Diplomacy & Crisis News

Last year was the deadliest on record for Rohingya refugees journeying through the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said in a new report on Thursday, highlighting that some two-thirds of those attempting the perilous voyages were women and children – risking even further abuse by smugglers.

Along one part of the Turkish border, hundreds of new Afghan migrants show up every day.

The parallels are easy to list.

Why the special immigration system is broken.

With the withdrawal completed, Washington’s strategic shift can commence.

Blue helmets from Thailand working with the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) are not only doing their bit to repair and rehabilitate critical infrastructure but are also helping support the mission’s COVID-19 response and training local communities about growing their own food.

Democratic principles were largely irrelevant to the EU’s founding—but are at the center of the project today.

AfCFTA was supposed to usher in a new era of continental trade and economic growth—but Beijing’s not letting that happen.

Edouard Manet incarne la révolution esthétique qui, à la fin du XIXe siècle, vit le renversement de l'art académique au profit de formes et de règles nouvelles. Le sociologue Pierre Bourdieu a consacré à cette transformation deux années de cours au Collège de France. Extraits exclusifs. / France, Art, (...) / France, Art, Culture, Histoire, Idées, Peinture - 2013/11

As the global aid community marked World Humanitarian Day on Thursday, UN chief António Guterres paid tribute to all those who help people in need and urged support for the day’s #TheHumanRace campaign, which aims to protect the most vulnerable people from the climate emergency.  

Legislation passed in the wake of the Vietnam War could provide a blueprint for today’s policymakers.

Michael Peck

Japan, East Asia

The U.S. Marine Corps’ F-35B—its version of a fighter being fielded by the Air Force and Navy—has vertical landing capabilities, but those may have compromised some aspects of the Lightning II’s performance.

Here's What You Need To Know: If Chinese ships and aircraft can isolate the Senkakus, then it will be easy for Chinese troops to occupy them. And very difficult to Japan to recapture them: the special amphibious brigade created by Japan would be a sitting duck. But even a few F-35Bs operating from rough airstrips—and perhaps armed with hypersonic anti-ship missiles—could disrupt a Chinese amphibious landing.

Japan may deploy its new F-35 stealth jet fighters to an airbase in southwestern Japan.

The location is not coincidental: Nyutabaru Air Base, in Miyazaki Prefecture, is situated nearer to Japanese islands and waters claimed by China.

“The envisioned deployment of the aircraft to Nyutabaru Air Base is aimed at keeping in check China’s maritime assertiveness around the area, including the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea,” according to an article in the Japan Times. China claims the islands, which are located near China and Taiwan, as its own, and has repeatedly sent ships and aircraft into the area.

“With Beijing’s increasing maritime activities in mind, Japan is stepping up its capabilities to protect the Nansei Islands covering Okinawa and the Senkakus,” the newspaper said.

Government sources told Japan Times that “the F-35Bs are expected, after being deployed to the Nyutabaru base, to conduct joint exercises with other F-35Bs already deployed at the U.S. Marine Corps’ Air Station Iwakuni in Yamaguchi Prefecture. It is also envisaged that eventually upgraded Izumo-class flat-top helicopter carriers will transport and launch fighter jets such as F-35Bs, the U.S. Marines variant of the F-35 stealth plane made by Lockheed Martin Corp.”

However, local opposition could derail the planned deployment, the newspaper noted.

Japan is buying two versions of the F-35: 105 F-35A land-based fighters for the Japanese air force. The first batch are already deployed at Misawa Air Base in Aomori Prefecture in northern Japan, watching Japan’s other main security threat, North Korea.

Japan also plans to acquire forty-three F-35B short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) jets by 2023, with the first models arriving by 2023. Some would be stationed at Nyutabaru.

How Japan is deploying the two different F-35 models reveals the multiple—and vastly different—security challenges confronting the Japanese military. The more powerful F-35As are stationed in northern Japan, facing North Korea. While North Korea’s conventional military is no particular threat to Japan, North Korea’s ballistic missiles—which could carry nuclear warheads—do worry Tokyo. The F-35s—which the United States has already tested in a missile defense role—could be used to shoot down ballistic missiles or use its stealth capabilities to destroy North Korean missile and nuclear weapons sites.

