Diplomacy & Crisis News

Au début de l'année, l'écrivain algérien Mouloud Mammeri publiait à Paris un recueil de « Poèmes kabyles anciens » (textes berbères et français), œuvres précieuses, transmises oralement jusqu'alors et recueillies avant qu'elles ne disparaissent. La jeune université de Tizi-Ouzou (wilaya de Grande-Kabylie) (...) / Algérie, Éducation, Identité culturelle, Politique, Berbères, Université - 1980/12

In Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region there’s deep concern for thousands of Eritrean refugees whose camps have been found burned to the ground, confirming satellite imagery and testimony from those who have fled attacks.

Corrupt local elites thwarted some engagement efforts of the past decade, Biden’s new special envoy wrote.

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Netanyahu's focus on maintaining ultra-Orthodox support as the pandemic raged didn’t help him win, but it has left deep scars.

Steve Weintz

Security,

It was definitely crazy, and wouldn’t have been cheap.

Here's What You Need to Remember: So are there deep bunkers carved into the American soil still hiding in the dark? Vast sums have been spent since 9/11 and much is unaccounted for. But the same concerns that kept super bunkers from being built - cost, capacity and effectiveness—mitigate against any grand caverns of doom.

With the arrival of the Bomb and its immense destructive power, the efforts to protect elites and commoners alike from swift destruction assumed novel and at times grotesque forms. Civil defense foundered in America upon the sheer scale of the problem—getting tens of millions of urbanites out of cities and into shelters before enemy nukes arrived. Ultimately the United States quietly gave up on protecting the majority of its residents from nuclear attack via shelter, and opted for a grand technological fix in missile defense.

Elite shelter concepts, however, had better success. Ostensibly, this makes sense; targeting the enemy leadership can sometimes win a struggle. The assassination of Admiral Yamamoto by the U.S. Navy in 1943, for example, derailed Japan’s defense of its island conquests. But such a policy opens a door into a very dark room, as many leaders instinctively know.

So from early on in the Nuclear Age the U.S. government explored numerous ways to keep itself safe during and after Armageddon.

The Greenbriar Resort in West Virginia, a grand old vacation destination abounding in stately elegance, now includes a Cold War extra amongst a tour of its premises: the congressional bunker built in the late 1950s under the guise of a resort expansion. The Greenbriar bunker is a true time capsule, its rotary-dial phones and fusty office chairs ready for the cast of a period movie.

The Greenbriar bunker was never used for its intended purpose and was decommissioned in 1992 after a news expose. When members of Congress evacuated the Capitol on September 11, 2001, they flew to the Mount Weather emergency command facility in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Now run by FEMA, Mount Weather can shelter several hundred people from all three branches of government for months.

Along with Congress agencies such as the Federal Reserve made accommodations for apocalypse, including giant vaults full of currency. As Strangelovian as it sounds, the work of returning American society to some semblance of pre-war routine would depend on cash and banking.

As aircraft became faster and missiles faster still the warning times for nuclear attack shrank from hours to minutes. Even as Greenbriar and Mount Weather were conceived and built,  the evolving threat demanded more urgent safety measures. As Mark, the author of Atomic Skies blog writes:

“Two solutions were considered: mobility and hardness. Mobility meant keeping the president on the move, on plane or train or ship, so that the Soviets could not find and kill him. Hardness meant burying the president, deep underground, deeper than even a nuclear weapon could reach.”

Early in the Eisenhower administration a plan was devised to spirit the president away from Washington aboard a fast Navy boat down the Potomac (helicopters being then too unreliable for Presidential transport) to a waiting Navy ship, which would head to sea. The naval aide in charge of this plan, Captain Edward Beech, later commanded a nuclear sub, the USS Triton, big enough to function as “Navy One”—a submerged presidential command post.

During the Kennedy Administration mobile solutions expanded to include airborne command posts—first 707s then 747s—capable of supporting the executive branch during and after World War III. Spiriting away the President into the sky remains the preferred option.

But if ICBMs left no time to get the President and other leaders to safety, then only the deepest of bunkers would suffice. In 1963 the Pentagon proposed a whopper: the Deep Underground Command Center (DUCC).

DUCC would have been a shock-mounted capsule dug into the living rock 3,500 feet below the nation’s capital, accessible by tunnels from the White House, Capitol Hill and the Pentagon. Up to three hundred people could shelter there for up to a month after bombardment by three-hundred-megaton warheads. Evacuation would take only fifteen minutes, enough time even with minimal warning.

But there were problems. The DUCC was small and half its personnel would be needed just to keep the shelter running. It was expensive, costing as nearly much as all the mobile command posts combined. It wasn’t certain that the Soviets couldn't just build bigger bombs. Contact with the outside world would be tough if the explosions vaporized the communications antennas.

And there was, at least among some of President Kennedy's advisers, just a little uncertainty about the Pentagon’s views. “Basically,” said Harold Brown, a future Secretary of Defense, “the Chiefs probably aren’t interested in having the civilian command survive. If we were to come to a war, they would only get in the way.”

The Joint Chiefs’ lack of enthusiasm and the Vietnam War, along with a general slide in American focus on civil defense, led to the DUCC proposal fading away by the mid 1960s. The flying and floating command posts were upgraded and existing facilities like Mount Weather were hardened. But, writes Mark, during the Carter Administration the Army Corps of Engineers revisited the concept.

We know they did because a few scraps of evidence surfaced before the project ended/evaporated/went dark:

“Special Projects Office (later to become the Protective Design Center) was created in 1977 to work on a classified Department of Defense program. The Alternate National Military Command and Control Center Improvement Program involved criteria development, studies, and preliminary design of a deep underground highly hardened and survivable command and control center. The center included separate structures for command personnel, power, fuel, and water. Over 3 miles of air entrainment tunnels were required as well as access shafts to the surface.

“Although canceled in 1979, the experience, expertise, and leadership in protective design and classified programs that Special Projects gained from this work brought other unique projects and major programs to the District.”

The one photo associated with the project depicts a model of a spherical structure like a buried moon base, cocooned in rock and encased in a lattice of shock absorbers. It looks very safe. It doesn't look cheap. And nothing more is known about it.

So are there deep bunkers carved into the American soil still hiding in the dark? Vast sums have been spent since 9/11 and much is unaccounted for. But the same concerns that kept super bunkers from being built - cost, capacity and effectiveness—mitigate against any grand caverns of doom.

Steve Weintz, a frequent contributor to many publications such as WarIsBoring, is a writer, filmmaker, artist, animator. This article first appeared in 2018.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Warfare History Network

History, Europe

Few airmen cringed at the indiscriminate use of air power.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Dave Nagel, an engineer and gunner with the 305th Bomb Group, said, “If you saw London like I saw it, you wouldn’t have any remorse. I don’t know anyone who was remorseful. We didn’t know whether an area was populated or not. We were supposed to be over a target, normally a factory, when we let the bombs go, but we assumed it was surrounded by civilians.”

Behind the strategy that governed the American air war in Europe during World War II lay events and ideas that dated back to World War I and the 1920s. The first strategic bombing raid in 1915 deployed not airplanes but German Zeppelins, rigid airships that dumped ordnance on the east coast of Great Britain. Two years later Germany’s Gotha bomber, a machine capable of a round trip from Belgian bases, struck at Folkestone, a port through which British soldiers embarked for the front. This raid killed 300 people, including 115 soldiers. The bomber had proven itself as a weapon against a military target.

A few weeks later, 14 Gothas attacked London in the first fixed-wing assault upon civilians and their institutions. The dead and wounded totaled 600, and the raid wrought consternation among the public and the government. The British hastily summoned fighter units to gird the cities. To counter the defensive cordon, the Gothas flew night missions. With primitive navigational tools and no bombsights, the raiders drizzled explosives without any pretense of hitting military or industrial targets. Theoreticians of war now had a new factor to enter into equations: the terror of massive strikes upon workers producing the stuff of war.

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Brigadier General Billy Mitchell, who had only earned his wings in 1916, commanded the air force for General John J. Pershing and his American Expeditionary Force in France. Mitchell met Maj. Gen. Hugh M. Trenchard, commander of the Royal Flying Corps, who quickly persuaded the American that the “airplane is an offensive and not a defensive weapon.” Mitchell grasped the possibilities of taking the war behind the lines and plotted a huge raid that would blast German military and industrial targets in the autumn of 1918. A correspondent for the Associated Press wrote, “His navy of the air is to be expanded until no part of Germany is safe from the rain of bombs…. The work of the independent force is bombing munitions works, factories, cities and other important centers behind the German lines…. Eventually Berlin will know what an air raid means, and the whole great project is a direct answer to the German air attacks on helpless and unfortified British, French and Belgian cities.”

World War I ended before Mitchell could demonstrate what his “navy of the air” might achieve, but he continued to expound his ideas. While accepting the need for control of the skies through destruction of the enemy air forces, he said, “It may be … the best strategy to damage and destroy property, and to kill and disable an enemy’s forces and resources at points far removed from the field of battle of either armies or navies.” Implicitly, Mitchell accepted war on civilians.

In 1921 and 1923, Mitchell demonstrated that bombers could sink some anchored warships. The experiments confirmed that aircraft could destroy substantial stationary targets, but admirals scoffed that vessels under way could easily avoid the attacks. The Army dismissed the show as irrelevant for its vision of warfare, which was to slug it out with hostiles while capturing territory.

While Mitchell and Trenchard promulgated their ideas of aerial offensives, a contemporary Italian, General Giulio Douhet, preached that modern war involved the entire society, including “the soldier carrying his rifle, the woman loading shells in a factory, the farmer growing his wheat, the scientists experimenting in the laboratory.” Douhet spoke not only of smashing wartime production but argued, “How could a country go on living and working, oppressed by the nightmare of imminent destruction.” He conceded that such a war without mercy eliminated considerations of morality.

Americans partially bought into the Douhet’s theories. They buried the idea of indiscriminate raids that slaughtered nonmilitary people and emphasized hitting industrial production, transportation facilities, and military centers. Promoters of strategic bombing hypothesized that by destroying the goods of war and the will of the people to resist, conflicts could be shortened and the wholesale carnage of the World War I battlefield avoided.

Mitchell’s outspoken demands for an independent air force ended his career, but acolytes like Henry “Hap” Arnold, Carl Spaatz, and Ira Eaker retained positions in the military hierarchy. They successfully promulgated the doctrine of strategic bombing, accurate targeting of enemy installations and facilities. Toward that end, in 1933 the War Department approved a prospectus for a plane capable of traveling at speeds in excess of 200 miles per hour and with a range of more than 2,000 miles. The new bomber could be used to defend either coast, but if deployed overseas it would require bases in England or sites like the Philippine Islands. Boeing produced the first model of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, which roared through the sky at 232 mph during a 2,100-mile trip from Seattle to Dayton. The advocates of air power were delighted, but unfortunately the prototype crashed and burned on a test flight. Instead of ordering 65, the War Department scaled back to a mere 13.

To carry out daylight precision bombing the Army adopted a tool ordered and then discarded by the Navy as unsuitable for dive-bombers: the Norden bombsight. In the crucial seconds over an objective, a bombardier manipulated the device to guide the plane as he lined up the target and then released the explosives.

“I Can Shoot Those Things Down Very Easily.”

Douhet also taught his disciples that heavily armed bombers in mass formations could operate by day against fighter defenses. The publicity on Boeing’s creation hailed the new airplane as a “Flying Fortress,” but it was hardly as impregnable as the name indicated. The first B-17s lacked armor plate to protect the crew, carried only five machine guns, and made no provision for a tail gunner. The B-17 faithful believed that was sufficient since, in their minds, the aircraft could attain altitudes beyond reach of interceptors. In the late 1930s, a hot shot fighter pilot, Lieutenant John Alison, confounded the assurance of promoters of the early B-17 when he convincingly demonstrated he could push his fighter close enough to the weaponless rear of a Flying Fortress and shoot it down. His feat, however, did not immediately persuade the bomber command to install a tail gun. Nobody in the Air Corps was going to listen to a pursuit pilot, a second lieutenant who claimed, “I can shoot those things down very easily.”

