Diplomacy & Crisis News

David Axe

Security, Europe

As it transforms, the Russian navy by most metrics is falling behind the U.S. and Chinese navies.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Perhaps most tellingly, the U.S. fleet can carry around 12,000 offensive missiles. Chinese ships in total can carry 5,200 missiles. Russia’s fleet, despite upgrades like those to Smerch, packs no more than 3,300. And that number could fall as more large, old warships decommission and smaller ships take their place.

The Russian navy on Aug. 14, 2019 completed a key test of an upgraded missile corvette. The trial underscores the evolution of the Russian fleet from a force dominated by a few large vessels to one with a larger number of smaller ships.

The upgraded missile corvette Smerch conducted a live-fire exercise in the Sea of Japan, Russia’s state-run news agency TASS reported, citing the press office of Russia’s Pacific fleet.

"Today, in accordance with the plan of shipbuilders’ trials, the modernized small missile ship Smerch has held a series of missile firings against a naval and an air target," the press office told TASS.

Smerch, a Nanuchka III-class corvette, displaces around 500 tons of water. Smerch launched in 1984.

After recent upgrades, Smerch boasts 30-millimeter and 76-millimeter guns, a battery of small surface-to-air missiles and Uran anti-ship missiles, which are equivalent to the U.S. Navy’s own Harpoon anti-ship missile.

Smerch is one of around 150 corvettes, patrol boats and mine-warfare ships in the Russian fleet. Each displaces just a few thousand or few hundred tons of water. The Russian navy operates fewer than 30 large, oceangoing frigates, destroyers and cruisers.

The U.S. Navy by contrast operates just a couple dozen small surface combatants and more than 100 large ones. The American and Russian fleets are opposites, each reflecting their country’s strategy, history, industry and geography.

The U.S. fleet, backed by a powerful, high-tech industry, favors large ships for their ability to deploy long distances in support of an interventionist foreign policy.

The Russian fleet, on the other hand, relies on outdated shipyards that reliably can produce only small vessels. Fortunately for Moscow, smaller ships are appropriate for Russia’s strategic focus on destabilizing, and occasionally invading, rivals just a short distance away along its own periphery.

The Russian navy’s transformation into a small-ship fleet has been accelerating. More large ships are decommissioning and smaller vessels -- both new and upgraded -- are taking their place, reshaping what was once a major global force into a new kind of regional fleet.

In April 2019 the Kremlin decided to dismantle rather than revamp two Cold War-vintage Kirov-class battlecruisers. Moscow likewise considered scrapping its sole aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov rather than pay for maintenance and upgrades.

The accidental sinking of the PD-50 drydock in October 2018 weighed on the decision. PD-50 was the only drydock in northern Russia that could accommodate Kuznetsov. The Kremlin in mid-2019 signaled it will attempt to repair the aging carrier after combining two smaller drydocks to accommodate the vessel.

The new ships Russia is acquiring generally are missile corvettes displacing no more than 5,000 tons of water. An American destroyer, by contrast, displaces 9,000 tons.

The Kremlin bought just four new warships in 2018, all corvettes. While small, these vessels pack serious firepower. In recent years, corvettes from the Caspian Sea fleet have fired long-range Kalibr cruise missiles at targets in Syria -- all without ever leaving Russian waters.

But the numbers are telling. As it transforms, the Russian navy by most metrics is falling behind the U.S. and Chinese navies. In 2019 the Russian fleet has 360 ships, according to U.S. Navy commander Keith Patton, writing for the Center for International Maritime Security. The Chinese fleet, by contrast, possesses 624 warships.

The American fleet at the same time has just 333 “battle force” ships. But the American ships on average are much bigger than Chinese and Russian ships are. The U.S. fleet in total displaces 4.6 million tons of water. The Chinese fleet displaces 1.8 million tons. The Russian fleet displaces just 1.2 million tons.

Perhaps most tellingly, the U.S. fleet can carry around 12,000 offensive missiles. Chinese ships in total can carry 5,200 missiles. Russia’s fleet, despite upgrades like those to Smerch, packs no more than 3,300. And that number could fall as more large, old warships decommission and smaller ships take their place.

David Axe served as Defense Editor of the National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels War Fix, War Is Boring and Machete Squad. This first appeared in 2019 and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

David Axe

Security, Asia

China steadily is building up the forces it could deploy in an attempted invasion of Taiwan.

Here's What You Need to Remember: A sudden Chinese attack quickly could wipe out U.S. forces in the Asia-Pacific region and block the United States from intervening in a regional war. That’s the startling conclusion of an August 2019 report from the United States Studies Center at the University of Sydney.

China steadily is building up the forces it could deploy in an attempted invasion of Taiwan. The Chinese navy is acquiring aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships while the Chinese army and marine corps add modern fighting vehicles and the air force trains for intensive air-to-air combat.

But in crossing the Taiwan Strait, a Chinese invasion fleet would face not only Taiwanese forces, but probably Americans forces, as well. The United States is obligated by law to assist in Taiwan’s defense. A U.S. Air Force wing commander in August 2019 revealed one form U.S. intervention could take.

Bombers. Dropping mines. Lots of them.

The commandant of the Air Force’s Weapons School, part of the 57th Wing at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, recently visited Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, home to the 2nd Bomb Wing, the U.S. air arm’s biggest bomber unit with nearly 30 B-52Hs on its rolls.

“I told him to go eat some fried alligator,” 57th Wing commander  Brig. Gen. Robert Novotny wrote on Facebook. “Instead he went dropping sea mines out of a B-52 Stratofortress!” Novotny posted several photos depicting one of the 1960s-vintage B-52s hauling a whopping 15 Quickstrike air-dropped sea mines. Six externally and nine internally.

Quickstrike mines are not new. “The Quickstrike family includes 500-, 1,000-, and 2,000-pound class types, known as the Mk. 62, Mk. 63 and Mk. 64, respectively,” reporter Joseph Trevithick explained at The War Zone in late 2018.

“These [are] converted from Mk. 80-series high-explosive bombs and feature a fuzing system that detonates the weapon when it detects an appropriate acoustic, seismic or pressure signatures from a passing vessel. A fourth type, Mk. 65, is another 2,000-pound-class Quickstrike mine, but is based on an actual, purpose-built mine casing rather than an existing bomb.”

As the Pentagon pivots back to great-power conflict, the mines are enjoying a renaissance of sorts. And upgrades. Trevithick detailed the efforts.

For more than four years now, the Navy has been pursuing two related upgrade programs, known as Quickstrike-J and Quickstrike-ER, for the Mk. 80-series members of the Quickstrike family. The first of these simply combines the mine with a GPS-guided Joint Direct Attack Munition guidance package, while the latter adds a pop-out wing kit.

These are game-changing upgrades that allow aircraft to precisely employ the mines from any altitude and, in the case of the -ER types, loft them at targets up to 40 miles away. This speeds up the process of laying the minefields overall and dramatically reduces the vulnerability to the aircraft carrying the weapons, which would otherwise have to fly low-and-slow to perform the mission.

The Air Force operates more than 70 B-52s and, in the event of war, could deploy dozens of the huge planes to the Asia-Pacific region or fly them from the United States for missions over the Pacific war zone.

It’s not hard to imagine formations of B-52s quickly laying hundreds or even thousands of mines.

Of course, the bombers, if forward-deployed, themselves would be targets. China could target America’s main Pacific outposts -- in particular, the bomber base at Guam -- with ballistic and cruise missiles.

A sudden Chinese attack quickly could wipe out U.S. forces in the Asia-Pacific region and block the United States from intervening in a regional war. That’s the startling conclusion of an August 2019 report from the United States Studies Center at the University of Sydney.

“America’s defense strategy in the Indo-Pacific is in the throes of an unprecedented crisis,” the study’s authors Ashley Townshend, Brendan Thomas-Noone and Matilda Steward

warned. “America no longer enjoys military primacy in the Indo-Pacific and its capacity to uphold a favorable balance of power is increasingly uncertain.”

Dispersing B-52s across a wider area could help to protect them from attack. It’s not for no reason that the Air Force in recent years has begun sending B-52s to the Australian air base in Darwin.

David Axe serves as Defense Editor of the National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels  War Fix, War Is Boring and Machete Squad. This first appeared in 2019 and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

David Axe

Security, Asia

The U.S. military plans to begin rotating F-35 stealth fighters into South Korea starting in a few years.

Here's What You Need to Remember: In 2018 the Trump administration suspended Vigilant Ace as a concession to North Korea, hoping that Pyongyang, in turn, would suspend its nuclear-weapons program. North Korea has continued to develop its nukes.

The U.S. military plans to begin rotating F-35 stealth fighters into South Korea starting in a few years, a South Korean newspaper reported back in 2019.

The American planes would join a growing fleet of South Korean F-35s. The U.S. Air Force is already practicing employing the F-35s in a war with North Korea.

