Diplomacy & Crisis News

Cette recension a été publiée dans le numéro de printemps 2021 de Politique étrangère (n° 1/2021). Sina Schlimmer, chercheuse au Centre Afrique subsaharienne de l’Ifri, propose une analyse de l’ouvrage de Kathleen Klaus, Political Violence in Kenya: Land, Elections, and Claim-Making (Cambridge University Press, 2020, 374 pages).

Kathleen Klaus propose un ouvrage empiriquement riche, croisant l’analyse des relations foncières, de la compétition électorale, de la sociologie des mobilisations et des régimes politiques au Kenya.

Les élections générales de 2007 constituent le point de départ de l’ouvrage : Raila Odinga, le candidat du parti d’opposition Orange Democratic Movement, conteste la réélection du président sortant, Mwai Kibaki (Party of National Union). Odinga appelle alors l’opposition à se mobiliser en masse, ce qui se traduit par des violences dans les zones rurales, et urbaines provoquant la mort de 1 500 personnes et le déplacement de 600 000 autres.

Si l’auteur articule deux objets de recherche complexes, les violences électorales et la politisation des régimes fonciers, elle formule une question simple à laquelle répondent les huit chapitres : pourquoi des mobilisations violentes avant, pendant et après les élections s’observent-elles dans certaines localités et non pas dans d’autres ? Elle argumente que la violence électorale est une production conjointe entre les objectifs politiques des élites et les préoccupations de citoyens dits ordinaires.

L’ouvrage met la focale sur les dynamiques locales, se distinguant ainsi des travaux qui décrivent les violences électorales comme un phénomène national. Il compare le déroulement des événements post-électoraux dans différentes circonscriptions dans la région de la Vallée de Rift (Nakuru et Uasin Gishu) – où se sont concentrées les violences autour des élections en 2007-2008 – et dans la région de la Côte (Kwale et Kilifi) où la situation a été plutôt calme.

D’où la conclusion : la violence électorale est susceptible d’éclater d’abord lorsque deux communautés ethniques avoisinantes disposent de différents degrés de sécurité et de droits financiers. Sur cette inégalité, les communautés construisent, deuxièmement, des « discours fonciers contentieux » désignant l’autre groupe ethnique comme étant à l’origine de l’insécurité foncière. Ces rivalités ethniques exacerbées par la crainte de perdre l’accès aux terres sont exploitées par les candidats lors des campagnes électorales dans une logique de patronage.

En combinant un regard historique et une analyse fine des relations contemporaines entre gouvernants et gouvernés, cette recherche présente à juste titre les rapports au foncier comme l’épine dorsale de la (trans)formation de l’État et de la vie politique au Kenya.

Le travail de Klaus ne se limite pourtant pas à l’analyse des politiques foncières. Son ouvrage cherche à alimenter plusieurs corpus, y compris sur les mobilisations électorales, sur les dynamiques ethniques et, plus généralement, sur la trajectoire historique du régime politique kenyan. Si cette approche lui permet d’écrire un livre pouvant intéresser un large public, elle en rend la lecture parfois fastidieuse, notamment lorsque la richesse des matériaux empiriques paraît se perdre dans l’argumentation théorique.

Si l’ouvrage offre une lecture complète de l’histoire des relations entre la lutte pour les votes et la politisation du foncier au Kenya, il reste à savoir si la décentralisation des fonctions publiques vers les comtés, en cours depuis l’adoption de la Constitution de 2010, corrobore ces résultats, ou invite plutôt à les repenser.

Sina Schlimmer

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Russian Submarines, Europe

The Oscars needed to be fast to intercept American nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, and that meant they too needed nuclear propulsion.

Here's What You Need to Remember: In the end, the sinking of the Kursk appears to have been caused by a simple, freak accident of chemistry. The tragedy only reinforces how dangerous life aboard a submarine really is, and how important safety is in the underwater realm.

In 2000, a Russian submarine designed to sink aircraft carriers became a victim of its own arsenal. The cruise-missile submarine Kursk suffered a massive explosion and sank after an onboard torpedo accidentally detonated. The accident was the worst naval disaster suffered by post–Cold War Russia.

The Soviet Union’s greatest adversaries at sea were the aircraft carriers of the U.S. Navy. With their versatile air wings, American carriers could frustrate the Warsaw Pact’s plans wartime plans, doing everything from escorting convoys across the Atlantic to bombing Soviet Northern Fleet bases above the Arctic Circle. They also carried nuclear weapons, making them exceptionally dangerous to the Soviet coastline.

The Soviets’ solution was the construction of the Oscar-class submarines. Some of the largest submarines ever constructed, they displaced measure 506 feet long with a beam of nearly sixty feet—nearly twice that of the Soviet Union’s Alfa-class attack submarines. At 19,400 tons submerged, they were larger than the American Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarines.

They were large for a reason: each Oscar carried two dozen huge P-700 Granit missiles. The P-700 was a large missile designed to kill large ships. The P-700 was thirty-three feet long and nearly three feet wide. Each weighed 15,400 pounds each, most of which was fuel for the ramjet-powered engine which propelled the missile at speeds of Mach 1.6 to a range of 388 miles. The missile packed either a 1,653-pound conventional high explosive warhead, enough to damage an aircraft carrier, or a five-hundred-kiloton nuclear warhead, enough to vaporize a carrier. The missiles would be fed targeting data from the Legenda space surveillance system, which would hunt fast-moving carrier battle groups from orbit.

The missiles were concealed beneath the hull in two rows of twelve, in silos pointed upward at a seventy-degree angle. It was this arsenal that earned them the then-unusual SSGN designation in the West, with the G standing for “guided missile.”

If that weren’t enough, the Oscars had a large complement of torpedoes. Each submarine had four standard-diameter 533-millimeter torpedo tubes that could launch standard homing torpedoes, SS-N-15 “Starfish” antisubmarine missiles or SS-N-16 “Stallion” antiship missiles. It also had two oversized 650-millimeter torpedo tubes for launching Type 65-76A torpedoes against larger ship targets. Together the six tubes were armed with twenty-four torpedoes.

The Oscars needed to be fast to intercept American nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, and that meant they too needed nuclear propulsion. Each was powered by two OK-650 nuclear reactors that together provided 97,990 shipboard horsepower. This accelerated the submarines to up to fifteen knots on the surface and a speedy thirty-three knots underwater.

Twenty Oscar-class submarines were planned, but only thirteen were built before the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union. K-141, also known as Kursk, was laid down in March 1992 and commissioned into the Russian Northern Fleet in December 1994.

On August 15, 2000, the Kursk was on exercise with major elements of the Russian Northern Fleet, including the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov and battlecruiser Pyotr Velikiy. Kursk, which was fully loaded with Granit missiles and torpedoes, was scheduled to make a simulated attack on an aircraft carrier. At 11:28 a.m., an underwater explosion was detected followed two minutes later by a second, larger explosion. One Russian account claims that the twenty-eight-thousand-ton battlecruiser Pyotr Velikiy shook from the first explosion, and a Norwegian seismic station recorded both explosions.

Kursk had suffered two massive explosions and sank in 354 feet of water at a twenty-degree vertical angle. An explosion had ripped through the front of the hull, tearing a terrible gash along the upper bow. Still, at least twenty-three of the 118 crew had survived the sinking, as a note penned by one of the ship’s senior officers, Lt. Capt. Dmitri Kolesnikov, indicated. The note was dated exactly two hours after the initial explosion. Rescue efforts by Russian—and later British and Norwegian—teams failed to rescue the survivors.

A Russian inquiry into the accident concluded that one of the Kursk’s Type 65-76A torpedoes had exploded. A faulty weld in a torpedo or damage to a torpedo during movement had caused it to leak hydrogen peroxide. Like many torpedoes, the Type 65 used hydrogen peroxide as an underwater fuel. Unfortunately, hydrogen peroxide becomes explosive when it comes into contact with a catalyst, such as organic compounds or fire. A similar accident is thought to have sank HMS Sidon, a Royal Navy submarine, in 1955.

Conspiracy theories regarding the sinking of the Kursk are rife on the Russian Internet. Many allege that nearby American attack submarines sank the Kursk with Mark 48 torpedoes. While technically possible (in absence of the evidence of an internal torpedo explosion) there is no remotely plausible motive for such an attack during a period of good U.S.-Russian relations. Why attack the Kursk? Why was only the Kursk sunk, and not the Kuznetsov and Pyotr Velikiy? Why would the Russian government cover up the attack?

In the end, the sinking of the Kursk appears to have been caused by a simple, freak accident of chemistry. The tragedy only reinforces how dangerous life aboard a submarine really is, and how important safety is in the underwater realm. Finally, the rush to conspiracy is a warning that, had this incident occurred during a genuine crisis, such an accident could cause a dangerous escalation that could lead to war.

Kyle Mizokami is a defense and national security writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in the Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and the Daily Beast. In 2009 he cofounded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch. You can follow him on Twitter: @KyleMizokami.

This first appeared in November 2016 and is being reposed due to reader interest. 

Image: Wikipedia.

Robert Farley

Russo-Japan War, Asia

Land combat between Russian and Japanese forces in 1904 and 1905 was recognizably modern.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The Battle of Yalu River, the Siege of Port Arthur, and the Battle of Sendepu differ from 20th century land combat only in emphasis. Both Japanese and Russian forces suffered enormous casualties in efforts to take prepared defenses. The Battle of Mukden, fought in March 1905, produced a total of nearly 150,000 casualties.

The Russo-Japanese War commenced over 100 years ago, lasting eighteen months before a US-brokered truce mercifully put it to rest. The war killed upwards of 125,000 people, and sharply limited Russian influence in Northeast Asia. Japan gained control of Korea, and gained a long-term foothold for influencing events in Manchuria and China.

Writers have ascribed many legacies to the conflict, some of which we can set aside. Victory against Japan probably would not have prevented the collapse of Imperial Russia and the founding of the Soviet Union; the Revolution happened for other reasons. Moreover, the conflict did not give the Central Powers a “window of opportunity” for defeating Russia in Europe; we now know that Vienna and Berlin over-estimated, rather than under-estimated, Russian power in 1914. Defeat might conceivably have broken Japanese militarism for a time, but the weakness of China and of the European colonial empires would likely have proven too tempting for Tokyo in any case.

Still, the Russo-Japanese War may indeed have been a “regional” conflict, but Northeast Asia is a remarkably important region, home to three of the largest economies of the 21st century. The war set the terms upon which Russia, China, Korea, and Japan would contest control of the region over the course of the 20th century. The conflict also had important legacies for the conduct of war. The power of conscript and rapid fire weapons would prefigure the experience of 20th century land combat, while fighting between “castles of steel,” would lend key lessons for naval planners in both World Wars.

The Politics of Northeast Asia: 

The waning power of the Qing dynasty in the 19th century set the state for Russo-Japanese conflict in Northeast Asia. Although Japanese success at sea was not replicated to the same extent on land, the Japanese victory did place stark limits on the extent of Russian power in the Pacific. Even after the Soviets won a decisive victory over Japan at Khalkin Gol, and crushed the Kwantung Army in the waning days of World War II, circumstances prevented permanent territorial aggrandizement. Had the Russians maintained their position in Asia in 1905, this might have turned out much differently.

With the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, and the ensuing collapse of the Chinese state, China was unable to resist foreign encroachments upon its territory.  Fortunately for China, Russia remained in such disorder that it could not take advantage to its own territorial aggrandizement, and in any case Japanese power held Russia in check.