The conviction that strategic bombers could operate unmolested by enemy aircraft influenced the development of U.S. fighters. Escorts to protect the big planes would be unnecessary, and the design for a fighter focused upon a machine that would protect the ground forces. Not until the Battle of Britain in 1940 and the appearance of the Messerschmitt Me-109 did the American experts realize that the speed and altitude of an enemy fighter challenged their assumptions about the invulnerability of the B-17. The standard American fighter, the Curtiss P-40 Tomahawk—a good gun platform, while speedy in a dive—had a limited ceiling and rate of climb. It would not be deployed in the European Theater.

Desire for an interceptor with longer range and performance higher in the sky had belatedly resulted in the twin-engine Lockheed P-38 Lightning, and aeronautical engineers returned to their drawing boards to blueprint what would become the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt and the North American P-51 Mustang. At the same time manufacturers modified the big bombers, now including the Consolidated B-24 Liberator, which had slightly more range and bomb weight capacity than the B-17, adding better means to defend themselves: up to 12 .50-caliber machine guns, a tail gunner, and armor for the crew. When the enemy changed tactics during World War II and began head-on attacks, a chin turret would be added to give greater firepower forward.

From the start of World War II, the British intended to follow Trenchard’s maxims on carrying the war to the industrial centers and the population of the foe. In May 1940, when the Royal Air Force attempted daylight strategic raids by its fleet of bombers, German ack-ack and interceptors killed more flyers than the enemy lost on the ground. B-17s purchased from the United States carried out a few daylight missions with dismal results and curdled RAF enthusiasm for the Flying Fortress. American analysts noted that the Brits insisted on operating above 30,000 feet, which overloaded the oxygen systems, froze weapons, and reduced airspeed, making the planes vulnerable to the Me-109s. The RAF B-17 missions relied on an inferior bombsight, and the maximum number of aircraft in formation was a mere four. The British, using their own bombers, switched to nighttime assaults, on industrial areas. They made no pretense of discriminating between residential neighborhoods and factories.

The British tried to convince the Air Corps that it too should operate after dark. That would have negated the entire basis for the designs of the B-17 and B-24 and wasted the hundreds of hours training of bombardiers with the Norden device. Faith in daylight precision bombing thus remained intact as the United States entered World War II. There was no disagreement with the British on the purposes and potentials of air power. Maj. Gen. Ira Eaker, who headed the American bomber command in 1942, said, “After two months spent in understanding British Bomber Command, it is still believed than the original all-out air plan for the destruction of the German war effort by air action alone was feasible and sound and more economical than any other method available.” He did agree that since the resources then available were limited, a ground effort might be required.

The Eighth Air Force opened for business in England in May 1942, but neither B-17s nor B-24s were available. Most of the handful of combat-ready heavyweights had been sent to the Philippines, where Japanese attacks destroyed many of them. As a result, when the Eighth inaugurated its campaign against the Axis powers on July 4, 1942, the mission had little resemblance to strategic bombing. The 15th Bombardment Squadron borrowed 12 A-20 twin-engine Bostons from the RAF, and only half of these were flown by U.S. crews. They struck at four airfields in Holland, flying at an extremely low level before unloading their bombs and strafing the base. They inflicted minor damage, and three were shot down.

Not until some six weeks later did the Eighth launch a true daylight strategic bombing mission. On a beautifully sunlit day, a dozen B-17s from the 97th Bomb Group headed for the Rouen (France) railroad yards. Accompanied by RAF Spitfires, they encountered light flak and no serious interference from German fighters. All returned safely, leaving behind them, said Eaker, head of the Eighth Bomber Command who flew in the lead plane, “a great pall of smoke and sand.” General Henry “Hap” Arnold, the Air Corps commander, declared, “The attack on Rouen again verifies the soundness of our policy of the precision bombing of strategic objectives rather than the mass bombing of large, city size areas.”

The Rouen raid achieved only nuisance value, and euphoria dissipated rapidly as the strategic bombing campaign intensified. Practice revealed substantial holes in theory. The Luftwaffe, manning high-performance Me-109s and Focke Wulf 190s, greeted marauders with a skill and savagery that tore huge holes in the fabric of the Eighth. Losses of from 10 to 20 percent frequently resulted from the deadly combination of flak and fighters. Air Corps analysts calculated that adequate self-defense required a minimum of 300 bombers, a figure difficult to achieve during the first 18 months of U.S. aerial combat in Europe. Nevertheless, the Americans strove to meet their responsibilities for round-the-clock assaults. The RAF, exclusively bombing at night, including an occasional thousand-plane raid, endured heavy losses of air crews to flak and night fighters. Post-mission photo analysis indicated their destruction of industrial works was far from commensurate with the casualties.

By the spring of 1943, the Allied air command realized that there were not sufficient aircraft to hammer day and night the entire war industry of occupied Europe and Germany with precision. The RAF had no accuracy with its night raids, and the scattershot approach of the Eighth Bomber Command did not cripple production. Eaker, as commander of the Eighth’s Bomber Command, proposed a “Combined Bomber Offensive,” suggesting “it was better to cause a high degree of destruction in a few really essential industries than a small degree of destruction in many industries.”

Toward this end, the U.S bomber command mounted an attack on Romania’s Ploesti oil fields and refineries using B-24s flying from fields in North Africa. To avoid detection and increase accuracy, the participants in Operation Tidal Wave flew at low level. The raiders inflicted modest harm. Ploesti had been functioning well below capacity, and it was a simple matter for production to recoup. The Tidal Wave bombers suffered horrendous losses: more than 300 killed, hundreds wounded or captured, 79 interned in Turkey. Just 33 of the 178 Liberators involved could be listed as fit for duty after the mission. No one could seriously propose any further low-level daylight attacks for the heavyweights.

Because of the Luftwaffe’s success and with an eye to controlling the air when the time arrived for an invasion of Europe, in June 1943 the Allied high command created Operation Pointblank, announcing, “It has become essential to check the growth and to reduce the strength of the day and night fighter forces which the enemy can concentrate against us … first priority in the operation of British and American bombers … shall be accorded to the attack on German fighter forces and the industry upon which they depend.” German airbases and factories producing planes and essentials like ball bearings drew priority.

General LeMay Calculated That Flak Gunners Needed to Fire 372 Rounds to Guarantee a Hit on a B-17

The enemy met Pointblank with ferocity. In August 1943 a maximum effort that put up 300 bombers to strike Schweinfurt and Regensburg cost the Americans 60 planes—600 crewmen—shot down with many additional aircraft badly damaged. A basic problem lay in vulnerability to interceptors. Spitfires, with a range limited to 100 miles beyond the British coast, could not provide protection on longer missions. Bereft of escorts, the 10 or 12 .50-caliber machine guns of the B-17s and B-24s were not enough to fend off the swarms of Me-109s and FW-190s. Another weakness centered on use of the Norden bombsight, which required a clear view of the target and a steady hand. In the cloudless, peaceful skies over Texas, it might have been possible for a skilled operator in the boast of the times to put a bomb in a pickle barrel. But frequently over Europe heavy rain or snow, thick overcasts, and buffeting winds obscured or misled bombardiers. Even when the target was clearly visible, torrents of antiaircraft shells intimidated the men at the toggle switches and those in the cockpits. Bombs fell away prematurely, or the plane suddenly veered off because the pilot seized the controls and yanked the ship out of imminent danger.

General Curtis LeMay, commander of the 305th Bomb Group, after analyzing the photo reconnaissance intelligence, decided a prime culprit for poor accuracy was failure to maintain a steady course. He decreed that none of his pilots could take evasive action over a target. He had calculated that flak gunners needed to fire 372 rounds to guarantee a hit on a B-17 in level flight. Whether his arithmetic was correct or not, LeMay sought to persuade his subordinates by announcing he would fly the lead aircraft on missions. In fact, the first ship over a target had a better chance for survival because antiaircraft personnel adjusted for range and speed as a flight passed. Disciplined behavior, however, added effectiveness, although no one could compensate for weather that obscured a target.

LeMay also innovated a better defense for the big bombers. He insisted upon a tight, stepped-box formation that enabled gunners to provide mutual assistance. A bomb group could bring to bear from 200 to 600 machine guns on an attacker. His demands for more training by navigators and bombardiers and closed-in formations earned him his nickname of “Iron Ass,” but the 305th proved his point with more effective results and fewer losses.

In contrast to LeMay’s carefully worked out stepped-box formations, inexperienced Brig. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, newly installed as an air division commander, ordered the 95th Bomb Group to use a flattened formation, with aircraft wingtip to wingtip. Over Kiel, the Luftwaffe feasted upon the 95th, shooting down eight, including the bomber carrying Forrest. The disaster proved the efficacy of LeMay’s design.

Pointblank failed to halt aircraft manufacture because the enemy had decentralized its critical industries. In particular, the Third Reich had arranged to import vital ball bearings from neutral Sweden. To inflict lasting damage required repeated raids on factories, and in 1943 the Air Corps lacked enough planes and crews. It was also during Pointblank that the initial desire to minimize civilian casualties by concentrating on military installations, manufacturing plants, and transportation hubs began to give way. Bomber command directed the crews on a mission against the rail junction at Munster to unload on the city center, hitting the town’s workers. According to one historian, the attack upon civilians “did not produce any moral qualms among the airmen; some cheered … their own sufferings had bred bitterness.”

Throughout the last months of 1943, the U.S. bomber campaign staggered from the continued onslaughts of German fighters and the increasingly effective flak aided by improved German radar systems. Losses continued to soar above a prohibitive 10 percent. P-38 Lightnings and P-47 Thunderbolts with American pilots had replaced the Spitfires, but without drop tanks they could only venture as far as the Rhine River, leaving the big fellows exposed to the depredations of interceptors. At the beginning of 1944, newly arrived P-51 Mustangs equipped with Rolls Royce engines debuted and quickly won recognition as the best fighter in the theater.

The tide turned with Big Week, starting February 20, 1944. The occasion introduced new features to the American effort. Lt. Gen. Jimmy Doolittle had replaced Eaker at the helm of the Eighth Air Force. Doolittle modified his predecessor’s policy that no fighters, the Little Friends, could ever leave the bombers to chase the enemy. Doolittle ordered the P-38s, P- 47s, and P-51s to attack the Luftwaffe on sight, provided they left some guardians to screen the Big Friends. The open season on German fighters was a product of an abundance of fighter squadrons and the development of fuel drop tanks that gave the Lightnings, Thunderbolts, and Mustangs hundreds of additional miles of flight distance. The Germans, in spite of the raids upon their industrial areas, were able to replace downed aircraft, but the predatory tactics of the Americans slashed the number of skilled, experienced pilots dueling with the Allied air arm. As the war progressed into 1944, the reservoir of capable German airmen suffered severe attrition.

For the first day of Big Week, the Eighth Air Force, working with British Bomber Command and the U.S. Fifteenth Air Force operating from Italy, dispatched 880 Fortresses and Liberators along with 835 fighters deep inside Germany. The Eighth alone claimed 115 enemy fighters shot down. That may have been an exaggeration, but the ability to launch similar massive raids six times within seven days surely knocked the Luftwaffe back on its heels. The incessant battering of German cities and their people forced the Third Reich to withdraw some fighter squadrons from the Eastern Front and bring others back from France and the Low Countries to protect the home front. Similarly, antiaircraft batteries were redeployed from both fronts.

With Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy, now planned for June, Allied strategy switched from attacks deep inside Germany and began to work over the defensive infrastructure along the French coast: rail lines, roads, bridges, tunnels, viaducts, and the communications network. While the bombers struck at German airfields and marshalling yards, the P-47, equipped with bombs, proved to be a great train buster and general interdiction tool. Gradually, many of the Thunderbolt squadrons transferred to the Ninth Air Force, which was more of a tactical support weapon, while the Eighth added P-51s to its rosters.

On D-day, a thick, nearly impenetrable overcast of more than 10,000 Allied bombers and fighters hovered over the English Channel and the Normandy shoreline. The pre-D-day campaign had produced sensational results. At most two or three German planes dared to appear as the invaders struggled ashore. The Luftwaffe preferred to husband its assets rather than risk confrontation with the canopy of American bombers and fighters, along with numerous planes from the RAF.

Fighter pilot Martin Low, in a P-38, said, “From June 6th until about 10 days later, we flew three missions a day, bombed and strafed anything that moved within 50 to a hundred miles of the coast, mostly trains.” The air attacks sharply curtailed movement of German reinforcements to help defend the beaches. Patrols like that mentioned by Low menaced daylight convoys or trains. One serious failure of the Allied air effort was the inability to destroy the blockhouses and emplacements that guarded the shores. Fearful of dropping bombs on friendly forces, the landing area missions were confined to drops a few miles beyond the beaches, and most of the bombs exploded harmlessly in empty fields.

