it comes to being the “Grey Man,’ which is a common name people use to describe an operator who can blend seamlessly into their environment.

I’ve been asked about this countless times in emails. One of the more common questions I receive from prospective candidates is always about trying to blend in at Assessment and Selection – being the Grey Man. I spoke with someone just in the past few weeks about this very subject. 

There is no shortage of people who will tell you being the Grey Man is important, some of them will be Special Operations Selection cadre members. So, respectively, I’ll disagree. Overall, unless you’re an intelligence professional trained at blending in and being invisible, I will stick with my original advice and say in the majority of instances, it isn’t a smart thing to do. I will explain why below, but first, my caveat:

Yes, there are times when you absolutely, positively need to be the guy people standing in front of you are going to look right past while giving their attention to someone else.

The first one is if you are in SERE School (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape). The last thing you want at SERE is to stand out in any way. Standing out to the guard force in the POW camp usually means you’re going to withstand some “corrective measures.”

Being the biggest member of the prisoners or the most senior guy in the SERE Class is not a good way to be the grey man. The SRO (Senior Ranking Officer) is always singled out for real or perceived rules infractions –you get the idea. Once you get through the Selection process and into the training pipeline, you’ll get to experience SERE up close and personal and all of your questions will be answered.

The second example of when it’s a good time to be a “grey man” is when you are doing some kind of undercover intelligence work. Then you want to blend into your surroundings. If someone saw you walking down a busy street in an urban environment, you don’t want to raise an alarm among surveillance operatives watching for that type of operation. 

This has a lot to do with demeanor, dress, mannerisms, and movement. Special Forces have a training program that teaches all of this and much more. But the course and the acronym associated with it will come after your training is complete and you move on to the operational units and get some experience under your belt.

So, we’re back to the 800-lb gorilla in the room, and the question is why not be the grey man during Selection? You will see blog posts from people, message boards, and social media posts all telling candidates to the grey man or something remotely similar. I see it all the time. So why is it actually a bad idea? 

As a former Selection cadre member, I’ll let you in on my perceptions: Trying to be the Grey Man just may put a huge bulls-eye on your forehead.  

As I mentioned above, most people aren’t trained properly to be a grey man. And if it appears to the Selection cadre that you are trying to blend into the background, that isn’t a good thing. To the cadre members, it appears like you are trying to “ghost” through events (as we called it during my time there). And if a guy is going to ghost during Selection, then he certainly will on a team.

Back in the day, when I had the night duty during a course, one of the other cadre members and I would wander around the candidates’ barracks at night with no berets, just being the grey men of the cadre. We wanted to hear the chatter of the class and see how well or not so well they were holding up. 

These conversations would sometimes be quite telling, especially during team week. More than once, we heard candidates who passed their patrol (the criteria have since changed, thank you LTC Brian Decker) talk about coasting through the last few events to make it through the long-range movement. Bad idea.

Then there were the others, guys who passed their patrol and were volunteering to help out the next day’s guys who would be in the barrel and under the microscope. More than once we heard conversations similar to this:

“Hey bud, whatever happens, tomorrow, put me on lashings, I’m really good at that, and that’s one thing you won’t have to worry about.”

That’s the guy I want on my team. He is not done yet, he is looking out for his teammates. He is going to get high marks on his peer reports. 

Special Operations isn’t looking for cookie-cutter robots. We understand that everyone is different and there are certainly guys who are characters. You’ll undoubtedly have some in your class. 

That is why my advice is always to be yourself. When I was there, our cadre was made up of the most eclectic group of people that I’ve ever worked with. There was never a dull moment and every NCO, although vastly different, respected who each one of us was. And we all got along because we had the humility to understand that every person brings some unique element to the table.

If you are a rah-rah type of guy, then be that guy. If you are a quiet, lead-by-example type of guy, that’s fine…be him. Don’t try to be something you are not. Sometimes the characters of the class would lift everyone around him. All of the cadre members had those types of guys in their own classes, and they know how valuable they are to keeping up class morale, and for team-building. 

My own class in the SFQC (Special Forces Qualification Course) had a tremendous NCO who we called CPT Camouflage during Land Navigation. He would wear some outlandish get-up: PT Shorts hiked way too high, jungle boots, with a poncho pulled over his head like a cape with eye holes cut out. He’d run through the woodline offering the craziest encouragement to “lost Land Nav students everywhere.” As dumb as it sounds, our class loved it. And after a day or so, the cadre would ask if Captain Camouflage had any words for the class after we’d return from the day’s or night’s navigation practice.

A couple of years ago, I had a podcast interview with Mike Sarraille, a Navy SEAL officer who has written a book on Special Operations leadership and how civilian companies should incorporate the lessons of Selection and Assessment into their hiring process. 

Mike was a successful Marine NCO with Recon before becoming an officer. During BUDs, the other members of his class naturally gravitated toward Mike because of his experience, military bearing, and demeanor. That is who he is. If he tried to blend into the background, the SEAL instructors would have seen right through that and he would have never passed or gone on to become the officer he was.

Of course, “be yourself” has to be tempered with a bit of common sense. Don’t be overly argumentative with the cadre, even if you know that you may be right when receiving a critique. That will have the exact opposite effect.  Don’t be a “Spotlight Ranger” either – those types never last long as they’ll get peered out quickly (failed by peer reviews). And please spare your war stories about leading an attack with the 18th Mess Kit Repair Unit in Iraq or someplace else. Nobody cares about that or is interested. 

Remember you are always being evaluated and assessed. This is a time for the cadre to see if you have the core attributes that make Special Operations troops the best in the world. Selection is the time when you begin building the reputation that will follow throughout your Special Operations career. And as big as it has grown, it is still a small community. Selection is the first step in the process of showing you belong in the Regiment. 

Trying to do so by blending in the background isn’t the way to do it. Be yourself, try to excel at everything, and remember, some of your fellow candidates may be better at some things than you are. That won’t change once you get to an operational unit. 

Do the best you can. (Yes you’ll hear that again.)

Steve Balestrieri is a SOFREP Senior Editor. He has served as a Special Forces NCO and Warrant Officer before injuries forced his early separation.

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

Image: Shutterstock.

Since the very inception of manned flight, the United States has invested heavily in fielding game-changing military aircraft that leverage cutting-edge technology to provide a tactical or strategic edge over the nation’s peers or competitors. This drive to dominate the skies over the battlefield led the U.S. to field the world’s first military aircraft in 1908, the first aircraft to break the sound barrier in 1947, the world’s first supersonic bomber in 1960, the world’s first manned hypersonic aircraft in 1967, and of course, the world’s first stealth aircraft in 1983… just to name a few prominent blips on the U.S. military aviation timeline.

But for every F-117 that makes it into service, there’s a long list of aviation programs that never quite made it. Sometimes, these efforts leaned too hard into the cutting edge, resulting in capable aircraft that were just too expensive to field in real numbers. Other times, these efforts were built around misconceptions about aviation that, in the days before computer simulations, could only be proven wrong through trial and error.

The existential threats that fueled military procurements throughout the Cold War led to a renaissance in aviation technology. Programs that would never see funding under normal circumstances were suddenly seen as worthwhile ventures in the name of securing any kind of advantage in the nuclear hellfire of a Third World War that, at the time, seemed inevitable to many in power.

Yet, even the massive military expenditures of the Cold War could only fund so many technological revolutions. And some platforms or programs that could have very changed the way mankind perceived airpower were just too expensive, too far-fetched, or too ahead of their time to secure their share of the Pentagon’s coffers, dooming these prototypes, concepts, and X-planes to the secretive confines of America’s sprawling library of military what-ifs.

Here are some of these game-changing programs that never got their chance to actually change the game.

BOEING X-20 DYNA-SOAR: A HYPERSONIC SPACE BOMBER THAT PREDATES SPUTNIK

Born out of Germany’s World War II efforts to create a bomber that could attack New York and continue on to the Pacific, Boeing’s X-20 Dyna-Soar was to be a single-seat craft boosted into the sky atop American rockets. That’s right, in the 1950s, the Dyna-Soar would have been the world’s first hypersonic bomber. In fact, the Dyna-Soar was very similar in both concept and intended execution to China’s fractional orbital bombardment system that drew headlines the world over after a successful test in 2021, despite the X-20 program pre-dating the launch of Sputnik 1. So… it’s safe to say this effort was a fair bit ahead of its time.