China presents a different threat. Though Beijing has ballistic missiles aplenty, China has a large air force and navy that is rapidly growing in sophistication, including aircraft carriers and hypersonic missiles that could damage U.S. and Japanese airbases. During a wargame conducted by the Washington-based Center For a New American Security thinktank last year, the Chinese team used ballistic missiles to devastate Okinawan airfields packed with U.S. and Japanese aircraft.

If airfields on Okinawa are vulnerable, then how about the Senkakus, small, barren and uninhabited pieces of rock that lack infrastructure, are uncomfortably close to mainland China, and would be extremely difficult to defend?

All of which suggests that conventional fixed-aircraft—the F-35As and F-15s that are the backbone of U.S. and Japanese air arms—may find themselves trying to operate from bombed-out airbases and cratered runways on Okinawa and other Japanese islands. Which is exactly the kind of predicament that the F-35B is designed for.

The U.S. Marine Corps’ F-35B—its version of a fighter being fielded by the Air Force and Navy—has vertical landing capabilities, but those may have compromised some aspects of the Lightning II’s performance. On the other hand, such landing capabilities does allow the F-35B to operate from rough airfields. For the U.S. Marines, who prefer their own in-house air support rather than relying on the Air Force and Navy, the F-35B could operate from crude airstrips on a newly-seized amphibious beachhead.

Whether this is actually true is a different matter: just because the F-35B can land on any bare patch of ground, that doesn’t mean that fuel, ammunition, spare parts and trained mechanics will be there. Nonetheless, if Japanese planners have to reckon on the possibility that permanent airfields could easily be devastated by Chinese missiles, then Tokyo has a problem.

As Japan discovered in World War II, the only real defense against amphibious invasion is for air and naval defenses—and mostly airpower—to stop the invasion. If Chinese ships and aircraft can isolate the Senkakus, then it will be easy for Chinese troops to occupy them. And very difficult to Japan to recapture them: the special amphibious brigade created by Japan would be a sitting duck. But even a few F-35Bs operating from rough airstrips—and perhaps armed with hypersonic anti-ship missiles—could disrupt a Chinese amphibious landing.

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

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

Image: Flickr.

Michael Peck

Hypersonic Weapons Defense,

Russia is developing a new defense against hypersonic missiles: MiG fighters armed with long-range, multiple-warhead missiles.

Here's What You Need to Know: Most likely, if Russia’s MiG-based hypersonic defense works, it will work against tactical hypersonic missiles rather than ICBMs. While Russia claims its Avangard nuclear-armed glider has a reported speed of Mach 20-plus, tactical hypersonic missiles such as Russia’s Zircon anti-ship weapon, or a land-based U.S. hypersonic missile which may be fielded by 2023, seem to have speeds of Mach 8 to 10.

Russia is developing a new defense against hypersonic missiles: MiG fighters armed with long-range, multiple-warhead missiles.

But how feasible is the concept remains to be seen.

“The Ministry of Defense made a fundamental decision to develop for the MiG-31 fighter and the promising MiG-41 a multifunctional long-range interceptor missile system (MPKR DP) capable of hitting hypersonic munitions,” according to state-owned Russian newspaper Izvestia last yer. “Theoretical studies have already been carried out on an ultra-long-range air-to-air missile with a multiple warhead.”

The MiG-31 (NATO code name: Foxhound) is an air defense interceptor descended from the Cold War MiG-25 Foxbat. The MiG-41 is reportedly a developmental project to develop a MiG-31 replacement.

Using multiple warheads for missile defense is particularly interesting. Russia appears to be envisioning a single missile that will dispense several sub-missiles that will intercept hypersonic weapons, which travel faster than Mach 5. “Airborne heavy ammunition will deliver a warhead with several modern air-to-air missiles over a distance of several hundred kilometers,” explained Izvestia. “Then they will separate from the carrier and begin to search and attack targets on their own. An active homing head with its own radar will help them in this.”