“U.S. Forces Korea is expected to deploy state-of-the-art F-35A stealth fighter jets at major air bases here in place of the current bread-and-butter F-16s,” The Chosunilbo reported. “A South Korean government spokesman on [Sept. 1, 2019] said they will be deployed from early 2020s.”

The U.S. Air Force maintains around 60 F-16s in three squadrons -- plus a squadron of around 20 A-10 attack jets -- at two Korean air bases. The Air Force also keeps two F-16 squadrons in Japan.

The South Korean air force plans to deploy 40 F-35As in 2021. South Korea reportedly also plans to buy vertical-landing F-35Bs to embark on at least one new, large assault ship.

The planned F-35 deployment should come as no surprise. F-35s slowly are replacing F-16s in U.S. Air Force squadrons and eventually could replace A-10s, as well. By the 2030s the F-35 could be the most numerous fighter type in the Air Force inventory.

American F-35 units have begun practicing one key tactic for operations on the Korean Peninsula. On Nov. 19, 2018, two Air Force wings in Utah launched 35 F-35 stealth fighters in a short span of time.

The November 2018 group-takeoff, which the air force calls an "elephant walk," involved F-35As from the 388th and 419th Fighter Wings at Hill Air Force Base. The active-duty 388th and reserve 419th train air force F-35 pilots.

The 388th's 34th Fighter Squadron, whose F-35s have the latest Block 3F software, also has a front-line role. In late 2017, it became the first Air Force F-35 unit to deploy overseas, to Japan.

At the time of the elephant walk—the first for the F-35—the Utah wings possessed around 40 F-35s. The wings are on track to receive a combined 72 F-35s by 2019.

The Hill stealth fighters took off one at a time in roughly 30-second intervals. In just a few minutes, the wings launched as many F-35 sorties as they normally do in a full day of routine training.

"Exercising with multiple squadrons of F-35s can demonstrate our ability to defeat potential adversaries wherever they may arise," Maj. Caleb Guthmann, the 34th Fighter Squadron's assistant director of operations, said in a statement.

Elephant walks significantly contribute to the readiness of American and allied squadrons in South Korea and nearby countries.

In the event of war with North Korea, U.S. and allied forces plan to quickly target the roughly 13,000 artillery pieces that Pyongyang has massed along the Korean demilitarized zone. In the early hours of a war, that artillery likely would bombard Seoul, which lies just 25 miles south of the DMZ

An air campaign targeting North Korea would require 2,000 sorties per day, U.S. military officials told Air Force magazine. The F-16s and A-10s in South Korea and Japan—and any F-35s that deployed in time for the first day of fighting—likely would be the first to hit North Korean artillery. And they'd have to launch fast to save lives in Seoul.

There is a reason that the 7th Air Force in South Korea and Japan have organized more elephant walks than most air force commands have done. "The threat here on the peninsula is very real, and countering that threat needs to be in the forefront of our minds," Col. William D. Betts, then-commander of the 51st Fighter Wing in South Korea, said in 2017.

The U.S. Air Force organized elephant walks in South Korea in 2016 and 2017 but not in 2018.

In 2018 the Trump administration suspended Vigilant Ace as a concession to North Korea, hoping that Pyongyang, in turn, would suspend its nuclear-weapons program. North Korea has continued to develop its nukes.

David Axe serves as Defense Editor of the National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels  War Fix, War Is Boring and Machete Squad. This first appeared in 2019 and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

Ahmed Charai

Politics, Americas

Joe Biden’s election comes at a unique moment for America and an inflection point around the world.

Within his country, President Joe Biden represents the countervailing response to the insurgent, anti-establishment forces unleashed and led by Donald Trump. On the one hand, those forces brought hitherto marginalized problems to the fore. They exposed the opioid epidemic for the national tragedy it has become, requiring national solidarity with the victims and a national strategy to save them. They brought a more frank and open conversation about the tradeoffs of different immigration policies, however strident and painful the discourse became. On the other hand, the Trump approach injected stridency and pain into the discourse and tainted the discussion with the former president’s own flippancy toward the burdens and requirements of democratic governance. This latter tendency culminated in the assault on the Capitol, fueled by President Trump’s inability or unwillingness to accept the results of the election. Without question, January 6 was a stain on this nation that views itself, and is still viewed by many others, as a standard-bearer of democracy.

This unique moment for the United States highlights Biden’s unique virtues as an uniter. A presidential campaign he defined by the nation’s longing for unity should not give way to an administration of vindictiveness and score-settling.  

Trump won nearly 75 million votes, more than any candidate in history save Biden himself. Governing the United States without them would be all but impossible. Many of Trump’s supporters have legitimate grievances with coastal elites and globalization policies: an approach to trade that enriched some at the expense of many; an immigration policy that accelerated the decline of America’s industrial base.

Meanwhile, viewed from outside the United States, Trump’s personality may be unique, but his brand of politics is not. Many Western countries—and some non-Western ones too—have experienced a populist surge sharing many of the same characteristics. In some cases, such as Poland, they are parties of the Right. In others, notably Greece, they are offshoots of the Left. Their Middle Eastern equivalents—consider Tunisian Islamist and president of Congress Rached Ghannouchi or Turkish neo-imperialist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan—defy Western rubrics or easy categorization.

Foreign policy failures, above all America’s decades-long entanglements in Iraq and Afghanistan, were crucial to the rise of this populism. Their legacy makes it all the more crucial for Biden to find his footing on foreign policy. 

In this area, as in so many others, Trump proved to be a disruptive force. He withdrew from multilateral agreements, openly feuded with allies, and disparaged the role of civil service at home and abroad. Yet for all that, his administration enjoyed certain notable successes that Biden would be wise to build on. Principally, against decades of convention and all expectations, five Arab states have not only signed treaties with Israel but also taken meaningful steps toward sustained people-to-people engagement with the Israeli people, heralding the possibility of genuine, warm peace. This welcome trend, a departure from generations of boycotting and exclusion, owes its launch to the inventive leadership of the United Arab Emirates and its consolidation to the centuries-old Kingdom of Morocco, bound to the Jewish world through ties of blood.

Which brings us to Joe Biden’s foreign policy speech. In a clear, ringing voice, Biden announced that “America is back” and “diplomacy is back,“ and made several commitments. He affirmed that the defense of democracy and human rights are bedrock principles of American foreign policy. He adopted the time-honored view that foreign policy is at its most effective when America’s alliances are at their strongest. He embraced the principle that consistency and reliability are valuable ends in and of themselves. These points are at once banal and heartening. America’s many friends abroad welcome a renewed U.S. commitment to alliances and service as a steadfast guarantor of an international liberal order. 

But where American policymakers find conflict between these principles and the major foreign policy decisions of the prior administration, they will also encounter a dilemma. A reflexive reversal of the gamut of Trump precedents risks undermining those very alliances. It would raise precisely the same doubts about American credibility and consistency that Biden’s team so often—and rightly—critiqued about the Trump administration.

And the need for American leadership has never been greater. Covid-19 presents a unique challenge and, as American development of not one but three unique vaccines illustrates, a unique reflection of the country’s tradition as a beacon of hope. Chinese expansionism and authoritarian brutality—ongoing atrocities against the Uighurs come to mind—present an escalating threat.

I hope and trust that the Biden administration will renew and restore the essential role the United States plays for its allies, from Europe to the Middle East to the reaches of Asia. Rarely have a man and a moment been better matched.

Ahmed Charai is a Moroccan publisher and an Atlantic Council Board Director. He is also an international counselor of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a member of the Advisory Board of The Center for the National Interest in Washington and Board of Trustees in Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.

Image: Reuters.

David Saveliev

Russia, Europe

The Navalny protests have failed and Putin is expelling western diplomats who he says joined them.

MOSCOW—As the Kremlin expels Western diplomats, Alexei Navalny’s team is calling protesters off the streets—and admitting its defeat against a Kremlin that learned the lessons of neighboring Belarus. After a call by Navalny’s team, thousands thronged the streets of Moscow last Saturday. As the protesters marched through downtown Moscow, bypassing cars began blasting “We Want a Change”—a song synonymous with the ongoing Belarusian protests and the protest movements that brought down the USSR. The mood was cheerful. Suddenly, scores of riot police appeared out of the night. It took them minutes to encircle the core of the protest--about an hour to pound the protesters up and detain them. The Moscow protest was dead several hours after its inception. Like many other demonstrators, Ruslan Dvorovsky, a middle-aged city councilman was driving in his car among the protesters who flooded Moscow roads. He told me: “Navalny’s sentence is a sentence for all of us.” Two days after the fiasco, Navalny’s second in command, Leonid Volkov, sealed the sentence, by announcing that there will be no more protests in the immediate future.

