Diplomacy & Crisis News

Michael Peck

MiG-25, Eurasia

Forget being imprisoned in cattle class on a Boeing 747, your knees jammed into your face for eight hours. Think New York to London in two. That’s traveling in style.

Here's What You Need to Know: The MiG-25 needed lots of maintenance, especially of its engines. Most likely a business jet would have ferried only senior officials, who would have appreciated the convenience and ignored the cost. No doubt it would also have been popular with its flight and ground crews. The Foxbat was dubbed “Flying Restaurant” by Soviet personnel who enjoyed partaking of the 132 gallons of pure alcohol needed for braking, cooling and de-icing.

The Soviet MiG-25 Foxbat was many things. An interceptor, reconnaissance aircraft and a fast, high-altitude, record-setting bogeyman that scared the pants off Western air forces in the 1970s.

But a MiG-25 business jet? Coffee, tea or vodka served by an Aeroflot stewardess at 60,000 feet, the Earth below hurtling past your window at three times the speed of sound? Forget being imprisoned in cattle class on a Boeing 747, your knees jammed into your face for eight hours. Think New York to London in two. That’s traveling in style.

The idea never got off the drawing board. But it was under serious consideration, according to Yefim Gordon and Sergey Komissarov, authors of Unflown Wings: Unbuilt Soviet/Russian Aircraft Projects Since 1925.

The aircraft would have carried five to seven passengers or up to 2,000 pounds of cargo at a cruising speed of Mach 2.35—that’s 1,552 miles per hour. MiG would have lengthened the wings as well as added extra fuel capacity to extend passenger jet’s range to 2,200 miles, versus about 1,100 miles for a Soviet Air Force MiG-25P.

A photo of a model in Unflown Wings shows a stretched-out MiG-25 with a larger and wider forward fuselage. “Behind the flight deck was a passenger cabin with one-abreast seating for six and an aisle, with a port-side entry door immediately aft of the flight deck,” Gordon and Komissarov write. “The cabin could be converted for cargo carriage by removing the seats.”

The concept was the brainchild of some imaginative soul at the MiG design bureau. His bosses were interested, and the Soviet air force somewhat so. MiG conducted preliminary design work on the project from 1963 until 1965.

“However, the relatively short range, limited usage of the aircraft and the large amount of design work needed all consigned against the Mikoyan biz-jet and the project was abandoned,” according to Gordon and Yefimov, who believe that this might have been the world’s first supersonic business jet.

It was not to be—and that was probably fortuitous. The Concorde proved a commercial flop due to fuel costs, as well as concerns about its noise and environmental impact.

While the Soviets had plenty of oil and couldn’t have cared less about pollution, how economical would it have been to run commercial flights with a fighter jet on steroids? Supersonic transport across the vast Soviet empire would have been nice, but a 2,000-mile range would have been somewhat limited.

The MiG-25 needed lots of maintenance, especially of its engines. Most likely a business jet would have ferried only senior officials, who would have appreciated the convenience and ignored the cost. No doubt it would also have been popular with its flight and ground crews. The Foxbat was dubbed “Flying Restaurant” by Soviet personnel who enjoyed partaking of the 132 gallons of pure alcohol needed for braking, cooling and de-icing.

Still, next time you find yourself sentenced to flying in coach, close your eyes and imagine whisking to your destination at three times the speed of sound in a converted fighter jet.

If only it could be so.

Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

This article first appeared in December 2020.

Image: Wikipedia.

Adam Leong Kok Wey

U.S. Navy,

It is not surprising that today, when confronted with potential risks of a peer competitor challenging the status quo of free and open maritime passage as provided under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the United States is continuing its strategic policy to actively safeguard its interests in Southeast Asia as it did 190 years ago.

The Biden administration’s ongoing blitz of diplomatic visits—including Vice President Kamala Harris’s visits to Vietnam and Singapore at the end of August; Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s virtual meetings in early August with Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) officials; and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s trips to Vietnam, the Philippines, and Singapore (where he gave the IISS Fullerton Lecture) in July—indicates that the United States is coming back strongly in the Southeast Asia region, purportedly to balance China and to uphold the rules-based order in the South China Sea.  Nevertheless, a lesser-known event that had occurred 190 years ago provided the catalyst for the United States’ first strategic involvement in the Southeast Asia region.

In February 1831, a U.S. merchant ship, Friendship, arrived at Kuala Batu off the coast of Sumatra island to conduct its lucrative pepper trade. The Strait of Malacca runs between the eastern side of Sumatra and the western coastline of Peninsular Malaysia. While smaller boats were used to transport pepper onto Friendship moored off the coast, it was attacked by pirates which killed its crew and plundered its cargo of opium and gold. The Friendship’s captain, Charles M. Endicott, and a few of his men who were ashore when the attack took place survived and escaped. With the help of other U.S. merchantmen in the area, he managed to recover his ship and sailed back to Salem, Massachusetts, to report the incident. U.S. president Andrew Jackson was enraged and decided to send a retributive naval operation to inflict “chastisement”—to punish the pirates and deter further piracy. This was the first U.S. naval operation to keep maritime sea lanes safe in Southeast Asia.

A U.S. Navy frigate, USS Potomac, commanded by Commodore John Downes was sent to Sumatra on August 19, 1831. The mission was known as the First Sumatran Expedition. The USS Potomac was armed with a combination of thirty-two carronades and thirty-five long guns, and had close to 500 sailors and marines on board.

The frigate arrived off Kuala Batu on February 5, 1832, and found that there were five forts guarding the coastline. Commodore Downes met with a local chieftain and was informed that the pirates will not be receptive to negotiations.  Downes decided to attack the coastal forts at Kuala Batu on February 7, 1832. The USS Potomac, disguised as a Danish merchantman, managed to sail close to Kuala Batu and landed a force of 282 marines and bluejackets. The U.S. naval party promptly started burning the pirates’ boats and assaulted the forts but met fierce local resistance that led to brutal hand-to-hand fighting. The Potomac provided covering fire with its cannons causing substantial damage to four of the coastal forts. The marines and bluejackets succeeded in defeating the pirates on the ground; The rest of the locals retreated into the surrounding jungle. An estimated 150 pirates and two Americans were killed in the amphibious raid.

After crushing the pirates, the U.S. Marines and bluejackets were withdrawn. The Potomac continued to bombard Kuala Batu’s last remaining fort further inland and killed another 300 locals before the survivors sued for peace with Downes. Other local chieftains, fearing for their own fates, also asked for mercy from Downes who made them to agree not to attack any U.S. vessels in the area or else face similar punishment. The Potomac, having accomplished its mission, sailed away and completed its circumnavigation of the globe.

Thus ended the First Sumatran Expedition. Nonetheless, six years later, another U.S. merchant ship, the Eclipse, was attacked at Sumatra near Trobongan village and its crew was massacred.  The United States sent a Second Sumatran Expedition which reached Sumatra in 1839. The U.S. naval flotilla of two frigates destroyed Kuala Batu and Muckie. Afterward, there were no more major pirate attacks on U.S. merchantmen in the Strait of Malacca area for a long time.

These U.S. strategic missions in the 1830s initiated by the pirate attack on Friendship were the first military interventions to protect maritime security in Southeast Asia. 

Today, the United States is again flexing its political and military muscles to ensure international waters in the region are safe, secure, and free for all to use, subscribing to the global rules-based order. It is not surprising that today, when confronted with potential risks of a peer competitor challenging the status quo of free and open maritime passage as provided under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the United States is continuing its strategic policy to actively safeguard its interests in Southeast Asia as it did 190 years ago. Fortunately, today America is not alone. The United States now has many allies and security partners in the region that share common security interests.

Adam Leong Kok Wey is associate professor in strategic studies and the Deputy Director of Research in the Centre for Defence and International Security Studies (CDISS) at the National Defence University of Malaysia. His latest book is  Strategy and Special Operations: Eastern and Western Perspectives published by NDUM Press (2021).

Image: Flickr.

Ethen Kim Lieser

Stimulus,

Anywhere between five and ten percent of those eligible for the checks have yet to see the direct cash in their bank accounts.

Despite the lack of new updates put out by the Internal Revenue Service, know that there are Americans out there who are still waiting to get their hands on the $1,400 coronavirus stimulus checks that are an essential part of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.

The latest estimates suggest that approximately one hundred seventy million checks—representing a sizeable value of $400 billion—have already headed out to eligible Americans since the passage of the stimulus bill in the spring. Anywhere between five and ten percent of those eligible for the checks have yet to see the direct cash in their bank accounts.

Options Available

However, do take note that there are still options available to those who have been relegated to the sidelines for this third round of stimulus. Perhaps it is high time to finally talk to a live human being by dialing the IRS Economic Impact Payment phone number, which is 800-919-9835.

Yes, there’s no doubt that many callers will be left on hold for a considerable amount of time, but for some individuals, this is indeed a necessary step they have to take.

Do be aware that the IRS is juggling several other responsibilities concurrently, not to mention the thirty-five million tax returns that it is currently working through. “IRS live phone assistance is extremely limited at this time,” states the agency’s website.

File Tax Return

Keep in mind that those individuals who recently filed their tax returns were able to see the money land in their bank accounts several weeks after. For months, the IRS has pressed Americans to file an extension and complete the returns if they haven’t already.

“Although payments are automatic for most people, the IRS continues to urge people who don’t normally file a tax return and haven’t received Economic Impact Payments to file a 2020 tax return to get all the benefits they’re entitled to under the law, including tax credits such as the 2020 Recovery Rebate Credit, the Child Tax Credit, and the Earned Income Tax Credit,” the IRS says.