After launch, the X-20 would soar along the blurred line between Earth’s atmosphere and the vacuum of space, bouncing along the heavens by using a lifting-body design and hypersonic speeds to skip along the upper reaches of the atmosphere. It would circle the globe, releasing its payload over Soviet targets miles below, before making its way back to American territory to come in for a gliding landing, not entirely unlike the Space Shuttle decades later. The X-20 was a 1950s science fiction fever dream born of the nuclear age and the earliest days of the Cold War… and according to experts at the time, it very likely would have worked.

By 1960, the spaceplane’s overall design was largely settled, leveraging a delta-wing shape and small winglets for control in place of a traditional tail. In order to manage the incredible heat of re-entry, the X-20 would use super alloys like the heat-resistant René 41 in its frame, with molybdenum, graphite, and zirconia rods all used for heat shielding on the underside of the craft.

The program was so promising, in fact, that in that same year, the Pentagon tapped a group of elite service personnel to crew this sub-orbital hypersonic bomber. Among them was a 30-year-old Navy test pilot and aeronautical engineer named Neil Armstrong, who would go on to leave the program two years later for even greater heights as a part of NASA’s Gemini and Apollo missions.

Armstrong’s departure was a sign of things to come. After the launch of Sputnik in 1957, the United States saw a pressing need to focus its resources toward orbit itself, canceling this sub-orbital bomber effort to reallocate funds toward new space ventures within America’s fledgling space-fairing organization, NASA.

BOEING QUIET BIRD: A STEALTH JET THAT PREDATES THE F-117 BY DECADES

On December 1, 1977, Lockheed’s Have Blue technology demonstrator took flight for the first time, making a significant leap toward fielding the aircraft’s successor, the F-117 Nighthawk, just a few years later. But more than a decade and a half before Have Blue saw a runway, Boeing’s largely-forgotten Model 853-21 Quiet Bird was already making significant strides toward being the world’s first operational stealth aircraft.

While various aircraft have laid dubious claims about being the first to field “stealth” because of design or material happenstance (we’re looking at you, Ho 229), the Quiet Bird effort actually was aimed at developing a low-observable aircraft to serve as an observation plane for the U.S. Army.

Throughout 1962 and ’63, Boeing experimented with stealth aircraft design concepts for the Quiet Bird, incorporating different shapes and construction materials in an effort to reduce the jet’s radar cross section (RCS) long before Denys Overholser at Lockheed’s Skunk Works would develop the means to accurately calculate a design’s radar return without actually building it to stick in front of a radar array. In effect, the Quiet Bird’s stealth development was a very expensive game of guess-and-check.

Although Boeing’s tests did indeed prove promising, the U.S. Army didn’t fully appreciate the value a stealth aircraft could bring to the fight and the program was ultimately shelved. If the Army had been more forward-thinking, the Quiet Bird may have offered a low-observable battlefield reconnaissance platform by the late 1960s, kickstarting the stealth revolution more than a decade earlier and almost certainly changing the way airpower has matured in the decades since.

However, Boeing has credited lessons learned in the development of the Quiet Bird for some of the success they would later find with the AGM-86 Air Launched Cruise Missile.

CONVAIR KINGFISH: THE HIGH-FLYING ALTERNATIVE TO THE BLACKBIRD

When Lockheed’s U-2 spy plane entered service, Soviet air defenses were already capable of tracking the high-flying platform. American officials knew it was only a matter of time before tracking the Dragon Lady turned into targeting it, so, the CIA tasked both Convair and Lockheed with developing a new reconnaissance platform that could fly at higher altitudes, at significantly faster speeds, and have a reduced radar cross-section to minimize the chances of being shot down.

Lockheed would ultimately meet these requirements in their A-12 and subsequent SR-71, but Convair’s Kingfish was its primary competitor until then. Today, Convair’s Kingfish offers us an interesting glimpse into what could have been, if not for the unrelenting genius and budget-mindedness of Lockheed’s Kelly Johnson.

The Kingfish developed out of what remained of Convair’s first attempt, known as the First Invisible Super Hustler or FISH. The FISH would have been carried aloft by a modified B-58 Hustler before being launched and powered by onboard ramjets to speeds in excess of Mach 4. But with concerns about the complexity and cost of the FISH concept, Convair was instructed to go back to the drawing board to come up with a new design built around the Pratt & Whitney J58 “turboramjet” — the same propulsion system Lockheed was working with in their A-12 design proposal.

The resulting Kingfish design was rather forward-leaning for its time, tucking its two J58s deep inside the aircraft’s angular fuselage to limit the radar return they could produce. Its delta-wing design bore a striking resemblance to the stealth aircraft that would follow decades later, but it was that emphasis on stealth that may have ultimately done the Kingfish in.

Pentagon officials, spurred in no small part by criticisms from Lockheed’s legendary Kelly Johnson, feared the Kingfish incorporated too many untested technologies to be built, tested, and operated within the program’s assigned budget. Johnson was outspoken in his views that the Kingfish design compromised performance in favor of stealth — something that was seen as a mistake at the time, despite becoming commonplace in the stealth platforms of today.

Ultimately, Lockheed’s proposal won the day, and the Kingfish was relegated to the what-if file.

MCDONNELL DOUGLAS/GENERAL DYNAMICS A-12 AVENGER II: A CARRIER-CAPABLE STEALTH FIGHTER IN THE 1980S

On 13 January 1988, a joint team from McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics was awarded a development contract for what was to become the A-12 Avenger II, not to be confused with Lockheed’s proposed A-12 of the 1960s, which led to the SR-71. Once completed, this Navy A-12 would have been a flying wing design reminiscent of Northrop Grumman’s B-2 Spirit or forthcoming B-21 Raider, though much smaller and with harder angles.

Although the A-12 Avenger II utilized a flying wing design, its overall shape differed from the triangular B-2 Spirit under development at the time for the Air Force. The sharp triangular shape of the A-12 eventually earned it the nickname, “the flying Dorito.“

The A-prefix denoted an attack-emphasis in the A-12 design, but interestingly enough, the aircraft would have actually met the design requirements to be considered a fighter — including an onboard radar array and the ability to carry a variety of air-to-air missiles. As a result, this A-12, carrying an attack prefix, could have been the world’s first true stealth fighter, as the F-117 Nighthawk, secretly already in service, had neither onboard radar nor the ability to engage airborne targets outside the realm of hypotheticals. That’s right, the Air Force’s F-117 wasn’t really a stealth fighter, but the Navy’s A-12 actually would have been.

For some time, it seemed as though the A-12 Avenger II program was going off without a hitch, but then, seemingly without warning, it was canceled by Defense Secretary (and future Vice President of the United States) Dick Cheney in January of 1991. It was only later revealed that the A-12 Avenger II was significantly overweight, over budget, and behind schedule.

Despite a number of other efforts over the years, it would ultimately take 26 more years for the U.S. Navy to get a stealth fighter onto the decks of its carriers in the F-35C.

You can read our full feature on the A-12 Avenger II’s development here.

BOEING 747 CMCA: THE MOST COST-EFFECTIVE BOMBER CONCEPT IN U.S. HISTORY

During the 1960s, the United States began fielding intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in land-based silos, as well as submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) carried by stealthy sub-platforms strategically positioned around the globe. With America’s defense posture primarily oriented toward deterring Soviet aggression, these new methods of delivering nuclear payloads prompted many within the public and politics, to question the need for expensive new bomber development programs. By 1977, this pervasive line of thought took root in the Carter administration, leading to the cancelation of the supersonic heavy payload B-1 bomber effort.

Boeing, recognizing that this cancelation could leave a gap in America’s strategic capabilities, set to work developing an extremely cost-effective bomber-of-sorts to meet this need at a much lower price point. The firm ultimately settled on plans to load a 747 with as many as 72 AGM-86 air-launched cruise missiles carried in nine internal rotary launchers, allowing this commercial people-carrier to serve instead as a long-range arsenal ship capable of wiping out targets from hundreds of miles away. This design, dubbed the 747 Cruise Missile Carrier Aircraft (CMCA), may sound crazy… but it was actually extremely practical in a number of important ways.

With an unrefueled range of 6,000 miles, the ability carry to 77,000 pounds of ordnance, and pre-existing global infrastructure already established for the 747 line, this CMCA concept would have produced the most cost-effective bombing platform in modern history. Today, the B-52 Stratofortress costs approximately $88,000 per flight hour, the B-2 Spirit rings in around $150,000 per hour, and the B-1B Lancer burns through around $173,000 per hour.