The 2021 Russian protests were markedly different from the Navalny protests in 2019 and 2017. They were grimmer. The usual Navalny protester is young, pro-Western, creative, and peaceful. They protested with imaginative bright posters and ironic symbols: one such symbol of the 2017 protests was a bright yellow rubber duckie. But this time the mood changed. There were few posters and few smiles. Those who got out on the streets understood the brutality of the possible response: over the years Russian laws changed to allow for harsher sentences and larger fines for protesting. A fifteen-year-old protester, identified as Kostya for safety reasons, told me “I am not afraid. I can tolerate this no longer.” He, like other young Russians, was born after Putin’s ascent to power and has never seen a “Russia Without Putin”—an extremely popular slogan among protesters.

The first protest after Navalny’s arrest simmered with protester violence unseen in Russia since the 1990s. A car with FSB license plates was attacked and the driver was injured, an anti-Navalny demonstrator was brutally beaten, some protesters fought the riot police, and so on. Met with excessive brutality from the Russian security services, protesters didn’t waver and stayed on the streets until late at night. A potential full-on violent protest akin to the Euromaidan in Ukraine or the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States was in the air. A twenty-seven-year-old anarchist protester, who asked to identify as Ivan out of safety concerns, told me that “there were those who wanted blood...they weren’t the majority, but there were none of them before [on earlier Moscow protests in 2017 and 2019].”

However, Navalny organisers blew the opportunity for a real uprising and were ultimately unsuccessful in managing a peaceful protest. Navalny Telegram channels kept spreading the protest thin, calling upon the demonstrators to move around their cities, especially in Moscow, thus breaking up the huge groups of people and making them easy prey to the motorized riot police. Instead of following the example of the Euromaidan or Tahrir Square or Gezi Park, they were seemingly inspired by the constantly moving marches of Belarus. Indeed, many organizers like to draw inspiration from the western neighbor. Still, Minsk protests mobilized 10 percent of the population, while on the 23rd, Navalny adherents could only attract 0.25 percent of Muscovites, according to Artyom Shraibman, a scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

The second big protest proved even more disastrous. A record number of people, over 5,000, were detained, and the protesters were unable to hold any ground whatsoever. In Moscow, the rallying point was changed at least five times during the march that didn’t help the protest’s logistics. I was in Moscow's march that day and saw the visible confusion around me. I myself received a few blows while reporting. Just like in Belarus, the regime was unimpressed with the peaceful protests. No concessions were made, officials ignored the protests and pro-regime media cheered the repressions on. There is every indication that the Kremlin learned from Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s example.

Why were the Russian and Belarusian protests unsuccessful in shattering their regimes? It’s because getting people onto the streets is only the first step. Timothy Garton Ash, a professor at the University of Oxford who studied civil resistance in Eastern Europe since the collapse of communism, notes that authoritarian regimes learned two things from revolutions of the past: “ruthlessness and a skill set for managing [protests]”. Garton Ash also pointed out that  “[a regime] can actually live with people letting off steam on the streets for quite some time...as long as it doesn’t become politically threatening.” Garton Ash argues that for a peaceful protest to be successful, it needs “a clear opposition strategy around achievable goals… simply saying ‘Russia Without Putin’ is not a strategy.”

Why were the protests relatively small, once the size of the Russian population is taken into account? Some view Navalny as a symbol rather than a politician. For Alexey Vasilyev, a famous photographer from the Russian region of Sakha, Navalny is simply a symbol that’s “too big to be ignored.” Many don’t even like Navalny—a young labor organizer who asked to be identified as Jakir, out of fear for his safety, said: “We think that we need to democratize our economy, take our factories out of the oligarchs' hands. This is our principal difference.”

Navalny backers faced one of the most sophisticated modern autocracies. Russian security services often simply outnumbered protesters. They are armed with the best equipment—especially in Moscow—and are motivated by relatively high wages. Major cities are also equipped with sophisticated facial recognition and surveillance systems completely under the security apparatus’ control. 

Navalny’s team is promising a rematch in the spring, but many are skeptical. Jakir, who was organizing during both Belarusian and Russian protests, told me that it is “doubtful whether a wave like this will rise in the spring.” Navalny’s team is hoping for an international pressure campaign on the Kremlin. However, Moscow seems emboldened, as it has announced the expulsion of diplomats from Germany, Sweden, and Poland who it says attended Navalny protests. For now, the Putin regime appears to have the upper hand.

David Saveliev is a journalist and a graduate student at the University of Oxford’s Russia and East European studies program. He specializes in protests and revolutionary politics.

Image: Reuters.

Warfare History Network

History, Europe

Anders told his soldiers, “We shall fight the Germans without respite because we all know that without defeating Germany there will be no Poland.”

Here's What You Need to Know: General Wladyslaw Anders led free Polish forces in their fight against the Nazis.

“They had lost their country but kept their honor,” future British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan said of General Wladyslaw Anders and the Polish II Corps, men in the strange position of trying to win the liberation of their homeland by fighting in Italy.

It is hard to imagine any other general of World War II having a more personally tragic odyssey than Anders: witnessing the devastation of his country, nightmarish captivity at the hands of the Soviet secret police, a trek to freedom across central Asia and the Middle East, and glory on the battlefield of Monte Cassino ending in a lifelong, bitter exile.

A Soldier in the Polish Army

Born in 1892 when Poland was still part of the Russian Empire, Anders deserted from the czarist cavalry during World War I to fight for independence in the Polish Legion of Jozef Pilsudski on the German side. Anders also fought under Pilsudski to defeat the Russian invasion of 1920, but then against Pilsidski when he overthrew the government in May 1926 and established a dictatorship. Pilsudski did not hold it against Anders, who was allowed to stay in the Army. When Pilsudski met him at a reception four years later and saw that Anders was still a colonel, he made a point of promoting him to brigadier general.

Anders was in command of a cavalry brigade just 13 miles from the border with Germany on September 1, 1939. During the opening minutes of World War II, he watched helplessly as Luftwaffe squadrons passed overhead on their way south to destroy the Polish Air Force on the ground and bomb the Polish capital of Warsaw.

In the chaos that followed, Anders had to waste precious days inching along roads jammed to a standstill with panicked refugees and disorganized soldiers under constant air attack while he was trying to reach a new command and then, almost immediately, another. He finally led a surprise counterattack near Warsaw, taking 1,000 German prisoners, before it fell apart because of communication failures.

Compounding the nightmare, on the 17th day of the German invasion, the Soviet Union “flung herself like a hyena,” in Anders’s words, on Poland as part of Stalin’s pact with Hitler. Trying to evacuate his men to Hungary, Anders was wounded for the eighth time in his military career and was captured by the Soviets.

Anders’ Army of Captives

“We are now good friends of the Germans, and together we will fight international capitalism,” the Red Army officer driving Anders away told him. A two-year ordeal with little hope then began for Anders—rat- and bedbug- infested cells, a slice of bread a day, beatings, endless rounds of interrogations, dysentery, and scurvy. In March 1940, he was placed in solitary confinement in Moscow’s dreaded Lubyanka Prison as a prisoner “of special interest to the Central Office of the NKVD.”

A Lubyanka guard seized Anders’s religious medal of the Virgin Mary and crushed it underfoot, saying, “Let us see if this harlot can be of any help to you in a Soviet prison!” When Anders did receive miraculous intervention, the inspiration was more satanic than divine.

Suddenly, on August 4, 1941, Anders was pulled from his cell and marched to the warden’s office. Squinting repeatedly in the unaccustomed light, he faced a bespectacled official who said simply, “Who am I addressing?” asked Anders. “I am Beria,” came the response.

Instead of the customary bullet to the brain he often meted out, the feared NKVD chief Lavrenty Beria informed an astonished Anders that he was to be the commander of a new Polish army composed of Poles imprisoned in the Soviet Union. In prison uniform and barefoot, Anders was then driven out of the Lubyanka in Beria’s own limousine and installed in a four-room luxury apartment with cook, maid, and ample stocks of caviar and vodka. Hitler had attacked the Soviet Union, and Stalin was desperately seeking allies anywhere he could find them—even the London-based Polish government in exile headed by Prime Minister Wladyslaw Sikorski.

Anders had to first determine just how many men he would have to fight with: “I tried to assess the real figure of Polish citizens deported in 1939-1941, but it was extremely difficult to do so. I questioned the Soviet authorities. Eventually I was directed to Fiedotov, an NKVD general who was in charge of this matter, and I had a few conversations with him. He told me in a most confidential manner that the number of Poles deported to Russia amounted to 450,000.… After many months of research and inquiries among our people, who were pouring from thousands of prisons and concentration camps spread out all over Russia, we were able to put the number at 1,500,000 to 1,600,000 people.” Behind those shocking figures were the horror stories of Soviet confinement—only 170 survivors of 20,000 at one slave mine, 3,000 to a man dying at another.

Tens of thousands of Poles, civilians including women and thousands of orphans as well as soldiers, trekked hundreds of miles to Anders’s camps along the Volga River. Several hundred started out from a camp above the Arctic Circle, and the only one who did not die on the 3,000-mile journey did expire the day after he arrived.