Filing a tax return will also help out with collecting missing stimulus checks from the first two rounds, as the ultra-handy Recovery Rebate Credit has been added to the forms.

“If you didn’t get any payments or got less than the full amounts, you may qualify for the Recovery Rebate Credit and must file a 2020 tax return to claim the credit even if you don’t normally file,” the IRS notes.

Most eligible Americans should have received the confirmation letter known as Notice 1444 from the IRS stating that their stimulus check was issued. If it is still missing, these individuals should immediately request an IRS payment trace.

Know that the same action can also be initiated if the IRS “Get My Payment” tool shows that the payments have been transferred but the balance has not changed in the recipient’s bank account.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Washington state-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.

Image: Reuters

Jeff Groom

Bombers, Asia

The technological marvels unveiled in the First Gulf War including the precision weapons that were supposed to transform warfare into simply pushing buttons were soundly defeated by sandals, superior will, and AK-47 rifles.

In the final scene of the Vietnam classic Platoon, the Bravo Company Commander, Bravo 6, authorizes a “danger close” airstrike on his position as a last desperate measure against being overrun by a North Vietnamese Army (NVA) nighttime attack. As Marines and Air Force heavy-lift stage a rerun of escape from Saigon and help evacuate U.S. embassy staff as well as thousands of desperate Afghans, the Pentagon last week completed what appears to be a final large scale bombing campaign using primarily B-52 Stratofortress bombers.

In an ironic twist, it was the B-52, the now almost seventy-year-old airframe, that was one of the first aircraft on the scene in Afghanistan after 9/11. As told in the book Horse Soldiers, U.S. Special Forces partnered with the Northern Alliance to call in precision airstrikes on entrenched Taliban positions in the fall of 2001. What are “precision” strikes? Don’t bombers drop dozens of bombs to saturate an area like the raids on Dresden and Tokyo in World War II? Back then yes; today, not so much at all really.

Looking past the shocking headlines as Afghanistan reverts to Taliban control, it is worth analyzing just how outdated and irrelevant the entire concept of the “bomber” actually is. Like many other pieces of military hardware, technology has rendered them redundant and irrelevant, and only the fiscal inertia of the war state propels them forward at their current scale. In addition to the B-52, the pork includes the B-2 Spirit, the B-1 Lancer, and the latest “bomber” being developed by Northrup Grumman, the B-21 Raider.

Beginning with redundant, the bombing raids of World War II were conducted with what are today called “dumb bombs.” Accuracy was a function of release point above and offset to the intended target; once released only ballistics had a say in terminal accuracy. It was simply a numbers game: in order to effectively destroy a given target, a large number of bombs would have to be dropped in order to have a high enough statistical chance of hitting it. Despite their firepower, carpet bombing with dumb bombs was notoriously inaccurate. In 1944 forty-seven B-29s raided the Yawata Steel Works in Japan, but only one bomber scored a hit, with one on its bombs.

As Vietnam came to a close, industry and defense contractors pioneered laser-guided bombs. The original dumb bombs were retrofitted with a laser seeker head and guidance fins that steered the weapon based on the reflection of a high-powered laser designator being deployed either on the ground or from aircraft. Their use in the Gulf War was a resounding success. In fact, “only about 9 percent of the munitions dropped in the Gulf War -- 7,400 of 84,200 tons -- were precision-guided, largely because stockpiles were limited. But that 9 percent was responsible for 75 percent of the damage done to strategic targets.”

Following laser bombs came precision bombs, or Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) paired to a Global Positioning System (GPS). The target location, derived from either ground-based forward air controllers or plane targeting pods, is entered into the bomb’s guidance computer and, after release, it steers itself to the location. Today, there are dozens of different kinds of smart munitions, but the vast majority of those dropped in the last twenty years are one of six types of bombs. In order of 500-, 1000-, and 2000-pound bombs, the laser-guided series are the GBU-12, GBU-16, and GBU-10 and the JDAM series are GBU-38, GBU-32, and GBU-31, respectively. 

What does all this have to do with bombers and redundancy? The capability of carrying precision munitions isn’t limited to the above-mentioned bombers. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter can carry both laser and GPS weapons, as can the ubiquitous F-18 Hornet, the F-16 Fighting Falcon, the A-10 Warthog, and many other current tactical jets in service. Even the propeller-driven AT-6, a military-grade version of the T-6 trainer, can carry both types of precision weapons. Due to high collateral damage and civilian casualties, the era of carpet bombing is long over. Now bombers use their payload capacity almost exclusively for smart weapons. The B-2 Spirit can carry eighty 500-lb GBU-38 JDAMs.

Bombers using dozens of precision weapons like this B-52 strike in 2018 are impressive indeed. But it isn’t anything that a squadron worth of tactical aircraft armed with the same weapons could also do and have done countless times in the last twenty years. The point is that no matter what airframe the smart bomb falls from the same motto holds true for precision weapons: one target, one bomb.

Where current tactical aircraft lag considerably compared to bombers is range. As demonstrated in Kosovo under Operation Allied Force in 2000, six B-2 Spirits flew from their home base in Missouri to the Balkans and back to drop the opening bombs of the operation (refueling with tankers when needed). Possibly seeing the writing on the wall, all U.S. Air Force bombers were incorporated into Global Strike Command in 2009.

Having the capability to play global whack-a-mole on a moment’s notice is definitely a tool worth keeping on hand. But how many bombers are required to do this? The Air Force plans to buy around 100 B-21 Raiders at $550 million per plane to replace the B-2 Spirit and B-1 Lancer, complementing about fifty-eight current B-52s in service. Recall the B-2 was originally pared down from 132 planes to twenty-one due to cost overruns and, more sanely, the end of the Cold War. But the New Cold War with Russia and China has provided the casus belli for the current scale of the bomber force. Lieutenant General David Nahom, Air Force deputy chief of staff for Plans and Programs, called near-peer competition the “driving force” for a two-bomber fleet.

The convenience of planning for a big war then leads to the irrelevance of the bombers’ other trump card: nuclear strike. With the capability to launch nuclear weapons in intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) or from Ohio-class boomer submarines, the days of air-delivered nuclear weapons are clearly nothing more than nostalgia for Strategic Air Command, which was decommissioned in 1992. The thought of U.S. bombers in 2021 flying nuclear missions against near-peer competitors who also have similar weapons to retaliate is the final hilarious culmination of mutually assured destruction.

Finally, precision weapons have proven difficult to use precisely in low-intensity conflicts when the enemy and populace are hard to differentiate. As reported by Glenn Greenwald, during a five-month period in Afghanistan, nine out of ten persons killed by drone Hellfire missiles were not the intended targets. And smart bombs are only as smart as the coordinates they attack. Entering friendly GPS positions as target positions results in predictable fratricide. Modern “bombers” are nothing more than strategic-level precision weapon pack mules.

It is now obvious the United States will take an official loss in Afghanistan. The technological marvels unveiled in the First Gulf War including the precision weapons that were supposed to transform warfare into simply pushing buttons were soundly defeated by sandals, superior will, and AK-47 rifles. As America reassesses its missions and military following this loss, it would be prudent to significantly downsize the bomber force to a scale that matches today’s technological and strategic realities.

Jeff Groom is a former Marine officer. He is the author of American Cobra Pilot: A Marine Remembers a Dog and Pony Show.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Stephen Silver

Social Programs,

But not everyone is convinced it's a good idea. 

In addition to all of the benefit increases that have passed since the start of the pandemic, the government announced this week that it will “modernize” and increase benefits, to those in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). 

The Department of Agriculture (USDA), which supervises the program, announced a re-evaluation of the Thrifty Food Plan, a metric used by the government to calculate the SNAP benefits. As a result of this re-evaluation, the average benefit will increase beginning October 1, when the new fiscal year begins. 

The USDA started a review of the Thrifty Food Plan, as directed by the 2018 Farm Bill, and the process was expedited by an executive order by President Joe Biden shortly after he took office. It resulted in the first “cost adjustment” in the programming since 1975. 

“A modernized Thrifty Food Plan is more than a commitment to good nutrition—it’s an investment in our nation’s health, economy, and security,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said as part of the announcement. “Ensuring low-income families have access to a healthy diet helps prevent disease, supports children in the classroom, reduces health care costs, and more. And the additional money families will spend on groceries helps grow the food economy, creating thousands of new jobs along the way.”

The “data-driven” review took into account four “key factors,” according to the USDA announcement: “current food prices, what Americans typically eat, dietary guidance, and the nutrients in food items.” 

“To set SNAP families up for success, we need a Thrifty Food Plan that supports current dietary guidance on a budget,” Stacy Dean, Deputy Undersecretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services, said in the USDA release. “Too many of our fellow Americans struggle to afford healthy meals. The revised plan is one step toward getting them the support they need to feed their families.”

The change by the USDA has not exactly been met with universal praise. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, in particular, was less than complementary. 

“USDA hilariously says that Americans need to consume more calories because they are fatter. It has also adjusted its food basket to include more protein and dairy, which happen to be food products whose prices are increasing most. Milk prices were up 6.2% year-over-year in July and meat 5.9%,” the newspaper said. 

“Like other Great Society programs, food stamps have done nothing to reduce poverty and little to improve public health. They have encouraged government dependency, which is the Democrats’ political goal. Recall how Democrats fought attempts by the Trump Administration and GOP states to modestly tighten work requirements and eligibility rules. Between 2016 and 2019, the food-stamp rolls shrank by nineteen percent and benefit spending fell sixteen percent.” 

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

Image: Reuters

Ethen Kim Lieser

economy, Americas

Be aware that a person cannot report a death online.  