Lt. Gen. Fritz Bayerlein Reported That 70% of His Soldiers Were “Either Dead, Wounded, Crazed or Dazed.”

Six weeks later, as the U.S. Third Army prepared to break out of Normandy toward the end of July 1944, it was exposed to the perils of high-altitude bombing aimed at tactical situations. Poor visibility prevented two-thirds of the scheduled 900 bombers to even reach the target near St. Lo, but 343 B-17s and B-24s unloaded on a poorly defined zone outlined by ground forces commander General Omar Bradley. Many of the bombs fell in no-man’s land between the opposing armies, but some exploded among GIs, killing 25 and wounding more than 60. A subsequent 1,500-plane attack that included fighter-bombers from the Ninth Air Force and the dreadnoughts of the Eighth devastated the Germans. Lt. Gen. Fritz Bayerlein of the Panzer Lehr Division said, “Artillery positions were wiped out, tanks overturned and buried, infantry positions flattened and all roads and tracks destroyed… The shock effect on the troops was indescribable. Some of my men went mad and rushed around in the open until they were cut down by splinters.” He reported 70 percent of his soldiers “either dead, wounded, crazed or dazed.” The aerial assault opened the gates for the St. Lo breakout.

Campaigns like Overlord and the St. Lo mission mandated detours from the strategic bombing program. Similarly, when the first V-1 pilotless bombs struck London in June 1944, the British demanded immediate attacks to neutralize the launch installations near the French coast. Starting June 16, bombers with fighter escorts in what were called Noball raids hit several of the V-1 emplacements. By September, the advances into Normandy by the invaders eliminated the V-1 bases, but the more deadly V-2, a rocket-propelled explosive with a primitive guidance system fired from territory still held by the Third Reich, killed more than 9,000 Londoners. The Allies attempted to erase the source of the rockets with assaults on Peenemunde, where German rocket engineers using slave labor developed and then deployed the V-2.

During the run-up to D-day, there had been one exception to the concentration on the defenses against the Allied invasion. After much debate about priorities for bombing campaigns, the British and Americans agreed to target oil, which was critical to the enemy war effort. Although the initial strike at Ploesti cost the Air Corps dearly, Allied planes pounded the Romanian fields and refineries regularly, reducing the flow to Germany. After the Soviet Red Army invaded Romania, driving the country to change sides and shut off the spigot, the Third Reich relied on its reserves and production of synthetics.

Starting in May 1944, the Americans struck at depots and manufacturing sites for ersatz oil 127 times, while the RAF mounted 53 raids. Acutely aware of the threat to their lifeline, the Germans massed antiaircraft around the synthetic fuel installations. Tail gunner Eddie Picardo recalled one mission: “The flak was so thick it blotted out the sun. For a full 10 seconds it was like a total eclipse.” The ship next to his disappeared in a bright flash of fire. His plane returned home with basketball-sized holes in the fuselage.

On a single day in October 1944, during the missions to Politz, Ruhland, Bohlen, and Rothensee, the Eighth Air Force counted 40 planes shot down, only 3 percent of the more than 1,400 on the raid, but still more than 358 air crew missing in action. Furthermore, 700 bombers reported damage. However, the campaign against synthetic petroleum paid off. The amount available to the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe fell to half the total needed. The Me-262 jet fighters were towed to runways by cows, recruits received ever fewer hours of flight instruction, and artillery literally depended on horsepower to move.

As the strategic bombing campaign resumed in earnest after D-day, the Allied air forces attempted to extend their reach farther east. Diplomatic negotiations resulted in an agreement that U.S. bombers flying out of England could blast the most distant targets of the Third Reich and then continue several hundred miles to land at Soviet airbases. Refueled and rearmed, they could hit enemy installations on the way back to their home fields. The Soviets welcomed planes and crews. Unfortunately, their hospitality did not include the right for P-51s to fly protective patrols while the hosts threw a lavish banquet for their guests. A German reconnaissance plane discovered the sleek bombers sitting on the ground. A subsequent raid wrecked nearly 70 aircraft. The shuttle program fizzled out after a few more operations.

“If You Saw London Like I Saw It, You Wouldn’t Have Any Remorse. I Don’t Know Anyone Who Was Remorseful.”

With streams of bombers blasting targets even as far as Poland, there was talk of using the aircraft to halt the genocidal program at the Auschwitz concentration camp, either by targeting the buildings there or the rail lines that hauled the condemned to the gas chambers. The U.S. War Department opposed any diversion for that purpose as weakening “decisive operations elsewhere.” It was suggested that surely a handful of aircraft could have been spared from the thousand plane raids, but a detour that split off a few bombers would have denied them the protection of the massive formations. Furthermore, high-altitude strikes often missed small objectives like a rail line or bridge and the enemy could repair smashed tracks rather quickly. In any event, there was little political or military desire to attack the murder camps.

While the British openly wreaked havoc on civilians, the United States claimed it restricted its bombing to war facilities. That may have been a guiding principle, but invariably American bombers killed or maimed noncombatants. In the turbulence of flak and enemy fighters, with targets obscured by weather, and due to navigation errors, ordnance frequently exploded well off the mark. A miss by only 500 yards could plant a bomb in a residential area, and there were instances in which the drop struck miles from the objective. Toward the end of the war, the U.S. air command accepted the RAF policy and struck Berlin and Dresden without any firm strategic goal.

Few airmen cringed at the indiscriminate use of air power. Dave Nagel, an engineer and gunner with the 305th Bomb Group, said, “If you saw London like I saw it, you wouldn’t have any remorse. I don’t know anyone who was remorseful. We didn’t know whether an area was populated or not. We were supposed to be over a target, normally a factory, when we let the bombs go, but we assumed it was surrounded by civilians.”

Curtis LeMay, who departed Europe to direct the devastation from the air upon Japan, said, “As to worrying about the morality of what we were doing, nuts! I was a soldier, soldiers fight. If we made it through the day without exterminating too many of our own people, we thought we’d had a pretty good day.”

The advocates of strategic bombing and carrying the war to the civilian population had argued that these campaigns would bring the Third Reich to its knees without the need for brutal, bloody combat on the ground. They were wrong. By May 1945, the people of Germany may have lost their enthusiasm for Adolf Hitler’s regime and its wars, but they continued to carry on. It was only after the Allied armies with their superior manpower and firepower overran the German forces that surrender came.

A post-V-E Day survey estimated that Germany lost less than 4 percent of its productive capacity, and even a devastated city like Hamburg recuperated to 80 percent of its output within a few weeks. That said, the air war contributed significantly to the eventual defeat of the enemy. Foremost, the raids on fuel depots and synthetic plants curtailed the Luftwaffe’s ability to train pilots and deploy their new jet fighters in sufficient numbers. The Allied ground forces operated without interference from the air. The attacks on fuel sources destroyed the vaunted mobility of German armor, and the battering of rail and road nets strangled supply lines.To be sure, the successes of the Soviet forces on the Eastern Front played a major role in weakening the ability to resist, but at the same time, the armies on the Western Front could not have advanced as swiftly without the strategic bombing campaigns.

Acclaimed author Gerald Astor has written numerous books on the topic of World War II, including Voices of D-Day and The Mighty Eighth. He resides in Scarsdale, New York.

This article originally appeared on Warfare History Network. This article first appeared in 2018.

Image: Wikipedia.

Sebastien Roblin

History, Americas

While the B-29 was responsible for the three deadliest bombing raids in history, its successor the B-50 never dropped a bomb in anger.

Here's What You Need to Remember: A half-century later, the C-135 family of planes based on the 707 airliner continue to perform the numerous support roles the B-50 had pioneered—especially the air-to-air refueling technology which continues to undergird U.S. airpower into the twenty-first century.

Quiz time! Which secret American military project during World War II proved even more expensive than the $2 billion Manhattan Project which developed U.S. atomic bombs?

That would be the $3 billion B-29 Superfortress—the huge four-engine bomber designed to fly across huge distances and drop those atomic bombs.

The silver-skinned B-29’s four huge turbo-supercharged R-3350 Duplex Cyclone radial engines allowed the 37-ton aircraft (when empty!) to fly relatively fast at 290 to 350 miles per hour and at altitudes exceeding 30,000 feet, making it extremely difficult for Japanese interceptors to catch up with them.

But even as World War II ground on to its conclusion, the Air Force appreciated that the Superfortress’s advantages would soon vanish due to the advent of turbojet-powered fighters. As the Cold War gathered momentum in the late 1940s, it further became vital for the Air Force to have a nuclear bomber that could strike Russia from U.S. bases.

These needs culminated in a new B-29D model with engine power cranked up nearly 60 percent using a 3,500 horsepower R-4360 Wasp Major engine and a skin made of stronger but lighter 75-S aluminum alloy. Together, this lowered the weight of the wings by 600 pounds and increased speed to nearly 400 miles per hour. Other trimmings included a taller tail fin, hydraulically assisted controls, and wing and window de-icing systems.

The end of World War II saw the cancellation of B-29 orders. To rescue the program, the military redesignated the B-29D as the B-50 to imply the aircraft incorporated more original design features than was actually the case—hardly the first nor the last time misleading aircraft designations have been adopted for political purposes.

Only a small run of sixty B-50As were produced in Washington, and these went onto become the tip of the newly-formed Strategic Air Command’s nuclear deterrence fleet in 1948 until huge B-36 Peacemaker and B-47 Stratojet jet bombers could enter service.

A small number of B-50Bs were then built with lighter-weight fuel cells, until the Air Force settled on the B-50D to commit to larger-scale manufacture of 222 bombers. The last model downsized the crew from eleven to eight, had provisions for external fuel tanks, featured a simplified nose cone, and included a built-in inflight-refueling boom.

The B-50 fleet suffered its share of teething issues too due to defective pressure regulators, engine problems, and cracking of its aluminum skin which took several years to iron out. Furthermore, as the Pentagon kept on rapidly deploying new types of nuclear bombs, the B-50 bombers had to be repeatedly converted to fit them in their bomb bays.

When the Korean War broke out in the 1950s, only the older B-29s were called into perform non-nuclear strikes—where they suffered unexpected losses to Soviet MiG-15 jet fighters. With speeds approaching 680 miles per hour and high climb rates, the MiG-15 demonstrated that even the B-50’s higher speeds and altitudes were of little advantage due to advancing jet technology. This led to the cancellation in 1949 of an experimentally re-engined model first called the YB-50C with 4,500-horsepower engines.

However, the B-29 and B-50 by then were at the forefront of pioneering air-to-air refueling technology, which would allow the kind of extended range bombing raids the SAC was aiming for. Initially, this involved converting B-29s into KB-29s tankers, that would use a long hose to refuel nuclear-armed B-50s.

In 1949, the B-50A Lucky Lady II became the first aircraft to fly around the world in an epic ninety-four-hour flight between February 26 and March 2. (An earlier attempt by B-50 Global Queen, had to be aborted due to engine failures.) She was refueled by no less than four pairs of KB-29M tankers flying out of the Azores, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and Hawaii along its 23,452 mile-long journey. This record would finally be beaten in 1956 in less than half the time by a brand-new B-52 jet bomber.

Before that, in 1953 jet-powered B-47s began entering service while B-29s came to be retired, so it naturally fell to B-50s to take on the support duties. Ironically, the B-50 would go on to see far more action in these support roles than as a bomber.

Altogether 136 B-50s were converted into KB-50 tankers. Starting in 1956, 112 were further modified into the KB-50J model by adding J-47 turbojet engines from the B-47 bomber to help them sustain higher speeds and altitudes to keep up with the bombers they were refueling. The add-on turbojets boosted the KB-50J’s maximum speed to 444 miles per hour—slightly faster than a World War II-era Mustang fighter.

The RB-50B and RB-50E were photo-reconnaissance planes dispatched on increasingly dangerous overflights over Soviet and North Korean airspace. Some of these “ferret” missions were even intended to provoke Soviet intercepts, allowing U.S. spies to listen in on the resulting radio chatter and radar activity, studying what kind of defenses were in place.