The Poles were emaciated, lice-ridden, and diseased but still proud, as Anders found at his first review. “For the first time in my life, and I hope for the last, I took the salute of a march-past of soldiers without boots,” he recalled. “They had insisted on it. They wanted to show the Bolsheviks that even in their bare feet, and ill and wounded as many of them were, they could still bear themselves like soldiers on their first march toward Poland.”

But, ominously, of the 17,000 Polish officers known to have fallen into Soviet hands, only 2,000, including just two of 14 generals, turned up. With Sikorski, Anders met Stalin on December 3, 1941, to press him on their whereabouts.

“They must have escaped,” answered Stalin. “Where could they have escaped to?” asked Anders. “Well, to Manchuria,” was Stalin’s feeble response. In fact, over 4,000 had been massacred by the Russians and were at that moment buried in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, awaiting discovery by the Germans in 1943. These would be the only ones ever accounted for.

“One of the Great Fighting Forces of the War”

The Soviets reneged on their promises and delivered only half the food and medicine that Anders requested. Through the autumn and winter of 1941, the Poles lived in nothing more than canvas tents while dysentery, malaria, typhus, and hepatitis spread.

In the spring, the Soviets began demanding that Anders start sending troops west to the front. Knowing that in their still-weakened state such an order would lead to useless slaughter, Anders instead secured permission in April 1942 to ship 74,000 troops by rail 1,200 miles south to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Some 41,000 civilians followed.

An appalled Polish officer remarked, “A vast tide of human beings … were now flowing into the starving districts of Uzbekistan, to surge round an army organization which was itself undernourished and decimated by disease.”

In August 1942, Anders moved his people further on their exodus, to Krasnovodsk, Turkmenia. From there, he shipped them across the Caspian Sea to the port of Bandar Pahlavi, Iran. The civilians were sent east to camps outside Tehran while Anders and his troops continued west first to Iraq, then Palestine. There he began building his troops with other Poles already fighting in the Middle East in what was to become the 125,000-man Polish II Corps. Historian John Keegan called this storied unit “one of the great fighting formations of the war,” and its future would include international renown for assaults against Monte Cassino in May 1944.

Anders said, “We shall fight the Germans without respite because we all know that without defeating Germany there will be no Poland.”

Assault on Monte Cassino

The ruined abbey atop Monte Cassino was the key to the German Gustav Line, blocking the Allied approach to Rome. Attacks by French, American, New Zealander, then Indian troops had failed to take it. When General Oliver Leese, the commander of the British Eighth Army, proposed that the Poles try next, Anders later wrote: “It was a great moment for me.… I realized that the cost in lives must be heavy, but I realized too the importance of the capture of Monte Cassino to the Allied cause, and most of all to that of Poland, for it would answer once and for all the Soviet lie that the Poles did not want to fight the Germans. Victory would give new courage to the resistance movement in Poland and would cover Polish arms with glory. After a moment’s reflection I answered that I would undertake the task.”

In his order to attack, Anders declared, “We have long awaited the moment for revenge and retribution over our hereditary enemy.”

The Poles fought their way in a veritable shooting gallery of foxholes, pillboxes, bunkers, mines, wire, and devastating interlocking fields of fire defended by ferocious German paratroopers. “I noticed that the Germans very wisely stayed under cover at all times, whereas our men would suddenly stand up to hurl defiance at the enemy. They paid dearly for these and similar acts of bravado,” a Polish officer said.

During the first attack, the Poles took Hill 593, then defended it through four counterattacks until only one officer and eight men were left. They fought their way to the top of Phantom Ridge but could not reach the end of the heights. One Polish soldier described the relentless German shelling: “The explosions sounded like an enormous giant clearing his throat.” Polish phone lines were cut and most of the radio operators killed, making it almost impossible to relay commands and direct counterbattery fire.

“It soon became clear that it was easier to capture some objectives than to hold them,” Anders concluded. He broke off the first attack.

Leese found Anders in his trailer uncharacteristically disheveled and distraught. “What do we do now?” he asked Leese. “Stay where you are, but hang on to what you have. Don’t lose that whatever happens,” responded Leese. “But we must attack again,” said Anders.

“May Your Hearts be Those of Lions”

The Poles did attack again just two days later, with Anders telling his troops: “May your hearts be those of lions.” Cooks, drivers, and staff personnel were thrown in to fill the depleted ranks. The Poles took and this time held Hill 593 and Phantom Ridge.

On the second afternoon, Anders’s headquarters intercepted a German radio message to the defenders in Monte Cassino to evacuate at midnight. The Gustav Line was crumbling, and the abbey was facing encirclement. Anders immediately barreled in a jeep to his division commanders to tell them: “You must hold through tonight. Send patrols to keep up spirits at all the posts. Order your men to stay where they are at all costs.”

The next morning, the Poles cautiously inched up to the monastery to find it had been abandoned. At 10:20 am, May 18, 1944, the Polish flag flew atop Monte Cassino.

Anders described the battlefield: “Corpses of Polish and German soldiers, sometimes entangled in a deadly embrace, lay everywhere, and the air was full of the stench of rotting bodies.… Crater after crater pitted the sides of the hills, and scattered over them were fragments of uniforms and tin helmets, Tommy guns, Spandaus, Schmeissers and hand grenades. Of the monastery itself there remained only an enormous heap of ruin and rubble, with here and there some broken columns.… Priceless works of art, sculpture, pictures, and books lay in the dust and broken plaster.” The capture of Monte Cassino cost the Poles 860 killed and 3,000 wounded.

Monte Cassino earned Anders and the Poles international acclaim. He was awarded the Legion of Merit, the highest American decoration available to a foreigner, in a ceremony, appropriately enough, below Mussolini’s balcony in Rome.

Chief of the British Imperial General Staff, Viscount Alanbrooke, said, “The series of offensives carried out from Cassino onwards would hardly have been possible” without the Poles.

But as they fought north, one Polish soldier said what they all believed: “On the one hand, I was happy that I could bring freedom to these people who were welcoming me at that moment. But on the other hand, I was disappointed that this was not a Polish street that I was walking on, that I wasn’t bringing freedom to my people and my nation, that this was not the fulfillment of our dreams.”

Anders himself said, “We trust that our great Allies and friends—Great Britain and the U.S. —will assist us to make Poland rise again free and independent.” British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met Anders in Italy and assured him: “I and my friend President Roosevelt will never abandon Poland. Put your trust in us.”

However, according to historian Matthew Parker in Monte Cassino: The Hardest Fought Battle of World War II, “much of the rest of [Anders’s] account of the war records the progressive abandonment of the Polish cause by the Allies.”

Betrayal at Yalta

Anders advised against the Warsaw Uprising, accurately predicting the Soviets would stand back and watch the Germans annihilate the Polish Resistance for them. He tried to warn the naïve prime minister of the government in exile, Stanislaw Mikolajczyk (Sikorski had been killed in a plane crash in 1943), about Soviet intentions toward Poland but found “our conversation led to no understanding between us.”

The Yalta Conference, which took place between Allied leaders as the defeat of Nazi Germany approached, was the near breaking point for Anders. Poland was to be left a satellite of the Soviet Union. Thirty of Anders’s men committed suicide, and he requested that his corps be withdrawn from the fighting.

At a stormy meeting in London, Churchill now raged, “You can take away your division! We shall do without them!”

Anders coolly replied, “That is not what you said during the last few years.”

In the end, Anders ordered his men to continue fighting. Harold Macmillan, then British government liaison with the Allied forces in Italy, feared Anders’s men “will disintegrate into a rabble of refugees,” but later admitted, “I had underestimated the marvelous dignity and devotion of Anders and his comrades. They fought with distinction, in the front of the attack, in the last battles.”

The Poles ended the war by capturing Bologna, with Anders receiving the division flag of the German paratroopers who had fought them at Monte Cassino.

Defying Communism in Exile

It would be the last moment of triumph in Anders’s life. He became commander in chief of all Polish forces in the West; then, working out of a small London office, he ran the organization to resettle ex-Polish servicemen abroad. Stripped of his citizenship by the Polish Communists, the very mention of his name outlawed in Poland, Anders to his dying day, in 1970, never forgave Britain and the United States for what he considered the betrayal of his country.

General Wladyslaw Anders was buried with his comrades in the Polish cemetery at Monte Cassino, where an inscription reads:

We Polish soldiers
For our freedom and yours
Have given our souls to God
Our bodies to the soil of Italy
And our hearts to Poland.

This article first appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Maya Carlin

Iraq, Middle East

The restructuring of alliances in the Middle East does not bode well for Tehran’s regional agenda. 

On February 1, Iraqi President Barham Salih joined the secretary-general of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in Baghdad to discuss joint economic, security, and regional concerns. Secretary-General Nayef Falah al-Hajraf confirmed the GCC’s pledge to support Iraq in its fight against terrorism and its commitment to achieving political stability and sovereignty. Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi also met with the GCC leader and ]outlined the necessity for Baghdad to work with its Gulf neighbors to “combat terrorism and the ongoing campaign to pursue its remnants.”