When older Americans get set to retire, know that there is invariably that one pressing question that all must answer: when should a person start claiming Social Security benefits?  

For many experts, the most prudent financial decision would be to hold off on filing for the benefits as long as possible—preferably till age seventy.  

According to the Social Security Administration (SSA), “workers planning for their retirement should be aware that retirement benefits depend on age at retirement. If a worker begins receiving benefits before his/her normal (or full) retirement age, the worker will receive a reduced benefit. A worker can choose to retire as early as age sixty-two, but doing so may result in a reduction of as much as 30 percent.”  

The agency concluded that “starting to receive benefits after normal retirement age may result in larger benefits. With delayed retirement credits, a person can receive his or her largest benefit by retiring at age seventy.” 

However, what a person cannot ever control is when one dies, which will naturally have a huge effect on how much Social Security money an individual will collect over his or her lifetime. If this occurs, then it’s the closest survivors who will have some decisions to make.  

Who Reports Death? 

First, know that is important for the SSA to be alerted as soon as possible after a beneficiary dies. But be aware that a person cannot report a death online.  

“In most cases, the funeral home will report the person’s death to us. You should give the funeral home the deceased person’s Social Security number if you want them to make the report,” according to the SSA website, adding that one can call 1-800-772-1213 to report a death.

The agency also noted that the deceased is not due any Social Security benefits for the month that the death occurred. If payment was made, then that money would need to be returned.

However, there is a “one-time lump-sum death payment of $255 (that) can be paid to the surviving spouse if he or she was living with the deceased; or, if living apart, was receiving certain Social Security benefits on the deceased’s record,” the website states.

“If there is no surviving spouse, the payment is made to a child who is eligible for benefits on the deceased’s record in the month of death,” according to the website.

Survivor Benefits 

As for a spouse or qualifying dependent who already was receiving money based on the deceased’s record, the benefit will automatically convert to survivor benefits. Once the widow or widower reaches full retirement age, they are legally entitled to the deceased spouse’s full benefit.

But if the widow or widower qualifies for Social Security on their own record and the monthly payments are higher, they have the option to switch to their own benefit at any time between ages sixty-two and seventy.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Washington state-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.  

Image: Reuters

The Organization and its 12 peacekeeping missions around the world must fully embrace new technology in the face of ever-changing challenges, the UN chief said on Wednesday as he outlined to the Security Council his Strategy for the Digital Transformation of UN Peacekeeping.

Sebastien Roblin

Tanks, Middle East

It was not the leap forward Moscow was hoping for. 

Here's What You Need to Know: The underwhelming combat test in Syria highlights why robot tanks haven’t shown up on the battlefield sooner, despite the component technologies have been available for decades. Developing reliable long-distance communication links, sophisticated autonomous operation algorithms, and well-integrated sensors and targeting systems to allow a distant operator to identify and engage targets all pose significant practical challenges.

In May 2018, the Russian military revealed it had combat-tested its Uran-9 robot tank in Syria. The diminutive remote-control tank is noted for its formidable gun and missile armament.

However, just a month later Defense Blog reported that Senior Research Officer Andrei Anisimov told a conference at the Kuznetsov Naval Academy in St. Petersburg that the Uran-9’s performance in Syria revealed that “modern Russian combat Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) are not able to perform the assigned tasks in the classical types of combat operations.” He concluded it would be ten to fifteen more years before UGVs were ready for such complex tasks.

This stands in contrast to a source that told Jane’s that the system had “…demonstrated high performance in an operational environment.”

Robotic armored vehicles are in development across the world, with the U.S. Army planning for its Bradley fighting vehicle replacement to be “optionally-manned.” However, Russia arguably has more aggressively moved towards combat-deploying UGVs. In 2015 Russia’s Military Industry Committee announced its objective of deploying 30 percent of Russia’s kinetic weapons on remote-control platforms by 2025. Current projects include the MARS six-seat infantry carrier, the robotic BMP-3 Vihr (“Hurricane”) fighting vehicle, robotized T-72 tanks, and tiny Nerekhta UGVs that can evacuate wounded soldiers, fire a machine gun or kamikaze charge enemy positions.

The Russian Army reportedly procured twenty-two Uran-9s in 2016 from the JSC 766 UPTK company. The robo-tanks are apparently attached to support infantry and engineer units by engaging in reconnaissance and fire support missions, rather than being concentrated in independent maneuver formations. The Uran-9 is also being offered for export by the state-owned Rostec Corporation and was photographed being inspected by General Min Aung Hlaing, commander of Myanmar’s armed forces.

The first UGVs were developed a century ago during World War I. By the 1930s the Soviet Union deployed two battalions of remote-controlled “Teletanks” armed with flamethrowers and demolition charges which saw action during the 1939-1940 invasion of Finland. Today, UGVs such as Russia’s Uran-6 have are being successfully employed to clear mines and IEDs in the Middle East and Central Asia. However, few UGVs have been operationally deployed for such complex tasks as detecting and engaging enemy forces.

The rhombus-shaped Uran-9 weighs twelve tons and measures five meters long, one-fifth the weight and just over half the length of a T-90 tank. A diesel engine allows the vehicle to accelerate to twenty-two miles per hour on highways, or six to fifteen mph off-road. The robot’s steel armor plates reportedly protect it from shell splinters and small-arms—though implicitly it may remain vulnerable to other relatively common weapons such as RPGs or heavy machine guns.

Two Uran-9s are transported to the battlefield by a large truck, and then radio-controlled by an operator and commander in an armored 6x6 Kamaz truck. Thermal and electro-optical sights and sensors mounted atop the turret allow the operators to “see” through the tank. There is also a hand-held control unit option.

A “Skynet” Unified Tactical Management system allows up to four Uran-9s to network together, either spread out up to four miles apart or strung together in a column formation. The robo-tanks do have some limited autonomous capabilities if they lose their signal—particularly for maneuvering around obstacles when moving along pre-programmed paths. Some sources claim the Uran-9 may also be able to detect, identify and engage enemy forces without manual human direction.

The robo-tank’s turret mounts a rapid-firing 2A72 30-millimeter autocannon that can blast light-armored vehicles and infantry to deadly effect, as well as a 7.62-millimeter machine gun. Furthermore, a firing rack can extend from the turret to launch two or four 9M120-1 Ataka anti-tank missiles which can spin away to bust tanks up to 3.7 miles away while guided by a laser. And top that off, a further six to twelve Shmel flamethrower rockets with air-combusting thermobaric warheads can be mounted on two rotating launchers on top of the turret to flush out entrenched infantry up to a mile away. If there’s a threat from low-flying aircraft, those rockets can be swapped out for Strela or Igla short-range anti-aircraft missiles.

You can see the Uran-9s moving about and shooting in one of several music videos.

However, all that impressive firepower is only useful if the Uran-9 and its operators can actually detect enemy forces and fire accurately at them—and that turned out to be a problem when field-tested in Syria.

To start with, according to Anisimov, the Uran-9’s thermal and electro-optical sensors proved incapable of spotting enemies beyond 1.25 miles—one-third of the 3.75-mile range in daytime or half that at night officially claimed. He also stated, “The OCH-4 optical station does not allow detecting optical observation and targeting devices of the enemy and gives out multiple interferences on the ground and in the airspace in the surveillance sector.”

Furthermore, the sensors, and the weapons they guided, were useless while the Uran-9 was moving due to a lack of stabilization. When fire commands were issued, on six occasions there were significant delays. In one case, the command simply didn’t go through.

The Uran-9’s tracked suspension also was reportedly frequently bedeviled by unreliable rollers and suspension springs, requiring frequent repairs that effectively limited the duration of any deployment.

Arguably most problematic of all, however, was the discovery that the remote-control system, which officially had a range of 1.8 miles, only proved effective up to 300 to 400 meters in a lightly urbanized environment. Over such short distances, the control vehicle is likely to become exposed to enemy fire.

Unlike high-flying drones, remote-controlled vehicles are susceptible to having their control signals disrupted by hills, buildings and other terrain features. During field-testing in Syria, this caused Uran-9s to suffer seventeen lapses of remote control lasting up to one minute, and two events in which they lost contact for as long as an hour-and-a-half.

The problem grows more acute when considering that modern war zones like Syria already experience extraordinary electromagnetic activity from communication signals and drone-links—as well as extensive jamming, spying, and other forms of electronic warfare. The bandwidth consumed by the Uran-9s might not only limit how many can be deployed in a given sector but may make them a conspicuous target for hostile electronic attacks, despite the manufacturer’s claims that the data-links are hardened against such interference.

According to Jane’s, Rostec is still working to improve the Uran-9’s range, response-time, and data-bandwidth. During the huge Vostok 2018 military exercise, the robot-tanks were reportedly deployed to provide overwatch fire support for Uran-6 de-mining UGVs and combat engineers while they cleared simulated defensive obstacles.

Theoretically, the Uran-9 could be useful at reducing the risk of losing human lives in high-risk operations such as scouting out the location of concealed enemies or providing covering fire for assaults on well-defended positions. However, unless reliability can be improved and the “tether” distance between the robo-tanks and their command vehicles can be extended, the Uran-9s would be of limited military use except in static, set-piece scenarios.

In a sense, the underwhelming combat test in Syria highlights why robot tanks haven’t shown up on the battlefield sooner, despite the component technologies have been available for decades. Developing reliable long-distance communication links, sophisticated autonomous operation algorithms, and well-integrated sensors and targeting systems to allow a distant operator to identify and engage targets all pose significant practical challenges.

Thus, the Uran-9’s unflattering debut will serve as a valuable, if cautionary, learning experience for engineers working to perfect forthcoming robotic ground warfare systems.

