Diplomacy & Crisis News

What You Need to Know: The U.S. Navy’s next-generation SSN(X) nuclear attack submarine program aims to enhance undersea capabilities with greater speed, stealth, and payload capacity. However, budget constraints have delayed the start of SSN(X) construction until the 2040s, despite an initial timeline for 2031.

-With Virginia-class submarines in high demand and shipyards struggling to meet production goals, Congress hesitates on the SSN(X) due to its projected $6.2 billion per unit cost.

-As a more cost-effective option, experts suggest increasing investments in unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) and modernizing shipyards to address immediate threats, rather than focusing solely on expensive, future-oriented systems.

The “X factor” has been longtime in military aviation nomenclature tradition, as in X-planes, such as the Bell X-1 that became the first aircraft to break the sound barrier, with the late great Chuck Yeager at the controls. 

Or the rocket-powered North American X-15, which, at Mach 6.7, is the fastest aircraft ever, yes, even faster than the air-breathing Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, which flew barely half that fast, at Mach 3.2, to the U.S. Navy’s (USN) upcoming F/A-XX fighter jet program.

But this time we’re talking about the “X factor” in a maritime context, such as warship’s nomenclature, more specifically an undersea warshp’s moniker. 

Say hello to the U.S. Navy’s (SSN(X)) program.

NOTE: “SSN” is the U.S. Navy hull classification symbol for nuclear-powered general-purpose attack submarine, a designation used for interoperability throughout NATO under Standardization Agreement (STANAG) 1166.

The Navy first publicly identified the requirement for the SSN(X) program in 2014, and eight years later the USN brass submitted a budget request for Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 which included $98 million to continue research and development (R&D), including $29.8 million for general class development and $68.1 million for developing nuclear propulsion.

Along with the Columbia-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) and Virginia-class boats, the SSN(X) program is seen as a critical component of the USN's in maintaining American naval superiority in the coming decades, especially in the light of Communist China’s ever-expanding shipbuilding capabilities.

Given the experimental, hence the presence of that “X factor” in the first place, and hush-hush nature of the program, actual technical specifications and vital status for these prospective undersea boats are few and far better and speculative. 

In the general sense, the “X-boats” will provide greater speed, increased torpedo payload capacity, improved acoustic superiority and non-acoustic signatures, i.e. quieter, and higher operational capacity.

There is even a rumor that these subs will include biomimetic propulsion systems, which are engines that replicate the movement of undersea wildlife to make it harder for enemy submarines to track the SSN(X). 

Sounds all well and good in theory, right?

So, is there a potential holdup in practice, and if so, why? With so many up-and-coming military technologies (such as the USN’s DDG[X] next-generation destroyer program and aforementioned F/A-XX, along with the U.S. Air Force’s Next-Generation Air Dominance [NGAD] project) it all boils down to dollars and sense, as explained by my colleague Brandon J. Weichert explains in a October 27, 2024 article for The National Interest, “The U.S. Navy will push back construction of its next class of attack submarine, the SSN(X), until the early 2040s. Initially, the Navy had planned to begin building the SSN(X) in 2031. Then, the start date was pushed back to 2035. Now, because of budgetary constraints and the need to prioritize ongoing and near-term projects, the Navy has pushed the program back again.”

The most optimistic assessment of the prognosis for SSN(X) can be summed up as “Hurry up and wait.” The emphasis right now is on building up the Virginia-class fleet and given the suboptimal hand that America’s shipyards have been dealt, they’re struggling to produce even two of those boats per year, “[T]he older Los Angeles-class attack submarines continue being retired at alarmingly high rates…America’s Congressional Budget Office projected the costs of the SSN(X) to be around $6.2 billion per unit. That’s orders of magnitude higher than the $2.8 billion price tag of the Virginia-class submarines. Because of the high price of the SSN(X), Congress is understandably reticent to commit…The real focus for the Navy should not be purchasing another expensive weapons platform to fight tomorrow’s theoretical wars. Instead, the Navy must focus on reliably countering real threats today…The Navy should focus its efforts on rapidly expanding and modernizing America’s broken shipyards.”

As a far more cost-effective alternative to the SSN(X) money pit, Brandon suggests beefing up the USN’s  unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) drone program. Time will tell.

Christian D. Orr is a Senior Defense Editor for National Security Journal (NSJ). He is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He has also been published in The Daily Torch, The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security, and Simple Flying. Last but not least, he is a Companion of the Order of the Naval Order of the United States (NOUS).

 Image Credit: Creative Commons and/or Shutterstock.

What You Need to Know: China’s militarization of the South China Sea (SCS) has established a powerful anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) network across the region, positioning it to delay or block U.S. intervention in a Taiwan contingency.

-Advanced surveillance, defensive, and offensive capabilities stationed on China’s manmade islands give Beijing a strategic edge in the opening stages of any conflict, potentially inflicting heavy losses on U.S. forces.

-This setup relies on achieving swift strategic dominance before U.S. responses can degrade its island defenses. Analysts agree the U.S. could eventually counter these islands but may face costly setbacks in early engagements, highlighting escalating risks in U.S.-China tensions.

America’s elite want you to think that they’ve got everything under control. In fact, they’ve lost control. The new reality is that the United States is a declining power in regions of the world that it once took for granted, notably in the region that the Pentagon now calls the “Indo-Pacific.”

According to former U.S. Navy Admiral Mike Studeman in a post on X, “China is working very hard at having superiorities [throughout the South China Sea] that nobody else can match.” Studeman continued his post by adding, “They’ve built an ability to project power with multiple types of capabilities—air, missile, militia, ships, submarines.”

In other words, Washington has sat idly by as its greatest geopolitical foe has marshaled its strength, enhanced its strategic position, and created capabilities that are tailored for stunting U.S. military power projection in regions that China claims as its own, such as the South China Sea (SCS) and the Taiwan Strait. China is also developing the means to potentially wrest control of the East China Sea and Yellow Sea from their other great regional foe, Japan. All this was unthinkable a decade ago.

Alas, China’s strength and position in the SCS are so great that short of total war between the United States and the People’s Republic of China, there will be no rolling back of China’s presence in the SCS.

For instance, beginning in 2010, the Chinese military started a massive construction project throughout what international arbitration courts (and the United Nations) have already defined as international waters or maritime regions belonging to China’s neighbors in the SCS. These projects saw Chinese engineers build increasingly sophisticated and hardened military bases on manmade islands throughout the region.

China has placed complex surveillance stations on some of these manmade islands that monitor international shipping traffic through the crowded SCS and keep a close eye on the movements of foreign naval forces throughout the busy region. 

Beyond their surveillance capabilities, China’s manmade islands are now sporting new runways to host increasingly large military planes and China is deploying a robust—and lethal—anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) network across the region. This A2/AD network is meant to prevent the U.S. Navy and its allies from projecting power through the SCS against Chinese forces (and allowing for Chinese forces to more easily project power in the area while behind the protective bubbles of those A2/AD networks).

In 2020, Gregory B. Poling of Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies argued in War on the Rocks that “without the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, or some undiscovered (and unlikely) stand-in, U.S. forces would have little choice but to concede the waters and airspace of the South China Sea to China in the opening stages of a conflict.”

Poling’s excellent article further stated that, “The logistics and maintenance hurdles China would face during wartime would likely prevent the island bases from effectively operating over the long-term. But for several weeks at least—time that would be critical in a Taiwan contingency, for instance—they would pay huge dividends for Beijing.”

Responding to Poling’s 2020 essay, Olli Pekka Suorsa, a research fellow at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, disputed Poling’s conclusions. In Suorsa’s summation, “U.S. tested conventionally armed intermediate range ballistic missile[s]” that were “once banned under the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty (INF)” are the surest way to end the purported threat that China’s manmade bases pose in a potential conflict with the United States.

Strangely, both analysts are in agreement on one aspect: in the long run, the United States would likely be able to knock those manmade bases out in a war—or at least degrade their threat considerably, using weapons like long-range ballistic missiles as well as whatever hypersonic missiles the Americans could deploy (although the United States lags far behind the Russians and Chinese in deployable and reliable hypersonic weapons). Yet, in the short run, the Americans are going to get rocked hard by Chinese forces stationed at those manmade islands.

What’s more, China’s military has built an impressive defensive array around Chinese islands in the SCS. The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative first reported on Beijing’s defensive measures in 2016. According to its analysis, China has “built significant point-defense capabilities, in the form of large anti-aircraft guns and portable close-in weapons systems (CIWS).” In 2022, China proudly announced the success of its anti-ballistic missile system that it “billed as a bulwark against a hypothetical U.S. attack,” according to the Washington Examiner.

These systems can be deployed to degrade America’s long-range ballistic missile threat to those manmade islands.

And the fact that the anti-ship ballistic missile arsenals that undergird China’s A2/AD systems throughout the SCS will assuredly prevent the U.S. Navy from deploying its surface warship fleet—notably U.S. Navy aircraft carriers—against those fortified Chinese islands significantly reduces America’s threat to those islands. Then there are also the incredible developments that China has made in radar detection and even anti-hypersonic weapons technology—all of which will be deployed in defense of those manmade islands.

A final daunting issue for the Americans to overcome is the Chinese first-strike threat to the U.S. Air Force’s permanent forward bases in the Indo-Pacific, in places like Guam. China has already practiced hitting those areas as part of an opening bid to end America’s threat to its forces in the region. 

So, Poling’s take about those islands paying “huge dividends” to China in the opening phases of a war with the United States is apt. 

China’s entire plan relies upon achieving strategic surprise long enough to surround and possibly invade neighboring Taiwan. Once that occurs, and the Chinese have achieved escalation dominance over the Americans and their allies, Beijing believes it will be able to force a negotiated settlement with Washington. 