The 747 on the other hand, costs just $30,950 per hour to fly, all while carrying a larger payload than any of America’s in-service bombers.

Ultimately, the 747 CMCA never made it off the drawing board, however, with the Reagan administration pulling the B-1 program out of mothballs and the B-2 entering service shortly thereafter – but we may see the U.S. revisit a similar concept in the future. After all, there are already a number of commercial airliners filling other military roles today, from the Boeing 707-based KC-135 to the 747-based E-4B National Airborne Operations Center.

CONVAIR NB-36: DELIVERING NUCLEAR PAYLOADS WITH NUCLEAR-POWERED BOMBERS

The NB-36 Crusader was an experimental nuclear-powered bomber that actually flew with a nuclear reactor onboard during testing.

The NB-36 was based directly on the absolutely massive Convair B-36 Peacemaker. With a 230-foot wingspan, the B-36 still holds the title for the longest wingspan of any combat-coded aircraft. Its wingspan was so big, in fact, that you could lay a B-52 Stratofortress’ wings over the B-36’s and still have room to throw a Super Hornet on the end for good measure. Thanks to its massive size, the B-36 could fly with an 86,000-pound payload onboard — and in the 1950s, the Air Force experimented with using some of that payload capability to equip the bomber with its own nuclear powerplant — allowing it to fly almost indefinitely like a nuclear-submarine in the sky.

The NB-36 that resulted carried a one-megawatt, air-cooled nuclear reactor that hung on a hook inside its cavernous weapons bay. This reactor then had to be lowered through the bomb bay doors into shielded underground facilities for storage between flights. In theory, a nuclear-powered bomber could stay airborne for weeks at a time (if not longer) and could reach any target on the planet without the need to land or refuel.

At the time, the United States maintained a state of constant readiness in its nuclear-armed bomber fleets to serve as a potent deterrent against Soviet aggression. This policy would later mature in Operation Chrome Dome — an effort that resulted in the U.S. having airborne B-52s armed with nuclear weapons 24 hours a day for eight straight years. As you might imagine, this policy was rather expensive… but it’d get a whole lot cheaper if Uncle Sam didn’t have to pay for fuel.

Rather than using jet fuel, the NB-35’s nuclear reactor would power four GE J47 nuclear-converted piston engines, each generating 3,800 hp, which were then augmented by four additional turbojet engines that produced 5,200 lbs of thrust. The HTRE-3 was a direct-cycle system that pulled air into the compressor of the turbojet and through a plenum and intake that led to the core of the reactor where the air served as coolant. From there, the super-heated air would travel into another plenum that led to the turbine section of the engine before exiting as exhaust out the back.

But despite the effort’s promise, the risks associated with flying a nuclear reactor over American or allied airspace ultimately led it its cancellation in 1961.

LOCKHEED X-24C: A SCRAMJET-POWERED HYPERSONIC AIRCRAFT IN THE 1960S

The X-24C was part of an effort to field a scramjet-powered hypersonic research aircraft beginning in the late 1960s. Taking on the role of lead contractor, Lockheed worked side by side with the Air Force’s National Hypersonic Flight Research Facility and NASA to develop and field two hypersonic test aircraft, with each vehicle slated for 100 flights.

The decision was made to equip this new “L-301” program’s aircraft, unofficially dubbed the X-24C, with a new LR-105 rocket engine found at the time in the Atlas series of rockets. The LR-105 would launch and accelerate the X-24C to hypersonic speeds, not unlike the rocket engine that powered the X-15. From there, a second hydrogen-fueled, air-breathing scramjet (supersonic-combustion ramjet) engine mounted on its belly would fire up and take over.

The scramjet engine would propel the X-24C to sustained speeds in excess of Mach 6, reaching intended peak speeds that were higher than Mach 8, or more than 6,130 miles per hour. The aircraft itself resembled the lifting body design leveraged by the Martin Marietta X-24A and B programs that tested unpowered reentry flight characteristics.

In a real way, the L-301 program and its X-24C could be seen as the precursor to ongoing legends about Lockheed Martin’s combined cycle turbofan/scramjet SR-72, the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Mayhem program, and even Hermeus’ combined cycle turbofan/ramjet hypersonic aircraft efforts. Had the X-24C program continued, it would have given the U.S. a scramjet-powered hypersonic aircraft in the 1960s. Instead, the U.S. now appears to still be years away from fielding a reusable, airbreathing aircraft for testing, let alone service.

But by the end of 1977, however, the L-301 program and its notional X-24C were canceled in favor of a different Lockheed developmental effort that would change the value proposition associated with sheer speed. That effort, of course, was Have Blue, which later matured into the F-117 Nighthawk.

Alex Hollings is a writer, dad, and Marine veteran.

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

Image: VanderWolf Images / Shutterstock.com

My recommendations to the next Chief of Naval Operations are based on the difference between the kind of navy we have today and the kind of navy our nation needs. Today we have a forward-based navy, not an expeditionary navy. This distinction is important for remaining competitive against modern threats and guiding force design.

Due to the unique geographical position of the U.S., the Navy has the luxury of defending the nation’s interests “over there.” Since World War II, it developed and maintained a navy that was able to project power overseas; to reconstitute its combat power while still at sea or at least far from national shores; and continuously maintain proximity to competitors. This expeditionary character minimized the dependence of the fleet on shore-based and homeland-based infrastructure to sustain operations, allowing the fleet to be more logistically self-sufficient at sea.

However, late in the Cold War, the U.S. Navy started to diminish its expeditionary capability, and became more reliant on allied and friendly bases. A key development was subtle but consequential – the vertical launch system (VLS) for the surface fleet’s primary anti-air, anti-submarine, and land-attack weapons. While a very capable system, reloading VLS at sea was problematic and soon abandoned. While an aircraft carrier can be rearmed at sea, surface warships cannot, which constrains the ability of carrier strike groups to sustain forward operations without taking frequent trips back to fixed infrastructure. The Navy is revisiting the issue of reloading VLS at sea, and those efforts should be reinforced.

The next step the Navy took away from an expeditionary capability was in the 1990s, when it decommissioned most of the submarine tenders (AS), all of the repair ships (AR), and destroyer tenders (AD), and moved away from Sailor-manned Shore Intermediate Maintenance Centers (SIMA). Not only did this eliminate the ability to conduct intermediate maintenance “over there,” but it destroyed the progression of apprentice-to-journeyman-to-master technician that made the U.S. Navy Sailor one of the premier maintenance resources in the military world. Combat search and rescue, salvage, and battle damage repair are other areas in which the U.S. Navy no longer has sufficient capability for sustaining expeditionary operations.

The Navy needs a new strategy that highlights the kind of fleet the nation needs. This strategy would argue the Navy needs to be able to use the sea when needed, to deny it to the nation’s enemies, and to project force ashore when required. To accomplish this, the Navy would maintain a tempo of operations using the necessary multi-domain forces, wherever in the world they are required. The Navy’s operations and force posture should always be based on the logic that naval operations will principally be conducted “over there,” far from the nation’s borders, and with a minimum of dependence on shore-based infrastructure.

The Navy also needs a different overall force structure to return to a more balanced and expeditionary force. The modern fleet is top-heavy in large surface combatants, light in smaller combatants, and insufficient in auxiliary ships. In summary, a new force structure calls for: 11 Aircraft carriers, 10 LHA/LHDs, 21 Amphibious warfare ships, 71 Large surface combatants, 78 Small surface combatants, 66 Attack submarines, 12 Ballistic missile submarines, 34 Combat logistics forces, and 48 Support vessels.

This overall battle force of 351 ships is a more balanced and affordable force structure than what is currently under consideration.

The top thing the next CNO can do to affordably improve the U.S. Navy as a fighting force is to reduce operational tempo. Returning to predictable six-month-long deployments would improve force material readiness, morale, and retention. The tempo necessarily increased after 9/11 and the war in Iraq, but those efforts are largely over and the Navy needs to return to a rational and sustainable level of effort. The Navy will be able to make numerous and far-reaching changes to its warfighting readiness and expeditionary capability if it can manage to create a stable foundation of predictable deployment cycles.

Anthony Cowden is the Managing Director of Stari Consulting Services, co-author of Fighting the Fleet: Operational Art and Modern Fleet Combat,  author of The Naval Institute Almanac of the U.S. Navy,  and was a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy for 37 years.

This article was first published by CIMSEC.

Image: Shutterstock.