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

This article first appeared in January 2019.

Image: Reuters

Four days after a devastating 7.2-magnitude earthquake hit south-western Haiti, the level of destruction and desperation is becoming increasingly evident, the United Nations said on Wednesday, noting that the death toll has surged to nearly 2,000. 

Allowing the International Criminal Court to prosecute a former leader for war crimes could be a pivotal moment in the transition to democracy.

Sebastien Roblin

U.S. Navy, Global

Although the stealthy and heavily armed Seawolf allows it to dodge sonar, it cannot avoid its hefty price tag. 

Here's What You Need To Remember: Demand for the Seawolf’s high-end capabilities may rise, however, due to the return of an undersea arms race involving the United States, Russia, and China.

Late in the 1950s, the Soviet Navy’s nuclear-powered submarines—starting with the November-class attack submarine—could dive twice as deep as most of their American counterparts and often had higher maximum speed. But they had a conspicuous flaw: they were a lot noisier.

That meant American subs were routinely detecting and trailing the Soviet submarines from a distance without being detected in return—a huge advantage had there ever been a conflict. In the 1980s, however, the Soviet Navy began to improve its acoustic stealth game. The Japanese Toshiba and Norwegian Kongsberg firms had sold propeller-milling technology to the Soviets that allowed for a much quieter seven-bladed propeller on its new Akula-class attack submarines.

U.S. Navy studies concluded the Akula exceeded the mainstay of the U.S. submarine force, the Los Angeles class, for acoustic stealth and roughly matched the Improved Los Angeles variant. As the Pentagon was flush with money during the Reagan administration, in 1983 the Navy began designing the biggest, baddest—and fastest and quietest—attack submarine possible to restore its edge over the Soviet Navy.

The resulting Seawolf laid down by Electric Boat in October 1989 had a wider hull than the 7,000-ton Los Angeles, displacing over 9,000 tons submerged and measuring 108 meters in length. Whereas the Los Angeles carried 37 torpedoes in four tubes, the Sea Wolf could lug fifty heavy-weight 533-millimeter Mark 48 torpedoes or Harpoon anti-ship missiles, which it could launch through eight over-sized 660-millimeter torpedo tubes. (The tubes size was meant to future-proof in case the Navy adopted larger weapons. It didn’t.) The Seawolf could also use the tubes to launch surface-attack Tomahawk missiles.

The Seawolf submarine was built entirely out of higher-strength HY-100 steel so that it could endure dives as deep as 490 meters. Its sail (conning tower) was reinforced for operations Arctic ice, where Soviet ballistic-missile submarines were known to lurk. Moreover, its S6W pressurized water reactor gave the Seawolf an extraordinary maximum speed of 35 knots (40 miles per hour), allowing it to chase down disengaging adversaries.

But most impressive were the Seawolf’s advancements in acoustic stealth: a Seawolf was an order of magnitude quieter than even the Improved Los Angeles boats at 95 decibels. Oceanic background noise averages 90 decibels.

Even better, the Seawolf’s propeller-less pump-jet propulsion system allowed it to maintain acoustic stealth even when cruising a brisk 20 knots, whereas most submarines are forced to crawl at 5-12 knots to remain discrete. Its huge 7.3-meter diameter spherical sonar array on the bow was supplemented by wide-aperture flank arrays and TB-16D and TB-29 towed arrays. These feed sensor data to the Seawolf’s BSY-2 combat system, which can engage multiple targets simultaneously using Mark 48 torpedoes directed either via a wire connected to the sub, or using their own organic sonar.

Thus, the Sea Wolf was designed as the ultimate submarine-hunter: stealthier, more heavily armed, and able to match or exceed its adversaries in speed and maneuverability.

These exquisite capabilities came at a steep price—namely $33 billion for twelve Seawolves, cut down from the initial plans for 29. Adjusted for 2018 dollars, that comes out to nearly $5 billion per sub, three times the cost of the Los Angeles boats. The HY100 steel also particularly suffered extensive weld-cracking problems, necessitating additional reconstruction.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Seawolf’s premium capabilities and expense could hardly be justified as large numbers of Russian submarines rusted away at their docks. Thus the Seawolf order was downsized to just three submarines which launched between 1995 and 2004: the Seawolf, the Connecticut, and the Jimmy Carter, numbered SSN-21 through 23. All three are based on the Pacific Ocean at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor in Washington State.

The last boat, the Carter uniquely was modified at an extra cost of $887 million into the ultimate spy and special operations submarine. Its hull was lengthened by 30 meters to incorporate a special Multi-Mission Platform that can carry divers or manned or unmanned underwater reconnaissance vehicles which can be deployed using special locks. The 12,000-ton Carter also boasts thrusters allowing it to maneuver more precisely while in treacherous shallow waters and ocean floors. It is also understood to carry instruments allowing it to tap the undersea cables through which the internet and other long-distance communications travel.

Naturally, the Carter’s clandestine activities remain a secret, though its reception of numerous unit citations for unspecified reasons suggest an eventful operational career. It’s known to have deployed an aerial drone to spy on North Korean coastal artillery, and it returned to port in 2017 flying a black pirate flag—traditionally flourished by a submarine returning from a patrol in which it has scored a victory.

In fact, all of the Seawolf-class submarines remain shrouded in secrecy, with very few photos or articles released to the press. What reports are available suggests the subs frequently traverse under the polar ice of the Arctic Ocean, at times testing specialized sonars and communications equipment.

None of the Seawolf subs are known to have engaged in combat, however—unless you count the attack of a polar bear on the Connecticut's rudder after it surfaced through the Arctic in 2003. You can see a picture of the engagement taken via the periscope here.

Meanwhile, more affordable ($1.8 billion each) Virginia-class submarines better suited for littoral engagements are entering service, retaining many of Seawolf class’s advanced features such as the stealthy pump jets while ditching some of the bulk and gold-plating and making greater use of off-the-shelf technologies. Later Virginias also sport vertical launch cells for rapid land-attack capabilities.

Demand for the Seawolf’s high-end capabilities may rise, however, due to the return of an undersea arms race involving the United States, Russia, and China. China’s submarine fleet will likely soon exceed America in numbers, though the majority of it consists of shorter-range diesel-electric submarines, and even its nuclear submarines are considered to be significantly noisier than their U.S. counterparts. Russia continues to operate stealthy Akula and Borei-class boats and is developing improved successors as well as Poseidon strategic nuclear torpedoes designed to destroy coastal cities.

Thus the U.S. Navy reportedly sees the beefier, more heavily armed characteristics of the Seawolf as a model for its next SSN(X) submarine—even if it comes at a similar cost of $5.5 billion per submarine.

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

This piece first appeared in 2019 and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

Sebastien Roblin

Cold War, Americas

If you assume nuclear weapons will be used, you would want to be sure your planes and tanks can survive to keep fighting.

Key point: During the early days of the Cold War, it was assumed that nuclear weapons might well be used in the next war. Naturally, the U.S. Air Force needed to test the durability of its aircraft. The results of these tests and the durability of the XF-90 might shock you. 

In 1945, the U.S. Army Air Force issued a requirement for a “penetrating escort” jet that could accompany comparatively ponderous B-29 and B-50 strategic bombers all the way to targets over the Soviet Union. It wanted that jet to be capable of supersonic speeds, boast a combat radius of 900 to 1,500 miles, and for the sake of versatility, also be capable of hitting ground targets.

The Air Force’s first operational jet, the Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star, was a reliable workhorse but its straight-winged configuration limited its potential at high speeds. Kelly Johnson, the chief designer at Lockheed’s innovative Skunk Works facility in California, initially thought to overcome this limitation with a delta-wing configuration, but this would have degraded lift and thus low-speed performance. He iterated through sixty-five different concepts before settling on using swept-wings, which delay the formation of shockwaves at high speeds.

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

The needle-nose XF-90 retained the basic contours of the F-80, but with a pointed needle-nose, 35-degree swept wings and horizontal tail stabilizer, and a vertical tail stabilizer that could move forward and backward.

The jet’s side-mounted Westinghouse J34 turbojets would eventually include the Air Force’s first afterburners, which allow pilots to inject fuel straight into the jet pipe for bursts of added speed, though at a cost to fuel efficiency. Six 20-millimeter M39 cannons mounted in two rows under the nose would serve for armament, while wingtip fuel pods extended the XF-90’s range to a projected 2,300 miles.

As Chuck Yeager only achieved the first manned supersonic flight on October 14, 1947, Johnson’s team could only hypothesize that supersonic speeds would impose extreme stress on the airframe. This led them to over-compensate by using extremely high-strength 75T aluminum alloy instead of the standard 25T.

This made the XF-90 as tough as “bridge girder,” resulting in one of the largest and heaviest single-seat fighters ever made at the time. It weighed nine tons empty, comparable to the C-47 cargo planes that dropped paratroopers over Normandy, or a modern F-16 jet. The XF-90’s aluminum skin could withstand twelve times the force of gravity, while most modern fourth-generation jets are rated for nine Gs.

Johnson also incorporated relatively new elements including an ejection seat, wingtip fuel tanks that extended range to 2,300 miles, and Fowler flaps. These last can extend horizontally, increasing wing surface and lift at little cost to drag, as well as bend down vertically to induce more drag.

Lockheed built two prototypes, the XF-90 numbered 46-687, and an XF-90A #46-688 with an afterburning J34-WE-15 engine—the first U.S. fighter to be designed with the now-standard technology.