But even if China cannot do that, if the Americans decide to respond more forcefully, the costs to both sides will be far greater than what either government thinks.

Brandon J. Weichert, a National Interest national security analyst, is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, the Asia Times, and The-Pipeline. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His next book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine, is available for purchase wherever books are sold. Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

What You Need to Know: China’s aircraft carriers play a secondary role within the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), supporting the nation’s anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) strategy rather than serving as the fleet’s centerpiece.

-While the U.S. Navy relies heavily on carriers for global power projection, China’s defense centers on extensive A2/AD networks in the South China Sea, capable of keeping American forces at bay and deterring intervention in a Taiwan conflict.

-These A2/AD systems, featuring anti-ship ballistic and hypersonic missiles, create a protective bubble over Chinese forces, rendering China’s carriers a support asset, strategically positioned closer to home and more replaceable than their U.S. counterparts.

There continues to be a grave misconception about the importance of aircraft carriers in the overall force posture of China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) surface warfare fleet. For American observers, the aircraft carrier is the penultimate naval power projection platform. 

Western think tank types cannot fathom a fleet, one that wants to be taken seriously at least, wherein the carrier is not the centerpiece of all activity. 

But that is precisely the case for China, a nation that very much wants to, and very well should, be taken seriously as a real challenger to the United States.

China currently has three aircraft carriers with a fourth on the way. The first carrier, the Liaoning, is quite unimpressive, even with all the modifications the advanced Chinese installed on the ship. 

It’s a hand-me-down from the old Soviet Union. 

Subsequent Chinese carriers, however, are indigenously built and they incorporate some of the most advanced systems imaginable. Indeed, China’s Shandong aircraft carrier has a new system installed that makes it nearly impossible for rival nations to track their massive carriers while at sea, or to use wake-homing torpedoes to attack the Shandong.

This is just one of many features the innovative Chinese military has gleaned from years of perfecting their tracking capabilities of large U.S. Navy warships, notably American carriers. Just last week the Chinese completed a massive wargame off the coast of the beleaguered democracy of Taiwan, which China covets.

In that wargame, for the first time, all of China’s operational carriers conducted joint operations. It was a signal to the Americans and the region that China was truly the most dominant regional actor. 

Of course, Japanese carriers remain technically more advanced than China’s, although that is set to change very soon.

More importantly, the Chinese defense industrial base, their mighty shipyards, are upstaging the Americans, once considered the “arsenal of democracy.” One Chinese admiral reportedly boasted to Western media that, unlike the American shipyards, there were “no bottlenecks” in the production line for China’s new and increasingly advanced carrier force. 

In other words, the fleet that the Americans have is static whereas China’s fleet is growing, and its industrial base is robust enough that it can far more easily replace any lost units or repair them at a greater rate than the Americans.

This is a decisive advantage, when one considers the high degree of probability that the United States and China will be in a shooting war likely over the fate of Taiwan soon. 

However, the primary role that carriers play in the overall strategic disposition of China’s navy is not the same as the role that America’s massive nuclear-powered carriers play in its expeditionary fleet. 

Instead, the Chinese carriers, while sophisticated, are merely support ships tailored to further China’s strategic goal of taking Taiwan. 

Interestingly, in this author’s assessment, the centerpiece of China’s maritime power is the advanced anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) systems that Beijing has spent the better part of a decade developing, and deploying, throughout the South China Sea (SCS) and along their coastline.

These A2/AD networks will be essential for China’s military in keeping the bulk of America’s military over the horizon in any war over Taiwan. The A2/AD threat includes massive numbers of long-range anti-ship ballistic missiles, even hypersonic weapons that can track and destroy U.S. carriers, these are known as “Carrier Killers”. 

All these systems mean that the Pentagon will be hard-pressed to risk their massively expensive aircraft carriers, especially if the probability exists that those carriers will not even be within effective combat range of Chinese forces before they could be crippled or killed by China’s A2/AD systems.

China’s carriers are meant to operate within the protective bubbles that their A2/AD networks will create over whatever area of operation Beijing has assigned, again, likely Taiwan. What’s more, China’s carriers are far more replaceable than the American ones. 

While still technically superior to China’s, the American carriers will have to contend with far greater threats to its safe operation than will the Chinese carriers, which will be operating beneath the protective shield of those A2/AD networks and be operating much closer to their home territory than will the Americans. 

So, the next time you read a think tanker in Washington lambasting China’s carrier force when compared to that of America, remember that it is likely coming from a place of profound ignorance, and mirror-imaging, the bane of all analysts.

Brandon J. Weichert, a National Interest national security analyst, is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, the Asia Times, and The-Pipeline. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His next book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine, is available for purchase wherever books are sold. Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

Image Credit: Creative Commons and/or Shutterstock.

What You Need to Know: The Lockheed-Martin F-22 Raptor, the U.S. Air Force’s premier stealth fighter, exceeds all near-peer airframes in capabilities like stealth, supercruise, and supermaneuverability. However, it was never adapted for carrier operations due to budget and technical constraints under the Naval Advanced Tactical Fighter (NATF) program.

-Although Congress had initially pushed for a carrier-compatible FB-22 bomber, the design’s limited combat radius, costly sweep-wing configuration, and limited internal bomb capacity prevented its development.

-Despite its costly upkeep and small fleet, the F-22 remains a significant deterrent against U.S. adversaries, but plans to retire older models face resistance.

Since its inception, the Lockheed-Martin F-22 “Raptor” has exceeded every near-peer airframe.

As the planet’s premier operational jet – combining stealth, supercruise, supermaneuverability, and sensor fusion in a single airframe – the Raptor remains one of the U.S. platforms that rival militaries fear the most.

However, there is one thing the world’s most capable air-superiority stealth fighter cannot do: fly from a carrier.

The single-seat, twin-engine tactical fighter jet entered service with the U.S. Air Force in 2005, following a lengthy and expensive production process. As the product of the U.S. Air Force’s Advanced Tactical Fighter program, the Raptor was intended to outperform advanced Soviet fighters including the Sukhoi Su-27 and Mikoyan MiG-29. At this point of the Cold War, the Air Force determined that its current capabilities might be at a “mission deficiency” in the near future if a superior fighter was not in the works. 

Some of the Raptor’s cutting-edge capabilities include its smaller radar cross-section, which enables the airframe to fly undetected. In fact, the F-22’s cross section is about five to ten times less observable than the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Additionally, the fighter is equipped with twin thrust-vectoring F119 turbofan engines, which give its pilot unparalleled advantages in dog fights. The fighter’s larger frame also features three internal weapons bays. 

The Raptor’s formidable potential convinced Congress to pressure the U.S. Navy to consider adopting a sweep-wing version of the new jet under the Naval Advanced Tactical Fighter (NATF) program. As detailed by Sandboxx Media, “In return for the Navy considering the NATF as a potentially lower-cost alternative to developing their own replacement carrier-based fighter, the U.S. Air Force agreed to evaluate a modified version of the carrier-based stealth bomber being developed under the Navy’s Advanced Tactical Aircraft (ATA) program as a replacement for their own aging F-111.”

This collaborative approach would eventually beget joint combat aircraft programs across the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force that would result in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program.

However, by 1991, the plan to incorporate a carrier-compatible FB-22 was dropped primarily for technical and budgetary reasons. Turning the Raptor into a bomber would significantly impact the airframe’s payload and range. Defense expert Sebastian Roblin explained in the past why the F-22’s limited combat radius would have been detrimental to bomber operations. The Raptor’s combat radius of 600 miles “is not nearly far enough for a deep penetrating bomber that cannot rely on tanker planes to tag along into hostile airspace.” 

Additionally, the Raptor can only carry four Small Diameter Bombs within its internal weapons bay. Any more munitions positioned on the wings of the airframe would diminish the Raptor’s stealth. Engineers also grappled with how to incorporate a sweep-wing design, similar to the F-14 Tomcat, into the FB-22. Sweep-wings are extremely expensive to maintain, and integrating this design into the airframe would compromise its stealth. 

While an FB-22 carrier-capable bomber would have been truly remarkable, it probably would not have altered the overall abilities of the U.S. military’s current carrier platforms. Plus, the Air Force had only purchased 187 F-22 airframes by 2009 – hundreds fewer than the original projection. America’s shift to the Global War on Terror, and the continuing development of cheaper, comparable platforms, kept the Raptors in short supply. Today, the Air Force is seeking to retire its fleet of older-model F-22 fighters, due to the platform’s expensive upkeep and diminishing value. Congress is working to stop the Air Force from taking such action. 

Despite the limited number of airframes available and working, the F-22 Raptor still deters U.S. adversaries. If the FB-22 was developed under the NAFT program, the bomber would probably be experiencing the same growing pains as its sister platform today. 

Maya Carlin is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel.

Image Credit: FB-22 artist creation. 

Starfighter: Russia has announced ambitious plans to develop the MiG-41, a sixth-generation “starfighter” capable of extreme speed, EMP attacks, and laser weaponry.

-Intended to replace the MiG-31 Foxhound, the MiG-41 is designed to reach near-space altitudes and exceed Mach 4. However, while impressive on paper, these aspirations are widely seen as unrealistic given Russia’s current military priorities in Ukraine and technological limitations, particularly in directed-energy weapons.

-Some argue Russia should focus its resources on achievable projects like the Tupolev PAK DA stealth bomber, rather than the speculative MiG-41.

Russia wants the world to know that it is unaffected by the Western proxy war being waged between itself and the NATO alliance over control of Ukraine. Recently, Moscow let the world know that it was moving ahead with the construction of its long-range strategic stealth bomber, the Tupolev PAK DA. Russian forces already possess the world’s most advanced, working hypersonic weapons arsenals.

Now, Moscow has announced that it intends to move forward with the Mikoyan Design Bureau’s radical new sixth-generation warplane, the MiG-41.