These remarks follow a pair of suicide bombings that tore through a crowded marketplace in Baghdad on January 21. The blasts killed over thirty people and injured dozens of others, rattling a city that had not experienced a large-scale suicide bombing in more than two years. The resurgence of Islamic State (ISIS) activity reflects Iraq’s current instability. In recent years, Iraq has grappled with economic collapse, political corruption, sectarian conflict, and the spread of coronavirus. Additionally, Iraq’s disordered security forces, muddled by the presence of Iranian-backed militias, have paved the way for the return of extremist attacks.

Iraq has also suffered an unreliable power supply in recent years, contributing to public protests and frustration that the government cannot provide this basic necessity. By 2019, between 30 to 40 percent of Iraq’s energy was acquired from Iranian electricity and natural gas sources. In the last year, Tehran has taken advantage of Iraq’s dependency on various occasions, including slashing its exports in December 2020 from nearly 50 million to 5 million cubic meters.

In addition to combatting terrorism, the GCC-Iraq meeting on February 1 outlined power supply sharing proposals that would help Baghdad obtain a more stable energy source from the Gulf. This is not the first time Iraq and the GCC have worked on strengthening relations. In 2019, Baghdad signed an agreement with the GCC to construct a power line from Kuwait that would import 500 megawatts of electricity.

The signing of the GCC solidarity pact in early January boosted the prospects for power-sharing. The cooperative agreement, brokered by the United States and Kuwait, ended Riyadh’s three-year-long blockade of Doha. This newly unified Gulf front can provide Iraq with the regional allies and energy security it desperately needs. In this week’s meeting in Baghdad, Secretary-General al-Hajraf updated Iraqi officials on progress with the power line first discussed in 2019.   

In response to this power-sharing proposal, Iranian-backed groups in Iraq protested Iraqi officials to halt any further collaboration. One militia alleged the GCC is “aiming to destroy what remains of the Iraqi economic security and perpetuate a state of instability in Iraq.” In reality, Tehran’s encroachment on Baghdad’s political, economic, and security spheres is the real roadblock to Iraqi sovereignty.  

The restructuring of Gulf relations with Iraq reflects the consequential shifts the Middle East has experienced in recent months. In 2020, Israel normalized relations with four of its Arab neighbors (UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco) in the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords. Similar to the catalyst driving the Gulf solidarity pact, Israel and its neighbors prioritize the same security concern—Iran. As new these regional alliances unfold, Tehran’s spheres of influence will be tested.  

Maya Carlin is an analyst at the Center for Security Policy in Washington D.C. and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel.

Image: Reuters.

Après les « printemps arabes », la Turquie se trouve désormais en froid avec la Syrie, l'Arabie saoudite, l'Iran et l'Egypte. Alors que le régime connaît une dérive autoritaire, le choix de la « solitude dans la dignité » constitue-t-il une option ? / Égypte, Europe, Irak, Israël, Palestine, (...) / Égypte, Europe, Irak, Israël, Palestine, Proche-Orient, Syrie, Turquie, Censure, Islam, Kurdes, Médias, Parti politique, Politique, Relations internationales, Diplomatie, Autoritarisme, Réveil arabe 2011- - 2015/01

Kris Osborn

F-15EX, Americas

The answer is both yes and no, depending on how much the warplane’s radar cross section has been improved.

There are several much lesser-recognized variables regarding the significance of the upgraded Air Force’s F-15EX jet fighter’s first flight. Alongside the highly visible discussion regarding its more affordable cost and upgraded fourth-generation technologies, there is speculation that the F-15EX could actually be a little stealthy.

Interesting question, as much is being said about how the new, higher-tech aircraft is still a fourth-generation fighter in a global universe of fifth-generation aircraft. Yet to what extent do some of the upgrades potentially push the envelope beyond what is thought of as fourth-generation? Yes, it is a 1980s aircraft, yet not only does it contain quantum-like improvements in computing, sensing and weaponry, but the fuselage itself has been adjusted as well. Naturally its construction, configuration, coating and external shape do not resemble the stealthy exterior of an F-22 or F-35, and it does not appear to have an internal weapons bay, yet the shape of F-15EX does seem to have a few stealth-like attributes.

For instance, my colleague at The National Interest, Mark Episkopos, pointed out in a recent essay that the F-15EX does have conformal fuel tanks, something which not only adds fuel to extend mission dwell time but also smooths out the fuselage into a flatter, more horizontal and therefore slightly stealthier shape. Also, while Boeing developers do explain that the outer mold line of the new F-15EX variant is similar to the legacy aircraft, it does incorporate some modifications intended to strengthen the wing and fuselage.

While not as flat, sloped or rounded as a fifth-generation plane, and most likely not built with a mind to seams, bolts and other attachments specific to procedures needed to construct a stealth aircraft, its fuselage does look somewhat rounded and horizontal. Moreover, one could certainly make the case that it does slightly resemble a stealthy F-22 in some respects with its double engine exhaust and body shape. At the same time, the F-15EX does have a protruding cockpit, much like the original variants, as well as some sharp edges, likely to generate a stronger radar return signal.

The kind of effort with the F-15EX is not fully unprecedented, in the sense that the Navy has spent the last several years working with Boeing to integrate a handful of upgrades, enhancements and service-life extensions for the F/A-18 Super Hornet. Several years ago, the Navy and Boeing added new cockpit technology, new software technology called Magic Carpet to improve carrier landings, infra-red search and track targeting technology and, sure enough, conformal fuel tanks as well. While the Navy hesitated when it came to using the word “stealth” yet clearly the conformal fuel tanks do lower the radar signature for sure, as well as bring other advantages such as extended mission time. Also, perhaps of equal or even greater significance, previous Navy efforts with the F/A-18 also included engineering smoothly-shaped external weapons pods for ordnance carriage in a clear effort to reduce the sharp contours and radar signal return resulting from hanging pointed weapons off of weapons pylons under the wings. The effort was not so much to believe a stealthy F/A-18 had come to life, but rather to try to find ways to help lower the radar cross section and prepare the aircraft for a newer, more advanced and high-tech threat environment.

Yet another much discussed advantage to the F-15EX, which certainly bears upon survivability, is its sizable weapons carrying capacity. For example, the F-15EX is now operational with a cutting-edge weapon called Stormbreaker, a long-range, all-weather precision guided bomb able to track and destroy moving targets at ranges out to 40km. The bomb, slated to also fire from the F-35 and other platforms, is able to use a first of its kind tri-mode seeker using infrared, millimeter wave and semi-active laser targeting.

Kris Osborn is the Defense Editor for the National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

Image: Reuters.

Kris Osborn

Security, Americas

The day is fast approaching when stealth fighter jets, maneuvering in the sky faster than the speed of sound, can incinerate enemy aircraft or even ground targets with long-range, high power precision laser weapons.

The day is fast approaching when stealth fighter jets, maneuvering in the sky faster than the speed of sound, can incinerate enemy aircraft or even ground targets with long-range, high power precision laser weapons.

Ground tests and laboratory demonstrations have been underway for many years now at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico to assess, test and refine emerging laser weapons applications, with a mind to bringing the weapons to the air within just the next few years.

In order to bring the prospect of fighter jet-fired laser weapons closer to reality, the Air Force Research Laboratory recently conducted a massive wargame simulation intended to replicate and analyze the details and performance parameters associated with airborne laser use.

The wargame, conducted by the Air Force’s Directed Energy Utility Concept Experiment, combined F-16 pilots with F-15E weapons system officers to evaluate directed energy applications for air warfare.

“We engaged the warfighters in several battlefield scenarios. They gave us some excellent assessments, identifying where there is potential military utility of directed energy weapons,” Teresa LeGalley, Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Wargaming and Simulation Lead, said in an AFRL essay.

Air-fired lasers have been showing promise for many years now, as scientists, engineers and weapons developers continue to make progress addressing the many challenges associated with integrating power laser technologies onto fighter jet airframes. The principle challenge, developers explain, is simply getting and integrating an application of mobile, expeditionary power in a small, yet powerful enough technical configuration to succeed in arming fighters with lasers. Not only do the laser weapons need to operate within a smaller form factor to reduce weight and drag on a fighter jet, but they need to be powerful enough to achieve an intended combat effect. Also, thermal management is fundamental to laser weapons application, as they need to be properly cooled so as not to overheat the other electronics on an aircraft or disrupt other aspects of flight.

Given the mobile power challenges, one strategy being explored by the Air Force is to first deploy laser weapons on larger planes such as cargo aircraft, as they are better able to accommodate the transportable power requirements as well as the size, weight and cooling dynamics. Should the applications be miniaturized without losing effectiveness, scaling or combat power, then they can migrate onto smaller, faster fighter jets.

What will this do for combat? Given that the weapons travel at the speed of light, fighter jet laser weapons will be much faster than air-to-air missiles and therefore able to attack more quickly. Laser weapons can also perform various kinds of optical surveillance and are scalable, meaning a laser weapon could be set to completely destroy or merely stun and disable an enemy aircraft.