On June 3, 1949, test pilot and former aerial racing champion Tony Levier took the XF-90 out for its first flight. However, the J34’s engines proved underpowered, leaving it slower than the Air Force’s excellent F-86 Sabre fighter jet and resulting in long takeoff and landing distances. The afterburner-equipped XF-90A only boosted maximum level speed to 665 miles per hour, a disappointing performance for a plane dubbed ‘the big-breasted turkey.’

However, the XF-90 could attain more impressive speeds while in a shallow dive. In a fascinating article by Jorge and Karen Escalona for Air & Space, Lockheed engineer Ernest Joiner recalled:

“The test program was to conduct power-on dives to work up to the so-called sound barrier. We were on the radio with Tony as he made a dive at fairly low altitude. We could see the airplane on the other side of the dry lakebed. It disappeared in the haze. At that moment we heard a tremendous explosion.

There is no doubt that both Kelly and I thought that the airplane had augured in. I was afraid that Kelly was going to have a heart attack. Within a very short time Tony called in on the radio. Talk about relief! He had dived the airplane to Mach 1.12 and everything was fine. You have to realize that we hadn’t heard a sonic boom before.”

The XF-90 reportedly achieved supersonic speeds fifteen times. However, in August 1950 the XF-90 was pitted in a fly-off against the McDonnell Douglas XF-88 Voodoo, which used the same two J34 engines but weighed only six tons. The XF-90 promptly lost the competition.

However, the XF-88 fared little better in the long run, as the tactical airpower demands imposed by the Korean War led the Air Force to abandon its long-range escort fighter project. The XF-88 would eventually evolve into the F-101 Voodoo, the reconnaissance variant of which saw extensive action during the Vietnam War.

Ironically, that same year, the XF-90 was catapulted to fame as the then super-popular Blackhawks comic books series made it the steed of choice for the titular squadron of ace pilots. The single-engine “F-90B” was featured on the cover of issue #68 and even had its schematics compared to a Soviet MiG-15 fighter in issue #52. Starting in 1957, the artists switched to a sleeker rendition of the XF-90 with a mid-fuselage wing.

The reality was less glamorous for the XF-90. In 1952, XF-90 46-687 was shipped to the NACA (predecessor to NASA) testing facility in Cleveland, Ohio where its sturdy aluminum frame was subject to stress tests until it was apparently destroyed.

The Pentagon had even harsher treatment in store for 46-688, which was moved to the Frenchman’s Flat testing range in Nevada. In an era when nuclear war seemed imminent, the Pentagon wanted to know just how likely parked aircraft were to survive a nuclear first strike by enemy bombers—as you can see in this old documentary footage.

So on April 15, 1952, a B-50 bomber dropped a 1-kiloton Mark 4 nuclear bomb just a half-mile away from the XF-90, with its nose pointed towards ground zero. Inspection afterward revealed the jet to be cracked but intact, in need of 106 hours of repairs. You can briefly see post-strike footage here.

A week later, a 33-kiloton nuke was dropped on the same spot—this time, dinging the XF-90A’s nose.

Finally, on May 1, a 19-kiloton bomb blasted the XF-90, which was this time rotated perpendicular to the shockwave. The detonation blasted off its tail and landing gear and seared and warped its wings. The contaminated hulk was then transferred to Nevada Area 11 as part of a training exercise.

The XF-90A might well have rusted away into obscurity in the desert had not scientist Robert Friedrich recognized the irradiated wreck while flying overhead. In the late 1980s, he lobbying to have the unique jet preserved for display.

Finally in 2001 specialists in hazmat suits disassembled the jet down to its rivets, spraying away the radioactive sand encrusting it and evicting a colony of antelope squirrels that had nestled inside. They found the J34 engines in surprisingly intact condition.

The decontaminated parts were transported via a huge C-5 Galaxy transport plane to the U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton Ohio, where it was decided to preserve its nuke-blasted condition rather than fully restore it. The airframe currently remains there in storage.

While the XF-90 was not a successful design, it gave U.S. engineers their first experience developing a clean-sheet jet with afterburning engines, ejections seats, and Fowler flaps. For every famous jet fighter like the F-86 Sabre or F-16 Falcon, there is often a connective sinew of prototypes pushing the technological envelope that never make it into service, whether due to teething issues or external factors.

Ironically, seventy-years later, the Air Force has returned to the same concept it ordered for the XF-90: it plans for its sixth-generation stealth jet to be a “Penetrating Counter-Air” fighter to protect stealthy but slow B-2 and B-21 bombers deep over enemy airspace.

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

Image: Creative Commons.

Ethen Kim Lieser

Child Tax Credit,

If the Senate Budget Committee’s proposal gains approval, it will also extend the spectrum of who is covered and will aim to take out all tax liability for those government-issued payments.

For millions of cash-strapped American parents with multiple children to take care of amid the ongoing pandemic, the current third round of $1,400 coronavirus stimulus checks approved under President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan likely did little to assuage their financial pain.

However, there appear to be brighter days ahead, as these same parents could be in line to see even bigger payments from the expanded Child Tax Credits starting next year.

If the Senate Budget Committee’s proposal gains approval, it will also extend the spectrum of who is covered and will aim to take out all tax liability for those government-issued payments.

More importantly, for those who are wishing that these expanded credit payments won’t have an end date, the proposal will essentially make them permanent, paid both in installments and as a lump sum.

As it currently stands, due to Biden’s stimulus bill, the federal government now allows parents to collect as much as $3,600 per year for a child under the age of six and up to $3,000 for children between ages six and seventeen. This all means that a $250 or a $300 cash payment for each child will head into the bank accounts of eligible parents every month through the rest of the year.

Democratic Support

Several high-ranking Democratic lawmakers already have been pushing for months to attach a permanent status to these credits.

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) recently told reporters: “We all talk about how important families are and raising our children are the most important thing we can do but so many people can’t do it. It’s such a challenge. Raising kids is work. We should reward families and give families a chance.”

Other notable supporters include Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA), the chairman of the influential House Ways and Means Committee, who also shared similar sentiments.

“For our economy to fully recover from this pandemic, we must finally acknowledge that workers have families, and caregiving responsibilities are real,” he said.

Credits Already Improving Lives

Recent studies and surveys have also proven that the initial batches of the Child Tax Credits are already making a difference. For example, according to the latest Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey, parents who have received the credit funds reported less trouble affording food and paying for basic household expenses.

In addition, it indicated that approximately ten percent of American households with children sometimes or often didn’t have enough to eat over the past week—the lowest percentage registered since the pandemic started a year and a half ago.

In a separate report released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the data revealed that a permanent expansion could potentially lift more than four million children out of poverty.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Washington state-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.

Image: Reuters

Sebastien Roblin

Tu-95, Europe

The bear was the brainchild of the Soviet Union's desire to develop its own strategic bomber force.  Few aircraft are as distinctive as the massive Tupolev Tu-95 "Bear."

Here's What You Need to Know: The Russian military today maintains a diverse fleet of bombers capable of carrying heavier payloads and flying at faster speeds than the Tu-95. However, the venerable Bear remains well adapted to the job of hauling heavy cruise missiles and keeping a watchful eye over the Pacific and Atlantic—especially when being discreet is not merely unnecessary for the mission, but contrary to its purpose.

Few aircraft are as distinctive as the massive Tupolev Tu-95 “Bear,” a four-engine Russian strategic bomber and maritime patrol plane with a gigantic unicorn-like refueling probe, giving it the appearance of a monstrosity lurching in from prehistoric times—or at least from shortly after World War II, as is in fact the case.

Don’t let its looks deceive you. Over sixty years later, the Tu-95 remains in service because few aircraft can cover such great distances for such long periods of time while carrying a hefty payload. Which is to say, the Tu-95 is Russia’s B-52—but one with a decidedly maritime bent and a habit of knocking at the door of coastal air-defense systems in Europe, Asia and North America.

Cold War Nuclear Bomber

The Bear was born from the Soviet Union’s desire to develop its own strategic bomber force to match the one fielded by the United States in World War II. Soviet planners requested in 1950 a four-engine bomber that could fly five thousand miles to hit targets across the United States while hauling over twelve tons of bombs.

The jet engines of the time, however, burned through fuel too quickly. Thus, the design bureau of Andrei Tupolev conceived of an aircraft using four powerful NK-12 turboprop engines with contrarotating propellers.

Each of the NK-12s has two propellers, the second one spinning in the direction opposite the first. This not only counteracts the torque created by the rotational airflow of the first propeller, but harnesses it for greater speed. Contrarotating propellers are therefore modestly more efficient—but because they are more expensive to produce and maintain, and also unbelievably noisy, they have not been widely adopted. In fact, the noise produced by Tu-95s has reportedly been remarked upon by submarine crews and jet pilots.

On the Tu-95, however, the unconventional engines paid off: the enormous Tu-95 is actually one of the fastest existing propeller planes, capable of going over five hundred miles per hour. The tips of its eighteen-foot diameter propellers actually spin at slightly over the speed of sound. The Bear is also one of very few propeller planes with swept-back wings, which only benefit aircraft capable of flying at higher speeds.

The Tu-95 also had tremendous fuel capacity and could fly over nine thousand miles just using internal fuel. After the initial production variant, later types added the distinctive in-flight refueling probe, even further extending their range. Typical patrols during the Cold War lasted ten hours, but some Tu-95 flights lasted nearly twice as long.

Tu-95s had crew of six to eight depending on the type, including two pilots and two navigators, while the remaining crew operated guns or sensor systems. The original version of the Bear had two twin-barreled twenty-three-millimeter cannons in the belly and tail, and a single fixed gun in the nose, all intended to ward off enemy fighters. This kind of armament became increasingly obsolete in the age of long-range air-to-air missiles, so the later models got rid of all but the tail gun. (To be fair, tail gunners on B-52s did score two or three kills over Vietnam).

