Diplomacy & Crisis News

Mark Episkopos

F-35, Americas

The MQ-25 Stingray is an uncrewed aerial refueling drone that is being developed by Boeing.

Here's What You Need to Remember: By greatly enhancing the combat radius of carrier-based fighters, the MQ-25 Stingray allows carrier fleets to project power from safer ranges. With this new refueling capability, the F-35C jet can leverage its advanced survivability and attack potential without being artificially limited by its carrier. Offensive operations that would previously be considered too risky or impractical could finally be feasible, vastly expanding the Navy’s scope of possibilities against its toughest adversaries.

The MQ-25 Stingray promises to bring new functionality to the F-35 fighter jet, enhancing the U.S. Navy’s lethality against its great power competitors.

The MQ-25 Stingray is an uncrewed aerial refueling drone that is being developed by Boeing. The Stingray can almost double the effective strike range of the U.S. carrier wing. “The MQ-25 will give us the ability to extend the air wing out probably 300 or 400 miles beyond where we typically go,” former Vice Adm. Mike Shoemaker told U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings. For a sense of scale, consider that the Navy’s Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter has a combat range of no more than 450 miles.

This is a major potential liability at a time when both China and Russia are relentlessly investing in anti-ship missile technology. The former has the DF-21D, a medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) with an operational range of up to one thousand miles, as well as the new hypersonic DF-17 missile with a reported range of over one thousand miles. The latter has the 3M22 Tsirkon winged, hypersonic anti-ship cruise missile with a range of at least six hundred miles and quite possibly more depending on the target and firing circumstances. The risks are stark: a growing number of defense observers are warning that a single hit from a missile with the performance characteristics of the Tsirkon can disable, if not destroy, a U.S. carrier. Having to operate within the effective ranges of the latest Russian and Chinese missiles potentially hampers the power projection capabilities of U.S. carrier fleets. This bears clear and immediate implications for American security interests in the Pacific, which is where China’s emerging anti-access, area-denial approach makes it increasingly harder for U.S. assets to operate effectively. 

It is precisely this problem that the Stingray is designed to address. Controlled through an interlinked navigation system, the MQ-25 Stingray can deliver up to fifteen thousand pounds of fuel to a distance of just under six hundred miles. The Navy is making arrangements for all Ford and Nimitz-class carriers to “eventually be MQ-25 capable.” 

By greatly enhancing the combat radius of carrier-based fighters, the MQ-25 Stingray allows carrier fleets to project power from safer ranges. With this new refueling capability, the F-35C jet can leverage its advanced survivability and attack potential without being artificially limited by its carrier. Offensive operations that would previously be considered too risky or impractical could finally be feasible, vastly expanding the Navy’s scope of possibilities against its toughest adversaries. These possibilities include high-risk strikes against critical infrastructure and assets deep in enemy territory, strikes against multiple targets in a single sortie, and a greater ability to adjust to changing mission circumstances while deployed.

As former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson put it, the Stingray “represents a dramatic shift in the way we define warfighting requirements.” It exemplifies the U.S Navy’s focus, shared by the world’s leading military powers, on an increasingly sophisticated kind of mission interoperability between drones, manned aircraft, and surface vessels. The MQ-25 Stingray is expected to reach initial operating capability by 2024.  

Mark Episkopos is a national security reporter for the National Interest. This article is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Wikipedia.

Mark Episkopos

Guns,

 What the Glock 20 sacrifices in size, it makes up for with raw performance. 

Here's What You Need to Remember: Seeking to maintain their foothold in the U.S. market, Glock rushed to release the Glock 20 in 1991 shortly after the FBI’s official adoption of the 10mm caliber.

In a catalog saturated with popular 9mm offerings, the 10mm Glock 20 Gen4 stands apart as the Austrian gun manufacturer’s most powerful semi-automatic pistol. The Glock 20 is also the oldest 10mm in continuous production, successfully blending Glock’s legendary reliability with a newfound focus on stopping power.

Glock made its initial splash in the U.S. handgun market with the Glock 17, which fast became a bestseller in the early 1980’s for its lightweight, modular, and ergonomically friendly design. Market trends sharply changed, however, with the infamous Miami shootout 1986. It took eight FBI agents armed with 9mm guns a total of 18 gunshot wounds to incapacitate only two suspects, armed with a 12-gauge pump shotgun and semi-automatic rifle respectively; two agents were killed, and five more wounded in the protracted firefight. The FBI and other law enforcement agencies concluded that .38 special and 9mm guns lack the penetration necessary to reliably incapacitate targets. 10mm cartridge-based weapons quickly emerged as a leading alternative; traveling at supersonic speeds and hitting with a muzzle energy of up to 750 pounds, the 10mm round destroys soft tissue and disrupts the nervous system far more efficiently than its 9mm counterpart.