For decades, rumors have swirled about the United States secretly operating highly classified black, triangular craft known as the TR-3A and TR-3B, with some going as far as to claim that these platforms were designed using reverse-engineered alien technology. In fact, in the early ’90s, it was even reported that these covert craft flew alongside the F-117 during combat operations over Iraq in Desert Storm.

In our last installment of this series, we explored a meta-investigation conducted by the National Institute of Discovery Science regarding black triangle UFOs seen over the United States. In this installment, we’ll explore the possibility that the United States could have secretly funded the development of such a platform.

COULD THESE BLACK TRIANGLES HAVE BEEN SECRET AMERICAN AIRCRAFT?

The United States has placed a heavy emphasis on aviation technology since the very inception of manned flight, with the U.S. Army placing an order for the world’s first military aircraft from the Wright Brothers in 1908. Today, America’s warfare doctrine leans heavily on the nation’s ability to take and keep control of the airspace over any battlefield the world over. Of course, maintaining that capability in the face of increasingly capable international competitors has always required both significant investment and equally significant secrecy.

You can find a laundry list of secret aircraft programs that, once disclosed, still seemed awfully alien. Not only were highly classified stealth aircraft like the F-117 flying for years before the government acknowledged it existed, but even more exotic secret aircraft are now known to have been prowling the skies over the Southwestern United States for years.

Boeing’s YF-118 Bird of Prey, as just one example, started its design process in 1992 within the secretive confines of the U.S. military’s Groom Lake facility (known to most as Area 51) and conducted a total of 40 classified test flights over Nevada between 1996 and 1999.

The very alien-looking Bird of Prey was only disclosed to the public by Boeing in 2002 because the company financed the entire $67 million program without a penny of taxpayer funding. It’s been widely reported that other more classified government-funded technology demonstrators will never see similar disclosure, with some even reportedly being buried in the sands of Area 51 to be lost to time.

The Bird of Prey was actively flying while plane spotters and UFO junkies were collecting reports of other alleged secret aircraft like the TR-3B and the hypersonic reconnaissance platform many called Aurora. Sandboxx News has covered Aurora in depth before. While we’re all but certain that name was actually tied to the B-2 Spirit program, there is a fair amount of evidence to suggest that something similar to what people were reporting as the Aurora may have really been in testing, housed in the same secretive hangars as Boeing’s Bird of Prey and other secret platforms already lost to time.

Although defense spending did see consistent reductions following the fall of the Soviet Union, it’s worth noting that, until the late 1990s, the United States was still allocating a larger percentage of the nation’s GDP to defense than it does today. In fact, when adjusted for inflation, America’s 1992 defense budget of $325.03 billion equates to more than $718 billion today – meaning Uncle Sam certainly had the money to fund a variety of classified programs. Further, in 1991 it was reported that the U.S. Air Force had devoted more than $60.3 billion to classified research, development, and procurement over the five preceding years – that’s the equivalent of nearly $137 billion today, or enough to purchase more than 1,500 F-35As in today’s market.

REPORTS OF AMERICA’S TR-3A BLACK TRIANGLE SERVING IN DESERT STORM

In 1991, America’s Black Triangle was seemingly revealed to the world in a series of articles published by Aviation Week and Popular Mechanics. According to Aviation Week, the stealthy aircraft was designed by Northrop – the same firm responsible for the black, triangular B-2 Spirit – in 1976 alongside Lockheed’s Have Blue efforts that would ultimately produce the F-117. Northrop called its stealthy triangular aircraft the Tactical High Altitude Penetrator (THAP).

According to Aviation Week, the Air Force ultimately awarded Northrop a fixed-price research and development and demonstration/validation contract near the end of 1978 to build a prototype high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft based on their THAP design. That prototype, Aviation Week claimed, made its first test flight out of Area 51 in 1981, and a production contract was subsequently awarded in 1982.

In a follow-up article, Aviation Week went on to claim that Northrop’s TR-3A was about 42 feet long, 14 feet high, and had a wingspan of 60-65 feet, which describes a much smaller aircraft than popular reports made the “TR-3B” to be. Yet, this would seem to be in keeping with a sighting that is often attributed to Aurora over the North Sea in 1989, reported by a trained airfield observer named Chris Gibson.

According to Aviation Week’s unnamed sources, these aircraft “may have” been deployed to Alaska, Britain, Panama, and Okinawa, as well as flying in concert with the F-117 Nighthawk during combat operations in Iraq to provide laser-designation of targets over Baghdad.

That claim, while not officially substantiated, might explain why the documents given to Iraqi MiG pilots to identify the F-117 in the air also showed the silhouette of the B-2. Confusion over just what was being seen in the skies over Iraq may have prompted them to include the only other black triangle aircraft America was known to fly. However, the B-2 was not in service then, which would raise the question of what they actually saw. Though, admittedly, this line of reasoning may be a bit of a stretch.

Popular Mechanics discussed the Northrop TR-3A alongside other undisclosed but reportedly sighted aircraft in their coverage, including another boomerang-shaped platform said to be completely silent and boasting a massive wingspan that stretched between 600 and 800 feet – or three to four times the size of the B-52 Stratofortress.

Like Aviation Week, Popular Mechanics also reported on the TR-3A being significantly quieter than other aircraft, but not silent, as is often reported about the TR-3B.

BUT EVIDENCE OF TR-3A’S EXISTENCE ISN’T QUITE AS STRONG AS IT SEEMS

Those articles in Aviation Week that so authoritatively relayed the story of the TR-3A’s development? Well, they were both written by or with the support of William Scott – a journalist who is now known for sometimes getting a little too excited about the unusual topics he covered, resulting in some serious, if likely unintentional, stretching of the truth.

In 1990, for instance, he reported that the United States had a secret hypersonic bomber that could launch nuclear weapons from vertical launch tubes. That aircraft, of course, never manifested either. The TR-3 designation, many now believe, was the result of Scott simply mishearing stories about Tier 3, which was a program that followed Tier 2 (an effort that resulted in the Global Hawk drone). Tier 3 was supposed to be an unmanned SR-71 successor that was also known as “Quartz,” but that ultimately didn’t make it beyond the design stage. Elements of the Tier 3 program, known as Tier 3 Minus, did ultimately result in Lockheed and Boeing building the Darkstar in 1996 – no, not the hypersonic one Maverick flew, but rather a much slower drone meant for ISR duties.

In fact, when you save this image of the Darkstar from Wikimedia Commons, the file name includes both Darkstar and “Tier 3.”

And when you read the Popular Mechanics coverage that was published in 1991, you’ll find that it pulls primarily from Scott’s reporting in Aviation Week.

Many, including me, were struck by the details in the Aviation Week story because it’s a well-respected outlet with a history of having insider information. But the outlet also has a well-recorded history of publishing some less-than-factual accounts of black aircraft programs over the years; stories with little in the way of disclosed sources that made lofty claims about a near-term future that never manifests.

In 2006, space historian and policy analyst Dwayne Day summed up how academics now perceive Scott’s 1990 coverage of the TR-3A:

“The Manta story demonstrates a pattern that Scott repeats in all of his black airplane stories. Usually there is a small bit of real information about a classified aircraft project. Scott then connects alleged sightings of an unusual aircraft in flight to this bit of information. Then the article is padded out with a large amount of speculation, usually involving various studies and research projects conducted by various contractors. The characteristics are always the same, however: he never quotes anybody by name who has any direct connection to the alleged program, and he never even includes anonymous quotes of anybody who supposedly knows the big picture about the alleged program.”

But this isn’t the end of the story for these unusual black triangle sightings. In our next installment in this series, we’ll explore stories about the TR-3B – a similar black triangle that’s said to be powered by reverse-engineered alien technology. We’ll also look into the real patents that may support these claims.

Alex Hollings is a writer, dad, and Marine veteran.

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

For Navy SEAL trainees, one of the least favorite parts of BUD/S training is hydrographic reconnaissance. Given the hours spent shivering in the cold Pacific Ocean making repeated dives down to map out the coastline on a given target beach for a future amphibious landing, it is no wonder that BUD/S trainees lack enthusiasm for this mission. It is cold, tiring, lengthy, and involves intricate documentation of the results of the recon after the exercise is complete. And, oh yeah, it also takes place right after Hell Week, making it even harder to stay awake while trying to draw a hydrographic recon chart.