But the descriptions of the MiG-41 do not sound like a new, more advanced warplane for the Russian arsenal. They look and read like a starfighter right out of Star Wars. 

Russia wants these planes to shoot down enemy missiles with lasers. 

Never mind that Russia does not have working directed-energy weapons. It’s what Moscow wants. What’s more, Russia wants the plane to deploy electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons against its enemies. 

Oh, and the bird will travel at speeds exceeding Mach four. 

The MiG-41 is meant to be a replacement for Russia’s MiG-31 “Foxhound.” Russian media sources reporting on the development of this theoretically extraordinary bird indicate that the plane will fly at altitudes that exceed anything that any other warplane can fly at. In other words, the Russians are sending this thing to the edges of space—hence, why I like to describe it as a “starfighter.” 

Russian tactical thinking has moved beyond simply building more kinetic warplanes. The theorized sixth-generation warplane, which is pure fantasy at this point, is meant to outfly its rivals. The weapons that are being developed for this experimental plane are non-kinetic. They’re meant to attack the sophisticated electronic operating systems of enemy warplanes. 

EMP weapons, lasers, and skimming low-Earth orbit are all the big dreams of the Mikoyan designers. It’s interesting. 

These schemes are also totally impractical. 

The Russians are in what Vladimir Putin has repeatedly described as an “existential” war with Ukraine. He’s likely right. That’s why all national resources have been directed into winning the war. 

And the Russians are winning, but the Russians are also still limited by the reality of their national position. 

In other words, the Russians need to focus on the practical and leave building the wünderwaffe to the Americans, who are proving with each decade since the end of the Cold War that such fantastical systems are rarely worth the money and time it took to build them. 

Where Russia is right to spend its limited resources is in developing the aforementioned Tupolev PAK DA long-range strategic stealth bomber. That system will prove decisive over time for Russia, especially if the Ukraine War continues unabated for the next several years. But the MiG-41 is as ridiculous as it sounds.

Brandon J. Weichert, a National Interest national security analyst, is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, the Asia Times, and The-Pipeline. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His next book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine, is due October 22 from Encounter Books. Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

All images are Creative Commons or Shutterstock. All photos are of various submarine styles. 

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What You Need to Know: A recent CTC Sentinel report disclosed a near-miss missile incident involving the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Red Sea. A Houthi-launched missile reportedly came within 200 meters of the carrier, underscoring the growing risks posed by non-state actors.

-With an array of drones, ballistic, and cruise missiles, Houthi forces have increasingly targeted international vessels amid rising regional tensions.

-The incident underscores the challenges of protecting high-value assets like aircraft carriers against unconventional threats, with implications for U.S. naval readiness and strategy in more contested areas, particularly in the Indo-Pacific.

The Houthi rebels nearly hit a US aircraft carrier with a missile, new report shows. The incident, which occurred earlier it the year, but was only just reported in the October issue of CTC Sentinel (Combating Terrorism Center at West Point’s monthly publication), suggests that the Houthi missile came within just 200 meters of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.

“By some accounts, an ASBM [anti-ship ballistic missile] or other missile arrived at a very shallow trajectory, with minimal warning, without a chance for interception, and splashing down around 200 meters [656 feet]” from the Eisenhower. In other words: it was a close call.

The Houthis, whom Iran supports, have  been attacking international shipping lanes in the Red Sea, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and the Gulf of Aden ever since the war between Israel and Hamas began last October. The Eisenhower, along with other US and European vessels, were sent to the region to protect civilian ships traversing through the shipping lanes.

The Eisenhower, in particular, was quite busy during the deployment, expending “155 surface-to-air missiles, 135 land-attack cruise missiles, nearly 60 air-to-air missiles and 420 air-to-surface weapons during what is called a “historic” combat deployment,” Newsweek reported.

But the Eisenhower has been a target, as well. The Houthis, who have a diverse arsenal, including air, land, and sea drones, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles, have been pushing back against the American presence in the region. The Eisenhower has relied upon its Carrier Strike Group, which includes a cruiser and destroyers, for protection. “The cruiser and destroyers, which were armed with missiles for air defense, formed a defensive layer to protect the aircraft carrier,” Newsweek reported. “Meanwhile, fighter jets aboard the aircraft carrier, equipped with air-to-air missiles, can shoot down slow-flying drones and missiles.” Fortunately, the Eisenhower itself is equipped with self-defense weaponry, including surface-to-air missiles and gun systems for close-in threats.

Yet, the fact that low-tech drones and missiles, in the possession of a relatively rag-tag terrorist organization, can pose a legitimate threat to a multi-billion-dollar American supercarrier should be a point of concern – and speaks to the increased relevance of non-state actors in the post-Cold War global order. The aircraft carrier is a symbol for a nation’s prestige, military might, and technical prowess; that a rebel group armed with drones and missiles can threaten such a symbol perhaps transcends symbolism.

The supercarrier’s vulnerability to the Houthi rebels is also likely to exacerbate concerns over naval readiness for a confrontation with China. US strategy in the Indo-Pacific, where China has become increasingly assertive, depends upon successful aircraft carrier deterrence. Yet, to keep the carrier fleet safe from China’s (relative to the Houthi’s) sophisticated weaponry, America’s flagships may have a muted impact on any conflict.

But, frankly, the US public does not have, nor should have, the tolerance for the loss of a supercarrier. The human and fiscal toll implicit in the loss of just one supercarrier would be a shock to the conscious for a nation that has been able to engage in foreign conflict in a slow-burning, partially-committed sort of way for nearly two generations.

Harrison Kass is a defense and national security writer with over 1,000 total pieces on issues involving global affairs. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.

Image Credit: Creative Commons and/or Shutterstock. The Main image is USS Ford undergoing U.S. Navy 'shock trials'. 

The era of unrestrained free trade is over, and it’s not coming back. It’s not what the modern, interconnected world demands. Instead, a new era of trade policy is needed—one designed to bring prosperity to working people, address inequality between and within countries, create high-quality jobs, and promote resilient and sustainable supply chains. The Biden-Harris administration has started to make this transition—and with important results to show for it. Donald Trump, on the other hand, offers a return to his failed trade policies, although this time with even more chaos and disruption.

The last several decades of deregulation, corporate tax cuts, and unfettered liberalized trade turned out to be like an addictive drug, with the highs of GDP gains and a growing stock market obscuring the slow but steady decline of middle- and working-class communities. The era may have benefited global companies and the wealthy, and it helped to lower extreme poverty in a handful of countries. But too often, this came at the expense of the environment and workers elsewhere, as the “race-to-the-bottom” approach that defined the era reduced wages and disincentivized companies from protecting the environment or decarbonizing their production.

Eventually, the damage proved too much to ignore. The so-called “China Shock” characterized by a range of predatory Chinese exports cost the United States over 1 million manufacturing jobs. Regions with high concentrations of industrial workers fared the worst. In these communities, poverty rates increased, fertility rates declined, and social and political norms were upended. While some may blame this on trade itself, it is important to remember that these impacts were not the result of the innate human desire to exchange goods and services but rather of poor trade policy. The policy was based on the flawed assumption that government intervention in the economy was inherently negative and that free trade was always preferable to the alternative.

It doesn’t need to be this way, but better trade outcomes require better policies. And Trump has proven that he is incapable of delivering this sort of change. Why? Because his view of trade policy is extractive in nature. His outlook is fundamentally about demonstrating power—seemingly, his own personal power. His obsession with tariffs is not about creating better outcomes for working people, the environment, or the climate. Instead, he appears to view tariffs as a way to compel others—adversaries and allies alike—to grovel before him, offering concessions in exchange for lifting tariffs.

That may sound fine to some, but this strong-man approach to trade ruins opportunities to collaborate with international partners to address century-defining challenges like climate change, inequality, migration, and others—all of which require global solutions. Trump’s presidency consistently demonstrated why this approach failed. When faced with his impulsive tariff threats, other countries simply made promises they had no intention of keeping, as China did in its “Phase One” trade deal with Trump. In fact, a recent Peterson Institute study found China didn’t buy any of the $200 billion of U.S. exports it had promised. World leaders learned quickly that Trump was governed by headline chasing, which meant they could give him the headline he wanted and win all the details. And in trade policy, details matter—a lot.

Despite his continued promises, his tariffs and corporate tax cuts didn’t reorient global supply chains. The total number of manufacturing jobs was lower when he left office than when he began his term. The trade deficit exploded, and industries like semiconductors continued to lose market share to China. Now, he seems to think that with bigger tariffs and even more corporate tax cuts, the result would somehow be different.

Americans know that trade policy isn’t about asserting dominance or extracting concessions. And it’s certainly not about the personal power of any one person. Rather, it should be about leveraging global commerce in a way that makes our world more sustainable, our environment cleaner, and our workers more prosperous.

Trade policy, including strategic tariffs, can be (and should be) a force that creates and sustains high-quality jobs. It should align closely with other government tools—including regulation and procurement, as well as research and development—to form a holistic strategy for expanding the middle class and strengthening workers and their communities. It has not always been this way, but it can be—and that’s why leadership matters. That’s why values matter.  

The Biden-Harris administration has demonstrated that with the right mix of values and pragmaticism, a trade policy that puts working people and the middle class at the center can deliver real results. The administration’s transformational investments in future-forward industries, its expansion of “Buy American” provisions, use of export controls and targeted tariffs, and its commitment to both invent and domestically produce the next great technologies of the future have resulted in nearly a trillion dollars of private sector investment into U.S. manufacturing, and the creation of roughly 800,000 new manufacturing jobs. It has also caused the trade deficit with China to reach its lowest level in years.