Seeking to maintain their foothold in the U.S. market, Glock rushed to release the Glock 20 in 1991 shortly after the FBI’s official adoption of the 10mm caliber. The FBI quickly went on to reverse their decision over recoil concerns, opting instead for a halfway compromise between power and handling in the form of the new .40 Smith and Wesson caliber; still, the Glock 20 has not only endured but thrived as a leading consumer 10mm pistol.

Built with Glock’s Gen4 guidelines, the Glock 20 is easily distinguished from its 9mm counterparts by its prodigious size. At an overall length of 8.07 inches, there is no way around the fact that the Glock 20 is a large handgun that cannot be comfortably concealed. Those looking for a high-powered everyday carry (EDC) solution would be more tempted by the Glock 20’s more compact Glock 29 cousin.

But what the Glock 20 sacrifices in size, it makes up for with raw performance. The Glock 20 combines the impressive stopping power of the 10mm caliber with a 15-round capacity magazine that’s capable of accommodating a wide range of ammunition, all within the reliable and ergonomically friendly frame that is a trademark of the Glock brand.

Excessive recoil has always been the Achilles' heel of 10mm handguns, and the Glock 20 is not entirely an exception. There is, however, some good news: a customizable backstrap system and new Rough Textured Frame (RTF) can help to mitigate the intense recoil generated from firing high-caliber ammunition. More importantly, subsequent Glock 20 testing has demonstrated that the gun’s recoil heavily depends on the specific type of 10mm round that is being used. With some practice and the correct choice of ammunition, the Glock 20 shouldn’t generate an unbearable degree of recoil as compared with similarly-situated .40 caliber weapons.

Where does all this leave the Glock 20 today, just under 30 years after its introduction? While not an ideal solution in tactical and urban scenarios, the Glock 20 has earned a sizable following as a reliable hunting and survival handgun; notably, Denmark’s Sirius Sled Patrol continues to use the Glock 20 as a defensive weapon against polar bears. For everyone else, the Glock 20 is a well-rounded 10mm handgun that offers serious firepower at little compromise.

Mark Episkopos is a frequent contributor to The National Interest and serves as research assistant at the Center for the National Interest. Mark is also a PhD student in History at American University.

This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: Reuters

Mark Episkopos

T-14 Armata, Eurasia

Most recently, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that the first serial T-14 batch will arrive in 2022

The T-14 Armata boasts a bevy of best-in-class features, but can Russia produce enough of them? 

By far the most anticipated product in the next-generation Armata Universal Combat platform, the T-14 Armata is a main battle tank (MBT) that clocks in at forty-eight tons and can reportedly reach speeds of ninety kilometers per hour. The tank is designed around an unmanned turret scheme, boasting a 125-millimeter 2A82-1M smoothbore gun with autoloader compatibility. The T-14 also sports the Kord 12.7mm heavy machine gun with a sophisticated “remote reloading” mechanism, in addition to the latest in Russian explosive reactive armor technology, laser-guided missile integration, partially automated targeting algorithms, and digitized onboard equipment. The tank’s other features may include future potential compatibility with laser weapons and hypersonic missile systems.  

These strides in firepower, mobility, and survivability suggest that the T-14 is more than able to give any currently-serving NATO MBT a run for its money, but the Armata faces a different kind of challenge: all those bells and whistles don’t come cheap.  

In absolute terms, Armata’s cost metrics look fairly healthy. The current projected per-unit cost of the T-14 Armata is just under $4 million dollars, which puts the Armata well under its older and less advanced M1 Abrams counterpart. For more of an apples-to-apples comparison, consider that South Korea’s fourth-generation K2 Black Panther has a per model cost of over $8 million and Turkey’s fourth-generation Altay MBT comes in at just under $14 million, more than double and triple the Armata’s price tag respectively. Given how expensive fourth-generation tanks are to research, develop, and mass-produce, one could argue that the T-14 offers fairly good value for its reported features and performance-- at least, in absolute terms. But the full picture is far grimmer.  

Russia’s relatively modest defense budget (typically seen in the neighborhood of $60 billion, though experts have compellingly argued there is much more to this number than meets the eye) is being stretched thin across a wide gamut of ambitious modernization projects being simultaneously pursued across every service branch. Output has fallen woefully short of the military’s apparent plan to serially produce 2,300 T-14’s by 2020. It was reported earlier that twenty pre-production units had been delivered to the Russian army for testing, with eighty more to follow.

Top Russian defense officials have previously argued that the prior generation of Russian MBTs, including the T-72, T-80, and T-90, still fares well enough against its western counterparts that there is no pressing military need to rush the T-14 out of the gate. “Having a military budget ten times smaller than that of NATO, we are achieving our objectives due to such efficient solutions,” Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov said in 2018. “Why flood all Armed Forces with the Armata tanks, we have the T-72s in great demand in the market, they take it all, compared to the Abrams, Leclercs and Leopards, for their price, efficiency, and quality,” he said.