The Bear’s original intended mission was fairly clear-cut: in the event the Cold War became really hot, dozens of individual Bears would fly across the Arctic Circle and drop nuclear bombs on targets over the United States. Even if many fell victim to surface-to-air missiles and defending fighters, the reasoning was that some would get through.

This mimicked the U.S. Air Force’s own war plans, immortalized in the film Dr. Strangelove. However, the Soviet Union did not maintain a twenty-four-hour force of airborne nuclear-armed bombers like the United States did.

Along these lines, Tu-95s were also used in nuclear weapon tests. A Tu-95V dropped the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated over Severny Island in 1961, the fifty-megaton Tsar Bomba. Deployed by parachute, Tsar detonated four kilometers above the ground, sending a mushroom cloud over forty miles into the sky. The shock wave tossed the Bear a thousand meters towards the ground, but the pilot managed to retain control and return to base. The crew had earlier been informed they had only a 50 percent chance of surviving the test.

Maritime Marauders

By the 1960s, the Soviet Union wisely concluded that a nuclear strategic bomber force attempting to drop nuclear gravity bombs over the United States was a wasteful proposition, given the increasing effectiveness of air defenses and the comparatively lower cost of unstoppable ballistic missiles. New variants of the Tu-95 were therefore developed to pursue different missions.

One means of getting around the bomber’s vulnerability to interception was to use them as a platform for long-range cruise missiles. The Tu-95K variant could carry the enormous Kh-20 nuclear cruise missile, known by NATO as the AS-3 Kangaroo. The missile had a range of three hundred to six hundred kilometers, and looked like a wingless airplane because it more or less was one—it was modeled off the fuselage of a MiG-19.

Another mission assigned the Bear was to shadow U.S. carrier battle groups. Even with state-of-the-art sensors, finding and tracking ships across the vastness of the ocean was a challenging endeavor. However, if a U.S. carrier group could be located, it could be pounced upon by swarms of land-based bombers. The Bear, with its ability to fly over the ocean for hours on end and cover vast territories, was ideal for ferreting out the position of U.S. fleets and tracking their movements.

The Tu-95RT maritime reconnaissance variant was produced to specially perform this duty: it had surface-search radar in a belly pod and even added a glass observation blister just behind the tail gun position.

Not only was tracking fleet movements useful in the event of a war, but it also served as a psychological tactic to emphasize the Navy’s vulnerability to air attack. U.S. carrier fighters were often scrambled to chase off the intrusive Bears. Photographs of the many Bear-on-fighter encounters are icons of the Cold War era.

Tu-95 Variants

There was a multitude of experimental Bears, including the Tu-95LAL, which was powered by a nuclear reactor, and the Tu-95K, designed to carry MiG-19 fighters for airborne deployment.

Models that entered production included the Tu-95MR photo-reconnaissance aircraft, and the improved Tu-95K and KM with better sensors and the capability of launching Kh-22 missiles

The Soviet Union eventually developed a specialized antisubmarine reconnaissance plane from the Bear, the Tu-142. This arose out of fear of the new Polaris Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM), which performed the first underwater ballistic-missile launch in 1960. The Tu-142 is distinguished by its Berkut (Golden Eagle) surface-search and targeting radar. A boom in the tail houses a Magnetic Anomaly Detector useful for finding submarines. The Tu-142 is stretched a bit longer to accommodate all of the sensors packed inside it.

These systems had to be upgraded several times during the Cold War to keep up with U.S. submarine technology. The current variant, the Tu-142MZ, can use superior RGB-16 and RGB-26 sonar-buoys and has more powerful engines. On repeated occasions, Tu-142s succeeded in detecting U.S. submarines and following them for hours at a time. Two special Tu-142MRs designed to communicate with Russian submarines were also produced.

The Russian Naval Air Arm still operates fifteen Tu-142s today. One was recently spotted in Syria—either using its systems to spy on Syrian rebel positions or monitor U.S. fleet movements.

The Indian Navy has operated eight Tu-142MK-Es since 1988—though they are due to be replaced by twelve P-8I Poseidon aircraft in the near future.

The Bear was also developed into Russia’s first AWACs aircraft—the Tu-126—and the Tu-114 airliner which carried Khrushchev on a nonstop eleven-hour flight from Moscow to New York in 1959. However, neither type still flies today.

Besides the Tu-142, the only Tu-95s in service today are over fifty Tu-95MS aircraft, actually developed from the Tu-142 airframe to serve as a cruise-missile carrier capable of firing Kh-55 missiles, also known as the AS-15 by NATO. They have recently been upgraded to carry sixteen cruise missiles each, and outfitted with new navigation/targeting systems. The Kh-55 comes in many variants, both conventional and nuclear, with ranges as long as three thousand kilometers and as short as three hundred.

The Tu-95MSM variant can also fire the Kh-101 and nuclear Kh-102 stealth cruise missiles which skim at low altitude and boast a reduced radar-cross section. These missiles can reach up to 5,500 kilometers away.

Despite such deadly payloads, the Bear may be suffering from its age. In the summer of 2015 they were briefly grounded after suffering their second accident in two years.

The Tupolev Today

The Bear is still flying across the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean in the twenty-first century. One of its principal missions can be described as trolling other countries.

Tu-95s have been detected buzzing by the coast of England, fifty miles west of California, into the Alaskan air defense identification zone, and inside Japanese airspace. The closer flights usually provoke a fighter interception in response. Most of the time they don’t actually violate foreign airspace.

Such patrols, routine during the Cold War, were resumed by Putin in 2007. Although these are theoretically surveillance missions, their main intention is to remind other countries that Russia remains capable of sending nuclear-armed bombers close to their airspace if it chooses to.

Regular flights by U.S. RC-135 spy planes are also known to elicit interceptions by Chinese and Russian fighters. However, the RC-135 cannot carry any weapons.

Of course, the Bear is anything but stealthy and could not survive against modern air- and surface-launched antiaircraft missiles. However, a Bear launching cruise missiles doesn’t have to get close to air defenses in the first place.

In November 2015, fifty-nine years after entering service, the Tu-95 finally saw combat as a bomber. Videos from the Russian Ministry of Defense in the fall of 2015 show them launching cruise missiles that went on to pound the positions of Syrian rebels. Moscow’s first-time deployment of the cruise missiles on air and naval platforms has been interpreted as a means of demonstrating its military capabilities to the world.

The Russian military today maintains a diverse fleet of bombers capable of carrying heavier payloads and flying at faster speeds than the Tu-95. However, the venerable Bear remains well adapted to the job of hauling heavy cruise missiles and keeping a watchful eye over the Pacific and Atlantic—especially when being discreet is not merely unnecessary for the mission, but contrary to its purpose.

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

This article first appeared in September 2016.

Image: Creative Commons "TU-95 Bear bomber aircraft - 25423" by North Dakota National Guard is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

During Wednesday’s World Health Organization briefing on COVID-19, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for funding to fight the spread of the deadly Delta variant while also asking wealthy countries to suspend plans to provide booster shots. 

Graham Allison

Afghanistan, Middle East

The ugly reality is that American presidents have to make hard choices from a menu that offers no good options. In choosing to withdraw, Biden accepted increased ownership of the risk that a Taliban-governed Afghanistan could indeed become the haven for a future mega-terrorist attack on the United States.

Could Afghanistan become the base for another 9/11 terrorist attack that kills thousands of Americans here at home? Watching images of the collapse after two decades of investment in Afghanistan, it is easy to agree that we should have managed a less chaotic exit. But the current frenzy of second-guessing will soon be behind us. The consequential question for Americans is: what comes next? And there, the biggest red flag being waved by critics of President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw all American combat troops is the specter of another 9/11. As former Trump National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster put it on Sunday: “We learned 20 years ago on September 11, jihadist terror in Afghanistan won’t stay in Afghanistan.”

The speed at which Afghanistan’s 300,000-strong American-trained and equipped security forces melted under attack by a Taliban force of fewer than one-third their numbers has been surprising. But not the outcome. When Biden and his national security team decided to withdraw all American forces from combat there, they understood that this would very likely mean a Taliban victory.

They also knew that today’s Taliban is the same extremist Islamist group that had ruled Afghanistan before 9/11. They reflected on the fact that it had given sanctuary to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorists who killed 2,977 individuals in their attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Thus, when announcing on April 14 that all American forces would be out of Afghanistan before September 11, Biden was fully aware of what happened on the eleventh day of the ninth month of President George W. Bush’s first year in office.

So why withdraw now rather than kick the can down the road as his predecessors had? Even critics who believe that Biden made the wrong choice have to acknowledge that it was considered—and consistent with the view he has advocated for more than a decade. In 2009, a newly elected, young, inexperienced President Barack Obama wanted to withdraw from what he saw as a losing war. In the debate within his new administration, his vice president, Joe Biden, argued that the United States should focus like a laser beam on American national interests in Afghanistan. Specifically, that meant eliminating bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorists who had attacked us and preventing Afghan territory from being used by terrorists to plot future attacks.

When Biden became president seven months ago, he entered office with the settled view that this mission had been accomplished. After twenty years during which the United States had lost 2,448 servicemen’s lives and spent two trillion American taxpayer dollars, if the leaders and army of Afghanistan could not successfully fight for their own freedom now, the likelihood that they would be able to do so after another year of our efforts, or even another decade, was not worth more American blood and treasure.

Nonetheless, in making this fateful choice, he certainly listened carefully to the counsel of his military advisers—most of whom opposed it—and reflected deeply on the risks. Among these, none loomed larger than the possibility that a future Taliban government could host a successor to Al Qaeda that could execute another terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland.