“All warheads will be displayed at a pre-calculated point on the trajectory of a flying munition and attack it in the nose. The use of ultra-long-range missiles will expand the area of ​​destruction of the interceptor.”

The theory seems simple enough: launch enough radar-guided warheads at a hypersonic target, and you’re bound to hit something. “An ordinary anti-aircraft missile has one warhead,” Russian defense expert Dmitri Kornev told Izvestia. “The probability of a miss on a hypersonic maneuvering target is very high. But if one ammunition carries several homing shells, then the chances of hitting a high-speed object increase significantly.”

The U.S. uses a similar approach for ballistic missile defense against ICBMs. Interceptor rockets will launch “kill vehicles” with multiple warheads, each equipped with sensors as well as thrusters for rapid maneuvering.

Which raises a question: if many critics doubt that ballistic missile defense is even feasible -- “like hitting a bullet with another bullet,” as the saying goes -- then what about hypersonic missiles?

Izvestia paints a scenario where the process works smoothly. “Especially effective is the use of the system during aircraft operations as part of a single information space. Aerial targets, cruise or hypersonic missiles can be detected by ground-based radars, early warning radars, or an attack warning system. The fighter will only need to launch an ultra-long-range missile in the desired area. At the same time, the interceptor will not have to risk itself entering into an air battle.”

Yet U.S. ballistic missile tests have experienced numerous failures: President Ronald Reagan’s grandiose vision of a “Star Wars” total missile shield has shrunk to a minimalist defense against a few North Korean ICBMs. Hitting Mach 20 with a warhead is no easy feat, especially when the warheads are accompanied by decoys to confuse anti-missile defenses.

Most likely, if Russia’s MiG-based hypersonic defense works, it will work against tactical hypersonic missiles rather than ICBMs. While Russia claims its Avangard nuclear-armed glider has a reported speed of Mach 20-plus, tactical hypersonic missiles such as Russia’s Zircon anti-ship weapon, or a land-based U.S. hypersonic missile which may be fielded by 2023, seem to have speeds of Mach 8 to 10. That’s slower than an ICBM warhead, but still quite fast: unlike ballistic reentry vehicles, hypersonic missiles can also maneuver within the atmosphere to avoid interception. An object streaking through the air at ten times the speed of sound doesn’t leave much time for reaction or detection.

All of which means that merely firing a salvo of air-to-air homing missiles, and hoping that one will hit the target, may be a bit of wishful thinking.

Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on Twitter, Facebook, or his website.

This article appeared earlier this year.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

The global initiative to save the planet's biodiversity on land and water must not be allowed to threaten the world's most vulnerable people, a top human rights expert said on Thursday. 

Stephen Silver

DirecTV,

Now, we have some details about how the changeover will work.

Earlier this year, AT&T announced that it was spinning off DirecTV into a separate business entity, one in which AT&T will continue to own a majority stake. Earlier this summer, the deal was closed. 

As part of the deal, the service formerly known as AT&T TV (and before that, DirecTV Now) will rebrand as DirecTV Stream. Now, we have some details about how the changeover will work. 

According to Streaming Clarity, the changeover will take place on August 26, as confirmed in a series of notifications sent to customers of the service. It’s also been implied to subscribers that nothing of substance will change, in terms of plans or pricing. 

DirecTV will likely continue to offer the Entertainment, Choice, Premier, and Ultimate live TV packages, as before. 

“The rebranding is expected to happen automatically so subscribers should not have to do anything now or once the apps transition over to the new logo,” the Streaming Clarity reported. 

Streaming Clarity did suggest that the continuity could be temporary, with more changes to come later on. 

“Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean there won’t be any changes at all. It is likely that along with the change in name, branding, and logo, the apps may encounter other design and interface tweaks. Not to mention, there is the possibility that under DirecTV Stream, the service may become available on even more devices in the future. Either way, the extent to the immediate changes should start to become clear before the end of this month.” 