There is yet another interesting dynamic associated with lasers, as they may help increase the stealth properties of an aircraft, or at least help decrease any kind of detectable radar cross section, should they be used in place of easily detectable sharp weapons hanging on external pylons.

Kris Osborn is the Defense Editor for the National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

Image: Reuters.

Kris Osborn

China Missile, Asia

But how good is their system and how does it compare to U.S. missile defense?

Having successfully shot satellites out of the sky with Anti-Satellite weapons more than ten years ago, China is likely to surprise nobody with its ability to fire land-based interceptors into space to knock out intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in flight.

The People’s Liberation Army recently fired off an interceptor into space as part of a midcourse Anti-Ballistic Missile technical test which succeeded in taking out a target over Chinese territory, development which a Chinese newspaper said demonstrated the growing maturity of the technology.

Despite the announcement of this intercept test, stated in the Chinese government-backed Global Times, very little may be known about the actual condition of China’s midcourse missile defense technology. Indeed, many wonder whether it could in any way parallel the emerging new U.S. Ground Based Strategic Deterrent.

A single intercept of an ICBM in space, as the Chinese military reportedly accomplished, says very little about the sophistication and potential effectiveness of its missile defenses. Land-fired interceptors, such as the U.S. Ground-Based Interceptor, have existed for many years and repeatedly demonstrated an ability to knock out ICBM-type targets in testing. However, the best measure of modern missile defense, it would seem, might be an interceptor’s guidance and sensor systems as those are the technologies which will enable an interceptor to discern actual missiles from decoys and track threats closely to the point of intercept. Attacking ICBMs often travel with decoys intended to specifically throw-off, jam, or confuse targeting sensors so interceptors have a much harder time actually hitting the missile, therefore increasing the chances it will continue on to its target.

The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency is, for example, currently engineering a new generation of highly-sensitive interceptor missiles, called Next-Generation Interceptors, equipped with advanced discrimination sensors for improved targeting. It therefore might make sense to view the Chinese missile defense test as an effort to match or rival U.S. advances in the area of ICBM defense.

The Chinese paper did make the significant point that indeed it is the midcourse phase of flight which often provides the best opportunity for intercept, as it is often the longest. An ICBM can typically travel through space for about twenty minutes or so, between its ascent or boost phase and its high speed descent, or terminal phase.

“It’s technically easy to intercept a ballistic missile in the boost phase, because the missile is still close to the ground and accelerating, but it is difficult to get close to the launch site which is usually deep in hostile territory; in terminal phase, the interception is challenging because the speed of the diving missile is very high,” the Global Times writes.

Kris Osborn is the Defense Editor for the National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

Image: Reuters.

Warfare History Network

History, Americas

Hemingway the novelist got the story he wanted, even if Hemingway the sub chaser failed to net his prey.

Here's What You Need to Know: Author Ernest Hemingway tracked German U-boats aboard his yacht in the Caribbean.

“We are going to have Christ’s own bitter time to win it, if, when, and ever,” commented Ernest Hemingway to his friend and editor, Charles Scribner, at the start of World War II. A celebrated author, Hemingway considered the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor reprehensible, at one point asserting that Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox should have been relieved of duty, while ranking Army and Navy commanders at Oahu deserved to be shot. Hemingway was nothing if not opinionated.

But the man who penned such well-received novels as A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls could wield a sword too, in this instance, his yacht, the Pilar. In 1942 and 1943 Hemingway, supplied with an assortment of machine guns, bazookas, and grenades courtesy of the United States government, patrolled the Caribbean Sea. If all went well, Hemingway hoped to lure a German U-boat close to Pilar, before disabling or sinking it with a fusillade of firepower. The marauding German submarines had roamed the Caribbean and sunk thousands of tons of Allied shipping. Hemingway intended to make the hunters the hunted. It was a daring, perhaps foolhardy, plan, in keeping with Hemingway’s own outsized personality.

A Writer Goes to Sea

Ernest Hemingway began life far from the sea in America’s heartland. Born in affluent Oak Park, Illinois, in 1899, Hemingway learned to hunt and fish in the Upper Midwest, his sailing restricted to small freshwater craft. In World War I Hemingway served in an American Red Cross unit on the Italian front, suffered injury from artillery shell fragments, and earned medals from the Italian government. Literary prominence came while he lived in France in the 1920s, with the publication of In Our Time, a collection of short stories, and even more with The Sun Also Rises, a novel about American expatriates in France and Spain. Hemingway’s relocation to Key West, Florida, in 1928 introduced him to the Gulf Stream waters of the Caribbean, a venue that would figure prominently in his later fiction and mark the landsman’s transformation into a sailor.

The Pilar provided the impetus. Hemingway purchased the cabin cruiser from the Wheeler Shipyard in Brooklyn, New York, in 1934 for $7,500. Named after Our Lady of the Pilar at Zarogoza in Spain as well as his second wife, Pauline, the ship arrived by rail in Miami that spring. The black hull built of American oak had a green roof and mahogany cockpit; it was 38 feet long with an 11-foot beam and a draft of three feet, two inches. Powered by a 75-horsepower Chrysler engine and a 40-horsepower Lycorying engine for trolling, the Pilar could reach a top speed of 16 knots and cruise to a range of 500 miles.

Hemingway customized Pilar by lowering the transom 12 inches to pull in fish and increasing the number of gas tanks. Sailing Pilar to Key West, he inspected the controls and checked the engines and was thoroughly pleased. The “boat is marvelous,” he wrote a friend. As his son, Gregory, remarked, Pilar ranked among the great loves of Hemingway’s life, just behind his children, wives, and cats.

The six-bunk vessel hosted numerous sports fishing parties, and the New York Times reported on the author and his guests. Writers and nonwriters, men and women could see the proud skipper show off his skills. Fishing occasionally became a blood sport. Once, while gaffing a shark in 1935, the gaff broke, striking Hemingway on the hand holding his pistol, which had been intended to dispatch the shark. Instead, the bullets bounced off the brass railing and through Hemingway’s two calves, necessitating medical attention. A few days later Hemingway got his revenge. Sharks that descended upon a huge tuna caught by Hemingway started thrashing in blood-stained water, machine-gunned by an angry Hemingway. Pilar would become, in the words of a Hemingway biographer, a “kind of floating whore house and rum factory as well as a fishing boat.”

Pilar’s owner sought adventure, especially sports fishing, and was eager to try his luck. Anything from sailfish to marlin to tuna attracted Hemingway. From Key West it was a short hop to Bimini and Cuba, where even bigger fish swam. The run between Key West and Cuba took roughly four hours, and the trip provided Hemingway material for To Have and Have Not, a tale of a rum runner. The sea now colored his prose.

Hemingway’s “Crook Factory”

Hemingway relocated to Cuba by 1939. The following year he purchased Finca Vigia, a villa outside Havana that he had previously rented, and watched the world situation deteriorate. Having already covered the Spanish Civil War, at times exceeding his role as a wartime journalist by bearing arms, Hemingway seemingly relished risks. In war-torn China, assaulted by the invading Japanese, Hemingway passed along information in 1941 to the United States government, reporting to an Army Intelligence team in Manila. In May, the Office of Naval Intelligence debriefed Hemingway, and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau heard his report.

The U.S. entry into World War II prompted Hemingway to oversee an ad hoc intelligence operation in Havana in 1942, convinced that Falangists (Spanish Fascists) residing in Cuba represented a potential fifth column. The Finca’s guest house became the headquarters of Hemingway’s counterintelligence unit, the “crook factory” as he termed it, designed to keep tabs on suspects. The American ambassador, Spruille Braden, appreciative of Hemingway’s efforts, asserted that he “built up an excellent organization and did an A-one job.” Hemingway’s third wife, Martha Gellhorn, was less convinced, critical of the crook factory’s noisy nighttime parties and heavy drinking at the Finca. It seemed a strange way to conduct spying.

Going After a Big Fish

Offshore in the Caribbean Sea, U-boats were making even greater noise in a rich hunting ground that offered an array of pickings. Such cities as Galveston, New Orleans, and Houston, all of them major oil ports, attracted German naval interest. Aruba was the site of the biggest oil refinery in the world, a prime source of diesel, aviation fuel, kerosene, gasoline, and fuel oil, all of them vital to the Allied war effort.

On February 16, 1942, U-boats descended on Aruba, sinking tankers and shelling the refinery. Merchant ships carrying bauxite—a critical component for aluminum production—from British and Dutch Guiana provided other tempting targets. Sub attacks in 1942 at the height of the German Caribbean campaign sank 263 ships, exceeding total losses on the North Atlantic convoy route.

In Cuba, a restless Hemingway decided to equip Pilar as a sub chaser. Fascinated by the exploits of Q-ships, disguised to deceive U-boats into surfacing and then attack them during World War I, Hemingway saw possibilities of a U-boat capture by Pilar. British mariners in the Great War had disguised and armed civilian vessels, luring U-boats by outright deceit before pouncing with quickly uncovered weaponry. A camouflaged Pilar posing as a fishing boat, while in reality armed to the teeth, could continue the tradition of naval deception.