Could it happen again? The answer is obviously and unambiguously: of course. But does that mean that the decision to withdraw was a mistake? Before again answering “yes,” we must also consider how many other locations there are from which another major terrorist attack on the United States could come. Most of the commentators today seem to have forgotten that while bin Laden’s headquarters was in Afghanistan, his lieutenants who planned and prepared the attack on the World Trade Center did so from Hamburg, Germany. And the Al Qaeda operatives who hijacked U.S. commercial airliners, converted them into guided cruise missiles, and drove them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon spent the week before boarding those aircraft in Boston and Newark.

The brute fact is that there are literally hundreds of spaces around the globe—from Pakistan, Sudan, Lebanon, and Ethiopia to France, Mexico, and even the United States—that could house terrorists who could organize attacks on the American homeland. (Prior to 9/11, the deadliest terrorist attack on Americans was the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 masterminded by an American veteran, Timothy McVeigh.) Some of these spaces are governed, some ungoverned. Some of the governments are democratic, some autocratic, some oppressive, and some essentially permissive.

What has so far successfully prevented another 9/11 is not U.S. combat forces fighting on the ground—since we have no fighting forces in most of these places. Instead, it is the remarkable, robust defensive and offensive capabilities the U.S. government has built in the two decades since 2001. These include a major expansion of the seventeen agencies of the U.S. intelligence community (Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency, etc.), creation of a new cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security, and the development of unprecedented offensive counterterrorism capabilities by the U.S. military’s Special Forces.

U.S. counterterrorism strategy consists of three tightly linked layers: defenses to prevent terrorists entering the United States or operating from American soil; offenses that “find, fix, and finish”—to quote the mantra of America’s Special Forces—terrorists planning attacks on the United States and our allies wherever they are; and deterrent threats to governments of countries and groups governing parts of countries that are home to terrorist groups.

A network of exquisite intelligence collection technologies now collects signals of all types and integrates them to allow Special Forces and CIA to target individuals and groups who may be planning attacks. In the last two decades, the United States has conducted more than 15,000 precise counterterrorism strikes in Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, as well as Afghanistan. The U.S. base in Bagram served as the headquarters for many of these strikes. Thus, as part of his decision to withdraw, Biden also authorized an expansion of “over the horizon” capabilities to sustain America’s counterterrorism campaign. In the Biden administration’s current review of the national security posture it inherited, it should identify additional steps to strengthen each layer of the counterterrorism strategy, beginning with securing borders.

In sum: the ugly reality is that American presidents have to make hard choices from a menu that offers no good options. In choosing to withdraw, Biden accepted increased ownership of the risk that a Taliban-governed Afghanistan could indeed become the haven for a future mega-terrorist attack on the United States. If this were to happen, the commentariat will condemn Biden’s decision as a foolhardy unforced error. Politically, the safer option would have been a redefinition of the mission that kept the government in Kabul on life support and allowed U.S. combat troops to hold onto bases from which the counterterrorism campaign could carry on.

Biden’s willingness to accept this calculated risk in order to extract the United States from a failing effort in a misguided mission was, in my view, a commendable profile in courage. As he said in this week’s speech to the nation, he was elected president, and “the buck stops with me.”

Graham T. Allison is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is the former director of Harvard’s Belfer Center and the author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?

Image: Wikipedia.

Ian S. Lustick

Afghanistan, Iraq, Middle East

There is hope that defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan will help those brave American politicians who will object in the future to hitting nails in the Far or Middle East with the American military hammer.

Editor’s note: In early August, The National Interest organized a symposium on American foreign policy in the Middle East under the Biden administration. A variety of scholars were asked the following question: “Given Joe Biden’s recent decisions in Afghanistan and Iraq, is the president right to be reducing the U.S. military presence in the Middle East?” The following article is one of their responses:

American national interests are not the aspirations that some Americans have for their country on the world stage. Some citizens, for example, may want the United States to be the world’s predominant economic, military, and political power, able to assert itself incontestably in every important world region. Some may entertain particular goals so deeply—such as defending Ukraine against Russian encroachment, ridding Cuba of communism, and stopping Hamas attacks against Israel—as to portray them as vital to the country.

To qualify as a national interest, however, a foreign policy objective must attract the committed support of a vast majority of Americans. To be sure, some operational goals, such as retaliating against Al Qaeda after 9/11 or “bringing Osama bin Laden to justice,” may enjoy that kind of broad support. However, they do not qualify as vital national interests because they are not enduring. They cannot serve as touchstones for U.S. foreign and national security policy over decades and generations. Only widely shared aspirations attached to long-term goals can be usefully treated as national interests, capable of guiding policy across both decades and partisan lines.

Washington’s virtually unlimited military, economic, and diplomatic aid to Israel and its close security and economic ties to the Gulf oil kingdoms and to Egypt show that President Joe Biden’s decisions to accept defeat in Afghanistan and Iraq by ending U.S. combat deployments there do not mark a complete withdrawal from the Middle East. But they do indeed reduce U.S. clout in the region by signaling that American military might does not translate confidently into stable political architectures, and that implicit or explicit promises from Washington to use its military strength for such ends cannot be relied upon.

On the other hand, Biden’s decisions do not damage U.S. national interests. Aside from planetary survival, America’s most vital interest is avoiding destructive, catastrophically costly, and unwinnable conflicts such as Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. These wars were by far the most serious blows inflicted on our country since World War II and they were, let us never forget, almost entirely self-inflicted.

One can say that America’s humiliation in Vietnam helped prevent the deaths of hundreds of thousands or even millions of central Americans or Angolans in American interventional wars that did not occur in the 1980s because of lessons learned, at least temporarily, following defeat in Vietnam. So too we may hope that defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan will help those brave American politicians who will object in the future to hitting nails in the Far or Middle East with the American military hammer. Their struggle, in the name of America’s real national interests, to resist the dangerous combination of U.S. military superiority and domestic political incentives to attack the country’s enemies, may well be assisted by elites in future target countries who refuse to believe American promises to save and protect them in return for supporting the American war effort. These elites may learn from Afghanistan and Iraq that, except for a lucky few thousand who wangle U.S. passports, most will end up on the wrong side of history in their countries once the Americans leave.

Ian S. Lustick is the Bess W. Heyman Chair in the Political Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality.

Image: Reuters.

Stephen Silver

economy, Americas

Tax preparers have been warned to watch out for a series of telltale signs.

The Internal Revenue Service’s Security Summit this week issued some warnings to tax professionals about the problem of identity theft.

“There are tell-tale signs of identity theft that tax pros can easily miss," IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig said in the announcement. "Identity thieves continue to look for ways to slip into the systems of tax pros to steal data. We urge practitioners to take simple steps and remain on the lookout for signs of data and identity theft. They are a critical first line of defense against identity theft."

Tax professionals are also warned, by the IRS, to “contact the IRS immediately when there's an identity theft issue while also contacting insurance or cybersecurity experts to assist them with determining the cause and extent of the loss.”

The Security Summit is looking at identity theft as the fifth of a five-part series. The identity theft portion is officially titled “Boost Security Immunity: Fight Against Identity Theft.” 

Tax preparers were warned to watch out for a series of telltale signs. These include “Client e-filed returns rejected because client's Social Security number was already used on another return; more e-file acknowledgments received than returns the tax pro filed; clients responded to emails the tax pro didn't send.” They are also warned to look out for “low or unexpected computer or network responsiveness such as software or actions take longer to process than usual, computer cursor moves or changes numbers without touching the mouse or keyboard [and] unexpectedly locked out of a network or computer.” 

The Security Summit is described on its website as an “unprecedented coalition of state tax agencies and the private-sector tax industry officials to begin a difficult task—fighting back against emerging criminal syndicates, based here and overseas, that were filing fraudulent returns for refunds.” It was created in 2015.  

This year has been quite an eventful one for the IRS. The agency, in addition to the normal tax season, has distributed the stimulus checks from the American Rescue Plan, and more recently the expanded child tax credit, which has gone out to Americans once a month starting in July. The Biden Administration has proposed giving the IRS more funding, and even proposed greater IRS enforcement, as a way to pay for his proposed spending packages. However, Republicans in Congress have pushed back on that idea.  

In a fact sheet for his American Families Plan, the Biden administration laid out how that enforcement would work.  

“A recent study found that the top one percent failed to report 20 percent of their income and failed to pay over $175 billion in taxes that they owed. But today, the IRS does not even have the resources to fully investigate this evasion. As a result of budget cuts, audit rates on those making over $1 million per year fell by 80 percent between 2011-2018,” according to the fact sheet. “The President’s proposal would change the game—by making sure the wealthiest Americans play by the same set of rules as all other Americans.”

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

Image: Reuters

Image: Reuters

Sebastien Roblin

B-2 Spirit, Americas

The end of the Cold War meant that the B-2 seemed less necessary 

Here's What You Need to Know: The U.S. only has 20 B-2 Bombers. Many defense writers have lamented the small number of B-2s procured. However, the B-2 cut was a ‘bet’ on a lack of great-power confrontation the Pentagon is probably thankful for today, sparing the Air Force from spending the last twenty-five years paying for dozens of additional stealth bombers.

Since its inception in 1947, the U.S. Air Force has been deeply invested in operating long-range strategic bomber for nuclear deterrence. However, by the 1960s it grew clear that high-flying B-52 bombers had poor odds of surviving the Soviet Union’s growing network of high-speed interceptors and surface-to-air missiles. The Air Force instead invested in supersonic FB-111 and B-1 bombers designed to penetrate hostile airspace at low altitude, where radar detection was more difficult. But Pentagon strategists knew the Soviets were developing doppler radars and airborne radars to cover that blindspot.