Japan, however, took advantage of Chinese disorder. In 1931 the Japanese Kwantung Army occupied Manchuria and declared it independent of China, installing the last emperor of the Qing dynasty in what became Manchukuo.  Neither Communist nor Nationalist Chinese forces had the strength the contest this move, but the Soviet invasion of August 1945 quickly annihilated the Kwantung Army. Rather than maintain Manchukuo as a Soviet satellite, the Russians looted in, then used it to bolster the position of the People’s Liberation Army. In 1949, the Chinese Communist Party took control of most of China, including Manchuria but not including either Taiwan or Mongolia.

Had Russia prevailed in 1905, then either Russia or the Soviet Union, instead of Japan, might well have detached Manchuria, just as the Soviets detached Mongolia. Under such circumstances, it’s unlikely that any Chinese government would have been able to recover the territory; the Soviet Union was in no mood for reparations in 1945. Whether incorporated directly into Russia or simply into the Soviet sphere, Manchuria might now remain politically separated from the rest of China.  Conversely, a Korea more capable of playing Russian influence off Japanese might have been able to retain its independence.

Of course, much remains unknowable. A defeated Japan might have taken advantage of the opportunity provided by the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1918 to seize what it could not take in 1904.  Even this, however, might have produced a different configuration of power in Northeast Asia than eventually held.

Decisive Naval Battle: 

Fought in late May, 1905, the Battle of Tsushima remains the great battle of annihilation of the steam age, and possibly the single greatest naval victory of all time. Admiral Heihachiro Togo’s decision to offer battle at Tsushima remains an unremarked-upon curiosity. The Russian fleet was, in numbers, considerably superior to the Japanese, and in the technology of its most advanced ships qualitatively equal.  The first rate Russian battleships were of modern design, and the Russian 12” gun well regarded, even at long ranges.

To be sure, Togo had major advantages. His ships were well drilled, and his sailors in top condition.  The Russian squadron had endured a series of traumatic adventures in its interminable journey around Eurasia, and wasn’t in fighting shape. Nevertheless, offering battle represented a real risk. A single well-placed shot could have destroyed one of Togo’s battleships, probably tipping the result inexorably in the Russian favor.

Moreover, it’s unclear what precisely the Russian fleet could have done to change the verdict of the war. The geographic situation strongly favored Japan, as the Russian fleet could only disrupt communications if it deployed in force; otherwise, Togo could destroy it piecemeal. The Russians could have raided Japan or harassed the Japanese fishing fleet, but without a proximate base could neither have forced battle nor prevented Japan from supplying and augmenting its fielded forces on the mainland.

Nevertheless, Togo forced battle on the exhausted Russian fleet, and used two major advantages to great effect. The speed and coherence of the Japanese line allowed it to conduct what has become known as the “Togo Turn,” a maneuver which crossed the Russian “T” and effectively allowed the Japanese to double up on the lead Russian warships. The most powerful Russian battleships were destroyed in echelon, while the Japanese tracked down most of the escapees the next day.

In addition to its military impact, the victory had a great morale effect, serving as an international signal of Japan’s prowess, and Russia’s decay. The defeated Russian admiral was treated as a hero by opponents of the Czar, who argued that the corrupt, incompetent Russian government had needlessly sent thousands of brave young men to their deaths.

Whatever its effect on the war, Tsushima was enormously influential abroad. In the short term, this accelerated the trend towards fast, all-big-gun battleships. In the longer term, it helped ensconce the idea of a single, decisive battle in the minds of naval theorists and practitioners.  A concentrated Japanese fleet had prevailed over a concentrated Russian fleet through superior tactics and training, completely destroying the latter in the process.  The victory left Russia effectively without maritime recourse, no longer in a position to threaten Japanese communications with the mainland.

This is the victory that Jellicoe and Scheer sought at Jutland, and the victory that the admirals of the IJN wanted to inflict on the battleships of the U.S. Navy in the Second World War. Conversely, it was the defeat that the Italians desperately wanted to avoid in the central Mediterranean, and that the British feared off the Falklands. Tsushima, combined with a bastardized form of Mahanianism, influenced naval thought for generations, and remains important today.

Ground Combat: 

Most historical analysis of the Russo-Japanese War has focused on naval heroics, with the Battle of Tsushima taking a central place. In many ways, however, the legacy of the land war has proven more enduring. The transformative effect of military technology on the land warfare slowly became apparent across the nineteenth century. The Crimean War, the American Civil War, and the Franco-Prussian War were all “transitional” wars, progressive steps from the (graduated) plateau of eighteenth century infantry combat to the plateau of “modern system” combat.

Land combat between Russian and Japanese forces in 1904 and 1905 was recognizably modern. Although the airplane would not have an impact until the next decade, most of the pieces associated with the 20th century “Revolution in Military Affairs” were set in place. Most notably, this included the combination of mass, conscript armies with the advent of modern, rapid-fire weapons that could effectively clear the field, leading to the phenomenon of the “empty battlefield.” Armies have struggled to solve the problem of the empty battlefield since 1905, developing a cascade of innovations, from trenches, to tanks, to sophisticated artillery barrages, to storm troopers, to (in their own way) strategic bombers.

The Battle of Yalu River, the Siege of Port Arthur, and the Battle of Sendepu differ from 20th century land combat only in emphasis. Both Japanese and Russian forces suffered enormous casualties in efforts to take prepared defenses. The Battle of Mukden, fought in March 1905, produced a total of nearly 150,000 casualties.

To be sure, much has changed; the advent of the aircraft and the widespread use of the radio would change the means of land combat within fifteen years of the Russo-Japanese War. Still, the forms of battle are essentially recognizable, in a way that the battles of the American Civil War are not.

Conclusion

World War I and World War II so transformed the maps of both Europe and Asia that discerning the influence of antecedent conflicts like the Russo-Japanese War can be hard. Still, the setback that the Japanese dealt to the Russians in 1904-05 helped shape the contours of Asian politics for a century. Surprisingly, given the relative backwardness of the Russian and Japanese economies in 1905, it also served as the world’s first taste of modern, industrial warfare.

Robert Farley is a senior lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and The Diplomat. Follow him on Twitter:@drfarls.

This first appeared in 2014 and is being reposted due to reader interest. 

Image: Wikipedia.

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Robert Farley

Security, Asia

If the United States was deeply surprised to find itself at war with the People’s Republic of China, a country that hadn’t even existed the year before, it was even more surprised to find itself losing that war. It happened then and it could happen again.

Here’s What You Need to Remember: In November 1950, China and the United States went to war. Thirty-six thousand Americans died, along with upwards of a quarter-million Chinese, and half a million or more Koreans. If the United States was deeply surprised to find itself at war with the People’s Republic of China, a country that hadn’t even existed the year before, it was even more surprised to find itself losing that war. The opening Chinese offensive, launched from deep within North Korea, took U.S. forces by complete operational surprise. The U.S.-led United Nations offensive into North Korea was thrown back, with the U.S. Army handed its worst defeat since the American Civil War.

The legacies of this war remain deep, complex and underexamined. Memory of the Korean War in the United States is obscured by the looming shadows of World War II and Vietnam. China remembers the conflict differently, but China’s position in the world has changed in deep and fundamental ways since the 1950s. Still, as we consider the potential for future conflict between China and the United States, we should try to wring what lessons we can from the first Sino-American war.

Initiation: 

In early 1950, the politics of the Cold War had not yet solidified around a pair of mutually hostile blocks. Nevertheless, the contours were visible; the Soviets had spent several years consolidating control of Eastern Europe, and the Chinese Communist Party had ridden the victories of the People’s Liberation Army to power in Beijing. The stage was set for a zero-sum interpretation of the global struggle between Communist and non-Communist powers. It was just such an interpretation that dominated Washington’s thinking as North Korean forces escalated the Korean civil war with a massive invasion across the 38th parallel.

Inside the United States, tension over the collapse of Nationalist China remained high. The Nationalist government possessed an extremely effective public-relations machine in the United States, built around the Soong family’s relationship with Henry Luce. This influential domestic lobby helped push the United States towards both intervention and escalation, while at the same time undercutting the advice of experts who offered words of caution about Beijing’s capabilities and interests.

The initial Chinese victories in the late fall of 1950 resulted from a colossal intelligence failure on the part of the United States. These failures ran the gamut from political, to strategic, to operational, to tactical. The politicization of American expertise on China following the establishment of the PRC meant that U.S. policymakers struggled to understand Chinese messages. The United States also misunderstood the complex relationship between Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang, treating the group as a unitary actor without appreciating the serious political differences between the countries.

On an operational level, advancing U.S. forces paid little heed to warnings of Chinese intervention. The United States failed to understand the importance of the North Korean buffer to Beijing, failed to detect Chinese preparations for intervention, failed to detect Chinese soldiers operating in North Korea and failed to understand the overall strength of the Chinese forces. This lack of caution stemmed from several sources. The U.S. military, having had experience with Chinese Nationalist forces during World War II, had little respect for the capabilities of the PLA, especially outside of Chinese borders. Americans overrated the importance of air superiority at the tactical and operational level, not to mention the relevance of nuclear weapons at the strategic level.

Conduct: 

The People’s Liberation Army appreciated the significance of U.S. air superiority over the battlefield, as well as the effectiveness of U.S. armor and artillery. The PLA (or PVA, as the expeditionary force in North Korea was dubbed) attempted to fight with the hybrid insurgent tactics that it had used to prevail in the Chinese Civil War. This involved using light infantry formations, designed to move and attack at night, in order to avoid U.S. airpower and concentrated American firepower. These tactics allowed the PLA to surprise U.S. forces, which were uncertain of the magnitude of Chinese intervention until it was too late to do anything but retreat.

Similarly, the United States fought with the tactics (and often the weapons) that it had used in World War II. Although North Korean armor and artillery had outmatched unprepared U.S. ground forces in the opening weeks of the war, by the time of the Chinese counteroffensive, the United States was fielding mobile, armored forces and employing combined arms tactics. These weapons and tactics allowed the United States to inflict severe losses on Chinese forces, even as it gave up wide swaths of territory.

The U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy expected to conduct sea and air operations in what we now refer to as a permissive environment, without significant interference from Communist forces. The Navy was right; the Air Force was wrong. Expecting overwhelming advantages in training and material, the U.S. air forces found cagey Communist forces equipped with the MiG-15 interceptors, which could outfight American piston-engined aircraft and most early jets. Formations of B-29s attempted to conduct daylight precision bombing raids of North Korea, finding that MiG-15s could cut them to pieces. U.S. forces, fresh from the bloody organizational fights that had birthed the U.S. Air Force, also struggled to develop a compatible, cooperative ground-air doctrine. Still, despite the problems, the United States managed to establish and hold air superiority for most of the war, using that freedom to inflict severe damage on Chinese and North Korean forces, infrastructure and logistics.

Lessons and Legacies: 

The most important legacy of the first Sino-American War is the enduring division of the Korean Peninsula. Following the exhaustion of the Chinese counteroffensive, neither side really threatened to throw the other off the peninsula. The relationships between Seoul, Washington, Beijing and Pyongyang have changed mightily over the years, but the conflict remains frozen along the geography established in 1953.

Many of the problems have stayed the same, despite the fundamental transformations that have overtaken global politics. Beijing has grown tired of the antics of its North Korean client, just as South Korea has grown significantly in wealth and power. But North Korea can still threaten the security and prosperity of the Republic of Korea, and threats to the DPRK are still felt in Beijing.

China and the United States remember this conflict much differently. For the United States, the Korean War represents an odd aberration; a war fought for justice but without satisfactory resolution. Americans’ most enduring memory of the conflict came through the television show M.A.S.H., which used the war as a proxy for talking about U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Even this memory has begun to fade, however.