Conversely, underwater demolition training during BUD/S Third Phase – held out at San Clemente Island – is (and please pardon the pun) a blast. Trainees make numerous breath-hold dives down to fix haversacks full of explosives onto manmade underwater obstacles, and then blow them up once all the charges are set. Again, the point of this training is to prepare future SEALs to clear beaches for amphibious landings.

THE HISTORY OF THE MISSION

Hydrographic reconnaissance and underwater demolition are the very first of what would come to make up the set of Navy SEAL missions. In fact, the need for those capabilities in World War II is what led to the creation of the Navy’s Underwater Demolition Teams (UDTs), the precursors of the SEALs. UDTs were stood up to clear beaches that would be invaded by the U.S. Army and Marines.

Imagine a tranquil beach that provides an easy spot on which to land an invasion force in order to take control of a strategically valuable island. Now, if you are the force defending that island from invasion, you will do everything you can to make it extremely dangerous for the enemy to land on the beach. That would likely entail installing machine gun emplacements overlooking the beach and steel or concrete obstacles in the water near the shore to prevent easy boat access to it. In that way, you’d make the beach a deadly shooting gallery for amphibious forces getting hung up on the obstacles while coming ashore.

In response to those kinds of defenses, military leaders in World War II decided they needed units to recon the target beaches, map out the near shore seabed and beach terrain, the natural and manmade obstacles near shore and on shore, and then remove those obstacles before an invasion. The UDTs were thus born, and the mission continues to this day, now in the hands of the Navy SEALs.

WHAT GOES INTO PLANNING THEM?

Extensive mission planning is required for a hydrographic reconnaissance operation. First, the target beach must be identified, and then the most appropriate method of insertion chosen for the SEAL elements. Insertion might be done by air, surface naval vessel, submersible, or even full-sized submarine, or through some combination of those methods. In today’s world, it is also possible that this recon mission might employ automated systems and vehicles that replace some of the tasks previously carried out by humans.

Once a recon is successfully executed, and target obstacles identified, SEAL units would then have to plan and execute the underwater demolition mission. This would likely entail identifying the desired “lanes” through which the invading force would reach the beaches and splitting SEAL elements into smaller units that would each be responsible for clearing one or more of those lanes.

Ideally, the recon and explosives placement is done in a clandestine manner, and the actual demolition catches the enemy off guard and kicks off the invasion. In the worst-case scenario, SEAL elements would have to place explosives while under fire from shore-based guns, and while being supported by naval gunfire that tries to take out those guns. As you can imagine, the mission can get extremely dangerous in a full-on World War II-style amphibious invasion.

ARE HYDROGRAPHIC RECONNAISSANCE AND UNDERWATER DEMOLITION STILL RELEVANT?

Some might argue that these missions are irrelevant in today’s world of drones and advanced unmanned recon platforms. Those are arguments beyond this author, who is no longer privy to the most cutting-edge technologies of the U.S. military. What I do know, though, is that it seems shortsighted to rule out the possibility of amphibious landings in a future large peer-to-peer conflict. Hydrographic reconnaissance and underwater demolitions are capabilities that U.S. military commanders no doubt want to have at their disposal, and as long as that remains true, Navy SEALs will continue to keep them in their bag of tricks.

It is not a mission that the U.S. military has had to execute in the recent past, but it is a capability that remains important for possible future conflicts in which amphibious invasions may again become necessary.

Frumentarius is a former Navy SEAL, former CIA officer, and currently a Captain in a career fire department in the Midwest.

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

A German politician’s ties to a Chinese influence network are part of a pattern across Central and Eastern Europe.

One department now oversees everything from religion to winter sports to influence operations.

The Biden administration has been laying the groundwork for a big meeting with Xi Jinping.

If U.S. military aid falls short, more Ukrainians will die, officials in Kyiv say.

Des migrants se pressent aux portes du Vieux Continent, les services d'accueil sont débordés, la droite crie à l'invasion, la gauche se divise, les capitales européennes se rejettent la responsabilité, puis tout le monde passe à autre chose, jusqu'à la prochaine « crise ». Vu d'Europe, le scénario est (...) / Migrations, Immigrés, Afrique, Europe - 2023/10

The Paris Gun was used by Germany to shell Paris from a great distance during the First World War. It was the largest cannon in the world at the time.

Pressure has been put on Ukraine during the summer counter-offensive to make notable, media worthy gains in taking back lost territories from Russia. The amount of equipment being supplied by their allies and the motivation for more advanced systems depends upon the level of support the public has for Ukraine’s offensive in those nations supporting Ukraine financially and militarily. Even if the public in allied countries see the good in helping Ukraine, the amount of pressure on locals financially, via inflationary pressures, and their level of safety in their own community, will be juxtaposed against support for the war. For those policy makers wanting to support Ukraine and its people, it should be acknowledged that pressure on locals in their own countries at least need to be vocalized as being of equal priority to supporting Ukraine in the conflict. Ignoring this goal will do more harm to Ukraine in the medium term than denying them Leopard 2A6s and F-16s.

A standstill in the conflict and entrenchment can be harmful for the war effort if it extends the conflict past the support it has outside of Ukraine. A First World War scenario might be forming in some parts of the front where artillery exchanges and barrages make up much of the tactical movement on the field. The logistical weight of the conflict has already depleted the stock of arms on both sides, and with mothballed equipment from the United States coming though to the front, and Russia seeking compatible weapons from a Soviet design heritage, a longer term conflict might be the end result. Actions by Russia that might give them some realistic advantages comes from seeking weapons from North Korea for its forces in Ukraine. Despite some equipment being out of date, a 100mm cannon and armour that can mount ERA protection is better than not having it at all, and such equipment is still harmful to enemy infantry. Gaining access to 152mm artillery shells can create chaos for the attacking side, a role Ukraine has taken on this year with expected difficulty. Even a 1960s artillery shell can cause a great deal of damage to modern equipment, and many modern barrels have already gone past their effective time of use. With modern targeting systems, old Soviet equipment can be as effective as some modern systems.

Acts such as pushing for a new global currency via the BRICS+ nations will be less of a threat to the US Dollar and the political weight it gives to the United States. While Russia is already linking its economy Eastwards to China and India, the reality is that the diverse needs of the initial four BRIC nations was unsuccessful in dominating the world economy as a group. Expanding the BRICS+ only exacerbates the problem by adding other countries to the group, with more diverse interests, varied allegiances and a few in open conflict with each other. There are no conditions between those nations that would allow them to operate and share a common currency at this point.

A standstill might be exactly what Russia is seeking as a long term strategy, as they know that local citizens in countries supporting Ukraine are paying for much of the aid without payment in return, have limited patience for added stresses in their own lives, and have their own political divisions that work in Russia’s favour. Countries outside of Central Europe may not feel an immediate threat from the war, but will respond if their fuel, heat and employment are effected by the lack of energy in their community. Some of Ukraine’s allies who can help resist breaking their own environmental policies to aid Ukraine, and many countries have local crime and drug problems that affect citizens daily while the price of basic goods increase. For this reason, Russia has withdrawn from the Grain Deal and has attacked some of Ukraine’s grain supplies in Odesa, a port that ships essential food to much of the world. If Ukraine is to be helped, local Governments in those nations providing aid can no longer ignore local problems, as citizens have a limited amount of patience, health, and money to support themselves and an extended war policy from home.

Le Franco-Canadien Hervé Fischer, dans son précédent essai, sociologue et artiste, analysait l'évolution historique de la codification des couleurs en Occident. Il montrait comment leur langage visuel contribue à exprimer et à faire respecter l'ordre social voulu par les élites religieuses, (...) / Histoire, Art, Idées - 2023/10

The inauspicious return of the Cold War strategy of “Pactomania.”

Whatever Putin’s intentions are, he is hemmed in by limited capabilities.

The visit aimed to counter fracturing Western support for Ukraine.

Digital engineering has been around for some time. But only now is it coming into widespread use, both for the design and development of new platforms, weapons systems, components, and software, and for sustainment and upgrading activities. Digital engineering has the potential to radically change the way the Department of Defense interacts with the defense industrial base. It can transform the defense industrial base and the way the defense department accesses services and support. Specifically, it offers a large number of companies, particularly those not currently engaged in defense work, the opportunity to participate in the defense industrial base.

A prime example of how digital engineering is changing how sustainment and upgrades can be done comes from Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC). SNC is at the leading edge of the digital revolution. The company’s applications of digital engineering and related technologies and techniques are likely to result in a change not only in defense procurement and contracting practices, but in the overall defense acquisition culture, which was formed before the IT revolution.