As a nation, we can build on these gains by modernizing U.S. trade policy based on three reinforcing principles. First, ambitious standards related to workers’ rights, climate action, and respect for the rule of law should be required to receive the United States’ best trade terms. Second, tariff rates should be increasingly based on firm-level decisions, allowing individual exporters to receive better rates based on how well they treat their workers, recognize the collective bargaining rights of their employees, protect the environment, and decarbonize their production. Third, trade policy should closely align with a national investment strategy, ideally coordinated with like-minded partners, to ensure domestic manufacturers—and their workers—remain at the forefront of the industries that will define our future. 

This sort of strategy requires thoughtful and knowledgeable leadership on trade issues. It also requires that trade policy not be used for personal gain but as a lever in the service of our values and in coordination with America’s partners and allies.

Ryan Mulholland is a senior fellow for International Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Image: Shutterstock.com.

What You Need to Know: With an impressive combat record of 104-0, the American-made F-15 Eagle is renowned for its speed, maneuverability, and lethal firepower. Originating from the Vietnam War era, the F-15 was developed to rival Soviet MiG fighters and has proven its superiority in air-to-air combat.

-The latest iteration, the F-15EX, further elevates its capabilities, carrying over 13.5 tons of weapons and launching up to 12 air-to-air missiles.

-Nicknamed the "bomb truck," the F-15EX combines the Eagle's legacy with advanced technologies, ensuring the platform remains a formidable asset for the U.S. Air Force in the years ahead.

Renowned for its 104-0 combat record without a loss, the American-made F-15 Eagle remains a fan favorite among aviation buffs and military experts alike. The fourth-generation platform may be technically lagging behind the newer F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets, but the Eagle still holds its own when it comes to speed and armament power.

In fact, the F-15 remains the fastest air superiority fighter within any American military service. The jet’s air superiority is achieved through a combination of unparalleled maneuverability, range, weapons, avionics, and acceleration. These top-tier capabilities certainly contribute to the platform’s stellar combat record.

The Eagle’s prowess and development can be traced back to the early days of the Vietnam War when the Navy and Air Force were sorting out details for a joint future tactical aircraft. At the time, then-Secretary of State Robert McNamara tasked both services to create a singular platform that could fulfill the missions of both. The Soviets were flying the MiG-23 and MiG-25, which were considered to be exceptional fighters. Big-name manufacturers like North American Rockwell, Fairchild Republic, McDonnell Douglas, and General Dynamics all submitted proposals. The Air Force ultimately selected McDonnell Douglas’s design plan and the F-15 was born.

When the Eagle prototype took the skies, it achieved many “firsts.” The platform was the first of its kind capable of attacking multiple enemy targets at the same time from distances of up to 100 miles thanks to its cutting-edge air-to-air radar-guided missiles and advanced radar system. Notably, the jet was also the first of its kind to be able to accelerate straight up towards the sky directly after take-off due to its incredible acceleration speed.

United States Air Force Lieutenant Cesar Rodriguez shot down more Soviet MiG jets than any other pilot ever since the Vietnam War.

The revered pilot achieved his first two kills during the first Gulf War against a MiG-23 and MiG-29 both flown by the Iraqi Air Force. His third kill occurred at the end of the decade in the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

The F-15’s stellar combat record has contributed to the platform’s continued service in the USAF. The F-15EX is the latest variant to be introduced, equipped with cutting-edge capabilities that surpass its preceding Eagle airframes. Experts refer to this new Eagle as a “bomb truck” since it can carry more than 13.5 tons of weapons. Earlier this year, it was reported that this platform was able to carry and launch up to one dozen air-to-air missiles. Breaking records in terms of quantity and tonnage of ordnance carried is what makes the Eagle II such a lethal variant.

While the F-15 may be an aging variant, the incorporation of next-generation technologies into the latest variant will help it to serve the needs of the Air Force for years to come.

Maya Carlin, National Security Writer with The National Interest, is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel. You can follow her on Twitter: @MayaCarlin.

Image Credit: Creative Commons. 

What You Need to Know: Russia's Su-57 stealth fighter is making its debut at China's Zhuhai Airshow to attract international buyers, but instead of admiration, the aircraft has faced ridicule on Chinese social media.

-Event attendees were able to inspect the fighter up close, exposing numerous visible screws and poor fuselage panel joints that detracted from the Su-57’s intended stealth image.

-Comparisons to China's own J-20 Mighty Dragon highlighted these perceived flaws. While the aircraft will likely attract attention when it flies at the airshow, the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) now faces a PR challenge as photos and criticism of the Su-57 circulate online.

Russia continues to seek buyers for its Sukhoi Su-57 (NATO reporting name Felon) fifth-generation stealth fighter, and that explains why it sent a prototype to China, where it will be demonstrated at the 15th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, which will begin on November 12 outside the city of Zhuhai in the Guangdong province.

As previously reported, this is the first time that the Sukhoi Su-57 has been presented at the biennial airshow. The Kremlin likely expected that its highly-touted fifth-generation fighter would turn heads. It didn't count on Chinese social media, where the fighter was highly scrutinized and ridiculed.

"The oversight on the russian part was that they failed to organize a no-access zone for spectators, and the Chinese event visitors could freely come up unprecedentedly close to the Su-57 model demonstrated at the exhibition," Defense Express reported.

The aircraft was photographed in ways that Russia's adversaries might have once only dreamt of, and soon armchair pundits and aviation buffs weighed on every shortcoming they could spot.

"What especially catches the eye is the huge number of bolts holding together fuselage panels but this is no news, as previous models had the same look. A whole different matter is that the quality of joints fails to meet any reasonable expectations," the Daily Express added.

The result is that the aircraft didn't appear particularly stealthy on the ground, even as it was a prototype and not a serial production aircraft. Yet, commentators on TikTok were also quick to compare the Su-57 to China's domestically-built Chengdu J-20 Mighty Dragon.

"Lots of screws: Closer look at Russia's 5th generation Su-57 fighter jet at China's Zhuhai Airshow," wrote open source military news site Clash Report on X, sharing many of the same complaints as those on TikTok.

If the goal of sending the Su-57 was to raise awareness, get headline, and more importantly turn heads, then mission accomplished! The biennial airshow and aerospace trade expo doesn't kick off for a week and already the Su-57 is getting plenty of attention. While many of the attendees will still get to see the aircraft in flight – at least that's the current plan – and to see a static mock-up, which likely doesn't have the obviously apparent bolts and gaps, the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) still has some bad PR to deal with in the meantime.

Master showman P.T. Barnum (and not Elizabeth Taylor as many believe) may have famously quipped "There's no such thing as bad publicity," but plenty of celebrities and politicians would argue to the contrary. As goes military hardware, the publicity that the Su-57 has so received could only get worse if the Felon literally crashed and burned!

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.

Image Credit: Creative Commons and/or Shutterstock.

North Korean Troops in Russia: Benefits, but also Risks for Moscow and Pyongyang - It has been widely reported that thousands of North Korean troops, the exact number is unclear, are in Russia and that some 8,000 are now in Kursk where the U.S. government expects them to soon join Russian troops in the combat effort to expel Ukrainian forces from the portion of that Russian province still under Ukrainian occupation. 

Moscow brought North Korean troops onto Russian territory and even sent them to the battlefield because Putin anticipated benefits from doing so. Although the North Korean deployment is tiny compared to the number of Russian troops on the front lines, their presence might relieve the need for Moscow to redeploy its troops from inside Ukraine to Kursk. In addition, while the Kremlin may worry about the sensitivity of the Russian public to Russian casualties, North Korean casualties are not something that ordinary Russians will worry about. 

Finally, bringing in North Korean troops in response to Ukraine’s surprise seizure of Russian territory in Kursk may be intended to dishearten Ukrainians, especially since this raises the possibility that even more troops from North Korea and perhaps elsewhere might join Russia in fighting against them. 

For Pyongyang, the benefits of sending North Korean troops to Russia might include, as Michelle Ye Hee Lee pointed out in the Washington Post, much-needed cash for North Korea’s heavily sanctioned economy, Russian technological assistance for North Korean military production, including its nuclear program, and increased world attention for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which he reportedly craves. 

Some also fear that Kum Jong Un is sending his troops to Russia to gain battle experience which they might employ against South Korea. Perhaps he even sees sending North Korean troops to fight Russia’s enemies as obligating Moscow to send Russian troops to fight Pyongyang’s. 

This deployment, however, also involves potential costs for both Putin and Kim Jong Un. It may be that North Korean troops prove to be more trouble than they are worth if they do not fight effectively and coordination between them and Russian ones proves problematic, as some Russian troops have already acknowledged. It would also be embarrassing to both Moscow and Pyongyang if North Korean troops ended up defecting to Ukraine and then moving to South Korea. Seoul has already raised the prospect of responding to the deployment of North Korean troops to Russia by providing South Korean arms to Ukraine. 

Moscow and Pyongyang, though, are proceeding despite these risks, either because they do not see them as all that serious or because they believe the potential benefits outweigh the costs. 

Even if this calculation is accurate, other risks may be more difficult for Moscow or Pyongyang. While Putin has demonstrated that he is willing to accept high levels of Russian troop casualties, Kim Jong Un might balk at sending more North Korean troops if they end up being slaughtered in large numbers. Acquiring battlefield experience for possible use against South Korea, after all, is only useful if North Korean soldiers survive fighting against Ukraine. 

One risk that Putin runs is that inviting North Korean troops into Russia to fight against Ukraine opens the door to Kyiv inviting troops from other countries to Ukraine to fight against Russians. Even if most, or even all, NATO governments might not want to do this officially, “volunteers” from various NATO countries might arrive in increased numbers. 

Putin, though, may not worry about risk-averse NATO governments getting more involved in the Ukraine war. What should concern him, though, is what dependence on North Korean troops does to Russia’s image. Moscow’s dependence on Iran for armed drones and ballistic missiles as well as North Korea for artillery shells and now soldiers hardly enhances Russia’s image as a great power. 