The company, on the day the closing of the spinoff was announced, laid out how DirecTV Stream would work. 

“For those who stream it, the newly branded DIRECTV STREAM will become the single brand for video streaming services previously launched by AT&T, excluding HBO Max,” the company said. “The transition will happen later this month, and service will continue to be available with no term commitment or hidden fees. To enjoy the best of live TV and on-demand, customers can either bring their own streaming device or use DIRECTV’s exclusive streaming device. Those with DIRECTV’s streaming device can build a complete, integrated, and customized entertainment experience with the ability to watch and pause live TV on up to twenty devices in their home. It also allows consumers to get all their favorite entertainment in one place with easy access to apps like HBO Max, Netflix, Prime Video, and more.” 

The same announcement of the deal said that over the next few months, DirecTV Stream “will prominently feature its bold new look across its video services, and new and existing customers will experience several touchpoints with it.” 

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

Image: Reuters

Mark Episkopos

J-20,

China's answer to the F-22 is perhaps not all it's talked up to be.

China’s answer to the likes of the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jet, the Chengdu J-20 is the People’s Liberation Army Air Force’s (PLAAF’s) most advanced fighter jet to date.

The J-20 emerged from a 1990’s Chinese program to develop a fifth-generation fighter. The program’s early development efforts are a continued source of speculation, with vague reports of early concept fighters that may or may not have been directly related to the project. The first J-20 prototype emerged in 2010 and undertook its first flight test in the following year.

The J-20 “Mighty Dragon” is a single-seat, twin-engine, fifth-generation fighter. Boasting an elongated fuselage with a dual-wing configuration, the J-20 appears to be somewhat larger than its F-22 and F-35 counterparts. The fighter is believed to support a maximum speed of up to Mach 2.5, with a range of around 5,500 km. But, as previously noted by The National Interest’s Kris Osborn, a fighter’s “top speed” does not necessarily translate into sustained speeds. Despite the claims of Chinese defense observers, it is not clear if the J-20 can supercruise—that is, sustain supersonic flight without the use of stealth-compromising afterburners. Part of the confusion over the J-20’s precise aerodynamic performance stems from ongoing engineering difficulties surrounding the fighter’s engine. The J-20 requires its bespoke Xian WS-15 engines to support any degree of supercruise capability, but performance and reliability difficulties compelled the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) to accept the initial batches of serial J-20 fighters with stopgap WS-10C and Russian AL-31F engines instead. The current status of the WS-15 engine is unclear, with reports suggesting that it is still under development and could be completed by 2023.

The J-20 is commonly described as a stealth air superiority fighter with secondary precision strike capabilities. The fighter supports a versatile suite of air-to-air weapons, including PL-10 and PL-12 missiles that fill the short and medium-range engagements respectively. But the J-20 seems more suited for engaging aircraft at longer ranges with its formidable PL-15 and PL-21 missiles. The ramjet-powered, hypersonic, beyond-visual-range (BVR) PL-21–which is roughly comparable to the Russian R-37M missile that will reportedly be supported by the Su-57–can feasibly hold high-value aerial targets at risk and is a potent addition to China’s air power arsenal. The fighter carries its payload in internal weapons bays, consistent with its long-range, stealthy air-to-air mission purpose. The fighter likewise boasts four external hardpoints, which are believed to be primarily used for transporting fuel tanks during non-combat missions.

A twin-seat J-20 variant was spotted several months ago in PLAAF promotional materials. Chinese state media reports that the two-seater is intended to be used for dedicated drone control, bombing missions, and electronic warfare, but there are currently no concrete production and delivery timelines for this version of the fighter.

As of the summer of 2021, it is estimated that around forty to eighty J-20 fighters have been produced. Prominent People's Liberation Army watchers have suggested that the PLAAF seeks 200 serial J-20’s by 2027, rivaling the U.S. F-22 fleet in quantity if not in quality, but only time will tell how closely this early projection will correspond to China’s production output over the coming years.