What is digital engineering? One authoritative source defines it thusly: “Digital engineering describes a holistic approach to the design of a complex system: It uses models/data instead of documents, integration of data across models, and the culture change across project teams to realize significant risk reduction on construction cost and schedule.”

With digital engineering, rather than having to build a platform, system, or component, digital data is fed into validated models, which enables engineers to accurately create a digital representation of the object under investigation and use this representation in models to experiment with its functions, examine design changes or validate modifications. The digital representative of a physical object or system, however displayed or employed, is often referred to as a digital twin.

The defense department is pursuing a digital engineering strategy intended to transform the way platforms and systems are designed, developed, produced, and tested. This strategy also seeks to change defense acquisition culture by using digital engineering to speed the overall process and provide the tools needed to streamline sustainment and upgrades of existing, even legacy, capabilities. Recent applications for the T-7 trainer have been developed for the purpose of speeding up design and development.

The digital engineering revolution comes at a time when the defense industrial base is facing significant challenges. The U.S. economy has seen a decades-long decline in manufacturing with the losses of millions of jobs. In addition, there has been a significant consolidation of the defense industrial base since the end of the Cold War, leaving just a handful of major prime contractors and a supply chain marked by many single points of failure. The reduction in production capacity has also led to an ongoing tug of war between demands for new production and the needs for spare parts to support sustainment.

The innovative application of digital engineering, particularly to sustainment, could both significantly enhance the ability of the U.S. and allied defense industrial bases to meet wartime demand while also reducing defense department maintenance and support costs. The creation of validated digital versions of technical data packages that are high-fidelity representatives of existing platforms, systems, components, and parts would allow new and innovative manufacturing and integration companies to compete for contracts heretofore restricted to firms in possession of the needed intellectual property.

Sierra Nevada Corporation has been a pioneer in the area of digital engineering, demonstrating what can be done to improve sustainment and ease the process of introducing platform and system modification while reducing costs. SNC has demonstrated the ability to support and upgrade a variety of aircraft without the need for the original equipment manufacturer’s (OEM) proprietary data.

Using modern sensing techniques, including laser tracking and mapping, the company can create OEM-level technical data packages (TDPs) and even digital twins of existing platforms and develop the data to run high-fidelity models. The data collected by SNC is useful in creating and validating digital twins. These TDPs do not replicate all the data for a system and platform; rather, they are focused on specific areas for sustainment or modification. Consequently, neither the TDPs nor the models infringe on OEM proprietary intellectual property. Notably, SNC does not assert a right to the digital data it collects. Likewise, the data collected is limited to the information necessary to support specific work. Hence, it does not violate OEM intellectual property interests.

SNC has constructed TDPs for a number of platforms. For the Navy, the company has created TDPs for both the F/A-18E/F strike fighter and the CMV-22B Osprey. They have now expanded their efforts to support the aircraft of Air Mobility Command. SNC can provide its customers with all the necessary airworthiness certifications that support their modification and sustainment activities.

SNC is applying digital engineering in ways that can change the defense industrial base culture and the relationship between DoD and the private sector. The combination of TDPs, digital twins, and models could open up activities once restricted to OEMs. By employing digital engineering techniques, non-OEMs can undertake a broad range of maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) activities. The OEMs, in turn, would be able to focus on what they do best, which is the development and production of new equipment and platforms.

In essence, Sierra Nevada Corporation has created the equivalent in defense sustainment of the “Right to Repair” that has become central to the relationship between automotive and electronics companies and independent providers of aftermarket parts and services. The use of digital engineering as practiced by companies such as SNC can significantly expand the pool of companies available to perform sustainment and modification beyond those traditionally part of the aerospace and defense sector. This supports greater competition, faster sustainment, and reduced costs.

SNC busts the traditional model for performing MRO work while demonstrating how mid-size high-tech defense companies can apply digital engineering to a broad array of engineering, design, development, installation, test, and certification services that were once the province of only a few defense primes. SNC’s employment of both digital engineering and digital twinning is revolutionary. This revolution must now embrace program managers, who need to develop confidence that the products of digital engineering are equal in quality and validity to what can be provided by OEMs.

Dan Gouré, Ph.D., is a vice president at the public-policy research think tank Lexington Institute. Gouré has a background in the public sector and U.S. federal government, most recently serving as a member of the 2001 Department of Defense Transition Team. You can follow him on Twitter at @dgoure and the Lexington Institute @LexNextDC. Read his full bio here.

This article was first published by Real Clear Defense.

Image: Shutterstock.

How did Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping in just a decade manage to dismantle the collective leadership system carefully crafted by Deng Xiaoping, sour China’s relations with most of its neighbours and set China on a collision course with the United States? Western analysts generally focus on the authoritarian policies put in place by Xi since his rise to power in 2012, while Chinese scholars blame Western overreaction, starting in 2017 with US President Donald Trump, who made it clear that he wanted to prevent China from replacing the US as the global hegemon.

In Overreach: how China derailed its peaceful rise, Susan Shirk seeks explanations more widely. She focuses in particular on the era of Xi’s predecessor, CCP General Secretary Hu Jintao, who in her view set the stage for much of what has happened under Xi. Shirk has been following Chinese politics for decades, has published extensively on China and currently chairs the 21st Century China Center of the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. She has also served as US deputy assistant secretary of state responsible for East Asia and the Pacific.

Hu Jintao is generally seen as a weak leader who failed to build on the reforms initiated by his predecessor, Jiang Zemin. His term in office (2002–2012) is usually considered a ‘lost decade’. However, Shirk reminds us that much of China’s current overreach started under Hu. China’s fortification of rocks and shoals in the South China Sea gained pace in the early 2000s, its coastguard began to harass other countries’ ships in 2006, and the global financial crisis of 2008–09 boosted Beijing’s confidence and marked the start of a more openly assertive foreign policy.

Shirk ascribes this early overreach to Hu’s inability to manage the politburo standing committee, China’s top decision-making body. When Hu took over from Jiang, he increased the size of the standing committee from seven to nine, elevating the bosses responsible for internal security and propaganda to the committee.

However, in contrast to his strong-willed predecessors, the low-key Hu viewed himself simply as the first among equals. This left the expanded standing committee unwieldy and rudderless. As a result, the committee’s powerful members, often referred to as the ‘nine dragons’, each acted independently to expand their fiefdoms and resources, with Hu unable to control them. Instead of the collective leadership intended by Deng, the standing committee was sometimes referred to as simply a collection of leaders.

Shirk cites numerous examples of poor coordination. In 2007, the People’s Liberation Army tested an anti-satellite weapon by shooting down one of its own satellites, in the process spreading debris and endangering the satellites of other countries. When questioned by the US, China’s Foreign Ministry said it was unaware of the test. Coordination was particularly weak in the South China Sea, with the Foreign Ministry, navy, coastguard and fishing groups led by provincial governments all independently stirring up disputes in the name of the national interest.

As Deng’s policy of ‘hiding one’s strength and biding one’s time’ started to unravel, Hu ‘sent the pendulum swinging back to Xi’s Mao-style overconcentration of power’, Shirk writes. Xi inherited a governance system that was poorly coordinated and deeply corrupt, but with the foundations for overreach already firmly in place. As one Chinese entrepreneur described it, ‘Deng Xiaoping unplugged the Party’s Leninist machine, but Xi just put in the plug and it started up right away.’

Overreach is thoroughly researched and brims with information on events during the Hu and Xi eras obtained from interviews with well-informed insiders. A particularly useful chapter titled ‘Inside the black box’ outlines the workings of a political system ‘almost as opaque as North Korea’s’.

Under Xi, foreign policy went to extremes, security and anti-corruption measures were tightened and paranoia grew, with cadres at all levels scrambling to please the leader. As Xi continued to rein in the private sector and the economy faltered, dissatisfaction within the CCP also deepened. This reportedly came to a head at the party’s informal gathering in Beidahe last August.

Shirk’s book is a pleasure to read, but would have benefited from a final round of fact-checking. Her assertion that ‘Chinese diplomats now lead more than fifteen UN agencies’ is an exaggeration. And Shirk claims that APEC was ‘founded by the United States’, without any reference to the pivotal role played by Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke.

These minor errors notwithstanding, Shirk makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of how relations between China and the West have deteriorated, noting that China went into overdrive well before Xi came to power.