For China, the war represents a remarkable victory over imperialism in the face of overwhelming odds. It introduced the People’s Republic of China to the international system with a (literal) bang. At the same time, the legacy of the war complicated China’s international situation. In part because of the memory of Chinese intervention, but also in combination with China’s domestic politics, the United States managed to keep the PRC isolated from the international system into the 1970s. Today, the PRC poses a quasi-imperial threat to neighbors all along its vast periphery, while at the same time representing one of the three major tent-poles of the growing global economy.

Militarily, the political, social and technological conditions that produced mass infantry warfare in Korea in the 1950s no longer hold. The United States has grown accustomed to fighting opponents who excel in hybrid warfare, but the People’s Liberation Army has been out of that business for decades. The ground forces of the PLA are now transitioning between mechanized and postmechanized warfare, while the air and sea forces are in the process of perfecting the world’s most extensive anti-access/area denial system. If conflict were to happen again, China would challenge U.S. control of the air and seas in a way that it never did during the Korean conflict.

The most interesting, useful lessons may involve botched war termination. The Korean War dragged on for nearly two years after the settlement of the key strategic issues became clear. Nevertheless, poor communication between Washington and Beijing, combined with reputational concerns on both sides, inflated minor issues—such as POW repatriation—and extended the war well beyond its productive limits. That the United States viewed its conflict with China as a proxy war complicated the problem, as American policymakers became obsessed with the message that every action sent to the Soviet Union. In any future conflict, even as political questions associated with escalation and reputation loom large, Beijing can likely count on having Washington’s full, focused attention.      

Conclusion

There was nothing good about the last Sino-American War, not even the “peace” that resulted from it. The experience of this war, now nearly forgotten on both sides, should serve as a grim lesson for policymakers in both Washington and Beijing. The Korean War was anything but accidental, but miscalculation and miscommunication both extended and broadened the war beyond its necessary boundaries.

Robert Farley is a senior lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and The Diplomat. Follow him on Twitter:@drfarls.

Image: Reuters

This article was first published in 2014.

Robert Farley

Russia Cold War, Europe

In retrospect, Soviet defeat seems overdetermined.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The United States certainly enjoyed tremendous advantages in 1945, including the world’s most robust economy, an advanced technological base, a well-developed set of internal economic infrastructure, and a relatively appealing sociopolitical model. But few who actively fought the Cold War believed in American invincibility.

Could the Soviets have won the Cold War? In retrospect, Soviet defeat seems overdetermined. The USSR suffered from a backwards economy, an unappealing political system, and unfortunate geography. But even into the 1980s, many Cold Warriors in the West worried that Red Victory was imminent.

We can think of Red Victory in two ways; first, if the fundamental rules of the competition between the United States and the USSR had operated differently, and second if Moscow and Washington had made different strategic decisions along the way.

Changing the Rules

The idea of socio-political “rules” that dictate how the world works runs counter to a lot of work in the social sciences. Still, certain social and political experiments initiated at the start of the Cold War ran aground on the shoals of social and human capacity. If we imagine the loosening of some of these “rules” then the Soviet and American experiments might have performed differently.

It was not obvious that central planning would fail as dismally as it did. Some economists, often working from the experience of World War II, believed that central governments could process information with sufficient speed and accuracy to successfully allocate resources across a society. This included the allocation of capital (human and resource) to technological innovation. In a wartime context, this worked well enough; the state could direct investment away from consumer goods and towards critical military production and innovation. In peacetime, the system worked less well, as workers and consumers demanded better treatment.

As it turned out, of course, state central planning fell short of the various forms of capital allocation found in the West, especially where innovation was concerned. This eventually had an impact on military innovation, as civilian technological contributed to military advances. Eventually, the United States could rely on its productive civilian economy not only to out-produce the Soviets in consumer goods, but also to produce more effective weapon systems.

On the other hand, if the American system had proven less resilient to economic and social pressures, then the United States might have had to give up on the Cold War. During the 1960s, this looked distinctly possible. Although the economy continued to perform well, social conflict over civil rights, and over Vietnam War, threatened to cause serious damage to U.S. democracy. Informed by a version of Marxist orthodoxy, Soviet planners expected that class conflict and economic stagnation would produce precisely this outcome, but in reality it happened for reasons that they could not have predicted. The crisis of the West emerged not from economic dislocation, but from its opposite; the 1950s and 1960s were an economic “golden age” according to Thomas Piketty, who observed that inequality in wealth and income began to accelerate in the 1970s. The social upheaval that threatened to destroy the West in the 1960s stemmed from the decay of systems of social and political inequality, rather than from a stagnating economy.

Related to this, we now think of the U.S. commitment to a certain level of civil liberties as one of its greatest Cold War strengths. The far greater tolerance in the United States (which ran far short of absolute) for political dissent created an altogether stronger and more attractive social system, while also synergizing with the economic system to enable consistent economic growth and technological innovation. At the time, however, many (both in the West and in the USSR) believed that tolerance for civil and political liberties exposed social and political weakness; the repressive Soviet system could better weather internal dissent than the relatively open American system.

Finally, the United States drew a tremendous amount of strength from the international economic system that it created at the end of World War II. This system eventually extended across the developing world, and supplied the West with the labor forces and raw materials necessary to vastly outperforming their Communist counterparts. If revolutionary models had proven more appealing in the postcolonial world, the balance of economic power might have shifted. In reality, while the Soviet political and economic model had some appeal across the developing world, would-be revolutionaries still found themselves embedded within a larger system that pushed them into collaboration with the West.

Strategic Decisions

What about changes that don’t involve breaking the world open and tinkering with the mechanisms? In this case the immense vulnerability of the USSR weighs against success, but there are still some strategies that might have played out more effectively.

If the Soviets had undertaken much more aggressive measures in the first two decades of the Cold War, they might have shattered the NATO alliance and prevented the development of the transatlantic coalition that won the Cold War. A general Red Army offensive into Western Europe in the 1950s or 1960s almost certainly would have enjoyed tremendous short-term success. The problem was twofold; the Americans had a nuclear advantage that could devastate the Soviet homeland, and the Soviets could barely afford to maintain the empire they had, to say nothing of expanding it into Western Europe. But the Soviets appreciated that the first might have been a bluff, and if they had calculated the long-term odds differently, might have gambled on the second. Bringing millions of sullen Germans, Frenchmen, and Italians under the Soviet boot might not have increased Soviet power in the long-run, but it would have dealt a blow to the architecture of the American-led post-war global system.

Another alternative would have involved deliberately retreating from central planning in the 1950s and 1960s, rather than in the late 1980s. China undertook this policy with great success at the end of the 1970s, producing enormous economic growth. Such an effort might not have generated a tremendous amount of foreign direct investment (as it did in China) but would at least have unshackled a moribund economic system. And the Chinese Communist Party has managed, thus far, to hold the lid on political dissent. Undertaking these steps before falling too far behind might have saved the USSR, at least for a time.

What about American decisions? The United States could have decided not to wage the Cold War at all. The Soviets seemed willing to accept the Finlandization of much of Western Europe, and in the absence of a U.S. presence Moscow might have renewed its old ties with Paris. As a result of reduced tension between the United States and the USSR, the Soviets would presumably have dedicated fewer resources to their war machine, reducing pressure on the rest of the economy. Of course, moving off a war footing might have produced social instability and pressure for internal change of repressive Soviet policies.

With its enormous economic resources, the United States had the advantage of making tragic mistakes, as the experience of Vietnam illustrates. It could have been worse; the United States could have decided to bog itself down in an effort to save the Chinese Nationalist regime in the 1940s and 1950s. Such a decision would not only have proven tremendously costly in blood and treasure; it would also have raised dangerous questions about U.S. imperial aims, and about the wisdom of U.S. strategic policymaking. The Soviets could have bled the Americans much more effectively than they did in either Korea or Vietnam, although it’s unclear whether it would have been enough to force the United States to scale down its international commitments.

Final Shots

The United States certainly enjoyed tremendous advantages in 1945, including the world’s most robust economy, an advanced technological base, a well-developed set of internal economic infrastructure, and a relatively appealing sociopolitical model.

But few who actively fought the Cold War believed in American invincibility. Rather, they believed that U.S. victory (or even survival) depended on carefully calibrated investment in particular military technologies, as well as extensive interventions in the domestic politics of foreign countries (with the Korean and Vietnamese Wars representing the most extravagant such interventions). Even in the 1980s, when the signs of Soviet decay became increasingly evident, few believed that the USSR would either collapse or withdraw from the conflict.

In any event, Soviet weakness ran deeper than almost anyone expected. Even to the extent that “new Cold Wars” are developing between the United States and Russia, or the United States and China, few want to replicate Soviet mistakes. But it would also be an error to discount the perceptions of those who waged both sides of the Cold War.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is author of The Battleship Book. He serves as a Senior Lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and The Diplomat. This article first appeared several years ago.

Image: Reuters.

Robert Farley

Chinese Military, Asia

These weapons were reversed engineered or else copy technology that was stolen from America or Russia.

Key point: Beijing knows that having a modern military makes a big difference. This is how China went about getting high-end platforms through nearly any means necessary.

As the People’s Republic of China (PRC) emerged from war and revolution in 1949, it became apparent that the Chinese economy lacked the capacity to compete with the U.S. or the U.S.S.R. in the production of advanced military technology.  Transfers from the Soviet Union helped remedy the gap in the 1950s, as did transfers from the United States and Europe in the 1970s and 1980s. Still, the Cultural Revolution stifled technology and scientific research, leaving the Chinese even farther behind.

Thus, China has long supplemented legitimate transfers and domestic innovation with industrial espionage.  In short, the PRC has a well-established habit of pilfering weapons technology from Russia and the United States.  As the years have gone by, Beijing’s spies have become ever more skillful and flexible in their approach. Here are five systems that the Chinese have stolen or copied, in whole or in part:

J-7:

In 1961, as tensions between the USSR and the PRC reached a fever pitch, the Soviets transferred blueprints and materials associated with its new MiG-21 interceptor to China. The offering represented an effort to bridge part of the gap, and suggest to China that cooperation between the Communist giants remained possible.

The offering didn’t work. Sino-Soviet tensions continued to increase, nearly to the point of war in the late 1960s. The Chinese worked from the blueprints and other materials, and eventually produced the J-7, a virtual copy of the MiG-21.  The Chinese eventually sold the J-7 (F-7 export variant) in direct competition with the MiGs sold by the Soviets.  Indeed, after the US-PRC rapprochement of the early 1970s, the Chinese sold J-7s directly to the Americans, who used them as part of an aggressor squadron to train US pilots to fight the Soviets.

J-11:

The collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s heralded a thaw in Russia-China relations.  Russia no longer had strong reasons to withhold its most advanced military technology from the Chinese.  More importantly, the huge Soviet military industrial complex needed customers badly, and the Russian military could no longer afford new equipment. For its part, the PRC needed new sources of high technology military equipment after Europe and the United States imposed arms embargoes in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Accordingly, the 1990s saw several huge arms deals between Moscow and Beijing.  One of the most important involved the sale, licensing, and technology transfer of the Su-27 “Flanker” multirole fighter. The deal gave the Chinese one of the world’s most dangerous air superiority fighters, and gave the Russian aviation industry a lifeline.

But the era of good feelings couldn’t hold.  Details remain murky and disputed, but the Russians claim that the Chinese began violating licensing terms almost immediately, by installing their own avionics on Flankers (J-11, under Chinese designation).  The Chinese also began developing a carrier variant, in direct violation of agreed-to terms.  The appropriation of Russian technology undercut the relationship between Russia and China, making the Russians far more wary of transferring their crown jewels to the Chinese military.

J-31:

Even before the Snowden leaks established extensive Chinese industrial espionage, Americans analysts suspected that China was stealing information associated with the F-35.  The likely reality of this theft became clear when information about the J-31 stealth fighter became available.  The J-31 looks very much like a twin-engine F-35, without the VSTOL capabilities of the F-35B.