The RB-50G was an electronic spy plane full of special consuls, with an expanded crew of sixteen. This too proved a risky mission: in 1953 the RB-50G Little Red Ass was shot down over the near Vladivostok by two MiG-17 fighters. Of aircraft’s eighteen crew that managed to bail out, only the co-pilot survived the freezing waters of the Sea of Japan to be rescued by a U.S. destroyer.

There was even the WB-50D, a “hurricane hunter” plane operated by the National Weather Service to track violent weather events—and also sample radiation levels in the to monitor Soviet nuclear tests during the early 1950s. These saw so much rough duty that six WB-50s were lost with the total loss of their crew. Weather reconnaissance reports from WB-50s were instrumental in planning the U-2 spy plane flights that discovered Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, triggering the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The various B-50 variants were finally retired in the 1950s, their aluminum airframe aging poorly after seeing much hard use. A half-century later, the C-135 family of planes based on the 707 airliner continue to perform the numerous support roles the B-50 had pioneered—especially the air-to-air refueling technology which continues to undergird U.S. airpower into the twenty-first century.

While the B-29 was responsible for the three deadliest bombing raids in history—the firebombing of Tokyo and the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—its successor the B-50 never dropped a bomb in anger.

However, it would not be entirely accurate to say it never fired a shot in combat. The RB-53G that was shot down near Vladivostok fired back ineffectively at its pursuers. And in March 15, 1953 a WB-50 flying in international airspace near the Kamchatka peninsula was intercepted by two MiG-15 fighters. These tailed weather-recon plane for a while before one opened fire, and the WB-50’s tail gunner shot back. Fortunately, this time everyone returned to base.

Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: Wikipedia.

David Axe

Security,

And U.S. adversaries are taking notice.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The defunct bomber-rotation was “a tremendous success,” they wrote. “It clearly communicated U.S. readiness to act decisively when U.S. and allied interests were challenged.”

In mid-April 2020 the Air Force abruptly ended its 16-year-old rotation of B-1, B-2, and B-52 bombers at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam.

At least one expert believes the abrupt end to the Continuous Bomber Rotation effort signals a further decline in the Air Force’s ability to project long-range firepower.

“The Air Force knows this mission area is stretched too thin,” retired Air Force major general Larry Stutzriem and Douglas Birkey wrote in Defense News.

Stutzriem is the director of studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in Virginia. Birkey is the institute’s executive director

The flying branch, however, put a happy spin on the decision to halt the bomber rotation, which since 2004 has maintained a small force of bombers in the western Pacific region in order to deter Chinese aggression.

Bombers aren’t necessarily going to deploy less often or in fewer numbers, the Air Force implied. Rather, they’re simply going to deploy less predictably under a new scheme the service calls “dynamic force employment.”

“Our diverse bomber fleet – B-52, B-1, and B-2 – allows us to respond to global events anytime, anywhere. Whether they’re launched from Louisiana, Guam or the U.K., long-range strategic bombers have and will remain a bedrock of our deterrence!” Air Force Global Strike Command tweeted on April 16, 2020.

The Air Force six days later launched its first dynamic bomber sortie. A single B-1 took off from its base in South Dakota and, over the course of a 30-hour sortie, flew all the way to Japan and formed up with Japanese air force F-2 and F-15 fighters and locally-based U.S. Air Force F-16s before turning back toward the United States.

The B-1 sortie might have seemed to underscore the Air Force’s continuing commitment to a global bomber presence despite the flying branch also planning on cutting its 157-strong bomber fleet by one B-2 and 17 B-1s.

The service as part of its 2021 budget submission has asked Congress for permission to begin decommissioning the bombers. The B-1s, in particular, suffered from overuse over Afghanistan and the Middle East in the decades following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks -- and also suffered from a dearth of maintenance.

The result in 2019 was an abysmal readiness rate for the swing-wing bomber. In July 2019 just seven of 62 B-1s were fully mission-capable, South Dakota senator Mike Rounds revealed. Readiness somewhat improved in 2020.

The Air Force framed the first “dynamic” B-1 mission as evidence of the service’s enduring an undiminished ability to deploy long-range airpower. But Stutzriem and Birkey see the situation differently.

The defunct bomber-rotation was “a tremendous success,” they wrote. “It clearly communicated U.S. readiness to act decisively when U.S. and allied interests were challenged.”

Halting the bomber rotation “now sends the opposite message, just as the region grows more dangerous,” Stutzriem and Birkey added. “This is a decision with significant risk, yet it is an outcome compelled by past choices resulting in a bomber force on the edge.”

David Axe was defense editor at The National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels War Fix, War Is Boring and Machete Squad. This article first appeared last year.

Image: Wikipedia.

Sebastien Roblin

Security, World

should the Air Force devote a share of its funding to procuring a new version of its oldest fighter, the F-15 Eagle, or devote every available dollar to its newest, the F-35 Lightning?

Here's What You Need to Remember: At short range—where most air-to-air kills have been scored historically—the F-15 would retain an energy advantage compared to the F-35, which would also be more susceptible to detection by infrared and radar. Compared to the highly agile F-22 Raptor stealth fighter, the F-35 is less optimized for WVR combat though it can reportedly maintain high angles of attack.

The U.S. military’s over $738 billion dollar budget is unprecedented in human history—but that only makes the struggles for a piece of that monetary pie all the fiercer.

One of the battles currently raging revolves over a seemingly simple question: should the Air Force devote a share of its funding to procuring a new version of its oldest fighter, the F-15 Eagle, or devote every available dollar to its newest, the F-35 Lightning.

Complicating matters is that the two aircraft are built to do different things. 

The single-engine F-35A is designed to launch penetrating strikes into defended enemy airspace relying on its stealth characteristics and powerful sensors to evade enemy forces. 

The Air Force’s soon-to-be-retired twin-engine F-15C fighters are air-to-air-only aircraft that patrol the airspace around the United States and foreign military bases, fending off intruders and potential attackers. The F-15 is non-stealthy as a fighter can get, but has a 33 percent higher maximum speed of Mach 2.5 and a longer range.

As foreign air forces have ordered more and more heavily modernized F-15s over the last few decades, Boeing is offering to an F-15EX variant that will incorporate all those new bits of technology (detailed here)—while also incorporating the multirole capability the F-15C lacks. 

Though the F-15EX’s proponents argue that the money spent wouldn’t detract from F-35 funding, Lockheed and most of the air force brass don’t see it that way and strenuously object. In the last few years, the Defense Department has repeatedly tilted towards Boeing in competition, and one of the acting defense secretaries was a former Boeing executive.

For now, eight F-15EXs are on an initial order for $1.1 billion—with that possibly serving as a precursor for 144 more.

So just how well can these aircraft perform various missions?

Penetrating Strike

Russian, China and their export clients are increasingly fielding powerful radars and surface-to-air missile systems that can detect and shoot missiles at conventional fighters like the F-15EX from over 100 miles away.

To survive those kinds of defenses, fourth-generation jets must engage in elaborate anti-SAM games of cat and mouse involving jamming aircraft, HARM anti-radar missiles and Wild Weasel strike planes, and use expensive long-range standoff missiles. Such intensive operations can open narrow windows of vulnerability, and over days or weeks, gradually dismantle an air defense network—but don’t initially permit round-the-clock strikes.

By comparison, because a stealth aircraft’s reduced radar cross-section means they will only become vulnerable to targeting radars at short range, they can more easily infiltrate between the “bubbles” of enemy air defense radars and employ cheaper, shorter-range guided weapons. That means the F-35s can more freely operate over enemy airspace on “Day One” of a conflict.

Furthermore, F-35 advocates argue that using stealth jets saves the need to deploy huge strike packages incorporating dozens of aircraft, as were fielded by the Air Force in the 1991 Gulf War.

Air Support and Interdiction in Permissive Environments

When fighting against foes like the Taliban or ISIS without high-altitude anti-aircraft weapons, stealth capabilities become superfluous. Instead, the ability to loiter at length over combat zones and precisely deliver large payloads of weapons is key.

Normally, an F-35 is limited to four or six munitions stored in its internal bay.  Theoretically, in a permissive combat scenario where stealth isn’t a factor, a “Beast Mode” F-35 can be loaded down with four to six additional air-to-surface weapons on external racks.  But this much-touted capability has not actually been developed yet.

While the old F-15Cs were not configured for ground attack, the F-15EX will be—and should be able to carry a heavier ground-attack payload underwing.

Still, the F-35 does bring a different advantage to the table: its networked sensor suit may be better suited for locating enemy positions and sharing that information with friendly forces.

Interceptor/Air Sovereignty

The F-15EX is primarily supposed to replace F-15Cs performing routine air patrols around U.S. airspace and near key overseas military bases. These frequently intercept Russian or Chinese aircraft that test the boundaries of the sectors they are assigned to defend. 

Therefore, the F-15C’s replacement must be judged by how efficiently it performs that mission in peacetime as well as how viable it is in a high-intensity conflict scenario.

The F-15 is well-suited for peacetime patrols because its greater combat range of 1,200 miles allows it to embark on long patrols, and requires less aerial refueling, compared to the 770-mile range of the F-35A. Furthermore, the fact the Eagle has two engines means the aircraft is less likely to be lost if one fails—a factor manifested in significantly higher accident-rates of single-engine F-16 fighters compared to twin-engine F-15s. 

In a shooting war, higher maximum speed and a larger maximum missile load—up twenty missiles using special quad-racks instead of the F-35’s six—allow an F-15 to intercept bombers faster and launch more missiles in an emergency scenario.

F-35 proponents argue, however, that stealth would give F-35s the advantage of surprise versus enemy bombers—increasing the likelihood of killing bombers before they flee—as well as protect the interceptor from falling victim to enemy escort fighters.

Air Superiority

Air superiority refers to seizing control of the skies by beating enemy fighters at their own game—not just playing defense against enemy intruders. Traditionally, an air superiority fighter must be maneuverable for within-visual range (WVR) combats, as enemy fighters will have decent odds of evading beyond-visual-range (BVR) missiles.

Undoubtedly, the F-15EX will be more vulnerable to enemy fighters in BVR, particularly advanced 4.5-generation jets like the Su-35, as well as stealth aircraft like China’s Chengdu J-20. Quite simply, while F-15s may be able to shoot at enemy 4.5-generation aircraft from afar—and launch many missiles due to their quad racks—they will, in turn, be equally vulnerable.

At short range—where most air-to-air kills have been scored historically—the F-15 would retain an energy advantage compared to the F-35, which would also be more susceptible to detection by infrared and radar. Compared to the highly agile F-22 Raptor stealth fighter, the F-35 is less optimized for WVR combat though it can reportedly maintain high angles of attack.

But the Air Force insists that its Red Flag military exercises have repeatedly shown that its F-35s consistently trounce non-stealth aircraft by lopsided 20:1 kill ratios.

The Battle of the Books: Taxpayer Burden and Bureaucratic Support

Contrary to one might expect, the F-35A is no more expensive than an F-15EX—at around $85 million each. That reflects success in cutting initially alarming F-35 costs thanks to massive economies of scale in its favor—the Pentagon expects to order over 2,000 F-35s.  

However, if the F-15EX has a cost advantage, it comes in terms of operating costs. The F-15EX is forecast to cost $27,000 per flight hour, while the Air Force is struggling to get F-35 operating costs to $34,000 an hour.  As the Air Force is also very familiar with F-15 after forty years of service, the F-15EX likely benefit from higher readiness rates than the notoriously low ones currently afflicting the F-35.

But the F-15EX’s fortunes may ultimately revolve more around political factors: it is perceived as being foisted upon the military by civilian appointees, rather than having a strong bases of support within the Air Force brass. Thus, the F-15EX program may not survive a change in administration.

If the Air Force does dispense with the F-15EX down the line, however, it should consider developing a longer-endurance model of the F-35 for the interceptor/air sovereignty mission—particularly as in 2019 the Air Force appears increasingly disinclined to develop an entirely new manned sixth-generation fighters for that job.

Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Kyle Mizokami

Security,

But which is the best of the best?

Here's What You Need to Remember: Smith & Wesson’s successful “wonder nine” pistol, the M&P followed in the footsteps of the Glock to produce a highly effective, high capacity polymer frame pistol.