The fact that U-boats sometimes surfaced to confiscate fish and water from civilian vessels gave the venture a thin veneer of plausibility. Once a U-boat was crippled, Hemingway could radio for naval assistance, finish the job, and perhaps secure valuable German codebooks.

Other motivations may have influenced Hemingway, too. Journalists back home wondered about his contribution, or perceived lack thereof, to the war effort. A man wounded in World War I who also bore arms during the Spanish Civil War appeared strangely inactive. Nor was Hemingway able to publicize his crook factory activities beyond a few intimates. Intelligence work ashore was lonely, often bereft of notice. By definition, if not always in reality, Hemingway’s operation had to be kept quiet, at least to the press.

Yet the author eventually grew bored. Hemingway found typing reports tedious work. Where was the danger in such activity? Capturing a U-boat offered more excitement. It could even be trumpeted in a blaze of publicity loud enough to silence any critics. If not, Hemingway would still have the satisfaction of an independent command aboard his beloved Pilar.

A “Doubting Thomason”

Hemingway approached Ambassador Braden to help equip Pilar. According to Braden, Hemingway said, “I can really have myself a party provided you will get me a bazooka to punch holes in the side of a submarine, machine guns to mow down the people on the deck, and hand grenades to lob down the conning tower.”

Braden could not say no. Hemingway was, after all, a famous American author. If Hemingway acquired hard-to-get rationed gasoline, naval equipment, guns, and supplies, it could all be chalked up to the war effort. Besides, Secretary Knox had asked East Coast yachtsmen to employ their vessels against the German Navy. Should not Hemingway be permitted to play his own role?

Pilar’s wooden structure, too fragile to mount the .50-caliber machine guns Hemingway wanted, left the crew with light machine guns. Bazookas and grenades carefully hidden below deck complemented the arsenal. Hemingway recruited Cubans, Spaniards, and Americans, including for a time his two young sons, Patrick and Gregory, along with a Marine sergeant, Don Saxon, sent by the government to work the radio. Critics were airily swept aside. When the chief of naval intelligence for Central America, U.S. Marine Colonel John W. Thomason, certain that no German submarine would venture near Pilar, urged Hemingway to modify his plan, the famous author dismissed him as a “doubting Thomason.”

Searching for U-boats

So how would Hemingway proceed? The first task was to reconnoiter and patrol the sea-lanes in the Caribbean near Cuba, noting any surfaced U-boat and reporting it to the Navy. Listening to German naval chatter on the radio might give Pilar’s crew other clues to the enemy’s activities. Pilar could also venture into isolated cays, searching for German munitions and armaments, or perhaps discover caches of food and water placed there by Axis sympathizers. Naturally, the coup de grace, the capture of a German submarine, remained foremost in Hemingway’s thoughts. Several years after the war, he confidently informed his friend A.E. Hotchner, “A U-boat not on alert could have been taken by our plan of attack.”

His enthusiasm was unshakable.

To facilitate the sub attack, the Pilar carried atop its flying bridge a specially made bomb. The coffin-shaped explosive had handles enabling two strong men to toss it into the U-boat’s conning tower, presumably after gunfire had mowed down German crewmen on deck. It would certainly be a tricky operation. The submarine tower would be slightly higher than Pilar’s bridge, and the bomb barely small enough to fit down the narrow conning tower hatch. Once thrown, the explosive might well miss the hatch, sending fragments toward Hemingway and his crew, a point that a concerned Martha Gellhorn tried to impress upon her stubborn husband.

In 1942, Hemingway took short cruises, returning to Havana at night to deliver his reports. By 1943, he extended his range from a base camp on Cayo Confites, a flat sandy isle with a few palm trees where Hemingway anchored Pilar. Supplies of fuel, food, water, ice, and alcohol would be obtained from a naval facility. Daily patrols involved monitoring sea-lanes, spotting vessels, exploring tiny islands and cays, and watching for anything unusual. When exploring shallow waters, care had to be taken to avoid harming Pilar’s hull. Running aground might also leave them easy prey for the enemy.

A Fruitless Mission

Actual results proved spotty. For instance, in December 1942, Pilar observed a Spanish vessel, the freighter Marques de Comillas, which appeared to have a smaller ship, possibly a submarine, in tow. Hemingway tried to follow the sub before it faded from sight, having radioed naval authorities about the suspicious transaction. In Havana, the ship was stopped, the crew and passengers questioned by FBI agents. No one admitted seeing a sub. Listening to U-boat chatter via radio became an exercise in futility. No one spoke fluent German, making the task all the more difficult.

Nevertheless, Gregory Hemingway, Ernest’s youngest son, retained fond memories of life aboard Pilar. That Hemingway employed his sons in the operation says something about his parenting skills. At least one biographer, Kenneth Lynn, has suggested that Hemingway’s sub chasing more resembled a lark than a serious naval patrol. Still, from 11-year-old Gregory’s perspective the enterprise was a high seas adventure. Armed men took position in the stern and the bow, while he, the youngest member of a multinational crew, held a rifle.

Escapades ashore furnished additional excitement. At one point, while searching caves for German supplies, a crewman ordered Gregory and his older brother Patrick through a narrow passage. Gregory was at first overjoyed and later dejected to find that a few bottles of German beer had not been abandoned by a U-boat crew. It was likely that American tourists had tossed them away.

Gregory Hemingway’s sea adventure reached a climax near the end of his holiday. Pilar had actually sighted a U-boat 1,000 yards away.

“Battle stations,” roared his father.

The crew scrambled into position, with brother Patrick holding a .303 Lee-Enfield rifle and Gregory clutching his mother’s old gun, a Mannlicher Schoenauer rifle. Crewmen unmoored the bomb from the flying bridge. However, the U-boat sped away uninterested in the disguised fishing boat. The angry crew hurled insults at the Germans. As for the phlegmatic Papa Hemingway, young Gregory distinctly remembered his mocking speech about the episode, capped by telling his son to fix him a gin and tonic.

“The Ethylic Department”

Gellhorn developed a different perspective about her husband’s adventure. She was a seasoned journalist who fell in love with Hemingway during the Spanish Civil War. Dangerous assignments rarely fazed her. Sheer foolishness was something else. She had cautioned Hemingway about the plan’s shortcomings to no avail. Having seen the deterioration of Hemingway’s crook-factory spy ring, Gellhorn’s skepticism of the sub-chasing scheme mounted. She eventually concluded that Hemingway’s adventure was an excuse to drink at sea and hurl grenades at buoys.

Hemingway never shared his third wife’s opinion. To him, the Pilar patrols were serious business.

He informed Martha in early 1943: “I have so much to tell but have gotten so used to writing letters that will be censored that I have lost ability to put anything down.”

Even so, certain issues, namely alcohol, appeared noteworthy enough to mention. Drinking remained a popular Hemingway pastime, and two open shelves down in Pilar’s cabin, referred to by Hemingway as “The Ethylic Department,” housed his liquor supply. His shipmates drank freely when alcohol was available, but their skipper modestly made do with three and sometimes only two and a half drinks per day. He hoped to inspire Sergeant Saxon, their hard-drinking radio man, to cut back. Getting Saxon down to four drinks a day, instead of his usual 20, was a significant victory.

Too little booze could still rattle the normally hard-drinking author. By the summer of 1943, Hemingway complained to Martha that going without gin for a week and wine for six days was a wartime sacrifice. In response, he resorted to rum. When stirred with grapefruit juice, lime, and ice, he informed Martha, it made a decent cocktail, but a seven-day trip with only rum cocktails constituted a hardship.

Hemingway’s crew felt the strain as well. Two of them muttered about the absence of spirits, according to young Gregory, threatening to seize the helm and turn the ship to the nearest bar. No mutiny occurred.

By July 1943, the U-boat war in the Caribbean Sea was winding down. A coded message ordered Pilar home. The men were worn, and the boat was in bad shape. Pilar’s drive shaft had to be realigned, and the engine gaskets and rings needed replacing. Although Hemingway took a repaired Pilar out for short cruises in the autumn, his role as a sub chaser was effectively over. Perhaps it was just as well. A growing sense of frustration gnawed at him.

In his only known letter written aboard Pilar at sea, Hemingway informed a friend on June 30, 1943: “I would have written you Old Mike many times but there is nothing that I know or that could be of interest that I can write. Been that way for a year or more and working like a bastard all the time. Wish I could see you though and that we could have a few drinks and talk things over.”

Wartime censorship no doubt kept Hemingway from revealing Pilar’s covert mission, but the author’s disgruntled tone was plain enough.

Did Hemingway’s Sub-Chasing Scheme Really Have a Reasonable Chance of Success?