Most recently, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that the first serial T-14 batch will arrive in 2022. It remains unclear how fast, and how widely, serial T-14’s will be circulated throughout Russia’s Armed Forces.  

Mark Episkopos is a national security reporter for the National Interest. This article is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

Two decades of mistakes, misjudgments, and collective failure

Mark Episkopos

,

But would it have solved the F-35's problems?

Here's What You Need to Remember: The F-35 as a technological standard bearer for the U.S. Air Force was anything but inevitable.

Over a decade after its introduction, the F-35 stealth fighter jet is among the most recognizable symbols of American airpower. And yet, the emergence of the F-35 as a technological standard bearer for the U.S. Air Force was anything but inevitable.

Here is the F-32 that could have been.

In 1993, the U.S. government launched the Common Affordable Lightweight Fighter project (CALF) to phase out a slew of older fighters— including the F-15 and F-16— and provide a cost-effective development platform for the next generation of U.S. fighter aircraft. CALF was rolled into the Joint Strike Fighter Program (JSF) in the following year, and the bidding phase ensued. Emerging as the front runners from the first selection round, Boeing and Lockheed Martin were both offered contracts to produce two concept demonstrator fighters.

With little flexibility on the Pentagon’s highly detailed checklist of features and specifications, Boeing sought to distinguish itself based on cost. To this end, the X-32 used the same, massive delta wing as the foundation for all of the three fighter variants mandated by the JSF program. The result was, by wide consensus, an exceedingly ugly-looking aircraft. There is some indication that Boeing planned big design changes for future models, including a sleeker delta wing and redesigned nose, but nevertheless: the X-32 demonstrator model’s bizarre aesthetic hardly did Boeing any favors.

Employing a direct-lift thrust vectoring system, the X-32 reached top speeds of just under 1.6 mach. The X-32’s internal bay loadout supported six AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, or a combination of up to two air-to-air missiles and two bombs. Despite their significantly different designs, the X-32’s performance was roughly in line with rival Lockheed’s Martin’s X-35 concept demonstrator.

So, why didn’t the X-32 make the cut? For one, its direct lift system was prone to pop stalls, or severe malfunction caused by hot air being ingested into the engine. The government also expressed concerns as to whether the X-32’s engine was powerful enough to support its reported maximum take-off weight of 50,000 pounds.

Worse still, eight months into the competition, the JSF’s aerodynamic requirements were revised at the behest of the Navy. Boeing engineers managed to make some slight changes to the tail, but it was too late to meaningfully redesign the delta wing to fully comport with the new JSF guidelines.

Despite its cost-cutting strategy, Boeing wound up building two prototypes, each demonstrating different aspects of the JSF’s specifications guidelines: a conventional-flight model demonstrating supersonic performance, and an X-32B short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) variant. Boeing insisted that these features will be unified with the serial F-32, but its rival X-35 demonstrator model was already capable of doing both. Vertical take-off/landing capability was a core pillar of the JSF guidelines, and the Pentagon simply did not buy into Boeing’s vision for STOVL integration.

The Lockheed Martin X-35 was formally declared the winner over Boeing’s X-32 in 2001. In hindsight, it’s difficult to gauge whether or not the DoD made the right decision. From rampant budget concerns to the implicit technical challenges of implementing cutting-edge technologies like sensor fusion, it’s highly likely that Boeing would have encountered broadly similar problems as to those that have plagued the F-35 program for the past decade.

Boeing, for its part, has taken the loss in stride, describing the X-32’s R&D process as a “strategic investment” that paid off during subsequent work done on the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter and X-45A drone.

Mark Episkopos is the new national security reporter for the National Interest. 

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Mark Episkopos

F-35I Adir, Middle East

Israel moved to import Lockheed Martin’s fifth-generation stealth fighter in the early 2010s, but with a special arrangement: the first nineteen imported units would be standard F-35A models, but the following thirty-one will be specially modified by Israeli defense firms to better fit the IAF’s mission parameters.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Israel’s conventional and specially modified F-35 fleet is poised to greatly enhance Jerusalem’s ability to project power in the region, as it strives to hold on to the mantle of the best Air Force in the Middle East into the coming decades.

Israel’s F-35I Adir fighters have taken part in drills in Italy, marking their first foreign outing. Six of the jets departed on Thursday to participate in the Falcon Strike 2021 exercises. Accompanying the F-35’s are16A/Bs from the Israeli Defense Forces’ (IAF) 116th Squadron, G550 Airborne early warning and control planes, and support units, for a total of around thirty Israeli aircraft.

The U.S., Britain, and Italy have sent their fighters to participate in Falcon Strike 2021; all three have dispatched F-35B short take-off/vertical landing (STOVL) variants, with Italy also sending F-35A conventional takeoff fighters. The Israeli Air Force's (IAF) F-35 squadron is scheduled to take part in two sorties each day through June 17, including simulated air strikes behind enemy lines, ground support missions, and mock dogfights.