Shirk concludes with recommendations for China and the US to bring their relationship onto a more even keel. Some are practical, while others, in the current inflamed environment, are unrealistic. But it’s hard to disagree with Shirk that re-establishing consultations and getting the two countries’ leaders to meet regularly would be a good place to start.

Robert Wihtol is an adjunct faculty member at the Asian Institute of Management and former Asian Development Bank country director for China and director general for East Asia.

This article was first published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Image: Gil Corzo / Shutterstock.com

Just a few weeks ago, the United States and Vietnam announced an upgrade in relations to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, Vietnam’s highest tier of foreign relations, putting the United States on par with China. Keen observers of Vietnamese-American relations have expected this upgrade for some time, and it centers around both countries’ aligned support for the rules-based order and concerns over Chinese aggression in the region. However, this upgrade is about more than just signaling to China. The agreement includes provisions to expand engagement in trade and development. However, one overlooked area of cooperation is the commitment to fostering collaboration in the Rare Earth Element (REE) sector. This cooperative venture holds significant promise and deserves greater attention in discussions about the burgeoning partnership between the United States and Vietnam.

The seventeen elements comprising REEs are necessary for several technologies in domains such as health care, electronics, and defense technology. However, their most pertinent significance lies in their vital contribution to carbon-neutral technologies. For example, Neodymium is essential for wind turbines, Dysprosium is necessary for electric vehicles, and Lanthanum is critical for battery storage. Their importance is only expected to grow, as the International Energy Agency predicts REE demand will increase between three and seven times.

Despite the paradoxical abundance of REEs, they are not spread out evenly but disproportionately controlled by a select few countries. China possesses the largest REE reserves in the world, including 85 percent of the world’s rare earth processing capacity and 34 percent of its REE total. As a result, Beijing dominates the REE sector from mining to processing. More importantly, between 2018 and 2021, 74 percent of U.S. rare earth imports originated in China, while 80 percent derived from China between 2014 and 2018. 

That imbalance is a significant vulnerability for the United States as REEs become far more critical for renewable energy and U.S.-China relations deteriorate rapidly. Notably, China has proven willing to use this leverage as a stick when countries act contrary to its interests. Consider the Japanese example where China announced a cut of the exports of REEs to Japan following a collision between a Chinese fishing vessel and the Japanese Coast Guard in disputed territory that resulted in the Japanese arresting the Chinese fishing captain. It is also worth noting that in the face of growing great power competition, China, at the start of 2023, has reduced its rare earth mineral exports by 4.4 percent.

As the Biden administration has argued, securing REE is a question of national security. It must find an alternative but won’t find it at home. Despite technically having the sixth largest reserve in the world, the United States only has one rare earth mineral mine and a mere fraction of the amount China possesses. Of the top five largest reserves by country, only one U.S. ally, Australia, finds itself in the top five at fifth. 

Vietnam can be a critical partner in the American struggle to wean itself off Chinese REEs. Fortunately, as a part of the upgrade in relations, both countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding to develop broad cooperation in this area, including “attract[ing] quality investment for integrated REE sector development.” This partnership makes sense for a couple of reasons. 

First, Vietnam has proven a reliable market and a suitable alternative to the Chinese market as it and the United States elevate relations. The United States has bet on Vietnam as a prime candidate for its de-risking strategy, which, although ill-defined, here is taken to mean reducing its risk posed by deteriorating relations with China by restricting Chinese access to sensitive markets by diversifying its supply chains. Vietnam has been one of the prime beneficiaries of this new strategy as various companies have shifted some of their production to Vietnam, including American companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc.

Second, Vietnam is a major source of untapped potential. Despite its relatively small size, the American Geological Survey (AGS) estimates it contains about 20 million tons of the world’s rare earth reserves, valued at $3 trillion. In comparison, it is only behind China, which AGS estimates contains about 44 million tons, and Brazil, estimated to hold 22 million tons.

Third, Vietnam has made it clear that mining rare earth minerals is a critical industry for development and has taken steps to attract foreign direct investment in this area, like tax incentives, creating mining zones, and streamlining measures to speed up the time it takes to obtain a license, as evidenced by Resolution No. 10-NQ/TW, which established the strategic direction for the mining industry in Vietnam. Resultingly, last year, it boosted its rare earth output tenfold and welcomed a Korean firm that will open a magnet firm that could alone meet half of the United States neodymium magnet (utilized for various products in the field of information technology) demand. 

Still, tapping into Vietnam’s resources can be tricky. It has a notoriously layered and complex regulatory system that makes it challenging to enter its market. Moreover, the Vietnamese public has had bad experiences with foreign-led mining projects. Largely Chinese-led, the public has accused these projects of labor and human rights abuses and a palpable example of environmental degradation that benefits foreign powers at the cost of local health and the environment. Vietnam also notoriously lacks the technical expertise and capital to extract and process REE resources.

Still, despite potential obstacles, the United States should seize the opportunity presented by the recent improvement in relations to forge a partnership in Rare Earth Element (REE) development. The significance of REEs is continuously expanding, and securing alternative sources beyond China has become a paramount national security concern for the United States. The current upswing in relations and Vietnam’s keen interest in advancing its REE industry offers an auspicious moment for the United States to diversify its REE supply chain, reducing its dependency on Chinese sources.

Vincenzo Caporale has a BA from UC Berkeley in Comparative Politics and an M.Phil from the University of Cambridge in International Relations. He is an Editor at Large at the Realist Review and a Contributor at Modern Diplomacy. His work focuses on Vietnamese development, politics, and foreign policy. You can reach Vincenzo or follow his work on Twitter @VincenzoCIV.

Image: Shutterstock.

As the United States and the Soviet Union discovered half a century ago, China is finding that its deepening engagement with the Middle East is more frustrating than rewarding. Energy, economic interests, and security are the main goals of Chinese diplomacy in the Middle East. Beijing’s foreign policy, mimicking that of Washington’s in the 1950s, seeks as broad an appeal as possible to minimize energy dependence on a single country or coalition and offset the risks inherent in dealing with unstable regimes and regional alignments. China’s de-risking strategy means balanced relations with pairs of historical rivals, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, all of which puts it at odds with Israel. Beijing’s solution to the apparent contradiction of courting adversaries is a heavy dose of trade and investment while insincerely offering mediation over regional tensions.   

Despite Beijing announcing its contribution to the Iran-Saudi rapprochement in April of 2023, this development is more accurately characterized as a ceasefire primarily facilitated by the winding down of the conflict in Yemen. Aside from diplomatic encounters and exchanges, there have been no substantive changes in either Tehran or Riyadh’s policy declarations or posture. In July 2023, during the inauguration of its embassy in Tehran, Saudi Arabia refused to hold a conference in a hall with a photo of General Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of Iran’s Quds Force, and the conference moved to another venue. Iran’s “Shia Crescent” strategy still remains, although now as a diplomatic rather than a military effort. 

Beijing requested that the contents of its twenty-five-year accord with Iran not be published, most likely because of its blowback on Chinese-Saudi relations, though the New York Times managed to obtain a draft. The agreement focuses on exchanging Chinese investment as part of its Belt & Road Initiative for secure oil exports. What has not changed is China’s insistence on Iran curbing any move towards nuclear weapons, which it is pursuing primarily to assuage its Gulf Arab partners. Iran is a valuable geopolitical bridge if China extends strategic pipelines and rail links through Pakistan or Central Asia farther into the Black Sea region or the Eastern Mediterranean. During the visit of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi to Beijing, The China Daily described “Iran [as] an ideal country in the Middle East region to advance the Belt and Road project and in turn, [and] cooperation with China will be a key to Iran’s economic development.” 

However, Iran's publications and public opinion have taken a negative view of this accord, and some have questioned its fairness, given China’s propensity to demand complete control over its investment projects. To date, the accord has produced no observable economic benefits for Iran. This is partly because Iran’s manufacturing and non-energy sectors are not sufficiently developed to benefit from export opportunities to China. China has not yet made any significant infrastructural investments in Iran. In fact, because of concerns over Western sanctions and China’s Arab allies like Saudi Arabia and Iraq, Beijing has so far refused to invest in Iran’s oil fields and facilities. Some estimates show that Sinopec’s six-year delay in the first phase of “Yadavaran Square” has caused a loss of more than $3 billion to Iran's economy. Furthermore, China is far more likely to displace Iranian influence in Central Asia than integrate their regional interaction. 