The J-31 also presumably lacks much of the advanced avionics that have the potential to make the F-35 a devastating fighter.  Nevertheless, the J-31 may eventually operate from carriers, and could potentially compete with the Joint Strike Fighter on the export market.

UAVs:

In 2010, China lagged woefully behind the United States in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology.  Since that time, the Chinese have caught up, and are now producing drones capable of competing with US models on the international arms market.  How did the Chinese catch up so fast?

According to US intelligence, Chinese hackers appropriated technology from several sources, including the US government and private companies (General Atomics) associated with the production of UAVs. The newest Chinese UAVs closely resemble US aircraft visually and in performance, a remarkable turn-around time for China’s aviation industry.

Night Vision Technology:

After the Vietnam War, the United States military decided that it would invest heavily in an effort to “own the night.”  This led to major advances in night vision technology, including equipment that allowed individual soldiers, armored vehicles, and aircraft to see and fight in the dark. This equipment has given the US a huge advantage in several conflicts since the 1980s.

China is seeking to end this advantage, and has geared some of its espionage efforts towards acquiring and replicating US tech in this area.  This has included some cyber-theft, but also several old-style ops in which Chinese businessmen illegally acquired export-controlled tech from US companies.

The Last Salvo:

The United States has become increasingly aggressive about slowing down or halting China’s industrial espionage efforts. This has included indictments of PLA officers, broad condemnations of Chinese spying, and targeted reprisals against some Chinese firms. But given the extensive commercial contacts between China and the United States, stopping the flow of technology is virtually impossible. Moreover, China has developed a large, innovative technology economy in its own right. Indeed, as Chinese technology catches up with American (and in some cases exceeds Russian) we may see the Chinese run into the same problems with foreign espionage.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to the National Interest, is author of The Battleship Book. He serves as a senior lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His work includes military doctrine, national security and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money, Information Dissemination and the Diplomat. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Robert Farley

World War II History, Europe

Berlin would have loved to have developed the ultimate weapon, but it failed and America beat both the Axis and its fellow Allies to getting the bomb.

Key point: The Nazis won quickly at first with plenty of shock and awe. Yet as the war went on, it turned out that they did not have the time and resources to devote to costly wonder weapons.

In the early years of World War II, it looked as if Germany might have the luxury to spend its time developing a new generation of super-weapons. The Nazis haphazardly pursued the idea of building an atomic bomb, with an eye toward eventual conflict with the United States. However, the immediate demands of war, combined with Western Allied sabotage, undercut the program, leaving it at the basic research stage by war’s end.

But what if the Germans had devoted more attention to the program, or had lucked into more substantial breakthroughs?  What could the Nazis have done with an atomic weapon?

Context for Construction:

The American atomic weapons program cost an enormous amount of money, and took human capital away from other important projects. But the United States, unique among the great powers of World War II, believed that the war would last long enough to justify complex projects. 

Germany did not have this luxury, especially after it became apparent that the Soviet Union would not collapse in 1941. For Germany to seriously consider taking the atomic plunge, it needed favorable war conditions that would allow the development of long-term research projects. In the event, jets, submarines, and rockets took up a greater portion of the Reich’s scarce engineering resources.

The German program faced other obstacles. Western Allied attacks on the German industrial economy took their toll, even if they could not push Germany out of the war. Sabotage, like the attacks on heavy water processing plants in Norway, also curtailed German progress. The nature of the Nazi regime also made scientific progress difficult. Many of the best nuclear scientists disliked the Nazis, and took steps to escape Europe. The Germans could not draw on Europe’s scientific expertise to the same extent as the Americans. Nevertheless, the Nazi regime did make substantial progress on a number of engineering frontiers, and could have developed a weapon in time.

Solving the basic theoretical and engineering problems wouldn’t have suddenly turned Germany into a major nuclear power, however. The German program concentrated on enriched uranium, a simpler project that eliminated some of the more tricky problems faced by the United States.  However, the need for stocks of uranium (some of which had been seized from Belgium), and the extensive industrial complex needed to enrich, would have made it difficult for the Germans to produce a large number of devices.

Delivery:

Even if the Germans had managed to develop an atomic weapon, delivery would have been a problem. For tactical use against ground targets, the Wehrmacht could have engineered a way to deliver the devices, but anything at longer range would have been a struggle.

The Luftwaffe lacked an advanced heavy bomber capable of hitting targets in England or Russia, much less the United States. Designed to fight in support of the Wehrmacht, the German air force had toyed with the idea of heavy bombers in the 1930s, but concentrated on lighter, smaller planes as war approached. Surely, the German could have developed a strategic bomber given enough time; Junkers, Heinkel, and Focke Wulf all worked on large bomber projects during the war. But such aircraft were enormously complex and expensive, with long lead times. The B-29 program reputedly cost more than the atomic bomb itself, and even B-29s required modification in order to carry atomic weapons. The best candidate available to the Luftwaffe would have been the He 177, capable of carrying a device considerably smaller than the “Little Boy” bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Could submarines have delivered the devices? Conceivably. A nuclear torpedo was probably beyond the means of the Kriegsmarine, but a submarine sufficiently close to its target could probably deliver the warhead in a small boat. But getting into position was no mean task; by 1943, Allied anti-submarine warfare was devastating Germany’s submarine fleet. Only the Type XXI submarines could have approached useful targets with any degree of certainty, and these boats did not appear until late in the war.

The V-2 ballistic missiles represented the most obvious potential delivery vehicles. They could deliver payloads at range, with little chance of interception, and with enough accuracy for an atomic warhead. However, V-2s had a startling launch failure rate, making them a sketchy option for an atomic payload. They also lacked the ability to carry heavy payloads; reducing a warhead to sufficiently small size, and reinforcing it such that it could handle the rigors of launch, flight, and separation, were tasks likely beyond Nazi Germany in any useful timeframe.

Use of the Weapon:

How would the Germans have used the atomic bomb, if they had managed to construct it? It depends, naturally, on Germany’s tactical situation when it developed the weapon, and on the delivery systems it had available.

Obvious strategic targets include London and Moscow, and the Luftwaffe could probably have delivered them successfully with a fair degree of confidence. An attack on either would have proved devastating. In the case of Moscow, a surprise strike that decapitated the Soviet leadership might have caused very serious problems, although the Red Army would undoubtedly have continued to fight. In the West, the V-2 campaign had a serious impact on British morale, and an atomic device would have had an even more devastating impact. It’s worth keeping in mind, however, that the Combined Bomber Offensive was delivering atomic levels of destruction to the Reich from 1943 on, and that this effort failed to force a German surrender. In any case, the center of gravity of the Western Allied war effort had passed to the other side of the Atlantic, and the United States was likely out of reach.

If hard-pressed by the Red Army, Germany could have used its weapons for tactical effect. An atomic weapon could have had a devastating impact on armored columns, staging areas, or command centers, although with a small number of warheads the Germans would have had to take great care in target selection. The Red Army moved on such a massive scale that even an atomic attack might not have upset its grandest offensives.

On the naval side, the Bikini atom bomb tests demonstrated that modern naval units could survive atomic attacks, if imperfectly. As with the war in the East, atomic bombs could have dented the Western Allied naval advantage, but likely not to the extent of severing the trans-Atlantic lifeline. Major amphibious operations, such as the Normandy Invasion, would have proven far juicier targets, although they would have required very judicious decisions on the part of the Germans.

The Final Salvo:

Nazi Germany could have developed nuclear weapons if it had won the war. It could not develop them as war-winning weapons, both because of the demands of the project and the limitations of early atomic devices. Only the United States could combine the economic resources and the long-time horizon necessary to develop the bomb, while at the same time developing a fleet of bombers capable of delivering it.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is author of The Battleship Book. He serves as a Senior Lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and The Diplomat. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Matthew Moss

Rifles,

Civilian shooters often innovate when the military doesn’t.

Here's What You Need to Remember: People come in different sizes, and Colt expected shooters to hold the guns at different positions on their arms. But with plans to tuck the tiny rifles inside airplanes, an individual couldn’t properly calibrate it for his or her own shape and size.

Military aircrews always have to train for the possibility of crashing behind enemy lines. In the event of this disaster scenario, the pilots and crews must rely on the kinds of weapons—mainly pistols and knives—they can carry on their persons or stuff into small survival kits.

In the late 1960s, the famous Colt firearms company hoped to give fliers a tiny assault rifle instead. But the final version was awkward, inaccurate and difficult to use.

In 1969, engineers at Colt offered the U.S. Air Force a unique lightweight gun, primarily for bomber crews. Since the unusual-looking rifle had no butt stock, shooters would have had to brace the so-called Individual Multi-Purpose Weapon against their bicep.

“Consideration was … given to what an aircrewman might have with him when he bailed out or what he might find on the ground which could serve as a stock,” stated an official Air Force report. “The only practical solution was the man’s arm.”

Two years before, the Air Force’s Strategic Air Command had outlined a number of basic requirements for this new weapon. At the time, the flying branch still used World War II-era survival rifles.

These crude rifles shot .22-caliber bullets and small shotgun shells. While functional, the guns were only good for killing snakes or hunting small game.

“Capable of killing a man at 100 yards,” was SAC’s first demand for the new firearm, the technical study noted. The old war-era rifle wouldn’t do.

More than lethal, the Air Force wanted its next survival weapon to be extremely compact. The gun couldn’t be any longer than 13 inches, or more than one inch wide.

For a highly practical reason—the weapon needed to fit inside the cramped confines of a cockpit. Crews needed to be able to grab the guns quickly in an emergency, too.

Before coming up with its stock-less survival weapon, Colt toyed around with a tiny M-16 for pilots. The company trimmed down the standard battle rifle’s barrel, stock and even the pistol grip to create the Model 608.

But to meet the Air Force’s space constraints, bomber crews would have had to break the gun in half—making it unusable. As a result, the flying branch’s own weaponeers decided that getting rid of the stock was the only real solution.

“Folding, telescoping, detachable, and wire skeleton stocks were considered,” the report stated. “All of these except the wire skeleton exceeded either weight, volume, or dimensional restrictions.”

A stubby M-16 wouldn’t work, so technicians continued to experiment with various pistols and modified rifles. And the Air Force focused on a new bullet—the .221 Remington.

“The caliber .221 cartridge was chosen for the demonstrator because it produced a weapon midway between the weapons of ultimate interest, a caliber .17 survival rifle and a 5.56-millimeter rifle/submachine gun,” stated the technical overview.

Colt took this basic concept and ran with it. The new semi-automatic gun — known as the IMP-221, meaning Individual Multi-Purpose and .221 caliber — was extremely compact.

The weapon weighed less than four pounds and was only an inch wide. However, the mini-rifle was still more than two inches longer than the Air Force wanted. To shorten the gun down to this length, Colt’s designers put the IMP-221’s trigger right up near the front of the gun. The main firing mechanism sat in the frame’s rear.

The pistol grip swiveled left and right, so the gun and its 30-round magazine could rest neatly on an airman’s forearm. The sights rotated so the shooter could aim straight.

By 1971, Colt had tweaked the design even more. The gun now had special bracket that held—and could lock onto—the shooter’s arm.

“Demonstrations proved the basic concept was not only feasible but exceeded expectations,” the Air Force report declared. “Further efforts will be made to improve … and to modify the design for quantity production.”

Unfortunately, the Air Force evaluators had discovered the weapons were highly inaccurate. As the shooter swiveled around with the rifle locked in place, the motion threw off the gun’s freely-moving sights.