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

Image: Reuters

Sebastien Roblin

History, World

This Star Wars-esque ball tank was almost a reality. 

Here's What You Need To Remember: Plated in 5 millimeters of steel, the Kugelpanzer rolled on massive rollers 1.5 meters in diameter, manned by a single crew member sitting on motorcycle-style saddle. The driver could peer out into the battlefield through a narrow viewing slit and fire a single machine gun through a slot underneath the viewport.

The Star Wars prequel movies featured various monowheel robots and vehicles amongst its various fantastical elements. After all, who in real life would be crazy enough to invent such impractical designs?

Why, the Nazis, of course!  

The unique Kugelpanzer, or “ball tank”, was built in Germany and at some point shipped over to Japanese-occupied China. The sole prototype was then captured by the Russian Army in 1945 during its invasion of Manchuria. Plated in 5 millimeters of steel, the Kugelpanzer rolled on massive rollers 1.5 meters in diameter, manned by a single crew member sitting on motorcycle-style saddle. The driver could peer out into the battlefield through a narrow viewing slit and fire a single machine gun through a slot underneath the viewport.

A two-stroke 25 horsepower piston engine drove the bizarre conveyance, which was steered by a runner wheel on a tail extension which also must have contributed to stability. An article in Russian Popular Mechanics estimates the 1.8 ton Kugelpanzer wasn’t likely to win any races, rolling at a brisk jogging pace of 5 miles per hour.

The Kugelpanzer can now be seen at the Kubinka Tank Museum outside Moscow (check out the image here), stripped of its internal components and designated only as “Object 37.”

What on Earth was this vehicle intended to do? The plaque at Kubinka states the Kugelpanzer was intended as a reconnaissance vehicle.  A single machine gun and five millimeters of armor certainly was not going to make a major impression on the battlefields of World War II, so a reconnaissance role might make sense if one overlooks the vehicle’s low speed. Other light combat tasks proposed for the vehicle include artillery observation and cable-laying.

One author speculates to the contrary that the Kugelpanzer might have been conceived as a suicide vehicle for ramming into enemy troops and tanks. Certainly, the Japanese deployed a number of specialized suicide weapons, such as the Kaiten manned torpedo, the Ohka rocket-powered flying bomb, and Shinyo motorboat units.

However this theory does not sit well with the German origin of the vehicle. True, Nazi Germany flirted with a number of weapons that were practically suicidal by the end of the war—particularly their own human torpedoes, which had an 80% fatality rate for the pilots. However, after developing a manned version of the V-1 “buzz bomb” called the Fi-103, war production minister Albert Speer persuaded Hitler to cancel the program on the grounds that suicide attacks were not part of Germanic warrior culture.

Thus, the Kugelpanzer was likely designed with some other purpose in mind. After all, the Nazis transferred incredible quantities of technology to Japan on submarines during World War II, including impractical designs such as the Me 163 Komet rocket fighter.

In theory, large-diameter wheel designs benefit from low ground pressure and center of gravity, and excellent characteristics for climbing over vertical obstacles and traversing ditches. Similar rolling tanks were proposed but not built in Germany, Russia and the United States, such as the Texas Tumbleweed tank showcased in a 1936 issue of Popular Mechanics. For this reason, the Kugelpanzer’s combination of low speed and good all-terrain ability might have lent it more to serving as an infantry support vehicle rather than a scout.

In fact, there are some precedents that were actually constructed, including the German World War I Treffas Wagen. Completed in February 1917, it sported enormous wheels 3.35 meters in diameter that sandwiched a narrow armored hull mounting a 20 millimeter cannon on the front and machine guns on the side for sweeping out trenches as it rolled over them. Two runner wheels at the rear were used for steering, giving it a bizarre 2x2 format. The 18-ton beast was passed over in favor of the A7V tank, which was produced in small numbers and saw action against British armor in 1918. The Treffas-Wagen, on the other hand, was scrapped in order to recover the steel.