Nominally, the IAF joined Falcon Strike 2021 to hone joint operations capabilities with allies and to train aircraft maneuvers in an unfamiliar setting. But an IAF officer reportedly admitted off the record that there is a more immediate purpose to these exercises: “Iran is in our focus,” he said tersely. Tensions between Israel and Iran have spiked in recent months, with Tehran “cheering” on — and reportedly arming — Hamas in the recent resurgence of the Gaza conflict, shortly on the heels of allegations that Israel carried out strikes against Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility.

Israel moved to import Lockheed Martin’s fifth-generation stealth fighter in the early 2010s, but with a special arrangement: the first nineteen imported units would be standard F-35A models, but the following thirty-one will be specially modified by Israeli defense firms to better fit the IAF’s mission parameters. This compromise helped to allay the fears of Israeli Defense contractors that the massive export contract is leaving local industry out of the equation.

The Pentagon is famously loath to greenlight foreign hardware changes to the F-35 (with a few notable exceptions, including the European-made Meteor missile for British F-35’s and the Norwegian Naval Strike Missile for Japan and South Korea), especially on the level being sought by the IAF. Israeli officials have been nothing if not explicit in their assessment of the F-35’s stealth performance.  “We think the stealth protection will be good for 5–10 years, but the aircraft will be in service for 30–40 years,” a senior IAF official said. Rather, the IAF is more interested in the F-35 as an advanced electronic warfare (EW) platform: “So we need electronic warfare capabilities that can be rapidly improved. The basic F-35 design is OK. We can make do with adding more software.”

Jerusalem appears to have reached a tentative understanding with Washington: the IAF will not make changes to the plane’s core design, but will instead layer its EW modifications on top of the aircraft’s existing avionics infrastructure. The changes include datalink functionality that is unique to Israel’s Armed Forces, as well as Israeli-manufactured helmet-mounted displays. Israeli defense industry insiders said that the country’s bespoke command, control, communications, and computing (C4) architecture layers on top of the F-35’s existing electronics suite as non-invasively as a smartphone app. But the special arrangement doesn’t end here: while exported F-35’s are required to undergo deep maintenance only at Lockheed Martin facilities, Israel’s Nevatim Air Base reportedly has the equipment to conduct deep F-35 repairs and other non-routine overhauls.

Israel’s conventional and specially modified F-35 fleet is poised to greatly enhance Jerusalem’s ability to project power in the region, as it strives to hold on to the mantle of the best Air Force in the Middle East into the coming decades.

Mark Episkopos is a national security reporter for The National Interest. This article is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Wikipedia.

Mark Episkopos

B-52 Bomber,

In keeping with its raison dêtre, B-52 is prodigiously armed.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The B-52 bomber’s greatest long-term strength has proven to be its flexibility, and nowhere is this more apparent than its remarkable ability to assimilate new weapons platforms.

One of America’s most iconic bombers, the B-52 Stratofortress has managed to outlive its Cold War roots and is set to see service through the mid-twenty-first century.

The B-52 strategic bomber has its roots in a postwar procurement search for a heavy strategic bomber. Boeing, along with several competing companies, submitted dueling proposals. Boeing’s candidate, a colossal straight-wing aircraft called the Model 462, went on to win the tender in 1946. The process stalled amid a prolonged series of negotiations between Boeing and the Air Force, with the latter expressing concerns over the proposed bomber’s weight, speed, and bulky design. In the years that followed, Boeing churned out additional concept models that were lighter and faster—the initial design was eventually abandoned in favor of swept wings. It was only after six years, in 1952, that prototypes began to enter pre-production. By then, the strategic bomber was a thoroughly different plane from the early design concept introduced by Boeing in 1946.

Powered by Pratt & Whitney J57-P-1W turbojets that were later replaced by the markedly more powerful P&W TF33-P-3 turbofans, the B-52 supports a payload of up to 31,500 kilograms and boasts an operational range of just over fourteen thousand kilometers without aerial refueling. The B-52 isn’t particularly maneuverable or fast at a top speed of just over one thousand kilometers per hour, nor does it need to be; its primary purpose was to fly deterrence missions against the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War.

In keeping with its raison dêtre, B-52 is prodigiously armed. Beginning with its “H” revision, the B-52 bomber’s nuclear weapons capability was headlined by twelve AGM-129 advanced cruise missiles and twenty AGM-86A air-launched cruise missiles? The AGM-86A was theoretically able to overwhelm Soviet missile defenses with saturation strikes launched outside of Soviet airspace. The B-52 bomber likewise supports an exhaustive list of weapons for a wide range of conventional missions: among them, AGM-84 Harpoon missiles, joint direct-attack munitions (JDAM), AGM-142 Raptor missiles, and AGM-86C conventional air-launched cruise missiles (CALCM).