As the war goes on, will Russia become even more dependent on others for arms and troops? What price will it have to pay for them? And what will happen if they cease to be forthcoming? 

The arrival of North Korean troops in Ukraine does not bode well either for Ukraine or for its Western backers. But it might not work out all that well for Russia or North Korea either. 

Mark N. Katz is a professor emeritus of government and politics at George Mason University, a global fellow at the Wilson Center, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Image Credit: Creative Commons. 

In the Middle East, putting out burning fires is a priority. Larger positive accomplishments are impossible as long as the bloodshed continues. However, avoiding the endless igniting and reigniting of more fires requires serious examination and recognition of the underlying combustible material, which is all too rare. It has long been observed and is still true that the regional policy of Israel—the country generating most of the flames—appears to be “all tactics and no strategy.” Something similar could be said about U.S. policy, notwithstanding the good intentions of its hitherto unsuccessful efforts to get a ceasefire.

The Middle East is a complicated place with many conflicts and rivalries, some of which intersect and overlap. The first thing to guard against in any discussion of underlying causes of the region’s instability is the all-too-common tendency to oversimplify and attribute all its troubles to a single cause.

But careful reflection about even just the current fires, let alone all the past ones, points to one factor that, more than any other, underlies the region’s violence and instability. That factor is the continued subjugation by Israel of Palestinians, the denial of national self-determination, and the occupation, blockades, and impairment of daily living that have gone with that denial.

The connection is most obvious regarding the horrors that have unfolded in the Gaza Strip during the past year, with suffering that includes tens of thousands of deaths. An earlier dismantling of some Israeli settlements left Israel in control of Gaza’s borders, airspace, and sea lanes, which it used to sustain a suffocating blockade that turned the Strip into the world’s largest open-air prison. A natural human imperative is to strike back at those responsible for imposing such conditions. Amid miserable circumstances, people feel they have little or nothing to lose by attempting to strike back.

The other fronts in what today has become multifront warfare in the Middle East stem from the oppression of the Palestinians. The Houthi regime in Yemen began its attacks on shipping in the Red Sea as a show of support for the beleaguered Palestinians of Gaza, leading the United States to intervene by bombing targets in Yemen. Without the dire situation in the Gaza Strip, the Houthis would have had no reason to attack Red Sea shipping, and they have made clear that their attacks will end when Israel’s carnage in Gaza ends.

The intense Israeli assault on Lebanon also grew directly out of the situation in the Gaza Strip and thus is another by-product of the subjugation of the Palestinians. Like the Houthis, Lebanese Hezbollah started firing rounds into Israel out of solidarity with the Gazans. This was probably the least that Hezbollah’s leaders figured they could do lest they seem indifferent to the suffering of the Palestinians. Hezbollah, aware of the costs it incurred in the last previous full-scale war with Israel in 2006, did not want another war with Israel in 2024. Before Israel escalated this year to another major attack on Lebanon, Hezbollah, similarly to the Houthis, linked the cessation of firing along the Lebanon-Israel border to a needed ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

It is the political situation involving repression of the Palestinians that is the prime mover of the instability and violence—not the existence, nature, or objectives of any group or combination of groups that Israel considers its enemies. The groups in question have responded to the policies of Israel much more than to its mere existence. The origin, rapid growth, and popularity of Hezbollah in the early 1980s owed much to its role as the self-declared defender of Lebanese against an Israeli invasion of the country in 1982. 

That invasion, like the current one, also had a direct tie back to the subjugation of the Palestinians. The principal Israeli objective in 1982 was to deal a heavy blow to the Palestine Liberation Organization, which at the time was resident in Lebanon. If there were no occupation of Palestinian land in need of liberation, there would have been no role for a Palestine Liberation Organization.

Similarly, Hamas is not the prime mover of Palestinian violence against Israel, as demonstrated by the violent resistance conducted by an alphabet soup of Palestinian groups beginning in the late 1960s, long before Hamas was founded in 1987. Hamas owes much of its later growth and popularity to the widespread perception among Palestinians that the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority has been a feckless auxiliary to the Israel occupation rather than an effective opponent of it. 

Another way in which Hamas owed some of its strength to the Israeli policy of preventing Palestinian self-determination was through Qatari financial support that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu facilitated. For Netanyahu, propping up Hamas as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority helped to keep Palestinian leadership divided and enabled Israeli leaders to keep asserting that they have “no partner” with whom to negotiate peace.

Then there is Iran, which is frequently and erroneously identified—by those promoting a monocausal explanation of the Middle East’s troubles—as the “real problem” in the region. Current tensions involving Tehran, in the wake of an Israeli aerial attack on Iran following Iranian retaliation for earlier Israeli attacks, again link back to the Palestinian problem. The most recent Iranian retaliation was for Israeli attacks that killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh while visiting Tehran and that killed Iran’s ally, Hassan Nasrallah, secretary general of Hezbollah. The killing of Nasrallah was part of the current Israeli offensive in Lebanon, which, as noted above, grew out of the Israeli-inflicted carnage in the Gaza Strip, which in turn is an outgrowth of the occupation and Gaza’s status as an open-air prison.

Iran’s regional policies, and specifically its policies toward Israel, have been largely reactive. To the extent that Iranian antipathy toward Israel is based on more than a response to Israel’s attacks on Iranian interests—and the constant and intensely expressed Israeli animosity toward Iran—the Palestinian issue is again central. The Iranian regime speaks out on that issue partly out of genuine sympathy for the beleaguered Palestinians but mostly as a way of cultivating influence with Arab populations, among whom the Palestinian issue still has much resonance.

Although the Iranian regime has voiced some extreme rhetoric on the subject that appears to reject any two-state solution, it would have no reason to keep talking up the issue if a settlement were reached that gave Palestinians self-determination. It instead would have good reason to decide that whatever was good enough for the Palestinians was good enough for Tehran—especially given how the salience of the issue among most Arabs would quickly fade if the Palestinians finally got their own state.

If one takes away the Palestinian issue and takes away the Israeli attacks that compel an Iranian response, Iran has little reason to reject a stable relationship with Israel. There would still be obvious ideological differences, but since the first several years after the Iranian revolution, Tehran’s regional policies have been driven much more by pragmatic geopolitics than by ideology. Iran, like Israel and Turkey, is a non-Arab state operating in a predominantly Arab region. Geopolitical considerations have led Iran in the past to find some common cause with Israel not only when the shah was in power but also under the Islamic Republic when William Casey manipulated the hostage crisis to win the 1980 presidential election for Ronald Reagan. There was also the Iran-Contra affair, in which Israel played a significant part.

Consider an alternate history in which Palestinians did get their own state, either soon after the Jews in Palestine got theirs in 1948 or after a relinquishing of Palestinian territory that Israel conquered in the war that it initiated in 1967. There still would be many rivalries and other sources of instability in the Middle East that are not rooted in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. There still would have been, for example, sectarian and tribal fissures in Yemen that would attract intervention from the likes of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. There probably still would have been the reckless expansionism of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. There still would be rivalries involving the Muslim Brotherhood and authoritarian Arab regimes that have underlain political instability in Egypt and the Gulf. There also would be small extremist elements that would reject the existence of Israel, viewing it as a manifestation of Western colonialism.

Yet, in other respects, this alternate Middle East would be a much different and far less violent place than the actual Middle East of the past several decades. The violence that has been committed in pursuit of Palestinian self-determination would not occur if self-determination had already been achieved. The far greater Israeli violence in pursuit of keeping Palestinians subjugated would not occur if Israel were no longer subjugating the Palestinians.

The energies of Palestinian political elites would be focused on competing for power in their own state. Palestinians with real power would not be the object of disdain that the feckless Palestinian Authority has become, and there would not be the motivation to resort to violent alternatives to that fecklessness. 

Hamas, which grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood, would not exist in the violent form we know today. Still, there would be a Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood that would compete for political power the way the branches of the Brotherhood in Tunisia and Jordan (and Egypt before Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s coup) compete for power in their countries. Even the Hamas we know has shown, when given a chance, its willingness and ability to compete successfully at the ballot box rather than with guns.

Palestinian leaders, whatever their ideological coloration, would have much to lose in this alternate Middle East universe if they were to turn toward violence against Israel, in stark contrast to the desperate, nothing-to-lose nature of much Palestinian existence today. U.S.-backed Israel still would be the most militarily powerful country in the region, capable of crushing any small Palestinian state that had gone rogue. The risk of losing their much-sought state would deter its citizens and leaders from any thought of going rogue.

Terrorism in this alternative Middle East would be significantly less than what the region has actually known, given how large a share of terrorism involving the Middle East has been driven by frustrated Palestinian nationalism. The situation in the alternate Middle East would be analogous to Irish nationalist terrorism after a peace agreement was reached in which the main nationalist movement Sinn Fein became part of a power-sharing arrangement in Northern Ireland and its militant wing, the Provisional Irish Republican Army, laid down its arms. Terrorism subsequently perpetrated by fringe extremist groups that rejected the peace agreement has been a small fraction of the violence that was occurring when the PIRA was still active.

In the alternate Middle East, the multiple wars in Gaza, including the devastating one that is ongoing, would not have been fought. Nor would the multiple wars involving Israel and Lebanon have occurred since each one derived from Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians. Differences between Israel and Lebanon would be limited to negotiable matters such as where to draw the boundary line in a Mediterranean gas field. 

As for what relations between Israel and other Arab states would be like in the alternative Middle East, one does not need to speculate. The Arab League peace initiative was adopted by all Arab states twenty-two years ago, has been repeatedly reaffirmed, and is still on the table. The initiative offers full normalization between the Arab world and Israel provided that Israel withdraws from the occupied territories—with the possibility of land swaps—provides for a “just settlement” of the Palestinian refugee problem and allows the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. The Arab neighbors are not out to destroy Israel. They are out to end the subjugation of their Palestinian brethren.