Another problem was adjust for individuals. People come in different sizes, and Colt expected shooters to hold the guns at different positions on their arms. But with plans to tuck the tiny rifles inside airplanes, an individual couldn’t properly calibrate it for his or her own shape and size.

“An effort should be made to improve the sights, either by a simple design breakthrough, or by adding enough hardware to provide adequate sighting for all shooters,” the technical report recommended.

Colt and the Air Force abandoned plans for a .17-caliber version. Instead, Colt modified the guns to shoot standard 5.56-millimeter ammunition.

The final variants—given the official moniker GUU-4/P—incorporated many more parts from existing M-16 rifles, and used the same magazines. Frustrated by continued difficulties, the Air Force eventually scrapped the whole plan.

Former Special Forces soldier Mack Gwinn, Jr. and his company Gwinn Firearms eventually acquired the unique design.

Gwinn went on to sell his own version, the Bushmaster Arm Pistol, to civilian shooters. He also put the gun’s basic parts into a more conventional package to create the Bushmaster Rifle. Today, Gwinn’s old company—now renamed Bushmaster Firearms—makes AR-15 and M-16 variants for private customers, police and soldiers.

But the arm pistols never proved popular with civilians. As one can see from videos across the Internet, they’re more of a novelty than anything else—and no one can agree on how to hold them at the range.

Civilian shooters often innovate when the military doesn’t. But no one has ever figured out the best way to shoot the Air Force’s tiny assault rifle.

This first appeared in WarIsBoring several years ago.

Image: Flickr.

James Holmes, Robert Farley

Weapons, Americas

Here's a long list of modern military marvels.

Here's What You Need to Know: These weapons are not to be trifled with.

(This is a series of 5 pieces combined for your reading pleasure that have ranked as some of our most popular ever.)

5 Best Battleships:

Ranking the greatest battleships of all time is a tad easier than ranking naval battles. Both involve comparing apples with oranges. But at least taking the measure of individual men-of-war involves comparing one apple with one orange. That's a compact endeavor relative to sorting through history to discern how seesaw interactions shaped the destinies of peoples and civilizations.

Still, we need some standard for distinguishing between battlewagons. What makes a ship great? It makes sense, first of all, to exclude any ship before the reign of Henry VIII. There was no line-of-battle ship in the modern sense before England's "great sea-king" founded the sail-driven Royal Navy in the 16th century. Galley warfare was quite a different affair from lining up capital ships and pounding away with naval gunnery.

One inescapable chore is to compare ships' technical characteristics. A recent piece over at War Is Boring revisits an old debate among battleship and World War II enthusiasts. Namely, who would've prevailed in a tilt between a U.S. Navy Iowa-class dreadnought and the Imperial Japanese Navy's Yamato? Author Michael Peck restates the common wisdom from when I served in mighty Wisconsin, last of the battleships: it depends on who landed the first blow. Iowas commanded edges in speed and fire control, while Yamato and her sister Musashi outranged us and boasted heavier weight of shot. We would've made out fine had we closed the range before the enemy scored a lucky hit from afar. If not, things may have turned ugly.

Though not in so many words, Peck walks through the basic design features that help qualify a battleship for history's elite -- namely guns, armor, and speed. Makes sense, doesn't it? Offensive punch, defensive resiliency, and speed remain the hallmarks of any surface combatant even in this missile age. Note, however, that asymmetries among combat vessels result in large part from the tradeoffs naval architects must make among desirable attributes.

Only sci-fi lets shipwrights escape such choices. A Death Star of the sea would sport irresistible weaponry, impenetrable armor, and engines able to drive the vessel at breakneck speed. But again, you can't have everything in the real world. Weight is a huge challenge. A battleship loaded down with the biggest guns and thickest armor would waddle from place to place. It would make itself an easy target for nimbler opponents or let them run away. On the other hand, assigning guns and speed top priority works against rugged sides. A ship that's fleet of foot but lightly armored exposes its innards and crew to enemy gunfire. And so forth. Different navies have different philosophies about tradeoffs. Hence the mismatches between Yamato and Iowa along certain parameters. Thus has it always been when fighting ships square off.

But a battleship is more than a machine. Machines neither rule the waves nor lose out in contests for mastery. People do. People ply the seas, and ideas about shiphandling and tactics guide their combat endeavors. Great Britain's Royal Navy triumphed repeatedly during the age of sail. Its success owed less to superior materiel -- adversaries such as France and the United States sometimes fielded better ships -- than to prolonged voyages that raised seamanship and gunnery to a high art. Indeed, a friend likes to joke that the 18th century's finest warship was a French 74-gun ship captured -- and crewed -- by Royal Navy mariners. The best hardware meets the best software.

That's why in the end, debating Jane's Fighting Ships entries -- lists of statistics -- for Iowa, Yamato, and their brethren from other times and places fails to satisfy. What looks like the best ship on paper may not win. A ship need not outmatch its opponents by every technical measure. It needs to be good enough. That is, it must match up well enough to give an entrepreneurial crew, mindful of the tactical surroundings, a reasonable chance to win. The greatest battleship thus numbers among the foremost vessels of its age by material measures, and is handled by masterful seamen.

But adding the human factor to the mix still isn't enough. There's an element of opportunity, of sheer chance. True greatness comes when ship and crew find themselves in the right place at the right time to make history. A battleship's name becomes legend if it helps win a grand victory, loses in dramatic fashion, or perhaps accomplishes some landmark diplomatic feat. A vessel favored (or damned) by fortune, furthermore, becomes a strategic compass rose. It becomes part of the intellectual fund on which future generations draw when making maritime strategy. It's an artifact of history that helps make history.

So we arrive at one guy's gauge for a vessel's worth: strong ship, iron men, historical consequence. In effect, then, I define greatest as most iconic. Herewith, my list of history's five most iconic battleships, in ascending order:

Bismarck:

The German Navy's Bismarck lived a short life that supplies the stuff of literature to this day. Widely considered the most capable battleship in the Atlantic during World War II, Bismarck sank the battlecruiser HMS Hood, pride of the Royal Navy, with a single round from her main battery. On the other hand, the leadership's martial spirit proved brittle when the going got tough. In fact, it shattered at the first sharp rap. As commanders' resolve went, so went the crew's.

Notes Bernard Brodie, the dreadnought underwent an "extreme oscillation" in mood. Exaltation stoked by the encounter with Hood gave way to despair following a minor torpedo strike from a British warplane. Admiral Günther Lütjens, the senior officer on board, gathered Bismarck crewmen after the air attack and "implored them to meet death in a fashion becoming to good Nazis." A great coach Lütjens was not. The result? An "abysmally poor showing" in the final showdown with HMS Rodney, King George V, and their entourage. One turret crew fled their guns. Turret officers reportedly kept another on station only at gunpoint. Marksmanship and the guns' rate of fire -- key determinants of victory in gunnery duels -- suffered badly.

In short, Bismarck turned out to be a bologna flask (hat tip: Clausewitz), an outwardly tough vessel that shatters at the slightest tap from within. In 1939 Grand Admiral Erich Raeder lamented that the German surface fleet, flung into battle long before it matured, could do little more than "die with honor." Raeder was righter than he knew. Bismarck's death furnishes a parable that captivates navalists decades hence. How would things have turned out had the battlewagon's human factor proved less fragile? We'll never know. Doubtless her measure of honor would be bigger.

Yamato:

As noted at the outset, Yamato was an imposing craft by any standard. She displaced more than any battleship in history, as much as an early supercarrier, and bore the heaviest armament. Her mammoth 18-inch guns could sling 3,200-lb. projectiles some 25 nautical miles. Armor was over two feet thick in places. Among the three attributes of warship design, then, Yamato's designers clearly prized offensive and defensive strength over speed. The dreadnought could steam at 27 knots, not bad for a vessel of her proportions. But that was markedly slower than the 33 knots attainable by U.S. fast battleships.

Like Bismarck, Yamato is remembered mainly for falling short of her promise. She provides another cautionary tale about human fallibility. At Leyte Gulf in October 1944, a task force centered on Yamato bore down on the transports that had ferried General Douglas MacArthur's landing force ashore on Leyte, and on the sparse force of light aircraft carriers, destroyers, and destroyer escorts guarding the transports from seaward assault.

Next ensued the immortal charge of the tin-can sailors. The outclassed American ships charged Yamato and her retinue. Like Lütjens, Admiral Takeo Kurita, the task-force commander, appeared to wilt under less-than-dire circumstances. Historians still argue about whether he mistook Taffy 3, the U.S. Navy contingent, for a far stronger force; lost his nerve; or simply saw little point in sacrificing his ships and men. Whatever the case, Kurita ordered his fleet to turn back -- leaving MacArthur's expeditionary force mostly unmolested from the sea.

Yamato met a quixotic fate, though less ignominious than Bismarck's. In April 1945 the superbattleship was ordered to steam toward Okinawain company with remnants of the surface fleet, there to contest the Allied landings. The vessel would deliberately beach itself offshore, becoming an unsinkable gun emplacement until it was destroyed or its ammunition was exhausted. U.S. naval intelligence got wind of the scheme, however, and aerial bombardment dispatched Yamato before she could reach her destination. A lackluster end for history's most fearsome battlewagon.

Missouri:

Iowa and New Jersey were the first of the Iowa class and compiled the most enviable fighting records in the class, mostly in the Pacific War. Missouri was no slouch as a warrior, but -- alone on this list -- she's celebrated mainly for diplomatic achievements rather than feats of arms. General MacArthur accepted Japan's surrender on her weatherdecks in Tokyo Bay, leaving behind some of the most enduring images from 20th-century warfare. Missouri has been a metaphor for how to terminate big, open-ended conflicts ever since. For instance, President Bush the Elder invoked the surrender in his memoir. Missouri supplied a measuring stick for how Desert Storm might unfold. (And as it happens, a modernized Missouri was in Desert Storm.)

Missouri remained a diplomatic emissary after World War II. The battlewagon cruised to Turkey in the early months after the war, as the Iron Curtain descended across Europe and communist insurgencies menaced Greece and Turkey. Observers interpreted the voyage as a token of President Harry Truman's, and America's, commitment to keeping the Soviet bloc from subverting friendly countries. Message: the United States was in Europe to stay. Missouri thus played a part in the development of containment strategy while easing anxieties about American abandonment. Naval diplomacy doesn't get much better than that.

Mikasa:

Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō's flagship is an emblem for maritime command. The British-built Mikasa was arguably the finest battleship afloat during the fin de siècle years, striking the best balance among speed, protection, and armament. The human factor was strong as well. Imperial Japanese Navy seamen were known for their proficiency and élan, while Tōgō was renowned for combining shrewdness with derring-do. Mikasa was central to fleet actions in the Yellow Sea in 1904 and the Tsushima Strait in 1905 -- battles that left the wreckage of two Russian fleets strewn across the seafloor. The likes of Theodore Roosevelt and Alfred Thayer Mahan considered Tsushima a near-perfect fleet encounter.

Like the other battleships listed here, Mikasa molded how subsequent generations thought about diplomacy and warfare. IJN commanders of the interwar years planned to replicate Tsushima Strait should Japan fall out with the United States. More broadly, Mikasa and the rest of the IJN electrified peoples throughout Asia and beyond. Japan, that is, proved that Western imperial powers could be beaten in battle and ultimately expelled from lands they had subjugated. Figures ranging from Sun Yat-sen to Mohandas Gandhi to W. E. B. Du Bois paid homage to Tsushima, crediting Japan with firing their enthusiasm for overthrowing colonial rule.

Mikasa, then, was more than the victor in a sea fight of modest scope. And her reputation outlived her strange fate. The vessel returned home in triumph following the Russo-Japanese War, only to suffer a magazine explosion and sink. For the Japanese people, the disaster confirmed that they had gotten a raw deal at the Portsmouth Peace Conference. Nevertheless, it did little to dim foreign observers' enthusiasm for Japan's accomplishments.Mikasa remained a talisman.