Smith & Wesson is one of the oldest, and most storied names in American firearms. Founded in the 1800s, the company specialized in revolvers and guns such as the No.3 and Schofield became synonymous with the Old West. Although Smith & Wesson is best known for its handguns,the company now makes guns of all stripes, from revolvers to pistols to their own version of the AR-15 rifle. Here are five of the storied company’s best contemporary offerings.

Smith & Wesson 686

Smith & Wesson categorizes its revolvers using a system of letters, with the so-called “L” frames set in the middle between small and large caliber guns. One of the most popular “L frames” is the Smith & Wesson 686 .357 Magnum. The 686 is capable of shooting both high powered .357 Magnum and lighter .38 Special ammunition. This gives shooters the option of training on .38 Special until they know the ins and outs of the revolver and then stepping up to the more lethal .357 Magnum when they feel comfortable.

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The 686 has a four-inch barrel, an overall length of 9.6 inches, and weighs two and a half pounds. It also adjustable sights, a satin stainless steel finish, double action firing system and a six or seven round cylinder.

Smith & Wesson Model 29

The Smith & Wesson Model 29 was one of the first revolvers chambered for the powerful .44 Magnum round. A blued, six cylinder revolver with wooden grips and a classic style, the Model 29 became particularly popular after its use in the “Dirty Harry” series of films. The Model 29 is an all-steel handgun with heft, all the better to soak up the punishing level of recoil a user experiences when fired. Barrel length ranged from four to ten inches. The powerful .44 Magnum cartridge was particularly popular with gun enthusiasts and hunters who stalked dangerous prey. Discontinued in 1999, Model 29 was recently put back into production.

Smith & Wesson Model 442 Pro Series

In Smith & Wesson’s lettering system the smallest revolvers use the so-called “J frame,” and one of the smallest revolvers of all is the Model 442 Pro Series. Designed as a concealed carry revolver, the 442 is chambered in .38 Special and can handle more powerful, higher pressure +P rounds. The revolver frame is made of aluminum alloy to reduce overall weight with the cylinder itself made of carbon steel and barrel made of stainless steel. The 442’s cylinder holds five rounds, resulting in a narrower pistol that is easier to carry concealed. The revolver is double action only, meaning a single pull with both advance the cylinder to fresh round and release the firing pin, firing the gun. The 442 lacks a hammer, allowing for a smoother draw from under clothing.

Smith & Wesson M&P 2.0

Smith & Wesson’s successful “wonder nine” pistol, the M&P followed in the footsteps of the Glock to produce a highly effective, high capacity polymer frame pistol. The Military & Police Model, currently in version 2.0, has a low bore axis, which the manufacturer claims reduces muzzle climb and allows the shooter to get sights back on target faster. The M&P 2.0 incorporates a five-inch stainless steel barrel into a pistol with an overall length of eight inches. The double action pistol is available in nine millimeter and .40 Smith & Wesson, with the 9mm version sporting a seventeen round magazine plus one in the chamber, for a total of eighteen rounds. The pistol also features an optional loaded chamber indicator and optional thumb safety. Somewhat unique among pistols it comes with four different palmswell grip inserts for maximum ergonomic comfort.

Smith & Wesson 1911A1

The patent on John Moses Browning’s 1911 handgun design ran out long ago, and nearly all gun companies now manufacture their own versions of this iconic handgun. Smith & Wesson is no exception, producing its own S&W1911 E-Series pistols. The pistols are generally true to the final version of the 1911A1, with the exception of stainless steel barrels, skeletonized hammers, and in some cases an accessory rail for the mounting of lights and lasers. The company makes both full-size Government and smaller Commander handguns, the latter with a barrel three quarters of an inch shorter than the five-inch Government barrel and a slightly shorter slide. Commanders also feature bobtailed mainspring housings and aggressive checkering to help the shooter stay on target. The 1911 E-Series is generally true enough to form to satisfy 1911 purists.

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 2018.

Image: Reddit.

Sebastien Roblin

Security, Europe

The seamen cheered their support.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Years after Sablin’s failed plan, U.S. historian Gregory Young pieced together accounts of the mutiny in a thesis later read by an insurance salesman named Tom Clancy. Inspired by the story and that of a previous Soviet defector, Jonas Plaskus, Clancy went on to write Hunt for the Red October.

On the evening of November 8, 1976, Captain Anatoly Potulny, commander of the Soviet anti-submarine frigate Storozhevoy (“the Sentry”) was informed that several of his officers were drunk below deck in the forward sonar compartment. This was reported by the ship’s charismatic political officer, Captain Valery Sablin, responsible for maintaining crew morale and loyalty. Potulny went below deck but saw nothing amiss—then he heard the click of the hatch locking above him.

“Sorry, I could not do otherwise,” Sablin told him as the captain pounded on the hatch. “Once we arrive at our destination, you will be allowed to choose your destiny.”

The 37-year old commissar had always stood apart for his exceptional idealism. While a cadet, he had even written Nikita Khrushchev offering pointed advice on Leninist reforms. Now he was critical of Premier Leonid Brezhnev, who during the ‘Era of Stagnation’ focused spending on military projects and walked back political reforms. Sablin was upset by the privilege and corruption of the Soviet bureaucratic elite in a supposedly classless society.

The commissar told his aid, twenty-year-old Lieutenant Alexander Shein, to take up guard, handing him a pistol. Then Sablin convened the ship’s sixteens officers and revealed his plan: to sail the Storozhevoy from its quay in Riga, Lithuania to Leningrad 500 miles northeast. The frigate would berth at Kronstadt Island—the site of past naval mutinies that had inspired Russian revolutions in 1905 and 1917. (The former was commemorated in Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, which Sablin played in the background.) There he would broadcast his call for a new Leninist revolution.

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The ship's officers voted whether to support Sablin by casting black and white checker pieces in a cup—resulting in a tie. However, most of the ship's crew took Sablin's side and locked the dissenting officers in their cabins. Sablin then gave a speech:

"The leadership of the party and the Soviet government have abandoned the principles of the revolution. There is no freedom, nor justice. The only way out is a new communist revolution… It is assumed that the current state apparatus will be cleared away, and some of its institutions broken up and cast into the dustbin of history. Will these issues be addressed through the dictatorship of the proletariat class? Necessarily! Only through the greatest national vigilance is there a path to a society of happiness! "

Sablin envisioned the Storozhevoy’s politically independent crew daily broadcasting calls for reform across the nation, while furnished with necessary supplies and immunity from prosecution.

The seamen cheered their support. However, one of Sablin’s supposed supporters, Lt. Firsov, snuck off the Storozhevoy and alerted the incredulous guards of a nearby submarine.

Sablin had planned on leaving with the fleet the following morning before peeling away north. Realizing his plot risked exposure, Sablin slipped the frigate out at midnight with radar and running lights deactivated, braving the treacherous shoals of the Daugava River.

The Soviets Strike Back

To get to Leningrad, Sablin first had to cruise north into the Baltic Sea—towards Sweden. As the Soviet Baltic Fleet slowly grasped what was happening, it assumed the Storozhevoy was defecting to the Scandinavian nation. After all, this had happened before in 1961, when Lithuanian Captain Jonas Plaskus surrendered his submarine tender at Gotland Island.

However, the 18-month-old Storozhevoy was one of the Navy’s advanced Burevestnik-class frigates (NATO codename Krivak I). It was designed to hunt U.S. submarines from up to fifty miles away using short-range RBU-6000 rockets and far-reaching SS-N-14 Metel (“Snowstorm”) missiles. It would be a disaster for the sophisticated sub-hunter to fall into Western hands.

A Vice Admiral futilely begged Sablin on the radio to turn around, promising forgiveness. Finally, Premier Brezhnev was woken from his sleep at 4:00 AM with the bad news. He authorized using lethal force to prevent a humiliating defection.

Eleven fast attack boats were dispatched from Riga and Liepiejaie, Latvia to chase the rogue frigate. Meanwhile, Soviet Navy Il-38 turboprop patrol planes and Tu-16 Badger jet bombers began scouring the seas. They were joined by Soviet Air Force’s 668th Bomber Regiment’s Yak-28I and-28L ‘Brewers,' hulking twin-engine jets with transparent glass noses allowing a crewmember to aim its four unguided bombs.

However, visibility was poor, and the silent-running Storozhevoy was hard to locate in the open Gulf of Riga. But at 6:00 AM, Storzhevoy herself encountered dense fog, causing Sablin to activate his radar to avoid collisions with commercial traffic. Furthermore, as she was passing the Irbe Strait, she was spotted by a lighthouse.

Yak-28s vectored to Irbe spotted a ship and lobbed FAB-250 bombs that raked her hull with shrapnel—but that vessel was actually a Soviet freighter bound for Finland.

Then around 8:00 AM, Tu-16s closed around the Storozhevoy's radar emissions. The huge jet bombers were armed with radar-guided KSR-5 ‘Kingfish' cruise missiles programmed to hone in on the first target acquired. But the frigate was now in the international waters of the Baltic Sea, and the pilots refused to fire, either unwilling to risk hitting a neutral ship or possibly unwilling to fire on fellow Soviets. Swedish radar operators observed the frenetic Soviet air and naval activity and listened in on their radio traffic.

Finally, all thirty-six Yak-28s of the 668th were scrambled to join the hunt—narrowly avoiding a fatal collision on the runway. Meanwhile, two missile boats under Captain Bobrikov closed within the fifty-mile attack range of their P-15 Termit anti-ship missiles.

However, the Yaks struck first. One silvery jet pocked the port side of the Storozhevoy with twenty-three-millimeter cannon shells. The frigate boasted two rapid-fire three-inch dual-purpose guns on the stern and SA-N-4 Osa anti-aircraft missiles but did not fire back, either lacking loaded ammunition or under orders from Sablin not to return fire.

The jets began making repeated bombing runs, causing water to geyser over the frigate from near misses. But one FAB-250 smacked into the stern of the ship, blasting off the rear deck cover and jamming the steering gear. Taking on water, Storozhevoy began circling before coming to a halt only fifty nautical miles from Swedish waters.

Meanwhile, three crew members broke Captain Putolny out of the sonar compartment. Taking a pistol, he stormed onto the bridge and shot Sablin in the leg. At 10:32 AM he desperately messaged: “The ship is stopped. I have taken control.”

The Yaks aborted their attack runs, but not before one group mistakenly attacked Soviet pursuit ships and was fired upon in return, without effect. Naval Infantry then boarded the Storozhevoy and arrested her crew.

Moscow covered up the incident by staging naval exercises the next day. The bomber pilots were reprimanded for the friendly fire incidents and logistical confusion. The Storozhevoy’s crew were detained for months, but in the end, only a handful of officers were tried. Of those, just two convicted—Lt. Shein, who received eight years in prison, and Sablin. Convicted for treason, he was executed on August 3, 1976, and buried in an unmarked grave. In 1994, he was posthumously re-sentenced to ten years for disobeying orders.

Years after Sablin’s failed plan, U.S. historian Gregory Young pieced together accounts of the mutiny in a thesis later read by an insurance salesman named Tom Clancy. Inspired by the story and that of a previous Soviet defector, Jonas Plaskus, Clancy went on to write Hunt for the Red October. But unlike the novel’s disillusioned submarine captain Marko Ramius, Valery Sablin risked all not to defect, but in a quixotic attempt to reform the Soviet system he passionately believed in.

Sébastien Roblin holds a Master’s Degree in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This article first appeared in 2018.

Image: Wikipedia.

Robert Farley

Security,

The U.S.-Canadian border would have constituted the central front of the War of 1921.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Tokyo, rather than London or Washington, would have stood as the biggest winner, hegemonic in its own sphere of influence and fully capable of managing international access to China.

The end of a war only rarely settles the central questions that started the conflict. Indeed, many wars do not “end” in the traditional sense; World War II, for example, stretched on for years in parts of Eastern Europe and the Asia-Pacific.

Even as the guns fell silent along the Western Front in 1918, the United States and the United Kingdom began jockeying for position. Washington and London bitterly disagreed on the nature of the settlements in Europe and Asia, as well as the shape of the postwar naval balance. In late 1920 and early 1921, these tensions reached panic levels in Washington, London and especially Ottawa.

The general exhaustion of war, combined with the Washington Naval Treaty, succeeded in quelling these questions and setting the foundation for the great Anglo-American partnership of the twentieth century. But what if that hadn’t happened? What if the United States and United Kingdom had instead gone to war in the spring of 1921?