Of course, political leaders have to deal with reality, not with an imaginary alternative universe. Part of the current reality is a decades-long Israeli project of building Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, which has made the establishment of a Palestinian state more difficult than it would have been earlier. Some observers believe that it already has made a two-state solution impossible and that the realization of human and political rights for Palestinians can now be achieved only within a single state shared with Jewish Israelis. A successful one-state solution would confer all or nearly all of the benefits of the alternate Middle East described above.

Whether a two-state solution is still possible and whether a one-state solution could be devised that would satisfy the national aspirations of both Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Arabs is uncertain. However, those are questions that need to be actively and openly discussed, including by the U.S. government, with enough energy to drive toward the implementation of a solution. This means doing much more than ritually saying “two-state solution” as diplomatic boilerplate while doing nothing with U.S.-Israeli relations to bring any kind of solution closer to fruition.

What is most certain is that the Middle East will continue to be a violent place, with periodic paroxysms like it is undergoing now, as long as the subjugation of the Palestinians continues.

Paul R. Pillar retired in 2005 from a twenty-eight-year career in the U.S. intelligence community, in which his last position was as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. Earlier, he served in a variety of analytical and managerial positions, including as chief of analytic units at the CIA, covering portions of the Near East, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. His most recent book is Beyond the Water’s Edge: How Partisanship Corrupts U.S. Foreign Policy. He is also a contributing editor for this publication.

Image: Shutterstock.com.

What You Need to Know: The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program has faced considerable scrutiny, with critics citing high costs, maintenance dependencies, and limited survivability. Notably, some early models have already been decommissioned, despite originally intended 25-year service lives.

-However, recent reports suggest improvements in reliability, with Independence-class ships achieving a 96% operational efficiency. Advocates argue that LCS vessels should be judged as part of a broader joint force, not in isolation.

-Despite setbacks, the jury remains out on the LCS's ultimate value, with current performance improvements offering potential for fulfilling niche roles within the U.S. Navy’s fleet.

Look up the word “failure” in the dictionary, chances are you’ll see one of the definitions listed as “See Littoral Combat Ship (LCS).”

Okay, not really, but the U.S. Navy’s once much-ballyhooed LCS is now being almost universally derided as an expensive military boondoggle (even more so than the F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter and the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft). For example, one professional acquaintance of mine, a U.S. Coast Guard officer, told me on condition of anonymity that “They’re worthless.” And to think, when I was a Strategy & Policy Analyst with Navy Warfare Group/OPNAV N5I6 under the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon five years ago, the LCS was being trumpeted as the next big thing in naval technology.

However, for the sake of fairness & balance, we should ask ourselves: Was the LCS truly a complete & utter failure, or is there more to it than meets the eye?

There are two classes of LCS in the U.S. Navy arsenal, namely the Freedom class and the Independence class; sixteen of the former and nineteen of the latter have been completed. USS Freedom (LCS-1) was the lead ship of the first class, built by Fincantieri Marine Group, laid down on June 2, 2005, launched on September 23, 2006, and commissioned on November 8, 2008. The Freedom and her sister ships bear the following specifications and vital stats:

Displacement: 3.450 tons fully laden

Hull length: 387.6 ft (118.1 m)

Beam Width: 57.7 ft (17.6 m)

Draft: 14.1 ft (4.3 m)

Propulsion: four Rolls-Royce waterjets

Max speed: 47 knots (87 km/h; 54 mph)

Crew Complement: fifty core crew of commissioned officers and enlisted sailors; ninety-eight or more with mission package and air detachment crew.

Armament:    

-one × BAE Systems Mk 110 57 mm (2.2 in) gun.

-four × .50 caliber (12.7 mm) machine guns

-two × Mk44 Bushmaster II 30 mm (1.2 in) guns

-twenty-one × RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile surface-to-air Missiles (SAMs)

As for the Independence class, that one kicked off (appropriately enough) with the USS Independence (LCS-2), built by Austal USA, laid down 19 January 2006, launched 26 April 2008, and commissioned on 16 January 2010.

Displacement: 3.422 tons fully laden

Hull length: 418 ft (127 m)

Beam Width: 104 ft (32 m)

Draft: 14 ft (4.3 m)

Propulsion:   

-two × American Vulkan light weight multiple-section carbon fiber propulsion shaftlines

-four × Wartsila waterjets

Max speed: 44 knots (51 mph; 81 km/h))

Crew Complement: forty core crew (eight commissioned officers, thirty-two enlisted seamen) plus up to thirty-five mission crew

Armament:    

-one × BAE Systems Mk 110 57 mm gun

-one × Raytheon SeaRAM Close-In Weapon System (CIWS)

-four × .50-cal guns (2 aft, 2 forward)

-two × 30 mm Mk44 Bushmaster II guns

-eight × RGM-184A Naval Strike Missiles

-twenty-four × AGM-114L Hellfire missiles

In a nutshell, the LCS was afflicted by:

-Propulsion system failures

-Contractor-dependent maintenance

-Difficulties in swapping mission configurations

-(Allegedly) under-armed and unable to survive in hostile combat environments

Accordingly, several of the LCS warships—including LCS-1 and LCS-2 no less—have already been decommissioned, which is rather embarrassing when you consider that these vessels were originally slated to have a shelf life of twenty-five years … and even more embarrassing when you consider that the USS Independence alone has a total projected cost of $704 million … damn near triple the original projected cost of $220 million.

Moreover, the originally planned fleet of 55 LCSs was pared down to 35.

But before one writes off the Littoral Combat Ship, consider this from James Holmes of Real Clear Defense regarding the allegations of the platform lacking sufficient armament and survivability:

“One, as a general rule ships do not fight alone. They fight as part of a fleet and, assuming the battle takes place within reach of shore-based assets, as part of a joint force vying for command of the sea. Joint forces fight joint forces. And yet oftentimes the commentary over this or that platform seems to assume it will be thrown into the teeth of enemy firepower without support from the rest of the composite force. The idea seems to be that matching an individual platform’s capabilities against the worst an opponent can hurl against it lets you render a sound judgment of its fitness.”

Meanwhile, as Laura Heckmann points out in a March 26, 2024, article for National Defense, the remaining LCS ships have made remarkable strides in reliability:

“Capt. Marc Crawford, commodore of Littoral Combat Ship Squadron One, said as recently as 2020, 95 percent of maintenance checks were being handled by contractors, with maintenance execution teams handling 5 to 10 percent. So far in 2024, maintenance teams have taken over about 70 percent. ‘That in and of itself is a tremendous feat,’ he added … The latest triumph was an ‘unprecedented’’ 26-month deployment of the Independence-class USS Charleston to the Western Pacific, Crawford said … Four other Independence-class ships currently deployed to Seventh Fleet — Gabrielle Giffords, Manchester, Oakland and Mobile — are operating at a .73 materiel availability, “which means they’re operating at a 96 percent efficiency rate, which is fantastic,”[Cmdr. James] Hoey said.”

Long story short, the jury is still out on the Littoral Combat Ship. Time will tell.

Christian D. Orr is a Senior Defense Editor for National Security Journal (NSJ). He is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He has also been published in The Daily Torch , The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security, and Simple Flying. Last but not least, he is a Companion of the Order of the Naval Order of the United States (NOUS).

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Escalatory Choices and Regime Strength: The Sources and Consequences of North Korean Deployments in the Ukraine War -  North Korean military presence on Russia’s front lines with Ukraine is increasingly aimed at active combat roles. Initially, Moscow and Pyongyang may have planned to keep this deniable due to uncertainties about the value of deploying a small number of non-Russian-speaking foreign military personnel and potential diplomatic repercussions. Once these deployments were revealed, Russia and North Korea faced a choice: deny the reports as they likely planned, considering the issuance of Russian identity documents to North Korean military personnel, or acknowledge them.

Opting for denial would have required keeping the North Korean deployment limited and wrapping up operations before irrefutable evidence emerged. However, the revelation seemed to empower elements in both Moscow and Pyongyang that favored escalation. 

The two emerging allies decided that the reasons to keep the deployments limited had vanished and chose to admit their actions. They have since doubled down on the deployments, leaking more confirmations to the media. Now, North Korean leadership refers to Russia’s war against Ukraine as a “sacred war” that must be won, resonating with Russia’s persistent semi-official nuclear apocalypse rhetoric. Russia is encouraging Europeans, Americans, South Koreans, and others to step into the fray, which would support the Kremlin’s claim that it is fighting a powerful multinational coalition in Ukraine.

The increasing numbers of North Korean military personnel and their growing involvement in combat operations serve the interests of both nations. Initially cautious, Moscow may now sense an opportunity: if North Korean combat forces can be expanded to meaningful levels in the foreseeable future, it could eliminate the need to call up more Russian civilians to fight against Ukraine and signal to adversaries that Russia has access to an almost bottomless source of fighters. 

Moreover, if Moscow and Pyongyang can project the image of a successful offensive alliance, they may attract currently reluctant followers, such as Iran, not only to the front lines in Ukraine but also to projects like the Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa Alliance (BRICS), aimed at demonstrating alternatives to the West and a resolve to protect dictators’ interests.

For its part, North Korea has found a new source of cash and combat experience for its elite military units. Its armed forces can now identify the fittest and brightest combat survivors to place in command positions. Both Pyongyang and Moscow may have reasons to be upset with Beijing’s posture: North Korea resents China's lack of deference to its quest for status and autonomy, and Russia is frustrated with Beijing's limited willingness to defy Western pressure and unequivocally back its war effort. North Korean fighters in Ukraine represent a setback for China, which seemingly wants to keep its junior partners under close tutelage.