Capable of delivering huge payloads at vast distances, the B-52 bomber quickly became a U.S. Air Force staple in the Vietnam War. The strategic bombers flew hundreds of combat sorties and dropped over fifteen tons of bombs on North Vietnamese targets during Operation Linebacker II. More recently, the B-52 bomber distinguished itself during Operation Desert Storm: “B-52s struck wide-area troop concentrations, fixed installations and bunkers, and decimated the morale of Iraq’s Republican Guard,” read an Air Force statement.

The B-52 bomber’s greatest long-term strength has proven to be its flexibility, and nowhere is this more apparent than its remarkable ability to assimilate new weapons platforms. There are plans to upgrade B-52 bombers with AGM-183A hypersonic missiles as part of the U.S. military’s response to Russia’s recent strides in test-launching hypersonic cruise missiles.

In addition to new weapons, the Air Force’s fleet of seventy-six B-52s is slated to receive a raft of avionics and targeting updates to keep them relevant into the coming decades. B-52’s are currently being retrofitted with new data links and upgraded communications suites, as well as additional countermeasures and navigation features.

Combining a remarkably resilient airframe with a modular design approach, the B-52 bomber will be among America’s longest-serving aircraft when it eventually retires in the 2050s.

Mark Episkopos is a national security reporter for the National Interest. 

Image: Reuters

Mark Episkopos

B-2 Bomber,

The B-2 Spirit is the most advanced strategic bomber in the US Air Force (USAF) roster, occupying a vital role in the American nuclear triad for its blend of deep penetration and heavy ordnance delivery capabilities.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Aside from the changes to the Fuze mechanism, Boeing engineers have worked to mitigate the effects of ground impact through sheer size and mass; coming in at a whopping 30,000 pounds and with a 32-inch diameter, GBU-57’s warhead is encased in a massive hunk of protective steel as it burrows toward its target.

The B-2 Spirit is the most advanced strategic bomber in the US Air Force (USAF) roster, occupying a vital role in the American nuclear triad for its blend of deep penetration and heavy ordnance delivery capabilities.

There has been no shortage of B-2 footage over the past several decades, extensively capturing its takeoff and maintenance routines as well as a wide range of aerial shots. However, there has been a curious dearth of B-2 weapons exercise clips-- until now.

A few years back, the US Air Force posted a two-minute long video of the B-2 dropping GBU-57A/B “bunker buster” bombs from a past training event. The clip, shot with an unusually high video fidelity for a military exercise, shows a B-2 opening its internal weapons bay to drop two GBU-57 massive ordnance penetrator (MOP) bombs. One of the bombs drills into the earth beneath the designated area, marked with a red cone, before detonating in a powerful explosion with good effect on target (GEOT).

As depicted in the video, the GBU-57 is designed to penetrate fortifications up to 200 feet below ground before detonating its 5,300-pound warhead, clearing out enemy positions that are otherwise unreachable by surface-level bombing runs. 

The GBU-57 is arguably the most destructive weapon of its kind, hailing from a long line of smaller cousins and air blast variants.  When combined with the infiltration capabilities of the B-2 Spirit, MOP provides the US military with a robust toolkit for neutralizing enemy underground structure of the kind widely used by the North Korean and even Chinese militaries.

The latest iteration of MOP-- the GBU-57/B-- is slated to fix its predecessor’s most crucial shortcoming: its fuze system. The detonation fuze of prior models was prone to triggering before or after reaching the target, or not denoting at all. The US military is currently in the process of upgrading their MOP arsenal to “smarter fuzes,” capable of counting layers, resisting several feet of concrete impact, and even transmitting mission information back to military command.

Aside from the changes to the Fuze mechanism, Boeing engineers have worked to mitigate the effects of ground impact through sheer size and mass; coming in at a whopping 30,000 pounds and with a 32-inch diameter, GBU-57’s warhead is encased in a massive hunk of protective steel as it burrows toward its target.

The B-2, while not getting any younger from its 1997 debut, is anything but a slouch in the heavy bomber stealth performance department. It likewise features a remarkable viable avionics package for its day, boasting a coterie of digital displays (including a Synthetic Aperture Radar). Nonetheless, anti-air missile technology has advanced dramatically over the past two decades; Russia has since introduced its capable S-400 system, which is now on the cusp of being succeeded by the upcoming S-500.

As such, the USAF plans to modernize the B-2 platform over the coming decades while retaining the core performance features that have made it America’s staple heavy nuclear bomber. The ongoing B-2 modernization program is focused around a deep avionics overhaul, integrating a new flight management control processor and “Defense Management System (DMS),” a collection of sensors calibrated to reveal the precise location of enemy anti-air systems.

Mark Episkopos is a frequent contributor to The National Interest. Mark is also a Ph.D. student in History at American University. This article is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Mark Episkopos

Russia, arctic

The Northern Fleet announced that it will be hosting a new wave of drills this autumn.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The Northern Sea Route provides commercial ships in the Saint Petersburg area with a greatly expedited form of transit to East Asia through the Bering Sea.