An even larger rolling tank straight out of Star Wars is the 40-ton Russian Tsar tank built in 1915, which used 9-meter diameter tricycle wheels instead of caterpillar treads. The 12 meter-wide monster was intended to mount multiple cannon turrets, but development was abandoned after the 250 horsepower motor proved to be too underpowered for cross-country mobility.

The kinship with World War I-era prototypes ties the Kugelpanzer’s concept to an era in which the tank’s advantage in “mobility” related to its ability to negotiate the cratered and trench-strewn battlefields of World War I, rather than execute Blitzkrieg-style rapid advances. It therefore seems likely the spherical tank’s designers abandoned the Kugelpanzer because of its inability to keep up with the mobile warfare raging across Europe. The Nazis may then have been passed it on to the Japanese in case they could find some use for it.

However, the total lack of records regarding the Kugelpanzer confines historians to the realm of conjecture. Nonetheless, the Nazi rolling ball tank illustrates how bizarre science fictional concepts sometimes came closer to becoming a reality than one would think.

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 2016.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

The Biden administration should maximize diplomacy and prioritize support for front-line organizations.

Sebastien Roblin

History, Global

At its peak, the aggressive Imperial German Navy's U-Boat campaign was sinking over 874,000 tons of shipping in a month. 

Here's What You Need To Remember: While World War I submarines could only remain submerged for brief periods, they were highly successful at picking off unescorted merchants ship in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Washington had to do something about that. Enter the convoy system, which proved to be a dramatic success at decreasing ship losses. 

When Congress voted on April 6, 1917, to declare war on Imperial Germany, the task before the U.S. Navy was clear: it needed to transport and supply over a million men across the Atlantic despite the Imperial German Navy’s ferocious U-Boat campaign, which reached its peak that month, sinking over 874,000 tons of shipping.

Indeed, Germany’s decision to recommence unrestricted submarine warfare in February was one of the decisive factors driving the United States, and later Brazil, into finally joining “the war to end all wars.”

While World War I submarines could only remain submerged for brief periods, they were highly successful at picking off unescorted merchants ship in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Neither active sonar nor radar yet existed with which to track submarines, though the British had begun using hydrophones to listen for the noise of a submarine’s diesel engine.

The most successful anti-submarine ships were agile “torpedo-boat destroyers,” which sank U-Boats using deck guns and even ramming. Starting in 1916, Royal Navy vessels carried depth charges designed to detonate underwater, rupturing a submarine’s hull. These proved effective if the ship captains could guess the sub’s position. Statistically, naval mines proved deadliest, accounting for one-third of U-Boat losses.

For years, the Royal Navy resisted instituting a convoy system to guard merchant ships, preferring not to divert warships from offensive missions and believing the decrease in throughput from adhering to a convoy schedule would prove worse than the losses inflicted by U-Boats.

But that April, U-Boats had sunk one-quarter of all merchant ships bound for the UK, leaving it with just six week’s grain supply. Threatened with economic collapse, the Royal Navy finally instituted the convoy system. But the Brits had a problem: they could divert only forty-three out of the seventy-five destroyers required to escort convoys.

Naval liaison Rear Admiral William Sims convinced the navy to dispatch thirty-five U.S. destroyers to bases at Queenstown (modern-day Cobh), Ireland to fill in the gap. These began escorting convoys on May 24, usually supported by navy cruisers. In 1918, an even larger escort flotilla began operating out of Brest, France.

The U.S. Navy itself began the war with only fifty-one destroyers. It immediately faced a classic military procurement problem: politicians and admirals wanted to build more expensive battleships and battlecruisers, construction of sixteen of which had been authorized by the Naval Act of 1916.

But the Royal Navy already had the German High Seas fleet effectively bottled up in port with its larger force. While five coal-burning and three oil-burning U.S. battleships did join the blockade in 1918, they never saw action. Common sense prevailed, and battleship construction was halted in favor of building 266 destroyers.