Most importantly, over the past year or so, North Korea has been shifting to a more intransigent posture. It has rhetorically abandoned the goal of Korean unity on Pyongyang’s terms, deployed new weapon systems, resumed ballistic missile launches, and considered fresh nuclear tests. 

On this path, overtly aggressive actions in Northeast Asia are too risky for Kim Jong Un due to the preparedness of the United States and its regional allies. This makes Europe an ideal place to test the resolve of North Korea’s adversaries, first and foremost, South Korea and the United States.

Kim Jong Un may also be testing the impact of participating in a shooting war on his regime’s strength. He is vacillating between commitment to the status quo and expansionist actions to raise the stakes. While it may be too risky to attack South Korea or destabilize East Asia, a gambit in Europe appears to be a safer experiment. Domestically, it can be spun as Kim defeating Western imperialists shoulder-to-shoulder with a great-power ally, Russia.

All of this is happening against the backdrop of mounting challenges faced by Ukraine in defending against advancing Russian troops. This is why concern is rising in the West about the possibility of the war becoming further internationalized. 

The pressure on Ukraine’s Western partners and U.S. allies in Asia to respond is increasing, making verbal pushback insufficient. Some form of escalatory response may be inevitable if North Korea is not convinced by China to roll back its new battlefield partnership with Russia. We may witness the inauguration of a Poland–South Korea security partnership, unfathomable several months ago. 

In any case, the gap between the two theaters, Asia and Europe, is being bridged, especially as Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea become increasingly interested in a show of U.S. resolve in Ukraine.

The readiness to acknowledge North Korean deployments instead of backtracking on a risky operation may indicate Russia's unwillingness to seek negotiated solutions, contrary to the Kremlin’s claims of being open to ending the war through negotiations. In the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Moscow faced a similar dilemma of denying or accepting the evidence presented by Washington of Soviet missile deployments in Cuba. 

Once the die was cast and brinkmanship chosen as a response, runaway escalation scenarios were avoided only at the last minute. Moscow may soon realize again the difficulty of reversing escalatory choices that involve smaller allies and considerations of status and prestige.

Mikhail Troitskiy is a visiting scholar at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University, and a visiting professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. 

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The Zhuhai Airshow, China’s premier aerospace trade expo, will commence on November 12 and may see the official debut of the Shenyang J-35A, a carrier-based variant of the FC-31, showcasing China's growing fifth-generation aircraft capabilities.

Expected to operate from the PLA Navy’s Type 003 Fujian carrier, the J-35 lacks the VTOL capability of the U.S. F-35, though it will likely benefit from the Fujian’s electromagnetic catapult system. Equipped to handle an 18,000-pound payload, the J-35’s armaments include PL-10 and PL-12 missiles.

Russia’s Su-57 is also set to appear, underscoring China’s advancements in stealth aviation.

The 15th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition – commonly known as the Zhuhai Airshow as it takes place in the prefecture-level city in the Guangdong province – will kick off on November 12. The biennial event, which began in 1996, has become the largest airshow and aerospace trade expo held in China.

There is already speculation that the event could be used to officially introduce the Shenyang J-35A, the carrier-based variant of the Shenyang FC-31. It was on Monday that China military aviation researcher Rupprecht Denio shared a photo on X.com of the tail section of a J-35A with the number "75" to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF).

The J-35A won't be the only fifth-generation aircraft that could take flight at the Zhuhai Airshow, as a Russian Sukhoi Su-57 (NATO reporting name Felon) also arrived in the coastal city on Sunday and is expected to take part in a flight demonstration. It marks the first appearance of Russia's multirole stealth fighter at the Chinese airshow.

Beijing has kept its cards close to the chest when it comes to the J-35, but it is believed that the aircraft will operate from the Type 003 Fujian, the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) aircraft carrier, which has been undergoing sea trials this year.

"The J-35 is considered to be China's answer to America's F-35 Lightning II warplane. The J-35 is China's other fifth-generation warplane (the more well-known Chinese fifth-generation warplane is the Chengdu J-20 'Mighty Dragon,' which is more analogous to the Air Force's F-22A Raptor). Unlike the American F-35, China’s J-35 lacks the vertical, takeoff, and landing (VTOL) capability that the F-35s possess," wrote Brandon J. Weichert for The National Interest. "The VTOL feature comes in handy for F-35 warplanes operating aboard aircraft carriers."

That latter fact is notable as the Type 003 Fujian is the first PLAN carrier to be equipped with electromagnetic catapults, but as previously reported the J-35 has been tested aboard the older Type 001 Liaoning and Type 002 Shandong, which each employ a ski jump ramp for launching aircraft. Whether the J-35 will operate from those carriers isn't known.

The FC-31/J-35 prototypes are believed to employ the RD-93 engines, while China is also understood to be working on an improved engine, the WS-13E, which is expected to offer 22,000 pounds of thrust and the WS-13 could possibly replace the RD-93 on the FC-31.

Currently, the J-35 is expected to be able to handle a payload of 18,000 pounds. Internally, the carrier-based fighter can handle four munitions weighing a total of 4,400 pounds. Externally, the FC-31 has six hardpoints, capable of carrying 13,000 pounds. The jet's main armaments include the PL-10 short-range missile and the PL-12 medium-range air-to-air missile.

Hopefully, more details about the fighter will come into focus during the upcoming airshow.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.

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What You Need to Know: Australia’s Collins-class submarines face significant setbacks due to widespread hull corrosion, with only one currently operational as the remaining five await urgent repairs or upgrades.

-Maintenance delays, partly from labor strikes, compound the challenges for Australia’s diesel-electric subs, underscoring the urgent need for new capabilities through the AUKUS pact’s nuclear-powered submarines planned for the mid-2030s.

-Despite current woes, the Collins class was once a technological leap, with advanced stealth, automation, and endurance, adapted for Australia’s vast and varied waters. The subs remain essential for intelligence and defense, with future operations extending potentially to Eastern Australia.

Australia is a key partner in the AUKUS program with the United Kingdom and the United States, and its first pillar calls for the building of a new class of nuclear-powered submarines that could be operated by the Royal Australian Navy beginning in the mid-2030s. That can't soon enough, as Australia's fleet of six Collins-class diesel-electric submarines has been mostly sidelined due to "unprecedented hull corrosion," the Australian Broadcast Corporation first reported.

Currently, just one is fully operational as the others are undergoing "urgent" repairs or are set to complete planned upgrades. Two of the boats are now at the Osborne shipyard in Adelaide on Australia's southern coast awaiting maintenance – which has been delayed due to an ongoing labor strike – while three other subs are at Western Australia's Garden Island naval base.

ABC reported that if necessary one of those boats could be returned to service but only if absolutely required as the subs haven't received certification.

"Defence continues to meet government-directed levels of operational availability for the Collins-class submarines. Defence has more than one boat available for operations if required," a spokesperson with the Australian Ministry of Defence told the ABC, adding, "Owing to operational security reasons, defence does not confirm precise locations and availabilities of specific platforms."

Though the Collins class is now in the headlines for its maintenance woes, it should be remembered that it was a major technical leap in submarine technology. The Collins class was one of the first submarines to be completely designed by computers, incorporating elements from five generations of submarines designed and built by the Swedish Navy. The boats feature a high-performance hull form, highly automated controls, low indiscretion rates, high shock resistance, optimal noise suppression, and an efficient weapons handling and discharge system.

In addition, the diesel-electric boats were the first to be constructed in Australia, prompting widespread improvements in Australian industry. The class of submarines was developed from the Type 471 subs designed and built by the Swedish Navy, and the lead boat was launched in August 1993 and commissioned in Adelaide in July 1996.

The submarines were developed to travel distances while also being able to operate in varying environments from cool southern oceans to warm, shallow tropical waters. As a key component of the Australian Defence Force, the six submarines are capable of serving as an intelligence-gathering platform in peacetime while being employed as a forceful opponent in wartime.

Each of the subs is powered by three Hedemora/Garden Island Type V18B/14 diesel engines, three Jeumont Schneider 1,400kW 440V DC generators, and one MacTaggart Scott DM 43006 hydraulic motor for emergency propulsion. Submerged, the boats can move silently on electric power supplied by banks of specially developed lead-acid batteries, which can be charged by three onboard diesel generator sets. The Collins class can also travel at speeds greater than twenty knots submerged and ten knots surfaced.

The submarines are currently based at Fleet Base West in Western Australia, and it is unclear if any will operate from the announced facility in Eastern Australia.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.

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What You Need to Know: Russia’s Su-57, its fifth-generation stealth fighter, made a notable entry into China, landing at Taiyuan airport for the 15th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition. While Moscow may use the airshow to promote the Su-57’s capabilities to potential foreign buyers, it is unlikely China will become a customer, as it focuses on its domestically-produced J-20.

-The Su-57E export variant will be showcased in hopes of attracting buyers like Algeria, India, and Turkey, though confirmed deals remain elusive.

-Interestingly, Russia’s absence of the Su-75 Checkmate at this and other recent events suggests its indefinite postponement.

Russia's fifth-generation stealth fighter hasn't been seen over the skies of Ukraine, but the Sukhoi Su-57 (NATO reporting name Felon) did cross over Chinese airspace and according to a report from that state-run China Daily, landed at Taiyuan airport on Sunday. The Su-57 is just one of several Russian-made aircraft that are expected to be exhibited at the upcoming 15th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, which will begin on November 12 outside the city of Zhuhai in the Guangdong province.

The biennial event has become the People's Republic of China's largest international airshow, and in recent years has been used to showcase Beijing's great leap forward in military aviation.