The value of China’s trade with Iraq is double that of Iran. China has widened its relations with Iraq beyond energy and seeks to displace the dollar with the yuan. Tehran is aware that there is a zero-sum aspect to trade relations: any increase in Iraqi exports to China can decrease energy revenues for Iran. However, relations with Baghdad are further compromised by Beijing’s cultivation of good relations with the government of the U.S.-backed Kurdistan region of Iraq, giving it access to the oil output of the Irbil region. The Kurdistan region in turn is expecting China to pressure Tehran from conducting its occasional missile strikes against bases alleged to provide sanctuary to anti-Tehran dissidents and Kurdish separatists. Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran consider the independent Kurdish polities dangerous focal points for centrifugal ethnic social movements and safe harbors for terrorist groups.   

It is almost impossible for Beijing to satisfy both Iranian and Arab security interests fully. In December 2022, Chinese president Xi Jinping arrived in Riyadh and issued a joint statement with representatives of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council). Despite China’s broad diplomatic approach, its sidestepping of the territorial dispute between the UAE and Iran led to criticism from Tehran. There were calls by angry Iranian netizens suggesting a reciprocal withdrawal of the recognition of China’s claim to Taiwan. 

Paradoxically, Qatar and Oman are the Gulf Arab countries that enjoy the friendliest relations with both China and Iran. Nonetheless, they are also strong U.S. partners and friendly with European NATO countries. Consequently, China’s dealings with Qatar have been limited primarily to energy and investment. Chinese extraction companies have made repeated investments in Qatar’s North Field, which will export liquid natural gas to China for at least the next two decades. On the other hand, Doha is also the only Persian Gulf government to side with the Western democracies on the issue of China’s genocidal treatment of the Uyghur ethnic minority. 

Doha’s diplomacy is complex, to say the least, with significant influence on regional public opinion managed through media outlet Al Jazeera. It shares in common with Iran, the world’s largest gas field (the South Pars). Qatar also hosts the largest U.S. airbase in the Persian Gulf and has refused Russian arms purchases, such as the S-400 missile defense system. It furthermore consistently supports Turkish initiatives in Syria and Iraq, which go against Iranian interests. Yet, Doha acts as a mediator between the United States and Iran, as well as the Taliban and Yemeni Houthis. Similarly, while Doha has conditioned recognition of Israel on progress on the status of Palestinians, Al Jazeera has hosted a preponderance of commentators that condemn any agreement with Israel. Qatar may be exchanging information with Israel’s security establishment, given that, unlike other Gulf States, its foreign aid transits to Gaza solely through Israeli checkpoints.   

Finally, despite China’s growing commerce with Israel, a major U.S. ally, Beijing has stated its interest in resolving the Palestinian issue. Iranian officials consider the visit of Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, to Beijing as evidence of China’s efforts. This visit represented the highest level of recognition of Palestinians conferred to date by China. Wang Wenbin, the spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, told reporters: “Abbas is an old and loyal friend of the Chinese people and the first Arab head of state to visit China this year.” He added: “China has always supported the just cause of the Palestinian people to restore their legitimate national rights.” At the beginning of this year, China’s foreign minister, Chin Gang, announced to both Israeli and Palestinian officials that Beijing is interested in playing a constructive role in negotiations over the status of the Palestinians. In addition, in July of 2023, Chinese media announced that China’s Foreign Minister Chin Gang reiterated in a telephone conversation with Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen and Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki that Beijing is ready to mediate between the two sides. Tel Aviv did not take up China’s offer, and there were no resulting changes to Chinese-Israeli commerce. 

Unlike the Soviet Union, which was energy self-sufficient and free to pursue an ideological foreign policy against the Western democracies, China’s freedom of action is severely constrained by its dependence on imports from a region with many cross-cutting cleavages. Furthermore, the history of regime and domestic upheavals compels China to spread its imports as widely as possible among the oil and gas-rich states of the Middle East, further immobilizing any pursuit of security diplomacy. To avoid any retaliatory energy supply disruptions, such as what the West suffered during the 1973 oil embargo following the 1973 October War between Israel and the frontline Arab states, Beijing has prioritized avoiding political controversy. Given China’s trade with close U.S. allies, there is no room even for “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy. Integrating the Persian Gulf and the Middle East into Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative is not particularly controversial, at least for the countries in the region, given their long experience with managing engineering firms and mega-projects. In the event of war over Taiwan, Beijing might find its diplomacy sorely tested as many of its regional trading partners will be compelled by the close presence of the U.S. Navy to pick sides. The implication for Western states, particularly the United States and India, is not to exaggerate the security consequences of China’s deeper penetration of the Middle East.  

Dr. Julian Spencer-Churchill is an associate professor of international relations at Concordia University and the author of Militarization and War (2007) and Strategic Nuclear Sharing (2014). He has published extensively on Pakistan security issues and arms control and completed research contracts at the Office of Treaty Verification at the Office of the Secretary of the Navy and the then Ballistic Missile Defense Office (BMDO).  He has also conducted fieldwork in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, and Egypt and is a consultant. He is a former Operations Officer of the 3rd Field Engineer Regiment from the latter end of the Cold War to shortly after 9/11. He tweets at @Ju_Sp_Churchill.

Behrouz Ayaz is an Iranian political analyst specializing in the foreign policy of Iran, Afghanistan, South Asia, and Terrorism. He graduated from Tarbiat Modares University with an MA in International Relations. He is currently collaborating with SCFR (Strategic Council on Foreign Relations). Ayaz has co-authored the book The Nature, Dimensions, and Future of ISIS and has published articles, essays, and policy papers related to his expertise. He tweets at @behrooz_ayaz

Image: Shutterstock.

The simple answer to the question of whether North Korea will ever willingly give up its nuclear weapons is: “No.” 

The more complex and nuanced answer is: “Hell, no.” 

OK, maybe that is a bit too dramatic. I am a historian, after all, and people in my profession tend to define “ever” as covering a really, really, really, long period of time.

Strange and unexpected things do happen over really, really, really, long periods of time.

But, watching a DPRK leader willingly giving up these weapons would certainly be near the top of that list.

Why North Korea Wants Nuclear Weapons 

The critical factor is that North Korea’s commitment to its nuclear program is not just a product of the international security environment, but is instead rooted in domestic politics and ideology.

The Kim family has long positioned itself as the great protector of the Korean people, an almost superhuman line of leaders that is uniquely qualified to protect the country against the evil machinations of foreign antagonists. For much of the nation’s early years, Kim Il Sung rooted this position in both economic and security terms, insisting that only he could lead the country down this dual path towards a socialist utopia.

Long-term economic problems, however, have largely rendered moot the Kim family’s claim to rule in terms of national prosperity. Instead, Kim’s son and grandson have steadily shifted the emphasis to their ability to ensure national security through a military-first policy. And recent years have seen Kim Jong Un make this link between his rule and nuclear weapons increasingly explicit and central to his regime’s raison d'être.

Reports of domestic propaganda over the last few years have reflected this close linkage. North Korean propaganda posters––briefly modulated during the Kim-Trump talks––have returned to celebrate alleged nuclear triumphs and the greatness of the DPRK government that produced them. Nuclear weapons are featured on stamps, calendars, and school notebooks. Media broadcasts assure the population that nuclear weapons not only keep the nefarious United States at bay but also offer a path towards economic prosperity by forcing the US to remove sanctions and treat the country as an equal.

Government rhetoric similarly applauds the country’s nuclear status, even codifying its nuclear policy and status into law that declares the program “irreversible,” while Kim explains that he will not yield on the program even if the nation faced a century of sanctions. Nukes, he declared, represented the “dignity, body, and absolute power of the state.”

History will tell us whether Kim’s efforts to retain power by so closely linking his regime to the nuclear weapons program proves successful in the long-term. For now, though, any effort to truly understand the central role the program plays in DPRK society must start by recognizing the domestic political imperatives that lay behind it. And those domestic political imperatives mean that as long as there is a Kim family dictatorship in North Korea, there will be nuclear weapons alongside it.

Mitchell Lerner is professor of History and faculty fellow at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at The Ohio State University, where he is also director of the East Asian Studies Center. Lerner has received fellowships and grants from the Korea Foundation, Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library, Dwight Eisenhower Presidential Library, and John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. He has served as editor of Passport: The Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations Review, and is now associate editor of the a Journal of American-East Asian Relations. In 2005, Lerner won the Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching, and in 2019, he won the Ohio Academy of History's Distinguished Teacher Prize. In 2022, he was the Peter Hahn Distinguished Service Award from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.