More rapidly, the Navy commissioned hundreds of small 70-ton wooden-hulled “sub-chasers” equipped with hydrophones, 3” deck guns and depth charges. Civilian yachts were similarly converted. The Navy’s eleven L-class and K-class submarines were also deployed to Berehaven (now Castletownbere), Ireland and the Azores respectively to hunt (surfaced) U-Boats, but none encountered enemy forces during the war.

Hundreds of twin-engine HS maritime patrol planes were also procured to scour the seas for submarines. Though the seaplanes sank few if any submarines, they disrupted numerous attacks by forcing U-Boats to dive and abort their torpedo runs.

The convoy system proved a dramatic success, cutting shipping losses to less than half their peak. U-Boats simply lacked unprotected targets and were more likely to be lost combating escorts. Shipping losses gradually fell to roughly 300,000 tons per month, while U-Boat losses increased from three per month to between five and ten.

However, submariner-hunting remained a dangerous business in which a hunter could swiftly become hunted. On Nov. 17, 1917, the destroyer USS Cassin was pursuing U-61 near Ireland when the U-Boat counterattacked. Spotting a torpedo rushing towards the depth-charge launcher on the ship’s stern, Gunner’s Mate Osmond Ingram lunged forth to jettison the explosive charges but was caught in the blast that tore away the destroyer’s rudder. The Cassin remained afloat and shelled U-61’s conning tower, causing her to disengage. Ingram was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

The destroyer Jacob Jones was not so fortunate when she was struck in the rudder by a torpedo fired by U-353 near Brest on December 6. Sixty-six crew perished abandoning ship as her depth charges detonated. Gallantly, U-Boat captain Karl Rose rescued two of the crew and radioed the position of the other survivors.

U.S. sub-hunters did score some successes. On November 17, the destroyers Fanning and Nicholson forced U-58 to the surface with depth charges, then engaged her with deck guns until her crew scuttled her. The converted yacht Christabel crippled a U-Boat with depth charges in May 1918 off the coast of Spain.

That month, the Imperial Navy began dispatching long-range U-Boat “cruisers” with huge 150-millimeter deck guns to maraud the U.S. coast. These sank ninety-three vessels, mostly small civilian fishing boats. The Germans hoped this would spread panic, causing the Americans to withdraw assets in Europe for home defense.

Notably, on July 18 the boat U-156 surfaced off the coastal town of Orleans on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and proceeded to destroy a tugboat, four barges, and the nearby shoreline with its cannons. Nine Coast Guard HS and Model R-9 seaplane bombers scrambled from NAS Chatham and peppered the withdrawing U-boat with bombs—none of which exploded.

The following day, the armored cruiser USS San Diego struck a mine probably lain by U-156 south of Long Island. The explosion flooded her engine room, causing the cruiser to sink with the loss of six hands—becoming the only capital ship lost by the navy. U-156 proceeded to sink twenty-one fishing boats in the Gulf of Maine, and even commandeered a trawler to assist in its rampage. But though the navy instituted coastal convoys, it didn’t withdraw ships from Europe.

U-Boats were also active in the Mediterranean, and Gibraltar-based American subchasers—often little more than civilian yachts fitted with 3” guns and depth charges—twice clashed with them, sinking at least one.

Perhaps the Navy’s most swashbuckling episode of the war occurred on October 2, 1918, when twelve U.S. subchasers covered an Italian and British surface force raiding the Albanian port of Durazzo. Dodging shells from shore batteries, the subchasers cleared a path through the defensive minefield for the accompanying capital ships. They then hounded away the submarines U-29 and U-31, heavily damaging both.

The navy’s deadliest anti-submarine measure was the North Sea Mine Barrage, a 230-mile-long chain of 100,000 naval mines between the Orkney islands and Norway. U-Boats seeking passage to the Atlantic had to wend through eighteen rows of Mark 6 mines concealed at depths of twenty-four, forty-nine, and seventy-three meters deep strung together with piano wire. Each of the horned steel spheres contained three hundred pounds of TNT. The barrage cost $40 million ($722 million in 2018 dollars) and required the deployment of eight large steamships. However, it sank between four and eight U-Boats—including the infamous U-156—and damaged another eight.