Victory:

Topping this list is the only battleship from the age of sail. HMS Victory was a formidable first-rate man-of-war, cannon bristling from its three gun decks. But her fame comes mainly from her association with Lord Horatio Nelson, whom Mahan styles "the embodiment of the sea power of Great Britain." In 1805 Nelson led his outnumbered fleet into combat against a combined Franco-Spanish fleet off Cape Trafalgar, near Gibraltar. Nelson and right-hand man Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood led columns of ships that punctured the enemy line of battle. The Royal Navy crushed its opponent in the ensuing melee, putting paid to Napoleon's dreams of invading the British Isles.

Felled on board his flagship that day, Nelson remains a synonym for decisive battle. Indeed, replicating Trafalgar became a Holy Grail for naval strategists across the globe. Permanently drydocked at Portsmouth, Victory is a shrine to Nelson and his exploits -- and the standard of excellence for seafarers everywhere. That entitles her to the laurels of history's greatest battleship.

Surveying this list of icons, two battleships made the cut because of defeats stemming from slipshod leadership, two for triumphs owing to good leadership, and one for becoming a diplomatic paragon. That's not a bad reminder that human virtues and frailties -- not wood, or metal, or shot -- are what make the difference in nautical enterprises.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College

*****

5 Best Aircraft Carriers:

Anyone who's tried to compare one piece of kit—ships, aircraft, weaponry of various types—to another will testify to how hard this chore is. Ranking aircraft carriers is no exception. Consulting the pages of Jane's Fighting Ships or Combat Fleets of the World sheds some light on the problem. For instance, a flattop whose innards house a nuclear propulsion plant boasts virtually unlimited cruising range, whereas a carrier powered by fossil fuels is tethered to its fuel source. As Alfred Thayer Mahan puts it, a conventional warship bereft of bases or a coterie of logistics ships is a "land bird" unable to fly far from home.

Or, size matters. The air wing—the complement of interceptors, attack planes and support aircraft that populate a carrier's decks—comprise its main battery or primary armament. The bigger the ship, the bigger the hangar and flight decks that accommodate the air wing.

Nor, as U.S. Navy carrier proponents like to point out, is the relationship between a carrier's tonnage and number of aircraft it can carry strictly linear. Consider two carriers that dominate headlines in Asia. Liaoning, the Chinese navy's refitted Soviet flattop, displaces about sixty-five thousand tons and sports twenty-six fixed-wing combat aircraft and twenty-four helicopters. Not bad. USS George Washington, however, tips the scales at around one hundred thousand tons but can operate some eighty-five to ninety aircraft.

And the disparity involves more than raw numbers of airframes. George Washington's warplanes are not just more numerous but generally more capable than their Chinese counterparts. U.S. flattops boast steam catapults to vault larger, heavier-laden aircraft into the wild blue. Less robust carriers use ski jumps to launch aircraft. That limits the size, fuel capacity, and weapons load—and thus the range, flight times and firepower—of their air wings. Larger, more capable carriers, then, can accommodate a larger, more capable, and changing mixes of aircraft with greater ease than their lesser brethren. Aircraft carriers' main batteries were modular before modular was cool.

And yet straight-up comparisons can mislead. The real litmus test for any man-of-war is its capacity to fulfill the missions for which it was built. In that sense George Washington, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, may not be "superior" to USS America, the U.S. Navy's latest amphibious helicopter carrier, or to Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force "helicopter destroyers"—a.k.a. light aircraft carriers—despite a far more lethal air wing and other material attributes. Nor do carriers meant to operate within range of shore-based fire support—tactical aircraft, anti-ship missiles—necessarily need to measure up to a Washington on a one-to-one basis. Land-based implements of sea power can be the great equalizer. Like any weapon system, then, a great carrier does the job for which it was designed superbly.

And lastly, there's no separating the weapon from its user. A fighting ship isn't just a hunk of steel but a symbiosis of crewmen and materiel. The finest aircraft carrier is one that's both well-suited to its missions and handled with skill and derring-do when and where it matters most. Those three indices—brute material capability, fitness for assigned missions, a zealous crew—are the indices for this utterly objective, completely indisputable list of the Top Five Aircraft Carriers of All Time.

5. USS Midway (CV-41):

Now a museum ship on the San Diego waterfront, Midway qualifies for this list less for great feats of arms than for longevity, and for being arguably history's most versatile warship. In all likelihood she was the most modified. Laid down during World War II, the flattop entered service just after the war. During the Cold War she received an angled flight deck, steam catapults, and other trappings befitting a supercarrier. Indeed, Midway's service spanned the entire Cold War, winding down after combat action against Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1991. Sheer endurance and flexibility entitles the old warhorse to a spot on this list.

4. USS Franklin (CV-13):

If Midway deserves a place mainly for technical reasons, the Essex-class carrier Franklin earns laurels for the resiliency of her hull and fortitude of her crew in battle. She was damaged in heavy fighting at Leyte Gulf in 1944. After refitting at Puget Sound Navy Yard, the flattop returned to the Western Pacific combat theater. In March 1945, having ventured closer to the Japanese home islands than any carrier to date, she fell under surprise assault by a single enemy dive bomber. Two semi-armor-piercing bombs penetrated her decks. The ensuing conflagration killed 724 and wounded 265, detonated ammunition below decks, and left the ship listing 13 degrees to starboard. One hundred six officers and 604 enlisted men remained on board voluntarily, bringing Franklin safely back to Pearl Harbor and thence to Brooklyn Navy Yard. Her gallantry in surviving such a pounding and returning to harbor merits the fourth position on this list.

3. Akagi:

Admiral Chūichi Nagumo's flagship serves as proxy for the whole Pearl Harbor strike force, a body composed of all six Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) frontline carriers and their escorts. Nagumo's was the most formidable such force of its day. Commanders and crewmen, moreover, displayed the audacity to do what appeared unthinkable—strike at the U.S. Pacific Fleet at its moorings thousands of miles away. Extraordinary measures were necessary to pull off such a feat. For example, freshwater tanks were filled with fuel to extend the ships' range and make a transpacific journey possible—barely.

The Pearl Harbor expedition exposed logistical problems that plagued the IJN throughout World War II. Indeed, Japan's navy never fully mastered the art of underway replenishment or built enough logistics ships to sustain operations far from home. As a result, Nagumo's force had too little time on station off Oahu to wreck the infrastructure the Pacific Fleet needed to wage war. And, admittedly, Akagi was lost at the Battle of Midway, not many months after it scaled the heights of operational excellence. Still, you have to give Akagi and the rest of the IJN task force their due. However deplorable Tokyo's purposes in the Pacific, her aircraft-carrier force ranks among the greatest of all time for sheer boldness and vision.

2. HMS Hermes (now the Indian Navy's Viraat):

It's hard to steam thousands of miles into an enemy's environs, fight a war on his ground, and win. And yet the Centaur-class flattop Hermes, flagship of a hurriedly assembled Royal Navy task force, pulled it off during the Falklands War of 1982. Like Midway, the British carrier saw repeated modifications, most recently for service as an anti-submarine vessel in the North Atlantic. Slated for decommissioning, her air wing was reconfigured for strike and fleet-air-defense missions when war broke out in the South Atlantic. For flexibility, and for successfully defying the Argentine contested zone, Hermes rates second billing here.

1. USS Enterprise (CV-6):

Having joined the Pacific Fleet in 1939, the Yorktown-class carrier was fortunate to be at sea on December 7, 1941, and thus to evade Nagumo's bolt from the blue. Enterprise went on to become the most decorated U.S. Navy ship of World War II, taking part in eighteen of twenty major engagements of the Pacific War. She sank, or helped sink, three IJN carriers and a cruiser at the Battle of Midway in 1942; suffered grave damage in the Solomons campaign, yet managed to send her air wing to help win the climatic Naval Battle of Guadalcanal; and went on to fight in such engagements as the Philippine Sea, Leyte Gulf, and Okinawa. That's the stuff of legend. For compiling such a combat record, Enterprise deserves to be known as history's greatest aircraft carrier.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College

*****

5 Best Submarines: 

There have been three great submarine campaigns in history, and one prolonged duel. The First and Second Battles of the Atlantic pitted German U-boats against the escorts and aircraft of the United Kingdom and the United States. The Germans very nearly won World War I with the first campaign, and badly drained Allied resources in the second. In the third great campaign, the submarines of the US Navy destroyed virtually the entire commercial fleet of Japan, bringing the Japanese economy to its knees. US subs also devastated the Imperial Japanese Navy, sinking several of Tokyo’s most important capital ships.

But the period most evocative of our modern sense of submarine warfare was surely the forty year duel between the submarines of the USSR and the boats of the various NATO navies. Over the course of the Cold War, the strategic nature of the submarine changed; it moved from being a cheap, effective killer of capital ships to a capital ship in its own right. This was especially the case with the boomers, submarines that carried enough nuclear weapons to kill millions in a few minutes.

As with previous “5 Greatest” lists, the answers depend on the parameters; different sets of metrics will generate different lists. Our metrics concentrate on the strategic utility of specific submarine classes, rather than solely on their technical capabilities.

• Was the submarine a cost-effective solution to a national strategic problem?

• Did the submarine compare favorably with its contemporaries?

• Was the submarine’s design innovative?

And with that, the five best submarines of all time:

U-31:

The eleven boats of the U-31 class were constructed between 1912 and 1915. They operated in both of the periods of heavy action for German U-boats, early in the war before the suspension of unrestricted warfare, and again in 1917 when Germany decided to go for broke and cut the British Empire off at the knees. Four of these eleven boats (U-35, U-39, U-38, and U-34) were the four top killers of World War I; indeed, they were four of the five top submarines of all time in terms of tonnage sunk (the Type VII boat U-48 sneaks in at number 3). U-35, the top killer, sank 224 ships amounting to over half a million tons.

The U-31 boats were evolutionary, rather than revolutionary; they represented the latest in German submarine technology for the time, but did not differ dramatically from their immediate predecessors or successors. These boats had good range, a deck gun for destroying small shipping, and faster speeds surfaced than submerged. These characteristics allowed the U-31 class and their peers to wreak havoc while avoiding faster, more powerful surface units. They did offer a secure, stealthy platform for carrying out a campaign that nearly forced Great Britain from the war. Only the entry of the United States, combined with the development of innovative convoy tactics by the Royal Navy, would stifle the submarine offensive. Three of the eleven boats survived the war, and were eventually surrendered to the Allies.

Balao:

The potential for a submarine campaign against the Japanese Empire was clear from early in the war. Japanese industry depended for survival on access to the natural resources of Southeast Asia. Separating Japan from those resources could win the war. However, the pre-war USN submarine arm was relatively small, and operated with poor doctrine and bad torpedoes. Boats built during the war, including primarily the Gato and Balao class, would eventually destroy virtually the entire Japanese merchant marine.

The Balao class represented very nearly the zenith of the pre-streamline submarine type. War in the Pacific demanded longer ranges and more habitability than the relatively snug Atlantic. Like their predecessors the Gato, the Balaos were less maneuverable than the German Type VII subs, but they made up for this in strength of hull and quality of construction. Compared with the Type VII, the Balaos had longer range, a larger gun, more torpedo tubes, and a higher speed. Of course, the Balaos operated in a much different environment, and against an opponent less skilled in anti-submarine warfare. The greatest victory of a Balao was the sinking of the 58000 ton HIJMS Shinano by Archerfish.

Eleven of 120 boats were lost, two in post-war accidents. After the war Balao class subs were transferred to several friendly navies, and continued to serve for decades. One, the former USS Tusk, remains in partial commission in Taiwan as Hai Pao.