The Liberation of Canada

The U.S.-Canadian border would have constituted the central front of the War of 1921. Although Washington maintained good relations with Ottawa, war plans in both the United States and the United Kingdom expected a multipronged invasion into America’s northern neighbor, designed to quickly occupy the country before British (or Japanese) reinforcement could arrive. Canadian declarations of neutrality would have had minimal impact on this process. Plans for initial attacks included the seizure of Vancouver, Winnipeg, the Niagara Falls area and most of Ontario.

Given the overwhelming disparity between available U.S. and Canadian military forces, most of these offensives would probably have succeeded in short order. The major battle would have revolved around British and Canadian efforts to hold Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and especially the port of Halifax, which would have served both as the primary portal for British troops and as the main local base for the Royal Navy. U.S. military planners understood that Halifax was the key to winning the war quickly, and investigated several options (including poison gas and an amphibious assault) for taking the port.

Assuming they held the line, could British and Canadian forces have prevented the severing of supply lines between Halifax and the main cities of Quebec and the Great Lakes region? Unlikely. The U.S. Army would have had major advantages in numbers, logistics, and mobility. Ottawa and Toronto might each have proven too big to swallow and digest quickly, but severing their connection to the Atlantic would have made the question of their eventual surrender only a matter of time.

And what about Quebec? The nationalism of the early twentieth century did not look kindly on large enclaves of ethno-linguistic minorities. Moreover, the United States had no constitutional mechanisms through which it could offer unique concessions to the French speaking majority of the province. In this context, Quebecois leaders might have sought an accord with Washington that resulted in Quebec’s independence in exchange for support for the American war effort, and Washington might plausibly have accepted such an offer. An accord of this nature might also have forestalled French support from their erstwhile British allies. If not, the U.S. Army planned to seize Quebec City through an overland offensive through Vermont.

Operations in the Atlantic

British war planning considered the prospect of simply abandoning Canada in favor of operations in the Caribbean. However, public pressure might have forced the Royal Navy to establish and maintain transatlantic supply lines against a committed U.S. Navy. While it might have struggled to do this over the long term, the RN still had a sufficient margin of superiority over the USN to make a game of it.

The eight “standard-type” super-dreadnought battleships of the USN flatly outclassed any British warship on any metric other than speed. The USN also possessed ten older dreadnoughts, plus a substantial fleet of pre-dreadnoughts that would have undertaken coastal defense duties. The United States did not operate a submarine arm comparable to that of Imperial Germany, and what boats it had lacked experience in either fleet actions or commerce raiding.

For its part, the Royal Navy had at its disposal nine dreadnoughts, twenty-three super-dreadnoughts and nine battle cruisers. The British ships were generally older, less well armored and less heavily armed than their American counterparts. Nevertheless, the Royal Navy had the benefit of years of experience in both war and peace that the USN lacked. Moreover, the RN had a huge advantage in cruisers and destroyers, as well as a smaller advantage in naval aviation.

But how would the RN have deployed its ships? Blockading the U.S. East Coast is a far more difficult task than blockading Germany, and the USN (like the High Seas Fleet) would only have offered battle in advantageous circumstances. While the RN might have considered a sortie against Boston, Long Island or other northern coastal regions, most of its operations would have concentrated on supporting British and Canadian ground forces in the Maritimes.

Operations in the Pacific

Both the United States and the United Kingdom expected Japan to join any conflict on the British side. The connections between the Royal Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy ran back to the Meiji Restoration, and Tokyo remained hungry for territory in the Pacific. In the First World War, Japan had opportunistically gobbled up most of the German Pacific possessions, before deploying a portion of its navy in support of Entente operations in the Mediterranean. In the case of a U.S.-UK war, the IJN would likely have undertaken similar efforts against American territories. These included many of the islands that Japan invaded in 1941 and 1942, although the invasions would have moved forward without the benefit of years of careful preparation.

Given the strength of the IJN (four battle cruisers, five super-dreadnoughts, two dreadnoughts) and the necessary commitment to an “Atlantic first” strategy, the United States probably could not have held the Philippines, Guam, Wake, Midway or most of the other Pacific islands. Hawaii might have proven a bit too far and too big, and it is deeply unlikely that the Japanese would have risked a land deployment to western Canada (although U.S. planners feared such an eventuality), but the war would have overturned the balance of power in the Western Pacific.

Would It Work?

The British Army and the Royal Navy could, possibly, have erected a credible defense of Nova Scotia, preventing the United States from completely rolling up Canada. London could also have offered support for resistance forces in the Canadian wilderness, although even supplying guerilla operations in the far north would have tested British logistics and resolve.

In the end, however, the United States would have occupied the vast bulk of Canada, at the cost of most of its Pacific possessions. And the Canadians, having finally been “liberated” by their brothers to the south? Eventually, the conquest and occupation of Canada would have resulted in statehood for some configuration of provinces, although not likely along the same lines as existed in 1920 (offering five full states likely would have resulted in an undesirable amount of formerly Canadian representation in the U.S. Senate). The process of political rehabilitation might have resembled the Reconstruction of the American South, without the racial element.

The new map, then, might have included a United States that extended to the Arctic, an independent Quebec, a rump Canada consisting mostly of the Maritimes and Japanese control of the entirety of the Western Pacific. Tokyo, rather than London or Washington, would have stood as the biggest winner, hegemonic in its own sphere of influence and fully capable of managing international access to China.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to the National Interest, is author of The Battleship Book. This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: Flickr.

Salvatore Babones

Security,

Aircraft carriers aren’t leaving anytime soon.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Despite its name, the purpose of the carrier strike group isn't really to strike. It's to seize and hold a million square miles of the Earth's surface against all but the best armed and most determined opponents.

In the fourth week of October, 1944, the United States Navy sank the Japanese fleet. Nearly all of it. Japan lost twenty-eight major surface combatants and more than 300 aircraft in the four-day Battle of Leyte Gulf, fought off the east coast of the Philippines. Leyte Gulf was the final throw of the dice for the Imperial Japanese Navy, which never recovered from the loss.

The Battle of Leyte Gulf is well-remembered as the swan song of the battleship, with radar-guided American gunnery scoring dozens of hits on Japanese targets. Less well-known is the fact that it also marked the end of the carrier duel. Leyte Gulf was the last time that opposing fleets launched large numbers of carrier-based aircraft to seek out and destroy their opponents on the high seas.

If the dreadnought battleship era lasted less than forty years, the carrier duel era lasted less than four. The first major carrier-launched naval engagement in history was the November 1940 Battle of Taranto, when British aircraft from the HMS Illustrious struck the Italian fleet at anchor in a miniature Pearl Harbor. The last was Leyte Gulf.

Since the end of World War Two, the aircraft carrier has reigned supreme over the world's oceans, undefeated but also untested. With China developing anti-ship ballistic missiles with ranges up to 2500 miles or more and Iran boasting of its readiness to do just about anything to score the prestige victory of hitting a carrier, the continued reign of the carrier as the king of the ocean may seem far from assured. But that is to mistake the method for the mission.

The aircraft carrier played an indispensable role in the Allies' victory in the Pacific in World War Two. But it is a commonplace bordering on a cliche to warn that strategists are perpetually preparing to fight yesterday's wars. What about tomorrow's wars? If the aircraft carrier hasn't had to fight for naval supremacy for the last 75 years, why should we expect it to do so in the future?

We shouldn't. The battle for naval supremacy in the Pacific was yesterday's war, and the aircraft carrier is very much tomorrow's ship. Neither China nor anyone else is ever again going to launch a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor while landing troops in the Philippines and Malaysia in a bid to conquer the entire Indo-Pacific region. Satellite monitoring and nuclear-powered attack submarines have made major naval operations like these obsolete.

The real mission of the twenty-first-century carrier is to establish an extraterritorial zone of control overseas. An American aircraft carrier sits at the center of a circle with a radius of 500 miles in which the United States calls all the shots -- figuratively and literally.

The only limitation is that the center of the circle has to float on water, but even that's not as much of a limitation as it seems. Most of the world's population and economic activity are concentrated on its coasts. What's more, most of what connects a country to the outside world travels on, over, or under the world's oceans. China's Belt & Road Initiative has spectacularly failed to change that.

Of course, the Navy has to prepare for all contingencies, and so it has to be ready to fight a sea battle that will never come. That's why every American carrier goes to sea with a whole contingent of powerful auxiliary ships. But despite its name, the purpose of the carrier strike group isn't really to strike. It's to seize and hold a million square miles of the Earth's surface against all but the best armed and most determined opponents.

China and Russia can prevent the President of the United States from seizing and holding control of their coastlines, but the rest of the world is at his disposal.

Obviously, the United States doesn't actually "need" aircraft carriers. These days, an aircraft carrier is a foreign policy tool, not a defense necessity. No one is going to attack the United States, and if they were, land-based aircraft and submarines would provide the best defense. As for patrolling the world's shipping lanes, frigates can do that. You don't do search and rescue with an F/A-18.

The aircraft carrier is a weapon of choice for discretionary missions, not a weapon of necessity for essential ones. As long as the United States wants the option to project power overseas, the aircraft carrier will have a mission. China's aircraft carrier program should be seen in the same light. Carriers will give China the ability to establish a limited zone of control in a territory far from its borders -- that is, as long as the United States doesn't want to own the same piece of real estate.

Many defense analysts openly question the continuing military relevance of the aircraft carrier in an era of precision missiles and armed drones. Others warn that the consequences of losing one of these 7000-person cities of the seas are so scary that presidents and their advisors may prove reluctant to actually risk them in battle.

These skeptics are missing the big policy point: America's aircraft carriers are no longer intended for use in naval warfare. They're designed to give the President the power to take control of a substantial chunk of the surface of the Earth and put it to use in the national interest of the United States, or at least deny its use to anyone else. Whether or not that ability is worth the price is open to question. But no other policy tool can do the work more flexibly, or more effectively.

Salvatore Babones is the author of The New Authoritarianism: Trump, Populism, and the Tyranny of Experts. This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: Flickr.

Michael Peck

Syria, Middle East

The Kremlin has denounced Israeli strikes in Syria as “illegitimate.”

Here's What You Need to Know: The IDF is neither boastful nor belligerent about its capabilities versus Russia.

(This article first appeared in 2019.)

Could Israeli air strikes in Syria trigger war between Israel and Russia?

Israel remains determined to continue pounding Iranian forces in Syria in a bid to keep Tehran’s forces away from Israel’s northern border. At the same time, Russia has thousands of troops in Syria that could be caught in the crossfire—or even become belligerents if Moscow tires of its Syrian ally being pummeled.

And if Israel and Russia come to blows, would Israel’s big brother—the United States—feel compelled to intervene?

Not that Jerusalem or Moscow are eager for such a fight. “Neither of us desire a military confrontation,” a senior Israel Defense Forces (IDF) official told me during a recent interview in Jerusalem. “It would be detrimental to both sides.”

Yet Israel’s policy boils down to this: it will do whatever it sees as necessary to eject Iranian forces from Syria. And if Russia doesn’t like it, then that’s just the price of ensuring that Syria doesn’t become another Iranian rocket base on Israel’s border.

Relations between Jerusalem and Moscow are far warmer than during the Cold War. The result is a strange embrace reminiscent of the U.S.-Soviet detente of the 1970s. On the surface, a certain friendliness and desire for cooperation.  Yet beneath the smiles is wariness, suspicion and a clash of fundamental interests.

“No one in Israel is confused about who the Russians are and who they are aligned with,” said the IDF official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The Russians are not our allies, to put it mildly. We have one ally, and that is the United States. The Russians are here for totally different objectives. They are supporting a regime [Syria] that has an outspoken goal of annihilating Israel if it only could. They are also part of a coalition that supports Iran.”

Just how easily Israeli military operations can trigger an incident became evident during a September 2018 strike on ammunition depots in western Syria. Anti-aircraft missiles launched by Syrian gunners accidentally shot down a Russian Il-20 surveillance aircraft, killing fifteen people. Israel denies Russian accusations that it deliberately used the Russian plane as cover, or failed to give Moscow sufficient warning of the raid. Yet Russia still blamed Israel for the mishap and retaliated by supplying advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Syria.