This will be the first time that the Sukhoi Su-57 has been presented at the airshow, as well as the first time the fighter has even landed in China. That fact has led to conjecture that Moscow could grant Beijing a much closer look at the fifth-generation fighter. The Kremlin has sought to find foreign buyers as well as partners for the multirole fighter, and while China and Russia have forged closer ties, it would seem a serious reach to believe that Moscow would look to Beijing as either a customer or even joint producer of the aircraft.

China has a tendency to copy Russian designs, but there is also the fact that Beijing may not want to be tied to Moscow with the aircraft. Though such a deal would enable China to hedge its bets, it is likely still looking to go all in with its domestically-developed Chengdu J-20 Mighty Dragon.

A more likely explanation for the Su-57's presence at the China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition is to highlight the Su-57's capabilities in a relatively friendly yet still foreign environment.

There has been speculation that the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), a subsidiary of the state-owned Rostec military conglomerate, will present a mock-up of the Su-57E, the export variant of the fifth-generation fighter. It was in September that the export model was presented at the inaugural Egypt International Airshow.

Rosoboronexport has continued to court foreign buyers for the Su-57E, but without much interest although Moscow has claimed to have received requests from potential client states including Algeria, India, Malaysia, and Turkey. Sales have remained in stealth mode, as in unseen, although Algeria has been rumored to operate one Su-57.

The Su-57E made its debut at the Aero India Show in Bangalore in 2023, and it reportedly is equipped with Russia's most advanced avionics. Other details surrounding the new prototype remain sparse, and production and sale of these fighters are very unlikely – at least in the near future.

As this is now the second major international airshow to see the Su-57 present, but without any mention of the Su-75 Checkmate, we can assume that aircraft isn't even vaporware anymore. It has simply faded away.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.

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What You Need to Know: The U.S. Navy’s Zumwalt-class destroyers, initially praised for their stealth and advanced technology, have become an expensive misstep. Despite their $24.5 billion cost, these ships face persistent functionality and performance issues, leading the Pentagon to consider adding hypersonic weapons and lasers to salvage the platform.

-Critics argue this approach follows the “sunk cost fallacy”—continuing investment in a failed program.

-Instead, focusing on long-range hypersonics deployed via submarines would better address evolving threats in contested waters. Some experts recommend retiring the Zumwalts, emphasizing taxpayer value and prioritizing effective defense solutions.

The United States Navy’s Zumwalt-class destroyers were touted as the next evolution in destroyer technology. These otherworldly-looking warships, thin with angled hulls to enhance stealth, have turned out to be little more than a boondoggle. Ironically, the destroyers are named after U.S. Navy Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, probably one of the greatest and most innovative leaders of the postwar Navy. 

But the ship that is named after him is a floating disaster. It’s as bad as the Navy’s other modern boondoggle, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS).

But there might be a new lease on life for this massively expensive platform. Recently, the Pentagon has publicly ruminated about the prospects of installing hypersonic missile launchers, and possibly lasers, on the Zumwalt-class destroyers. Certainly, this would make these otherwise pathetic warships relevant. At the same time, though, one is entrusting highly experimental weapons systems being installed upon an unreliable platform, like the Zumwalt-class. 

It’s not a good idea. It’s one of those ideas that sounds great on paper until it’s tried. Like the entire concept of a stealth destroyer in the first place.

The fact of the matter is that the Zumwalt-class is a failed program that was allowed to continue far longer than it ever should have been because of the sunk cost fallacy that dominates the minds of the Pentagon’s program managers and Congress. A sunk cost fallacy is a cognitive bias that occurs when an individual continues investing money, time, and effort into a project or program long after it has any benefit to that individual or group engaged in the sunk cost fallacy. 

America needs a robust hypersonic weapons capability. It needs directed energy weapons (DEW), too. However, these systems need not be tied to a failed platform. 

What the Pentagon is doing is no different than what the Russians are doing with their running joke of an aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov. 

They view these platforms as an investment that has not yet fully realized its potential and, if only a little bit more time, effort, and money were spent on the program, it’d eventually correct itself. This has been the mindset of the Russian Navy with the Admiral Kuznetsov.

Economists call it a “sunk cost fallacy” for a reason. It is truly a mistake, faulty logic, that the U.S. taxpayers have already been asked to spend $24.5 billion on three warships, costing around $8 billion per unit, that doesn’t work. After twenty years of trying to make these systems work, the Navy cannot. 

One report has determined that the warships have underperforming engines, their weapons don’t function, which is why the Pentagon is talking about replacing them with experimental hypersonic and laser weapons, and those much-ballyhooed stealth capabilities do not live up to the hype, or the cost.

In other words, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it will still be swine. 

At a time when American taxpayers are struggling to pay for their most basic needs, Washington needs to do its best to properly manage the tax dollars they are taking from those hard-working taxpayers. Striving to keep the Zumwalts operational, despite all the data proving how bad of a program this has been, is an insult to every single taxpayer who could have used that money far better than the Navy has, or will.

What’s more, the United States is facing increasingly contested environments wherein its surface warship fleet will be made essentially obsolete. Thus, the Navy needs to develop longer-range hypersonic weapons that allow for the surface warship fleet to stay safely out of the range of anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) defenses that will ultimately sink their warships. Especially if the stealth capabilities on the Zumwalt-class destroyers are not all they’re cracked up to be. 

The Navy should focus on building hypersonic cruise missiles that can be launched from their guided-missile submarines, in much the same way the Russians have done with their Yasen-class submarines. If the Americans are serious about hypersonic weapons for the Navy, placing them on any surface warship is a mistake. It is a massive error to place them on the failed Zumwalt-class destroyer. 

In my humble opinion, just mothball these floating mess-heaps before something truly catastrophic befalls these warships.

Brandon J. Weichert, a National Interest national security analyst, is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, the Asia Times, and The-Pipeline. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His next book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine, is available for purchase wherever books are sold. Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon

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The Ukraine War: A New Battleground for Two Koreas: North Korea’s decision to send troops to Russia represents a significant shift in the regional and global geopolitical landscape, with consequences that extend far beyond the Ukraine conflict. While many may focus on the immediate effects in Europe, the true stakes lie in the impact on security in Northeast Asia, particularly the Korean Peninsula. 

In exchange for its military support, North Korea stands to gain several benefits that could reshape its economic and military capabilities. Key among these is hard currency, with reports suggesting that North Korean soldiers are being paid around $2,000 each per month. This financial boost, combined with potential economic aid from Russia in the form of food and energy, will allow Kim Jong Un to advance his domestic agenda, particularly his ambitious 10x20 rural development plan. Crucially, it enables the regime to mitigate the harsh effects of international sanctions, bolstering Kim’s domestic leadership. 

However, the most consequential gain for North Korea may come in the form of advanced Russian military technology. Access to improved intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), hypersonic weapons, nuclear submarines, and space weapons could significantly enhance Pyongyang’s military capabilities. This bolstered deterrent could embolden North Korea in its military activities against South Korea and the United States, potentially destabilizing the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia as a whole. 

Perhaps most alarming is the possibility that this deployment reflects a deeper commitment under the military treaty signed between Pyongyang and Moscow in June 2024. This agreement could allow North Korea to dispatch its soldiers four months after signing, while also opening the door for Russia to send troops or military equipment to the Korean Peninsula. 

Such a move would escalate tensions further, potentially drawing both U.S. and Russian forces into a direct standoff on the Korean Peninsula, with dire implications for global security. 

South Korea views North Korea’s involvement in Russia as a direct and escalating threat. Seoul's National Intelligence Service (NIS) has publicly disclosed details about North Korean troop deployments in Russia, highlighting the gravity of the situation and attracting global attention. Seizing this opportunity, Seoul is now pursuing enhanced military cooperation with NATO and the United States, particularly as the U.S. approaches its presidential election. There are concerns that a post-election shift in U.S. foreign policy could leave South Korea vulnerable, especially if the incoming administration seeks engagement with North Korea. 

One of the emerging strategic options for South Korea may involve direct military support for Ukraine. While the idea of sending troops or weapons to Ukraine was once unthinkable, it is becoming a viable option as Seoul looks to counterbalance the growing North Korea-Russia axis. 

Fighting North Korea in a third country may offer South Korea a way to avoid direct conflict on the peninsula, reducing the risk of catastrophic damage at home. South Korea's decision could ignite debates in Europe and the U.S. about the potential deployment of troops to Ukraine, potentially reshaping their military strategies toward Russia. Meanwhile, the long-standing debate over whether South Korea should develop its nuclear weapons is gaining momentum, driven by North Korea's advancement of nuclear technologies with Russia's support.  

For North Korea, its involvement in the Ukraine war has become a matter of regime survival. Pyongyang is betting heavily on a Russian victory, but if Russia loses, North Korea’s vulnerability would increase significantly due to the loss of a crucial economic and military ally. 

For South Korea, the Yoon administration faces high-stakes challenges. With President Yoon Suk-yeol’s approval ratings languishing at around 22-24%, North Korea’s actions could offer an opportunity to rally conservative support. By emphasizing the growing threat posed by North Korea’s alliance with Russia, Yoon could bolster his image as a strong defender of both global and national security against Pyongyang and Moscow. 

The war in Ukraine has now drawn the Korean Peninsula into its orbit, and the implications are far-reaching. Both North and South Korea are positioning themselves within a broader great power competition that is reshaping global security dynamics. 

Sangsoo Lee is an Associated Fellow at the European Center for North Korea Studies at the University of Vienna and a founder of Strategic Linkages (SL. Dr. Lee was the Deputy Director and head of the Stockholm Korea Center at the Institute for Security & Development Policy (ISDP). His areas of interest are Security and Conflict issues in Northeast Asia, with a focus on the North Korean nuclear crisis and inter-Korean relations. Dr. Lee holds a PhD in Northeast Asian Studies from Peking University and has been a Visiting Researcher at the United Nations University (UNU-CRIS) (2007) and at the London School of Economics (LSE) (2011).

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