The Onega and Naryan-Mar Grisha III- class corvettes launched torpedo attacks against a notional enemy’s submarine in the White Sea, according to the Northern Fleet’s press office. The Typhoon-class submarine Dmitry Donskoi played the role of the enemy vessel, the Northern Fleet specified. "The warships searched for the submarine using onboard sonars and launched a torpedo attack against it. The heavy nuclear-powered underwater cruiser Dmitry Donskoi operating at a depth of over 100 meters simulated the underwater enemy for the small anti-submarine warfare ships," read the press statement. The dummy torpedoes fired against Dmitry Donskoi were recovered and brought back to base following the exercises. The drills were staged out of the Northern Fleet’s Belomorskaya naval base, located in the Arkhangelsk region of northwestern Russia. The Northern Fleet is headquartered in the Murmansk region’s town of Severomorsk, not far off Russia’s state border with Finland.

The Grisha III class is a line of Soviet-built, dedicated anti-submarine corvettes, six of which are currently active in Russia’s Northern Fleet. The ships boast two RBU-6000 anti-submarine rocket launchers, carrying a total of ninety-six rockets, as well as two standard 533 torpedo tubes and a 9K33 “Osa” surface-to-air missile launcher. The Grisha class has been succeeded by the Steregushchiy corvette class, which is not specifically an anti-submarine vessel but offers a versatile enough armament loadout to serve in that role. The Paket-E/NK system of the latter provides what is an overall more effective solution against submarines, boasting anti-submarine MTT torpedoes with an operational range of up to 10,000 meters. Onega and Naryan-Mar are part of a naval task force that conducted artillery fire exercises against sea and air targets, as well as anti-submarine operations. It is unclear what other ships were included in this task force and how long this ongoing set of exercises will run.

Dmitri Donskoi is the sole remaining Typhoon-class nuclear-powered heavy ballistic missile submarine (SSBN). Laid down in 1976, it held—and by some measures, still retains—the title of the largest military submarine ever built. The Typhoon-class is being replaced by the newer and more capable Borei-class SSBNs, with Donskoi reportedly scheduled to serve through the mid-2020s.

These exercises follow a series of Russian bomber drills conducted earlier this month, which involved Tu-160 and Tu-95MS planes launching cruise missiles during a live-fire session at an Arctic firing range. The Northern Fleet announced that it will be hosting a new wave of drills this autumn, nominally aimed at protecting Russia’s Northern Sea Route. The route provides commercial ships in the Saint Petersburg area with a greatly expedited form of transit to East Asia through the Bering Sea.

Moscow has recommitted to ramping up its Arctic military activity in recent months, with Deputy Chairman of  the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev saying during an earlier session of Russia’s Arctic Commission that Russia “must continue its work on the strengthening of Arctic troops equipped with modern types of armament.”

Mark Episkopos is a national security reporter for The National Interest.

This piece first appeared earlier this year and is being reprinted due to reader interest.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

As the crisis in Afghanistan deepens by the hour, with reports that insurgent forces reached the country’s capital, Kabul, earlier on Sunday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has urged the Taliban and all other parties “to exercise utmost restraint to protect lives and ensure that humanitarian needs can be addressed.”

Mark Episkopos

F-35,

Here's how it dominates every wargame in which it 'fights.'

Here's What You Need to Remember: Whereas earlier Red Flag exercises prioritized survivability, recent sessions have taken steps to incorporate a more diverse set of criteria that include reconnaissance and surveillance, as well as air superiority and strike operations.

Over one decade since its first flight, Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II has earned an extensive and consistently impressive performance record in the most challenging wargames to date.

Conceived in the mid-1970s, Red Flag is widely regarded as the US Air Force’s (USAF’s) premier aerial combat exercise. Held in ten to twelve annual installments that are spread between the Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada and Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, the two-week exercises involve as many as one-hundred aircraft tested in accurate training conditions. Whereas earlier Red Flag exercises prioritized survivability, recent sessions have taken steps to incorporate a more diverse set of criteria that include reconnaissance and surveillance, as well as air superiority and strike operations.

The F-35A’s major Red Flag debut came in 2017, shortly after the fighter was declared as having reached initial operational capability (IOC). Thirteen F-35 pilots from the 388th Fighter Wing’s 4th Fighter Squadron went up against advanced anti-air threats, including enemy air defenses and air-to-air fighters. The results were unambiguous. The F-35’s dominated the notional enemy, achieving a kill ratio of fifteen to one whilst scoring direct hits with twenty-five out of twenty-seven inert weapons dropped. This, despite the fact that the goal was less to test the F-35’s combat prowess than its ability to act as a “quarterback in the sky” for other friendly aircraft. Here, the results were equally as unambiguous: the F-35’s proved their ability to act as a force multiplier for older fourth-generation aircraft like the F-16, utilizing their sensor fusion suite to give legacy aircraft what one pilot called a “god’s eye view” of the battlefield. “Situational awareness is king,” added Col. David Lyons, commander of the 388th Fighter Wing. “Everybody’s SA is improved when the F-35 is on the battlefield.”