Ultimately, 178 out of 360 operational U-Boats were sunk during World War I. In return, the German subs sank 5,000 merchant ships totaling 12.8 million tons, killing 15,000 mariners. The U.S. Navy lost 431 personnel and five ships—its worst loss occurred when the collier USS Cyclops vanished with 306 crew in the Bermuda Triangle.

Despite its unglamorous duties, the U.S. Navy learned valuable lessons in the Great War about employing convoys, smaller submarine-hunters, and maritime patrol planes that would save many lives in the even more destructive conflict that followed two decades later.

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 December 2018 and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Creative Commons 

Michael Peck

Luftwaffe, Europe

The problem is that the Luftwaffe doesn’t have enough flyable planes for its pilots to fly.

Here's What You Need to Know: The success of the air forces of America and Israel over the past seventy-five years has rested on well-trained aircrews. Some analysts note that today’s Russian military pilots receive fewer training flight hours than their Western counterparts. Allowing German pilot training standards to lapse will erode a key NATO edge over a potential Russian adversary.

German air force pilots don’t have enough flight time to meet NATO training requirements.

But that’s not because of poor training. The problem is that the Luftwaffe doesn’t have enough flyable planes for its pilots to fly.

“Almost half of the Luftwaffe’s pilots were unable to meet NATO’s target of 180 flight hours last year because their aircraft were grounded by maintenance issues,” according to Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper. Only 512 of the air force’s 875 pilots met the number of required flight hours, German officials told government Bundestag legislators.

“The Luftwaffe is at a low point,” Lieutenant General Ingo Gerhartz, the Luftwaffe’s chief of staff, said last month. “Aircraft are grounded due to a lack of spare parts, or they aren’t even on site since they’re off for maintenance.”

Germany’s armed forces, dreaded during World War II and respected during the Cold War, have been ridiculed in recent years as budget cuts have resulted in a military that seems barely functional. In the summer of 2018, only ten of the Luftwaffe’s 128 Eurofighters were rated fit to fly because of spare parts shortages. In February 2019, “on average only 39 of Germany’s 128 Eurofighter jets and 26 of its 93 older Tornado fighters were available for combat or training last year,” the Telegraph said.

“There are now concerns that pilots are leaving the air force in frustration at being unable to fly. Six pilots resigned in the first half of last year, compared to a total of 11 in the five previous year.”

German military strength has declined since the end of the Cold War and the disappearance of the Soviet threat that compelled Germany to build well-trained and well-equipped armed forces. The immediate problem is anemic defense spending, at 1.3 percent of GDP rather than the NATO goal of 2 percent (not that many European NATO members are meeting that threshold).

In 2018, German submarines were found to be in no condition to sail, new helicopters and transport aircraft were unable to fly, and armored vehicles have been sidelined. The situation is so bad that if Russia invaded the Baltic States, Germany would require a month to mobilize and transport a single armored brigade to the rescue, according to an American study.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that Germany is stuck with poorly trained pilots. Nonetheless, the success of the air forces of America and Israel over the past seventy-five years has rested on well-trained aircrews. Some analysts note that today’s Russian military pilots receive fewer training flight hours than their Western counterparts. Allowing German pilot training standards to lapse will erode a key NATO edge over a potential Russian adversary.

Ironically, lack of training was a major cause for the destruction of the old Luftwaffe in Nazi Germany. In 1939, German pilots would go into battle with more than 200 hours of flight time—significantly more than their opponents. This enabled German aces to rack up dozens or hundreds of kills. By 1944, with training crippled by fuel shortages, and with its fighters suffering severe losses against American heavy bombers, the Germans were forced to commit pilots into battle with perhaps 50 or 100 flight hours, compared to 300 or more hours for American and British pilots (Soviet pilots would receive about 100 hours).

The result was a vicious cycle where pilot shortages forced the Luftwaffe to commit untrained pilots, who were quickly killed or wounded, which meant that more rookies had to be sent into battle.

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

This article first appeared in August 2019.

Image: Wikipedia.