By then, U.S. aviation engineers were aware that radar-absorbent materials and non-reflective surfaces could reduce a plane’s radar detection range drastically, features implemented to modest results in Lockheed’s SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. Lockheed’s Have Blue prototypes led to the first operational stealth aircraft, the F-117 Nighthawk strike plane.

The Pentagon wanted its next stealth plane, the Advanced Technology Bomber, to address the strategic nuclear strike role. By then Northrop had tested at Area 51 in Nevada a bizarre-looking stealth demonstrator called ‘Tacit Blue’ (also known as the “Whale” or “alien school bus”). Earlier in the late 1940s, the firm had developed a gigantic 52-meter wingspan flying-wing jet bomber called the YB-49. When Lockheed and Northrop went head-to-head in the ATB competition in 1981, Northrop’s larger, tailless fly-wing concept won out.

The “grey” project’s existence was announced to the public, but further details remained highly classified, with the Pentagon procuring parts from mystified subcontractors using dummy companies. Nonetheless, two B-2 engineers were arrested for industrial espionage in 1984 and 2005. Over the next eight years, the bomber was expensively redesigned for low-altitude penetration, leading development costs to overrun to $42 billion, generating political controversy.

The Spirit was finally unveiled in 1988 and made its first flight the following year. But even before it began production in 1993, the Cold War abruptly ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, largely taking the rationale for a nuclear-armed super bomber with it.

The Air Force still wanted B-2s, but the expensive program was on the chopping block with other premium weapons like the Sea Wolf-class submarine. The Pentagon hastily placed new emphasis on developing the B-2’s non-nuclear capabilities—after all, a stealth bomber could theoretically reduce the number of escort aircraft required in the opening days of a conflict. (In practice, Spirits have often been accompanied by EA-6B Prowler aircraft to provide jamming and anti-radar support—just in case.)

The Spirit procurement was first reduced to seventy-five, then cut to twenty by the Bush administration in 1992. An additional B-2 prototype was converted to operational status under Clinton, for a total of twenty-one. This caused the B-2’s half-billion dollar unit price to surge to $737 million—or $929 million counting spare parts, upgrades, and technical support. With development factored in, the Spirits come out to $2.1 billion—by far the most expensive airplane ever built.

All but one test aircraft serves today with the 509th Bomb Wing based in Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, a unit descend from the group which dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan. The Spirits are flown by an elite corps of around eighty pilots who often fly globe-spanning missions directly from Whiteman, though B-2s have also been forward based at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, Guam, and England.

Each Spirit is named after a U.S. state, starting with the Spirit of Missouri. The exception is Spirit of Kitty Hawk, said to be possessed because it once mysteriously started its engines in the hangar while unmanned. In 2008, Spirit of Kansas crashed shortly after takeoff in Guam due to an air-moisture sensor miscalibrated by a storm led to a malfunction of the fly-by-wire system. Thankfully, the crew successfully ejected from the most monetarily expensive airplane crash in history.

Like today’s F-35, early production B-2s were not really delivered ‘feature complete,’ lacking full payload, weapons, navigation, and defensive systems. Over time, Northrop Grumman phased in two improved models, introducing a Terrain Following System, GPS navigation, satellite communications via laptop (instead of very terse high-frequency radio messages), and most importantly, integration of smart bombs and cruise missiles. Today, the Air Force continues to invest billions updating the B-2’s radar-absorbent materials, fiber-optic wiring, computer processors, and datalinks.

The B-2 received “Initial Operating Capability” in 1997 and saw their combat employment in March 24, 1999 by kicking off the NATO bombing campaign pressuring Yugoslavia to halt the ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians. B-2s based in Missouri flew fifty 30-hour sorties across the Atlantic, successfully penetrating the Yugoslav air defense network to drop roughly a third of the ordinance released in the first two months of the campaign.

The B-2 was the first plane to use GPS-guided JDAM bombs marking a turning point in aerial warfare towards the widespread use of cheaper precision-guided weapons. However, the war also illustrated that greater precision didn’t help if intel failed to distinguish targets correctly. A Spirit dropped five JDAMS on the Chinese embassy, wrongly identified as a weapons depot by the CIA, killing three and causing serious diplomatic fallout.

Two years later, the Spirits were back in action, flying six 70-hour missions involving layovers in Diego Garcia (where a replacement crew was mustered) to blast Taliban targets in Afghanistan—the longest combat sorties in history. Two years later, the B-2 was finally declared ‘fully operationally capable,’ with just six Spirits striking ninety-two targets in the opening days of the U.S. invasion of Iraq

B-2s kicked off another U.S. war in 2011, the intervention against Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi, destroying most of the Libyan Air Force on the ground at Ghardabiya Air Base using JDAMs. The Spirit’s most prominent recent mission was a strike killing eight-five ISIS militants camped out in the Libyan desert on January 19, 2017—detailed in this excellent article by William Langwiesche, who points out that the billion-dollar-bombers were dispatched to wipe out bedraggled insurgents lacking anti-aircraft weapons.

The Air Force’s twenty Spirits remain an intimidating “silver bullet” first strike weapon that can drop heavy conventional or nuclear payloads onto even well-defended command bunkers, air defense radars, or strategic weapon sites with little advance warning.

But the B-2’s weren’t just expensive to build—they cost a fortune to operate, with every flight hour costing a staggering $163,000 dollars per flight hour and sixty man-hours of maintenance. (It used to be closer to 120!) Simply maintaining each B-2 costs $41 million per year, and that with mission-capable rates hovering around 50 percent or lower.

Furthermore, each Spirit requires a special extra-wide $5-million air-conditioned hangar to maintain its radar-absorbent coating. And every seven years, the Spirits receive a $60 million overhaul, in which the RAM is carefully blasted off the skin with crystallized wheat starch and the surfaces meticulously inspected for tiny dents and scratches.

Many defense writers have lamented the small number of B-2s procured. However, the B-2 cut was a ‘bet’ on a lack of great-power confrontation the Pentagon is probably thankful for today, sparing the Air Force from spending the last twenty-five years paying for dozens of additional stealth bombers specialized in high-intensity warfare while the United States was engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Of course, China and Russia have recently emerged as formidable potential near-pear adversaries, giving the B-2’s long-range strategic strike mission greater relevance. However, the Pentagon is procuring a stealthier, and (ostensibly) more cost-efficient B-21 Raider to meet that contingency. After all, the B-2’s stealth capabilities are no longer cutting-edge, with newer F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters boasting between one-tenth and one-hundredth the B-2’s .1 to .05 meter squared radar cross-section.

The B-21 very much resembles a Spirit 2.0, and will incorporate more cost-efficient radar-absorbent materials baked into the skin of the airframe and networked computers for sensor fusion with friendly forces, allowing it to double as a surveillance platform.

As the B-2’s capabilities would be fully subsumed by the B-21’s, the Air Force plans to retire the Spirit around the year 2036 as the Raiders phase in. Of course, the B-2 story suggests that the biggest question may be whether the B-21 can stay on budget, and just how many Washington will be willing to pay for when the bill comes due.

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

This article first appeared in November 2018.

Image: Creative Commons "B-2 Bomber" by bobbrown.co is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Trevor Filseth

Afghanistan, Asia

The central bank’s vaults contained around $160 million in gold and silver, and the “Bactrian Treasure,” a priceless hoard of golden artifacts from Afghanistan’s past.

The Taliban captured Kabul on August 15 and gained access to the headquarters, main vault, and cash reserves of Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB), which is the country’s central bank. The country’s central bank had an estimated value of $10 billion. This has prompted early fears that Afghanistan’s new rulers could seize the money for themselves.

Unfortunately for the Taliban, the bank’s cash reserves—consisting of hard currency, gold, and a variety of other valuables—mostly remain far beyond their reach. The majority of Afghanistan’s financial reserves are held within the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which houses the gold reserves of many developing nations for safekeeping.  

A year-end DAB report dated from December 2020 revealed that the central bank had stored gold worth 100 billion afghanis—or $1.32 billion—inside the Federal Reserve. The statement also revealed that around $6 billion of the bank’s holdings had been invested in U.S. Treasury securities inside the United States. 

The Biden administration was quick to confirm that none of Afghanistan’s reserves held in the United States would be allowed to be released to the Taliban, and on Tuesday, an administration official officially confirmed that the United States had frozen $9.5 billion in Afghanistan’s assets. 

DAB’s governor, Ajmal Ahmady, fled the country on Sunday. He described the series of events leading to his exile on Twitter. 

The Taliban are also likely to be denied access to Afghanistan’s “special drawing rights,” or SDRs, held by the International Monetary Fund, according to Reuters. 

While the Taliban are unlikely to recover most of the previous government’s reserves, the Taliban did gain a substantial amount of money from its rapid offensive in July and August. Some of DAB’s foreign currency reserves, overwhelmingly in the form of U.S. dollars, were stored at the bank’s various branches throughout Afghanistan, which are now entirely under the group’s control. The value of these holdings is estimated at around $360 million.  

The central bank’s vaults also contained around $160 million in gold and silver, and the “Bactrian Treasure,” a priceless hoard of golden artifacts from Afghanistan’s past. It is unclear how much of this the group was able to obtain, as the administration of President Ashraf Ghani had several weeks to send it to safekeeping before the Taliban’s capture of the city.  

In Kabul, the Taliban has maintained its control of the treasury building, and issued a statement on Saturday that it would be “strictly guarded.” 

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for the National Interest. 

Image: Reuters