Nor was it a one-off, with the 4th Fighter Squadron replicating similarly impressive results during Red Flag’s 2019 exercises. The F-35’s were integrated into a larger “Blue Force” and pitted against a sixty aircraft-strong “Red Force” of “equally capable” fighters while subjected to a constant stream of communications jamming and GPS denial attacks.

"Even in this extremely challenging environment, the F-35 didn’t have many difficulties doing its job," said Col. Joshua Wood, 388th Operations Group commander. “That’s a testament to the pilot’s training and the capabilities of the jet.” As with the 2017 exercises, F-35 pilots raved about the fighter’s survivability and sensor fusion capabilities. “With stealth, the F-35 can get closer to threats than many other aircraft can. Combined with the performance of the fused sensors on the F-35, we can significantly contribute to the majority of the missions,” said 1st Lt. Landon Moores. “As this aircraft matures, we continue to see it be a significant force-multiplier in a threat-dense environment,” he added. “Red Flag was a success for us and has made our younger pilots more lethal and more confident.”

Beyond Red Flag, the F-35 has proven itself in region-specific exercises. A recent series of wargames found that the imminent Block 4 revision of the F-35 is one of the few fighters capable of meaningfully contributing to US efforts to counter a full-scale Chinese invasion of Taiwan, widely recognized as one of the most difficult potential scenarios facing the U.S. military today.

The large body of data gathered from Red Flag and other recent exercises could not be any clearer: even in highly demanding battlefield circumstances, the F-35 continues to meet and exceed USAF’s expectations.

Mark Episkopos is a national security reporter for The National Interest.

Image: Flickr

In a new chapter for Afghanistan, women are particularly vulnerable.

Mark Episkopos

Russia, Eurasia

The TOS-1’s multiple launch rocket system boasts a firing range of only up to 3.5 kilometers and can cover an area of two hundred by four hundred meters, cementing the weapon’s role as a fire support platform for infantry and heavy armor.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The Buratino was succeeded in 2001 by the more advanced TOS-1A, bringing a vastly expanded range of six thousand kilometers, revised launching tubes, and a slew of chassis upgrades. Despite their somewhat niche battlefield role, the TOS-1 and TOS-1A have proven to be fairly popular export products

Decades after its introduction, the TOS-1 remains one of the deadliest conventional weapons systems in Russia’s rapidly expanding arsenal. 

Beginning in the 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union took an increasing interest in fuel-air explosives (FAEs). An FAE is a two-charge weapon that disperses a chemical cloud; that cloud is then ignited, causing a devastating blast wave in a wide radius. FAEs detonate the air. Thus, they are most effective in enclosed spaces where they can turn the tactical advantage of reinforced structures like bunkers and tunnels into a lethal weakness.  

The U.S. military deployed FAEs during the course of the Vietnam War. Not to be outdone, the Soviet military got to work on its own version of a thermobaric weapons system. Introduced in the 1980s, the TOS-1 Buratino “heavy flamethrower system” is built from the T-72 main battle tank chassis. It can carry two types of 220-millimeter rockets, split between incendiary and fuel-air explosive warheads. The name Buratino—a nod to the long-nosed Pinocchio character—refers to the system’s protruding thirty-tube launcher unit, capable of unleashing a full salvo in up to fifteen seconds.

The TOS-1’s multiple launch rocket system boasts a firing range of only up to 3.5 kilometers and can cover an area of two hundred by four hundred meters, cementing the weapon’s role as a fire support platform for infantry and heavy armor. What this means, in practical terms, is that TOS-1 groups can devastate enemy fortifications within a relatively large area in a short time span.

Death by TOS-1 salvo is an eminently unpleasant experience. Depending on a person’s proximity to the detonation, the overpressure and subsequent combustion from the blast wave can inflict significant damage to internal organs, as well as broken bones, ruptured eardrums, blindness, suffocation, and loss of consciousness in the victim’s last moments.

The TOS-1’s destructive firepower was first laid bare in the latter stages of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and, again, during the Second Chechen War. The latter is a particularly jarring case of FAEs being used in dense, urban environments, obliterating entire swathes of the Chechen capital, Grozny, and costing numerous civilian lives in the process.  

The Buratino was succeeded in 2001 by the more advanced TOS-1A, bringing a vastly expanded range of six thousand kilometers, revised launching tubes, and a slew of chassis upgrades. Despite their somewhat niche battlefield role, the TOS-1 and TOS-1A have proven to be fairly popular export products. The Iraqi army has used these weapons against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militants from 2014 to 2017. TOS-1s were likewise used by the Syrian military against anti-government forces during the Syrian Civil War, with unconfirmed reports indicating that at least one such system was destroyed by rebels in 2016. More recently, video footage has emerged of Azerbaijan’s military allegedly launching TOS-1A salvos against Karabakh separatists during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War. Saudi Arabia has recently purchased a batch of TOS-1A units as part of a larger $3 billion deal with Russia.  