Type XXI:

In some ways akin to the Me 262, the Type XXI was a potentially war-winning weapon that arrived too late to have serious effect. The Type XXI was the first mass produced, ocean-going streamlined or “true” submarine, capable of better performance submerged than on the surface. It gave up its deck gun in return for speed and stealth, and set the terms of design for generations of submarines.

Allied anti-submarine efforts focused on identifying boats on the surface (usually in transit to their patrol areas) then vectoring killers (including ships and aircraft) to those areas. In 1944 the Allies began developing techniques for fighting “schnorkel” U-boats that did not need to surface, but remained unprepared for combat against a submarine that could move at 20 knots submerged.

In effect, the Type XXI had the stealth to avoid detection prior to an attack, and the speed to escape afterward. Germany completed 118 of these boats, but because of a variety of industrial problems could only put four into service, none of which sank an enemy ship. All of the Allies seized surviving examples of the Type XXI, using them both as models for their own designs and in order to develop more advanced anti-submarine technologies and techniques. For example, the Type XXI was the model for the Soviet “Whiskey” class, and eventually for a large flotilla of Chinese submarines.

George Washington:

We take for granted the most common form of today’s nuclear deterrent; a nuclear submarine, bristling with missiles, capable of destroying a dozen cities a continent away. These submarines provide the most secure leg of the deterrent triad, as no foe could reasonably expect to destroy the entire submarine fleet before the missiles fly.

The secure submarine deterrent began in 1960, with the USS George Washington. An enlarged version of the Skipjack class nuclear attack sub, George Washington’s design incorporated space for sixteen Polaris ballistic missiles. When the Polaris became operational, USS George Washington had the capability from striking targets up to 1000 miles distant with 600 KT warheads. The boats would eventually upgrade to the Polaris A3, with three warheads and a 2500 mile range. Slow relative to attack subs but extremely quiet, the George Washington class pioneered the “go away and hide” form of nuclear deterrence that is still practiced by five of the world’s nine nuclear powers.

And until 1967, the George Washington and her sisters were the only modern boomers. Their clunky Soviet counterparts carried only three missiles each, and usually had to surface in order to fire. This made them of limited deterrent value. But soon, virtually every nuclear power copied the George Washington class. The first “Yankee” class SSBN entered service in 1967, the first Resolution boat in 1968, and the first of the French Redoutables in 1971. China would eventually follow suit, although the PLAN’s first genuinely modern SSBNs have only entered service recently. The Indian Navy’s INS Arihant will likely enter service in the next year or so.

The five boats of the George Washington class conducted deterrent patrols until 1982, when the SALT II Treaty forced their retirement. Three of the five (including George Washington) continued in service as nuclear attack submarines for several more years.

Los Angeles:

Immortalized in the Tom Clancy novels Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising, the U.S. Los Angeles class is the longest production line of nuclear submarines in history, constituting sixty-two boats and first entering service in 1976. Forty-one subs remain in commission today, continuing to form the backbone of the USN’s submarine fleet.

The Los Angeles (or 688) class are outstanding examples of Cold War submarines, equally capable of conducting anti-surface or anti-submarine warfare. In wartime, they would have been used to penetrate Soviet base areas, where Russian boomers were protected by rings of subs, surface ships, and aircraft, and to protect American carrier battle groups.

In 1991, two Los Angeles class attack boats launched the first ever salvo of cruise missiles against land targets, ushering in an entirely new vision of how submarines could impact warfare. While cruise missile armed submarines had long been part of the Cold War duel between the United States and the Soviet Union, most attention focused either on nuclear delivery or anti-ship attacks. Submarine launched Tomahawks gave the United States a new means for kicking in the doors of anti-access/area denial systems. The concept has proven so successful that four Ohio class boomers were refitted as cruise missile submarines, with the USS Florida delivering the initial strikes of the Libya intervention.

The last Los Angeles class submarine is expected to leave service in at some point in the 2020s, although outside factors may delay that date. By that time, new designs will undoubtedly have exceeded the 688 in terms of striking land targets, and in capacity for conducting anti-submarine warfare. Nevertheless, the Los Angeles class will have carved out a space as the sub-surface mainstay of the world’s most powerful Navy for five decades.

Conclusion

Fortunately, the United States and the Soviet Union avoided direct conflict during the Cold War, meaning that many of the technologies and practices of advanced submarine warfare were never employed in anger. However, every country in the world that pretends to serious maritime power is building or acquiring advanced submarines. The next submarine war will look very different from the last, and it’s difficult to predict how it will play out. We can be certain, however, that the fight will be conducted in silence.

Honorable Mention: Ohio, 260O-21, Akula, Alfa, Seawolf, Swiftsure, I-201, Kilo, S class, Type VII

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is a Visiting Professor at the United States Army War College. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

*****

5 Best Bombers:

Bombers are the essence of strategic airpower. While fighters have often been important to air forces, it was the promise of the heavy bomber than won and kept independence for the United States Air Force and the Royal Air Force. At different points in time, air forces in the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and Italy have treated bomber design and construction as a virtually all-consuming obsession, setting fighter and attack aviation aside.

However, even the best bombers are effective over only limited timespans. The unlucky state-of-the-art bombers of the early 1930s met disaster when put into service against the pursuit aircraft of the late 1930s. The B-29s that ruled the skies over Japan in 1945 were cut to pieces above North Korea in 1950. The B-36 Peacemaker, obsolete before it was even built, left service in a decade. Most of the early Cold War bombers were expensive failures, eventually to be superseded by ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

States procure bombers, like all weapons, to serve strategic purposes. This list employs the following metrics of evaluation:

• Did the bomber serve the strategic purpose envisioned by its developers?

• Was the bomber a sufficiently flexible platform to perform other missions, and to persist in service?

• How did the bomber compare with its contemporaries in terms of price, capability, and effectiveness?

And with that, the five best bombers of all time:

Handley Page Type O 400:

The first strategic bombing raids of World War I were carried out by German zeppelins, enormous lighter than aircraft that could travel at higher altitudes than the interceptors of the day, and deliver payloads against London and other targets. Over time, the capabilities of interceptors and anti-aircraft artillery grew, driving the Zeppelins to other missions. Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and others began working on bombers capable of delivering heavy loads over long distance, a trail blazed (oddly enough) by the Russian Sikorsky Ilya Muromets.

Even the modest capabilities of the early bombers excited the airpower theorists of the day, who imagined the idea of fleets of bombers striking enemy cities and enemy industry. The Italians developed the Caproni family of bombers, which operated in the service of most Allied countries at one time or another. German Gotha bombers would eventually terrorize London again, catalyzing the Smuts Report and the creation of the world’s first air force.

Faster and capable of carrying more bombs than either the Gotha IVs or the Caproni Ca.3, the Type O 400 had a wingspan nearly as large as the Avro Lancaster. With a maximum speed of 97 miles per hour with a payload of up to 2000 lbs, O 400s were the mainstay of Hugh Trenchard’s Independent Air Force near the end of the war, a unit which struck German airfields and logistics concentration well behind German lines. These raids helped lay the foundation of interwar airpower theory, which (at least in the US and the UK) envisioned self-protecting bombers striking enemy targets en masse.

Roughly 600 Type O bombers were produced during World War I, with the last retiring in 1922. Small numbers served in the Chinese, Australian, and American armed forces.

Junkers Ju 88:

The Junkers Ju-88 was one of the most versatile aircraft of World War II. Although it spent most of its career as a medium bomber, it moonlighted as a close attack aircraft, a naval attack aircraft, a reconnaissance plane, and a night fighter. Effective and relatively cheap, the Luftwaffe used the Ju 88 to good effect in most theaters of war, but especially on the Eastern Front and in the Mediterranean.

Designed with dive bomber capability, the Ju 88 served in relatively small numbers in the invasion of Poland, the invasion of Norway, and the Battle of France. The Ju-88 was not well suited to the strategic bombing role into which it was forced during the Battle of Britain, especially in its early variants. It lacked the armament to sufficiently defend itself, and the payload to cause much destruction to British industry and infrastructure. The measure of an excellent bomber, however, goes well beyond its effectiveness at any particular mission. Ju 88s were devastating in Operation Barbarossa, tearing apart Soviet tank formations and destroying much of the Soviet Air Forces on the ground. Later variants were built as or converted into night fighters, attacking Royal Air Force bomber formations on the way to their targets.

In spite of heavy Allied bombing of the German aviation industry, Germany built over 15,000 Ju 88s between 1939 and 1945. They operated in several Axis air forces.

De Havilland Mosquito:

The de Havilland Mosquito was a remarkable little aircraft, capable of a wide variety of different missions. Not unlike the Ju 88, the Mosquito operated in bomber, fighter, night fighter, attack, and reconnaissance roles. The RAF was better positioned than the Luftwaffe to utilized the specific qualities of the Mosquito, and avoid forcing it into missions in could not perform.

Relatively lightly armed and constructed entirely of wood, the Mosquito was quite unlike the rest of the RAF bomber fleet. Barely escaping design committee, the Mosquito was regarded as easy to fly, and featured a pressurized cockpit with a high service ceiling. Most of all, however, the Mosquito was fast. With advanced Merlin engines, a Mosquito could outpace the German Bf109 and most other Axis fighters.

Although the bomb load of the Mosquito was limited, its great speed, combined with sophisticated instrumentation, allowed it to deliver ordnance with more precision than most other bombers. During the war, the RAF used Mosquitoes for various precision attacks against high value targets, including German government installations and V weapon launching sites. As pathfinders, Mosquitoes flew point on bomber formations, leading night time bombing raids that might otherwise have missed their targets. Mosquitos also served in a diversionary role, distracting German night fighters from the streams of Halifaxes and Lancasters striking urban areas.

De Havilland produced over 7000 Mosquitoes for the RAF and other allied air forces. Examples persisted in post-war service with countries as varied as Israel, the Republic of China, Yugoslavia, and the Dominican Republic

Avro Lancaster:

The workhorse of the RAF in World War II, the Lancaster carried out the greater part of the British portion of the Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO). Led by Arthur Harris, Bomber Command believed that area bombing raids, targeted against German civilians, conducted at night, would destroy German morale and economic capacity and bring the war to a close. Accordingly, the Lancaster was less heavily armed than its American contemporaries, as it depended less on self-defense in order to carry out its mission.

The first Lancasters entered service in 1942. The Lancaster could carry a much heavier bomb load than the B-17 or the B-24, while operating at similar speeds and at a slightly longer range. The Lancaster also enjoyed a payload advantage over the Handley Page Halifax. From 1942 until 1945, the Lancaster would anchor the British half of the CBO, eventually resulting in the destruction of most of urban Germany and the death of several hundred thousand German civilians.

There are reasons to be skeptical of the inclusion of the Lancaster. The Combined Bomber Offensive was a strategic dead-end, serving up expensive four-engine bombers as a feast for smaller, cheaper German fighters. Battles were fought under conditions deeply advantageous to the Germans, as damaged German planes could land, and shot down German pilots rescued and returned to service. Overall, the enormous Western investment in strategic bombing was probably one of the greatest grand strategic miscalculations of the Second World War. Nevertheless, this list needs a bomber from the most identifiable bomber offensive in history, and the Lancaster was the best of the bunch.

Over 7000 Lancasters were built, with the last retiring in the early 1960s after Canadian service as recon and maritime patrol aircraft.

Boeing B-52 Stratofortress:

The disastrous experience of B-29 Superfortresses over North Korea in 1950 demonstrated that the United States would require a new strategic bomber, and soon. Unfortunately, the first two generations of bombers chosen by the USAF were almost uniformly duds; the hopeless B-36, the short-legged B-47, the dangerous-to-its-own-pilots B-58, and the obsolete-before-it-flew XB-70. The vast bulk of these bombers quickly went from wastes of taxpayer money to wastes of space at the Boneyard. None of the over 2500 early Cold War bombers ever dropped a bomb in anger.