Nonetheless, Israel sees value in Russia as a potential restraint on Iran, and a possible lever to get Iranian forces out of Syria. After a February meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Vladimir Putin to mend fences after the Il-20 incident, Israeli officials claimed Putin had agreed that foreign forces should withdraw from Syria. For Moscow, friendly relations with Israel offer more influence in the Middle East even as America may be scaling down its presence in the region.

Still, the Kremlin has denounced Israeli strikes in Syria as “illegitimate.” Syria has been a Russian ally for more than fifty years, and it was Russian air strikes—along with Iranian and Hezbollah troops—that saved Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s faltering regime from ISIS and other rebel groups. At least 63,000 Russian troops have served in Syria since 2015. Though Putin has promised since 2016 that Russian forces would withdraw, Russia currently retains more than 5,000 troops and private military contractors in Syria, backed by several dozen aircraft and helicopters.

And Russia is in Syria to stay. The Syrian port of Tartus is Russia’s only naval base in the Mediterranean: in 2016, Moscow and Damascus signed a forty-nine-year agreement that allows nuclear-powered Russian warships to operate from there. In addition, Russian aircraft and surface-to-air missiles, including the long-range S-400 air defense system, operate from at least two air bases in western Syria.

Israel can live with the Russians next door—but not the Iranians. Israeli officials warn of Tehran’s plan to station 100,000 Iranian and allied troops in Syria. Hezbollah, with its estimated arsenal of 130,000-plus rockets, already menaces Israel’s Lebanon frontier. Syria joining Lebanon as a second Iranian rocket base is the stuff of Israeli nightmares.

“We can – and we intend to – make it as difficult as possible and inflict a price tag that the Iranians aren’t willing to pay,” the IDF official said. And the Israeli Air Force has been just doing that, attacking “Iranian and Hezbollah targets hundreds of times,” Netanyahu announced after a devastating attack on Iranian arms depots near Damascus International Airport in January.

“We continue to implement our plans,” the IDF official replied when asked if Russia would deter Israeli raids into Syria. “Our activities suggest that, despite everything, we enjoy significant freedom of action.”

But more telling was his one-word response when asked how willing is Israel to fight for that freedom of action.

“Willing.”

Which leaves the question: Can Israel target Iran in Syria without triggering a clash with Russia?

There are deconfliction mechanisms in place, including a hotline between the Israeli and Russian militaries. “We are very strict about informing the Russians about our activities and that their operational picture is up to date,” said the IDF official. Yet those procedures were not sufficient to avoid a downing of a Russian plane.

Perhaps that ill-fated Il-20 was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Still, it is not hard to imagine a multiplicity of equally fatal scenarios. Russian advisers or technicians caught in an Israeli raid on an Iranian or Syrian installation. An errant Israeli smart bomb that hits a Russian base, or a Russian pilot or anti-aircraft battery spooked by a nearby Israeli raid into opening fire. Or, perhaps Russia will just feel obligated to support the prestige of its Syrian ally and its shaky government. Just how incendiary Syrian skies are for everyone became evident in December 2017, when U.S. F-22 fighters fired flares to warn off two Russian Su-25 attack jets that breached a no-go zone in eastern Syria.

To be clear, the IDF is neither boastful nor belligerent about its capabilities versus Russia, a former superpower with the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet. The IDF official likened Israel to “The Mouse that Roared,” the classic novel of a tiny nation that challenges the United States.

But if Israel resembles any mouse, it’s Mighty Mouse: small, powerful and not afraid to use its fists. In fact, what makes a potential Israel-Russia battle so dangerous is that it is not hypothetical. After the 1967 Six-Day War, Soviet fighters were sent to Egypt. This led to a notorious July 1970 incident when in a well-planned aerial ambush over the Suez Canal, Israeli fighters shot down five Soviet-piloted MiG-21 jets in three minutes.

On the other hand, Russia doesn’t need to fight Israel to hurt Israel. Indeed, the IDF official seemed less concerned about a physical clash between Israeli and Russian forces, and more concerned that Russia could choose to supply advanced weapons—such as anti-aircraft missiles—to Israeli enemies such as Syria and Iran. In the early 1970s, the Soviet Union supplied numerous air defense missiles and guns to Egypt and Syria, which inflicted heavy losses on Israeli planes in the 1973 October War. If it wants to, Russia can make Israeli air operations very expensive.

As always with the Arab-Israeli (or Iranian-Israeli) conflict, the real danger isn’t the regional conflict, but how it might escalate. In the 1973 war, the Soviets threatened to send troops to Egypt unless Israel agreed to a cease-fire. The United States responded by going on nuclear alert.

Were the Israelis and Russians to come to blows, or if Moscow were to seriously threaten military force against Israel, could the United States risk a grave loss of prestige by not intervening to back its longtime ally? Could Russia—whose Syrian intervention is a proud symbol of its reborn military muscle and great power status—not retaliate for another downed Russian plane or a dead Russian soldier?

Which leads to the ultimate question: could tensions between Israel and Russia lead to a clash between American and Russian troops?

In the end, somebody will have to back down. But Iran isn’t about to give up its outpost on Israel’s border, and Russia probably can’t force them to. Then there is Israel, which is grimly determined to stop Iran.

As the IDF official said, “We have proven over more than 70 years as a sovereign state that you don’t push us around.”

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

This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: Reuters

David Axe

Chinese Submarines,

China's navy is getting strong, and they have America's aircraft carriers in their sights. 

Here's What You Need to Remember: Beijing’s ability to target carriers from below the sea depends on two related capabilities. First, China needs modern and reliable submarines. Second, these subs need some way of finding the flattops.

In 1995 and 1996, Taiwanese politicians signaled greater support for declaring their island country officially independent of China. Beijing’s response was swift, forceful … and ultimately an embarrassment to China. The Chinese fired several missiles toward small, Taiwanese-held islands.

That’s when the United States intervened in a big way, sending two entire aircraft carrier battle groups into the waters around Taiwan — and even sailing one carrier through the Taiwan Strait.

The Chinese military was powerless against this show of force. Beijing couldn’t even reliably track the American warships, and had no forces of its own capable of threatening the powerful U.S. vessels.

The Chinese backed down.

Years later, the situation has changed.

According to the California think tank RAND, if the same crises occurred today, Chinese submarines could target a U.S. flattop several times during a weeklong campaign. “China has rapidly improved its ability to reliably locate and to attack U.S. carrier strike groups at distances of up to 2,000 kilometers from its coast,” RAND warned.

Beijing’s ability to target carriers from below the sea depends on two related capabilities. First, China needs modern and reliable submarines. Second, these subs need some way of finding the flattops.

As far as its sub fleet goes, China has made great progress in the two decades since the 1996 crisis. “In 1996, China had taken delivery of only two submarines that could be described, by any reasonable definition, as modern,” RAND explained. “The remainder of its fleet consisted of legacy boats based on 1950s technology, lacking teardrop shaped hulls and armed only with torpedoes.”

By 2017, China will possess a smaller but more capable undersea fleet with 49 modern subs. “China’s recent submarine classes are armed with both sophisticated cruise missiles and torpedoes, greatly increasing the range from which they can attack,” according to the think tank. “Although most Chinese boats are diesel-powered and none is not up to U.S. standards, they could nevertheless threaten U.S. surface ships.”

Just how much Beijing’s subs could attack a single American carrier during a seven-day campaign depends on what RAND called “cueing.” In other words, the ability of Chinese satellites, drones, spy planes, land-based radars and other so-called “intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance” systems, or ISR, to detect the carrier and pass along the flattop’s location to the subs.

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“Improvements to Chinese ISR have improved the chances that Chinese submarines will receive such information,” RAND reported.

In 1996, Chinese subs had basically zero chances to take a shot at a U.S. carrier, with or without cueing. By 2010 that was no longer the case. Without cueing, Beijing’s subs were still pretty much blind, but with help from ISR the undersea vessels would have gotten two or three chances to attack a carrier with missiles or torpedoes.

RAND projected that, in 2017, Chinese subs with no cueing probably still won’t be able to attack a carrier. But with cueing in the same timeframe, the undersea warships could get three, four or even five chances to attack.

Of course, a chance to attack doesn’t guarantee a successful attack. And the U.S. Navy isn’t exactly standing still as Chinese forces improve, RAND pointed out. “The United States will look to counter this growing threat by developing ways to degrade Chinese intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities and by improving its own anti-missile, anti-submarine and defensive counterair capabilities.”

/*-->*/

This piece was published several years ago and is being republished due to reader interest.​

Image: Reuters.

Like 95 per cent of women in her Ugandan community, Margaret Chepoteltel underwent female genital mutilation (FGM) as a child, subjecting her to lifelong health problems. Today, she is raising awareness of the dangers of FGM, as part of a UN-backed programme.

Sebastien Roblin

Security,

Air Force’s B-1 Lancer strategic bombers circle over battlefields in Syria and Afghanistan like angels of death dispensing GPS-guided bombs from on high

Here's What You Need to Remember: The Bones brought to the table their huge payload—and their ability to pickle dozens of inexpensive GPS=guided two-thousand-pound JDAM bombs precisely onto targets designated by ground forces. The B-1 thus became a form of flying artillery orbiting overhead, on-call as ground troops ferreted out enemy positions and marked them for destruction.

Huge yet surprisingly sleek and agile, the U.S. Air Force’s B-1 Lancer strategic bombers—popularly dubbed “Bones” for B-ONE—circle over battlefields in Syria and Afghanistan like angels of death dispensing GPS-guided bombs from on high. Yet the B-1 started out as an over-priced nuclear bomber that was arguably obsolete by the time it entered service. Thus, a bomber designed to dodge Soviet surface-to-air missiles and interceptors found its niche battling Taliban and ISIS insurgents.

During the 1940s and 1950s, the U.S. military sought to push its bombers to ever higher altitudes and faster speeds to protect them from flak guns and fighter planes—pushing new performance envelopes with the pressurized B-29, and later the B-47 and B-52 Stratofortress strategic jet bombers.

But by the early 1960s, the shootdown of high-flying U-2 spy planes over China and Russia by surface-to-air missiles made it clear that altitude no longer offered dependable protection. The Air Force tried developing the huge XB-70 Valkyrie bomber to sustain speeds over three times the speed of sound, but the Soviets countered with the Mach 3-capable MiG-25 Foxbat interceptor. The Pentagon gave up on the Valkyrie in 1962 and began investing more in ground and submarine-launched ballistic missiles to provide nuclear deterrence.

This didn’t sit well with the Air Force, which proposed a new low-altitude penetration doctrine in which supersonic bombers skimmed close to the ground at high speed using new-fangled Terrain Following Systems, making them very difficult to track with radar due to intervening terrain faced by ground-based radars, and the ‘ground clutter’ experienced by airborne radars scanning low-flying aircraft.

The Air Force at first adopted the supersonic F-111 Aardvark to perform this mission, but wanted a larger, longer-range workhorse. The Nixon administration authorized development of a Northrop Rockwell B-1 design which saw its first flight in 1974.

The costly new bomber featured swing wings which could sweep forward to a 15-degree angle to maximize lift during takeoff or landing, allowing the 44.5-meter long plane to operate from shorter forward airbases. To minimize drag for supersonic flight, the wings could tuck inwards to a 67.5 degree angle. At high altitude the four B-1A prototypes could achieve up to 2.2 times the speed of sound-assisted by two flexible vanes situated under the nose that help stabilize airflow.

However, by the mid-1970s the Pentagon was aware of the Soviet Union’s development of new MiG-31 Foxhound interceptors equipped with Zaslon Doppler radars that could sift out ground clutter—making low altitude penetration highly risky. Meanwhile, U.S. B-52s were receiving nuclear-tipped AGM-86 air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs) that could be launched from well beyond the range of Soviet air defenses.

Advised that the ALCMs were adequate and that the B-1’s concept was outdated, President Jimmy Carter canceled the expensive B-1 in 1977—believing it more sensible to invest in the top-secret B-2 stealth bomber instead. Four years later, a newly-elected Reagan, who had blasted Carter for canceling the B-1, revived the Bones with an order for one hundred aircraft.

This time, the Air Force sought a cheaper, revised B-1B model which could fly further (6,000 miles!) with heavier payloads but at a reduced high-altitude speed of Mach 1.2 (830 miles per hour) or Mach .95 at low altitude. This was because the aircraft’s four F101 afterburning turbofans nestled into the wing roots were no longer designed to swing back with the wings. There was no longer any pretense that the B-1 would outrun fighters and air defense missiles.