A further TOS revision, the TOS-2 Tosochka, was first spotted during Russia’s Kavkaz-2020 exercises. The weapon, which is currently undergoing trials, reportedly boasts further firing range upgrades and automated targeting protocols. 

Mark Episkopos is a national security reporter for the National Interest. This article is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Wikipedia.

Mark Episkopos

F-35,

The state-of-the-art  F-35 program has made major strides in reducing costs over the past decade, and there are even more encouraging signs on the horizon.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The long-term figures are unambiguous: Lockheed Martin has consistently driven down the F-35A’s flyaway cost between serial production batches.

As the US Air Force (USAF) charts acquisition plans into the coming decades, an unmistakable trend emerges for the country’s most advanced fighter jet: the state-of-the-art  F-35 program has made major strides in reducing costs over the past decade, and there are even more encouraging signs on the horizon.

The debate over costs runs usually across two primary metrics: flyaway and sustainment costs. The flyaway cost is simply the price of producing a single additional model. As its name suggests, this is a marginal cost figure that excludes sunk expenses like research and development. Meanwhile, the sustainment cost refers to the price of operating a piece of hardware, including manpower, maintenance, system improvements, materiel, and more. These two figures are not strictly related, capturing different aspects of the expenses associated with an aircraft. When considered in conjunction, they can offer a comprehensive picture of how much it costs to produce and fly an F-35.

The long-term figures are unambiguous: Lockheed Martin has consistently driven down the F-35A’s flyaway cost between serial production batches. Lot 1 is estimated to have a per-model cost of around two hundred million dollars; with Lot 5, the price dropped all the way down to around $100 million per model. Lot 12 saw the cost come down to $82.4 million and, as of Lot 14, the per-model cost now sits at $77.9 million. For a sense of scale, consider that the F-35 now not only has a markedly lower flyaway cost than the less advanced F-15EX (which is typically quoted at around $85-90 million) but is also cheaper than competing foreign fighters like the Eurofighter Typhoon. Indeed, the F-35 remains in high demand among US partners: Saudi Arabia, Spain, Qatar, Greece, the Czech Republic are among those that have expressed import interest in recent years.

“We really haven’t seen any sort of diminishing interest,” said Bridget Lauderdale, Lockheed Martin’s new F-35 program head. “As the jet performs — and frankly as, for example, our European partners are able to operate together and see the power and the strength of the capabilities on the platform and particularly as they are interoperating in their missions — we are seeing a stronger conviction around what this means to the security of their individual nations and to the effectiveness of the alliances.” Lauderdale added that “the airplane is doing its job and selling itself.”

The F-35 has been or is being purchased by over a dozen U.S. allies, helping the American defense industry to secure a foothold in the lucrative and increasingly competitive high-end jet fighter market. Meanwhile, the consolidation of US allies around a single fighter platform is a major boon for the principle of interoperability that sits at the heart of NATO’s international military infrastructure.

Sustainment outlays, too, have seen a steady decline, with the fighter’s cost per flight hour dropping by 23% over the past four years. The F-35’s current cost per flying hour sits at $36,000, a sharp reduction from  $44,000 in fiscal year 2018. Through further logistics optimizations, Lockheed Martin seeks to drive that figure all the way down to $25,000 by 2025.

Significant progress has been made, but the good news doesn’t end here. As the F-35 program matures and expands, Lockheed Martin will be in a position to continue leveraging economies of scale and refining its supply chains. This will drive the fighter’s costs down even further in coming decades, giving the Pentagon and the American taxpayer rising value throughout the F-35’s roughly fifty years of projected service.

Mark Episkopos is a national security reporter for The National Interest.

Image: Flickr

The United States evacuates its embassy while diplomats and aid officials brace for a new humanitarian catastrophe.

Si elle veut encore exister en l'an 2000, l'Europe de l'électronique doit consentir des investissements lourds et faire des paris risqués. Absents de plusieurs domaines-clés, ses industriels devront tenter de sauter une génération de produits, voire plusieurs, et parfois acheter des compétences (...) / Intégration régionale, Japon, Technologie, Électronique - 1991/06

Authoritarians around the world are perfecting the art of seeming more powerful than they are.

A community-led project to manage some 28,000 tonnes of plastic waste and prevent 5,000 tonnes from ending up in the ocean is being supported by the UN in one of the most popular tourist attractions in Viet Nam.

Europe’s poster child for pandemic dysfunction can now teach other countries how to beat the disease.

“Social responsibility and sustainable profit” can go hand in hand according to the chief of Thailand’s government pension fund. The UN, and some of the biggest players in the Thai economy, are working together to support efforts by the country’s finance and banking institutions to speed up the South East Asian country’s transition to a net zero carbon economy.