The exception was the B-52.The BUFF was originally intended for high altitude penetration bombing into the Soviet Union. It replaced the B-36 and the B-47, the former too slow and vulnerable to continue in the nuclear strike mission, and the latter too short-legged to reach the USSR from U.S. bases. Slated for replacement by the B-58 and the B-70, the B-52 survived because it was versatile enough to shift to low altitude penetration after the increasing sophistication of Soviet SAMs made the high altitude mission suicidal.

And this versatility has been the real story of the B-52. The BUFF was first committed to conventional strike missions in service of Operation Arc Light during the Vietnam War. In Operation Linebacker II, the vulnerability of the B-52 to air defenses was made manifest when nine Stratofortresses were lost in the first days of the campaign. But the B-52 persisted. In the Gulf War, B-52s carried out saturation bombing campaigns against the forward positions of the Iraqi Army, softening and demoralizing the Iraqis for the eventual ground campaign. In the War on Terror, the B-52 has acted in a close air support role, delivering precision-guided ordnance against small concentrations of Iraqi and Taliban insurgents.

Most recently, the B-52 showed its diplomatic chops when two BUFFs were dispatched to violate China’s newly declared Air Defense Zone. The BUFF was perfect for this mission; the Chinese could not pretend not to notice two enormous bombers travelling at slow speed through the ADIZ.

742 B-52s were delivered between 1954 and 1963. Seventy-eight remain in service, having undergone multiple upgrades over the decades that promise to extend their lives into the 2030s, or potentially beyond. In a family of short-lived airframes, the B-52 has demonstrated remarkable endurance and longevity.

Conclusion

Over the last century, nations have invested tremendous resources in bomber aircraft. More often than not, this investment has failed to bear strategic fruit. The very best aircraft have been those that could not only conduct their primary mission effectively, but that were also sufficiently flexible to perform other tasks that might be asked of them. Current air forces have, with some exceptions, effectively done away with the distinctions between fighters and bombers, instead relying on multi-role fighter-bombers for both missions. The last big, manned bomber may be the American LRS-B, assuming that project ever gets off the ground.

Honorable Mention

Grumman A-6 Intruder, MQ-1 Predator, Caproni Ca.3, Tupolev Tu-95 “Bear,” Avro Vulcan, Tupolev Tu-22M “Backfire.”

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is a Visiting Professor at the United States Army War College. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

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What are the five greatest fighter aircraft of all time?

Like the same question asked of tanks, cars, or rock and roll guitarists, the answer invariably depends on parameters. For example, there are few sets of consistent parameters that would include both the T-34 and the King Tiger among the greatest of all tanks. I know which one I’d like to be driving in a fight, but I also appreciate that this isn’t the most appropriate way to approach the question. Similarly, while I’d love to drive a Porsche 959 to work every morning, I’d be hesitant to list it ahead of the Toyota Corolla on a “best of” compilation.

Nations buy fighter aircraft to resolve national strategic problems, and the aircraft should accordingly be evaluated on their ability to solve or ameliorate these problems. Thus, the motivating question is this: how well did this aircraft help solve the strategic problems of the nations that built or bought it? This question leads to the following points of evaluation:

Fighting characteristics: How did this plane stack up against the competition, including not just other fighters but also bombers and ground installations?

Reliability: Could people count on this aircraft to fight when it needed to, or did it spend more time under repair than in the air?

Cost: What did the organization and the nation have to pay in terms of blood and treasure to make this aircraft fly?

These are the parameters; here are my answers:

Spad S.XIII:

In the early era of military aviation, technological innovation moved at such speed that state of the art aircraft became obsolete deathtraps within a year. Engineers in France, Britain, Germany and Italy worked constantly to outpace their competitors, producing new aircraft every year to throw into the fight. The development of operational tactics trailed technology, although the input of the best flyers played an important role in how designers put new aircraft together.

In this context, picking a dominant fighter from the era is difficult. Nevertheless, the Spad S.XIII stands out in terms of its fighting characteristics and ease of production. Based in significant part on the advice of French aviators such as Georges Guynemer, the XIII lacked the maneuverability of some of its contemporaries, but could outpace most of them and performed very well in either a climb or a dive. It was simple enough to produce that nearly 8,500 such aircraft eventually entered service. Significant early reliability problems were worked out by the end of the war, and in any case were overwhelmed by the XIII’s fighting ability.

The S.XIII filled out not only French fighter squadrons, but also the air services of Allied countries. American ace Eddie Rickenbacker scored twenty of his kills flying an XIII, many over the most advanced German fighters of the day, including the Fokker D.VII.

The Spad XIII helped the Allies hold the line during the Ludendorff Offensive, and controlled the skies above France during the counter-offensive. After the war, it remained in service in France, the United States, and a dozen other countries for several years. In an important sense, the Spad XIII set the post-war standard for what a pursuit aircraft needed to do.

Grumman F6F Hellcat:

Of course, it is not only air forces that fly fighter aircraft. The F6F Hellcat can’t compare with the Spitfire, the P-51, or the Bf 109 on many basic flight characteristics, although its ability to climb was first-rate. What the F6F could do, however, was reliably fly from aircraft carriers, and it rode point on the great, decisive U.S. Navy carrier offensive of World War II. Entering the war in September 1943, it won 75% of USN aerial victories in the Pacific. USN ace David McCampbell shot down nine Japanese aircraft in one day flying a Hellcat .The F6F was heavily armed, and could take considerably more battle damage than its contemporaries. Overall, the F6F claimed nearly 5,200 kills at a loss of 270 aircraft in aerial combat, including a 13:1 ratio against the Mitsubishi A6M Zero.

The USN carrier offensive of the latter part of World War II is probably the greatest single example of the use of decisive airpower in world history. Hellcats and their kin (the Douglas SBD Dauntless dive-bomber and the Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bomber) destroyed the fighting power of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), cracked open Japan’s island empire, and exposed the Japanese homeland to devastating air attack and the threat of invasion.

In 1943, the United States needed a fighter robust enough to endure a campaign fought distant from most bases, yet fast and agile enough to defeat the best that the IJN could offer. Tough and reliable as a brick, the Hellcat fit that role. Put simply, the Honda Accord is, in its own way, a great car; the Honda Accords of the fighter world also deserve their day.

Messerschmitt Me-262 Swallow:

The Me 262 Schwalbe (Swallow, in English) failed to win the war for Germany, and couldn’t stop the Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO). Had German military authorities made the right decisions, however, it might at least have accomplished the second.

Known as the world’s first operational jet fighter, full-scale production of the Me 262 was delayed by resistance within the German government and the Luftwaffe to devoting resources to an experimental aircraft without a clear role. Early efforts to turn it into a fighter-bomber fell flat. As the need for a superlative interceptor become apparent, however, the Me 262 found its place. The Swallow proved devastating against American bomber formations, and could outrun American pursuit aircraft.

The Me 262 was hardly a perfect fighter: it lacked the maneuverability of the best American interceptors, and both American and British pilots developed tactics for managing the Swallow. Although production suffered from some early problems with engines, by the later stages of the conflict, manufacturing was sufficiently easy that the plane could be mass-produced in dispersed, underground facilities.

But had it come on line a bit earlier, the Me 262 might have torn the heart out of the CBO. The CBO in 1943 was a touch and go affair; dramatically higher bomber losses in 1943 could well have led Churchill and Roosevelt to scale back the production of four engine bombers in favor of additional tactical aircraft. Without the advantage of long-range escorts, American bombers would have proven easy prey for the German jet. Moreover, the Me 262 would have been far more effective without the constant worry of P-47s and P-51s strafing its airfields and tracking its landings.

Nazi Germany needed a game changer, a plane capable of making the price too high for the Allies to keep up the CBO. The Me 262 came onto the scene too late to solve that problem, but it’s hard to imagine any aircraft that could have come closer. Ironically, this might have accelerated Allied victory, as the Combined Bomber Offensive resulted in not only the destruction of urban Germany, but in the waste of substantial Allied resources. Win-win.

Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 “Fishbed”: 

An odd choice for this list? The MiG-21 is known largely as fodder for the other great fighters of the Cold War, and for having an abysmal kill ratio. The Fishbed (in NATO terminology) has served as a convenient victim in Vietnam and in a variety of Middle Eastern wars, some of which it fought on both sides.

But… the MiG-21 is cheap, fast, maneuverable, has low maintenance requirements. It’s relatively easy to learn to fly, although not necessarily easy to learn how to fly well. Air forces continued to buy the MiG-21 for a long time. Counting the Chengdu J-7 variant, perhaps 13,000 MiG-21s have entered service around the world. In some sense, the Fishbed is the AK-47 (or the T-34, if you prefer) of the fighter world. Fifty countries have flown the MiG-21, and it has flown for fifty-five years. It continues to fly as a key part of twenty-six different air forces, including the Indian Air Force, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, the Vietnamese People’s Air Force, and the Romanian Air Force. Would anyone be surprised if the Fishbed and its variants are still flying in 2034?

The MiG-21 won plaudits from American aggressor pilots at Red Flag, who celebrated its speed and maneuverability, and played (through the contribution of North Vietnamese aces such as Nguyễn Văn Cốc ) an important role in redefining the requirements of air superiority in the United States. When flown well, it remains a dangerous foe.

Most of life is about just showing up, and since 1960 no fighter has shown up as consistently, and in as many places, as has the MiG-21. For countries needing a cheap option for claiming control of their national airspace, the MiG-21 has long solved problems, and will likely continue to serve in this role.

McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle: 

What to say about the F-15 Eagle? When it came into service in 1976, it was immediately recognized as the best fighter in the world. Today, it is arguably still the best all-around, cost-adjusted fighter, even if the Su-27 and F-22 have surpassed it in some ways. If one fighter in American history could take the name of the national symbol of the United States, how could it be anything other than the F-15?

The Eagle symbolizes the era of American hegemony, from the Vietnam hangover to the post-Cold War period of dominance. Designed in light of the lessons of Vietnam, at a time where tactical aviation was taking control of the US Air Force, the F-15 outperformed existing fighters and set a new standard for a modern air superiority aircraft. Despite repeated tests in combat, no F-15 has ever been lost to an aerial foe. The production line for the F-15 will run until at least 2019, and longer if Boeing can manage to sell anyone on the Silent Eagle.

In the wake of Vietnam, the United States needed an air superiority platform that could consistently defeat the best that the Soviet Union had to offer. The F-15 (eventually complemented by the F-16) provided this platform, and then some. After the end of the Cold War, the United States needed an airframe versatile enough to carry out the air superiority mission while also becoming an effective strike aircraft. Again, the F-15 solved the problem.

And it’s a plane that can land with one wing. Hard to beat that.

A Contest Based on Parameters:

Again, this exercise depends entirely on decisions about the parameters. A different set of criteria of effectiveness would generate an entirely different list (although the F-15 would probably still be here; it’s invulnerable). Nevertheless, the basic elements of the argument are sound: weapons should be evaluated in terms of how they help achieve national objectives.

Honorable mentions include the North American Aviation F-86 Sabre, the Fokker D.VII, the Lockheed-Martin F-22 Raptor, the Messerschmitt Bf 109, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, the Supermarine Spitfire, the North American Aviation P-51 Mustang, the McDonnell Douglas EA-18 Growler, the English Electric Lightning, the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, the Sukhoi Su-27 “Flanker,” and the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is a Visiting Professor at the United States Army War College. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 2nd Class Scott Taylor