Instead, the B-1B’s aluminum and titanium skin surfaces were reshaped and coated with radar-absorbent materials to reduce radar cross-section to just 2.5 meter, roughly that of a small F-16 fighter. Though far from being a “stealth” plane, the B-1 would not be susceptible to detection and targeting at very long range like a B-52 would be.

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The crew of four included a pilot, copilot, weapons officer and a defensive systems officer who operated a suite including powerful radar jammers and oversized flares for decoying heat-seeking missiles. An APQ-164 passive electronically scanned array multi-mode radar designed for low-probability of intercept could snoop out the positions of enemy fighters and radars as well as scan the ground for specific targets.

The B-1B had three internal bomb bays allowing it to carry up to twenty-four B61 or 1.2-megaton B83 nuclear gravity bombs between them—each many times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Alternately, the B-1 could lug up to eighty-four Mark 82 five-hundred-pound gravity bombs, or the equivalent weight in larger bombs. A theoretical maximum bomb load of 125,000 pounds was never implemented operationally.

The first of one hundred B-1Bs built were rushed service in 1987 at the eyewatering price of $250 million each. However, the Lancer suffered a string of early mishaps, ranging from engine fires to the defensive countermeasures jamming the B-1’s own radar. These kept the bomber out of action during the 1991 Gulf War. When the Soviet Union collapsed the same year, the nuclear bomber’s raison d’etre seemed to go with it.

However, the Air Force upgraded the Bones with GPS and the ability to use JDAM precision-guided bombs, and tow ALE-50 decoys to divert hostile radar-guided missiles. Today, the B-1 can also mount up to twenty-four JSOW glide bombs or JASSM stealth cruise missiles with ranges measured in the dozens and hundreds of miles respectively. Meanwhile, the B-1’s nuclear-delivery capabilities were removed entirely in 2011 due to the New START treaty.

The B-1 remains well-liked by pilots for its unusual maneuverability and responsiveness for an aircraft of its size, as you can see in this video. In the early 2000s, Boeing even floated a concept for Mach 2-capable B-1R model using the F-119 turbofans of the F-22 Raptor and armed with air-to-air missiles.

The Bones finally saw action striking targets in Iraq in 1998, then flew out of England to hit Serbian targets during the Kosovo War—delivering one-fifth of all bombs dropped despite flying only two percent of the missions. The B-1’s towed decoys also proved effective, ‘catching’ two deadly 2K12 Kub missiles.

However, the Bones fully came into its own during the U.S. campaign to overthrow the Afghan Taliban in 2001. Afghanistan was simply too far for the Pentagon’s land-based fighters to fly without lots of aerial refueling—but B-1s based in the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia could fly over Afghan airspace and loiter overhead for hours at a time.

The Bones brought to the table their huge payload—and their ability to pickle dozens of inexpensive GPS=guided two-thousand-pound JDAM bombs precisely onto targets designated by ground forces. The B-1 thus became a form of flying artillery orbiting overhead, on-call as ground troops ferreted out enemy positions and marked them for destruction. In 2008 B-1s were outfitted with Sniper-XR targeting pods under their noses so they too could designate their own targets.

Bones went on to deliver huge bomb loads in conflicts in Iraq, Libya and Syria. For example, B-1s played an instrumental role in preventing the fall of the besieged Kurdish enclave in Kobane, Syria in 2014, dropping 660 bombs that killed an estimated thousand ISIS fighters. Four years later, Lancers were used to launch nineteen JASSM cruise missiles as part of a punitive strike against Bashar al-Assad.

As of 2017, sixty-two B-1s remain in service with the 7th and 28th Bombardment Wings based in Texas and South Dakota respectively, though aircraft are often operationally deployed to Diego Garcia and Al Udeid air base in Qatar.

Ironically, the B-1s is basically good at the same things the B-52 remains useful for: carrying lots of bombs and missiles over long distances and launching them at adversaries that can’t shoot back. The Bone is faster than the B-52, can carry heavier payloads, has more modern avionics, and is less conspicuous on radar. However, these advantages only marginally improve its survivability versus modern SAMs and fighter. Practically, the Air Force planners want to keep B-1s as far away from these threats as possibly.

The Air Force plans on retiring the B-1 bomber by 2036, while the B-52 is slated to remain active well into the 2040s and possibly beyond. While the B-1 is slightly cheaper to operate at $63,000 per flight hour, the B-1 reportedly is more difficult to maintain (seventy-four man hours of maintenance for every flight hour!) and thus suffers from lower readiness rates of 50 percent. The B-52 comes out to sixty-two hours and 80 percent in these metrics.

Therefore, the Bone may be retired after a respectable half-century of service. Until then, the huge swing-wing bombers will continue to receive upgrades and may yet again be adapted to fit the Pentagon’s evolving warfighting needs—such as potentially hunting ships with long-range missiles.

Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: Wikipedia.

Sebastien Roblin

Security,

What purpose do these cruise-missile-launching behemoths serve?

Here's What You Need to Remember: The conventional land-attack role will be taken up by the large fleet of Virginia-class attack submarines, which can be equipped with the Virginia Payload Module to launch up to forty Tomahawks each. While this means it will take four Virginia-class submarines to equal the firepower of a single Ohio-class, it will distribute that firepower more widely across the fleet and will likely prove adequate in most scenarios—short of World War III.

The Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarine (SSBN) was built to destroy cities and military installations in the event of a nuclear war—or more precisely, to deter adversaries from ever starting one. However, following the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Navy determined that it didn’t need all eighteen of its underwater horsemen of the apocalypse for the nuclear deterrence mission.

The Navy first intended to scrap the four oldest of the massive submarines, but instead opted to overhaul and convert them to launch Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles (TLAM) at a cost of $700–900 million each. These vessels were redesignated Ohio-class guided-missile submarines (SSGN) and intended to deliver conventional attacks on targets on land. The Ohio and Florida began the nuclear refueling, overhaul and armament upgrade in 2003 and were back in service by 2006, while the Michigan and Florida followed in 2008.

The Ohio-class SSGN bristles with more conventional firepower than any comparable vessel because its twenty-four missile tubes (eighty-eight-inch diameter) were originally designed to carry enormous Trident ballistic missiles. Twenty-two of them were refitted with Tomahawk launch canisters with seven missiles each, for a total of 154 Tomahawks missiles, all of which can be ripple-fired from underwater in the space of six minutes. This is likely to be a heavier cruise-missile armament than an entire surface task force.

The Tomahawks, which each cost over $1.5 million, are capable of delivering a thousand-pound warhead to land targets as far as a thousand miles away, guided via GPS. This, incidentally, means that Ohio SSGNs are carting well over $200 million in missiles when fully loaded.

The Ohio SSGN is also a multimission craft. The remaining two launch tubes have been converted into special undersea locks for deploying more than sixty Navy SEALs on special operations. The tubes can also launch underwater unmanned vehicles (UUV), SEAL delivery vehicle (SDV) midget submarines, sonar buoys and other aquatic sensors.

The nuclear-powered submarines were soon performing more conspicuous operations than their Trident-armed cousins. In 2010, Ohio, Florida and Michigan all participated in a show of force in reaction to a Chinese missile test, surfacing separately off of Diego Garcia, the Philippines and South Korea at roughly the same time. In 2011, the USS Florida launched ninety-three missiles targeted at Libyan air defenses in support of Operation Odyssey Dawn, all but three of which hit. The missiles helped clear the way for the warplanes of the anti-Qaddafi coalition to begin operations over Libyan airspace. This marked the first occasion in which an Ohio-class submarine fired in anger.

What purpose do these cruise-missile-launching behemoths serve? Why not use surface warships to launch the long-range Tomahawk, or even dispatch carrier strike planes using much cheaper precision-guided munitions? Quite simply, the stealthy SSGNs can get closer to enemy coastlines without being detected, enabling them to hit targets further inland and to deliver a massive missile strike, while exposing themselves far less than a surface ship or aerial strike package.

Deadly new long-range anti-shipping missiles, such as the Russian Kalibr cruise missile, which can be fired from land, air or sea platforms, make littoral waters perilous for large surface ships like aircraft carriers and missile cruisers. Even carrier-based aircraft would require the carrier to sail within eight hundred miles of a hostile coastline, within striking distance of a variety of carrier-killing weapons. By contrast, nuclear-powered submarines are extremely difficult to detect and track thanks to the very limited noise produced by their nuclear reactors and their ability to remain submerged for the duration of an entire long-range mission. An adversary would have difficulty detecting an Ohio SSGN before it launched its missiles—and after doing so, the submarine could dive deep and run silent to evade retaliation.

In fact, TNI contributor Ben Ho Wan Beng has already described how Ohio-class SSGNs could be used to “kick down the door” by suppressing anti-aircraft and anti-shipping missiles in a first strike, paving the way for aircraft and surface ships to exploit the resulting gap in an adversary’s defenses—a role the USS Florida played in the Libya intervention.

The Ohio SSGNs’ awesome firepower, however, will only remain in the U.S. Navy for around another decade or so, at which time the entire fleet of Ohio-class submarines will be gradually replaced with the new Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarines. The conventional land-attack role will be taken up by the large fleet of Virginia-class attack submarines, which can be equipped with the Virginia Payload Module to launch up to forty Tomahawks each. While this means it will take four Virginia-class submarines to equal the firepower of a single Ohio-class, it will distribute that firepower more widely across the fleet and will likely prove adequate in most scenarios—short of World War III.

But until then, the four Ohio SSGNs will remain the most heavily armed cruise-missile submarines in the world and will provide a devastating potential tool for circumventing and countering adversaries relying on anti-access/area-denial strategies.

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

This first appeared in 2017 and is being reposted due to reader interest. 

Image: Flickr.

Michael Peck

Weapons, World

A U.S. State Department report examined global military spending for 2007 to 2017.

Here's What You Need to Know: While global military spending has risen, the amount of money spent per soldier has risen even more.

The world is spending almost $3 trillion a year on arms.

That’s the estimate of the U.S. government. The State Department’s World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers (WMEAT) report examined global military spending for 2007 to 2017.

“From 2007 through 2017, in constant 2017 U.S. dollar terms, the annual value of world military expenditures appears to have risen about 11 percent to 33 percent, from about $1.51 trillion to $2.15 trillion in 2007 to about $1.77 trillion to $2.88 trillion in 2017, and to have averaged between $1.72 trillion and $2.61 trillion for the 11-year period,” according to the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, which compiled the report.

The huge gap between the high and low range of each number is because converting foreign military spending into U.S. dollars is a difficult process. The study used five different methods to make the conversion. Nonetheless, overall global military spending appears to have risen sharply since 2007.

On the other hand, fewer people are serving in the military, no surprise given that drones and automation are increasingly replacing human soldiers. “The number of people serving in the world’s armed forces appears to have fallen about 3 percent in absolute terms, from about 21.0 million in 2007 to about 20.4 million in 2017, peaking at about 21.3 million in 2008,” the study found. “From 2007 to 2017, the world total of armed forces personnel appears to have fallen about 13 percent in per capita terms, from about 0.32 percent to about 0.28 percent of total population. It appears to have fallen by about 13 percent as a proportion of the labor force, from about 0.69 percent to about 0.60 percent.”

Interestingly, while global military spending has risen, the amount of money spent per soldier has risen even more, again pointing to the trend of replacing people with drones, robots and highly automated platforms such as warships designed to require fewer sailors. “From 2007 through 2017, world military expenditures per armed forces member - an indicator of the capital-intensivity of the military - appear to have risen by 15 percent to 38 percent despite rising more slowly after 2009,” noted the study.

Curiously, there were two exceptions where spending per soldier did not rise: North America and East Africa.

Ironically, rich, democratic nations – which like to think of themselves as being the most peaceful – also accounted for a bulk of a global arms trade averaging $181 billion annually. “Countries in the most democratic quintile of world population appear to have accounted for about 92 percent of world arms exports and 50 percent of world arms imports,” the study found.

The United States accounted for 79 percent of the global arms trade, or an average of $143 billion per year, followed by the European Union at 10 percent, Russia at 5 percent and China at less than 2 percent

Arms exports actually had a significant effect on America’s balance of payments. “Over the period, the arms trade surplus of the United States may have offset as much as 24 percent of its total trade deficit,” the study concluded.

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

This article first appeared in January 2020.

Image: Reuters