The answer appears to be no. From the start, Pilar was overmatched; her crew, however determined, relied upon light machine guns, grenades, and bazookas, while German U-boats typically had an 88mm deck gun complemented by lighter weapons. Some U-boats carried 105mm deck guns. A single shell from either of these would have destroyed Pilar.

In addition, most U-boats stayed submerged during the day, surfacing to charge their batteries at night when Pilar was in port. Pilar lacked sonar and radar, useful implements for submarine warfare, making Hemingway’s plan more of a long shot. He gambled that Pilar would attract a passing sub’s curiosity, a slender straw of hope in the overall balance of Caribbean warfare.

Contemporaries remained divided over Hemingway’s sub chasing. The only Cuban to capture a U-boat off his country’s waters openly scoffed at the author’s plan. Captain Mario Raminez Delgado dubbed Hemingway “a playboy who hunted submarines off the Cuban coast as a whim.”

Raminez Delgado at least had action to back up his statement, Hemingway had none.

Yet, Hemingway had monitored the sea-lanes and sent in reports, much as any conscientious navy man might do, expending considerable time and effort. His contribution, if more well intentioned than substantive, convinced Ambassador Braden that the service rendered was important. In Hemingway’s own mind, he had gathered valuable naval intelligence, with Pilar paying the price in hard usage and repairs.

We do know what Ernest Hemingway would have preferred. As a novelist whose personal experience colored his art, he mentally filed away the sub hunt experience in hopes of reproducing in print his World War II sea adventure. In his novel Islands in the Stream, published after his death, Hemingway’s main character, Thomas Hudson, is an artist turned sub chaser patrolling the Caribbean. Word of a German crew escaped off a destroyed U-boat sends Hudson and his men in in pursuit. The two forces meet, leaving Hudson injured and dying, but the Germans have been killed.

Hemingway the novelist got the story he wanted, even if Hemingway the sub chaser failed to net his prey.

This article first appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Ethen Kim Lieser

Health, Americas

The survey further revealed that the $1,400 direct payments to Americans are more popular than the overall proposal itself—with 78 percent of respondents supporting the stimulus checks, while 18 percent opposing them.

As Democrats move forward with President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus rescue bill despite Republican calls to pare back the legislation, a new poll has found that more than two-thirds, or 68 percent, of Americans support the proposal, while only 24 percent oppose the measure.

The Quinnipiac University poll, taken from last Thursday to Monday, surveyed 1,075 adults and had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

The survey further revealed that the $1,400 direct payments to Americans are more popular than the overall proposal itself—with 78 percent of respondents supporting the stimulus checks, while 18 percent opposing them.

A recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll also saw similar results: “The majority of Biden’s proposals garner at least twice as much support as opposition,” the study said. “Nearly half are favored by more than 60 percent of Americans.”

The poll also discovered that 61 percent of respondents favor Biden’s push for a $15 per hour federal minimum wage.

On Wednesday, Biden, responding to Republican pressure, told House Democrats that he would be open to limiting eligibility for the direct payments, but he added that he would not cut the overall amount.

A group of Republican senators, who are wary of the size and scope of the direct payments after Congress approved a $900 billion bill in December, has already offered the president a $618 billion plan.

The Republicans’ pushback comes after a recent study that has suggested that not giving out any sort of payment to households making more than $75,000 a year would be the most economically prudent.

The analysis, conducted by nonpartisan, nonprofit Opportunity Insights, showed that families earning under about $75,000 generally spend the money quickly. But for households earning more than $78,000 (and singles earning more than $50,000), they are likely to spend just $45 of a $600 stimulus check over the first month. Scaled up to $1,400 payments, that would mean only $105 would be spent.

“Targeting the next round of stimulus payments toward lower-income households would save substantial resources that could be used to support other programs, with minimal impact on economic activity,” the study’s authors wrote.  

The research also revealed that the total price tag to send out another round of checks to couples earning more than $75,000 and singles earning more than $50,000 would be $200 billion—of which $15 billion, or 7.5 percent, would be spent.

Others have brought up the idea of using stimulus checks as pay incentives to get Americans vaccinated so that the country reaches herd immunity more quickly. For example, Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio) recently admitted that he would be willing to green-light $1,400 stimulus checks to people who receive the shot.

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

Image: Reuters

John Austerman

military, Americas

Waiting to act on AI integration into our weapons systems puts us behind the technological curve required to effectively compete with our foes.

Finding an effective balance between humans and artificial intelligence (AI) in defense systems will be the sticking point for any policy promoting the distancing from “humans in the loop.” Within this balance, we must accept some deviations when considering concepts such as the kill chain. How would a progression of policy look within a defense application? Addressing the political, technological, and legal boundaries of AI integration would allow the benefits of AI, notably speed, to be incorporated into the kill chain. Recently, former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter stated “We all accept that bad things can happen with machinery. What we don’t accept is when it happens amorally.” Certainly, humans will retain the override ability and accountability without exception. Leaders will be forever bound by the actions of AI guided weapon systems, perhaps no differently than they would be responsible for the actions of a service member in combat and upholding ethical standards of which the AI has yet to grasp.

The future of weapon systems will include AI guiding the selection of targets, information gathering and processing, and ultimately, delivering force as necessary. Domination on the battlefield will not be in traditional means, rather conflicts dominated by AI with competing algorithms. The normalcy of a human-dominated decisionmaking process does provide allowances for AI within the process, however, not in a meaningful way. At no point does artificial intelligence play a significant role in making actual decisions towards the determination of lethal actions. Clearly, the capability and technology supporting integration have far surpassed the tolerance of our elected officials. We must build confidence with them and the general public with a couple of fundamental steps.

First, information gathering and processing can be controlled primarily by the AI with little to no friction from officials. This integration, although not significant by way of added capability in a research and development (R&D) perspective, will aid in building confidence and can be completed quickly. Developing elementary protocols for the AI to follow for individual systems such as turrets, easy at first then slowly increasing in difficulty, would allow the progression of technology from an R&D standpoint while incrementally building confidence and trust. The inclusion of recognition software into the weapon system would allow specific target selections, be it civilians or terrorists, of which could be presented, prioritized, and then given to the commander for action. Once functioning within a set of defined perimeters confidently, you can increase the number of systems for overlapping coverage. A human can be at the intersection of all the data via a command center supervising these systems with a battlement management system; effectively being a human “on” the loop with the ability to stop any engagements as required or limiting AI roles based on individual or mission tolerance.

This process must not be encapsulated solely within an R&D environment. Rather, transparency to the public and elected officials alike, must know and be accepting. Yes, these steps seem elementary, however, they are not being done. Focus has been concentrated on capability development without a similar concern for associated policy development when both must progress together. Small concrete steps with sound policy and oversight are crucial. Without such an understanding, decisionmakers cannot in their conscience approve, rather defaulting to the safe and easy answer, “no.” Waiting to act on AI integration into our weapons systems puts us behind the technological curve required to effectively compete with our foes. It would be foolish to believe our adversaries and their R&D programs are being held up on AI integration due to moral and public support requirements; the Chinese call it “intelligentized” war and have invested heavily. Having humans “on” the loop during successful testing and fielding will be the bridge to additional AI authorities and public support necessary for the United States to continue to develop these technologies as future warfare will dictate.

John Austerman is an experienced advisor to senior military and civilian leaders focusing on armaments policy primarily within research and development. Experience with 50+ countries and the Levant to include hostile-fire areas and war zones.

Image: Reuters.

Warfare History Network

History, Europe

German paratroopers fought stubborn defenders during operations against Denmark and Norway.

Here's What You Need to Know: German airborne operations had important psychological consequences on Allied forces.

The Polish Campaign in 1939 demonstrated the awesome effectiveness of aircraft as weapons platforms for close ground support. Along with flexible control of tactical operations, it became part of the concept popularly referred to as blitzkrieg. The effectiveness of this doctrine was again demonstrated by the German military during the Norwegian campaign in 1940.

This campaign also demonstrated the usefulness of aircraft as vehicles for transporting supplies and reinforcements. The Luftwaffe made a significant contribution to the reinforcement and supply effort by successfully carrying out the largest air transport operation in history up to that time. Largely due to the efforts of the Luftwaffe, for more than two months the Germans were able to hold on to an increasingly precarious beachhead in and around Narvik over the great distances that separated those forces from the other beachheads.

The Germans were also pioneers in the use of airborne troops and initially planned to use paratroopers in the Polish campaign; however, German success was so quick and crushing that they were not used in air assault roles. The invasion of Denmark and Norway in 1940, codenamed Weserübung, Exercise Weser, saw the first use of the vertical envelopment concept to seize airfields and key objectives far behind enemy lines. The assault on Sola Airfield and the airborne operation against Dombås were the first contested airborne operations in history. These early operations revealed problems familiar to present-day planners and executors of such operations.

The German Drop into Scandinavia

The German parachute forces in 1940 were organized into the 7th Air Division under Luftwaffe command. The division—organized along the lines of an infantry division—was commanded by Maj. Gen. Kurt Student, but it did not reach full strength until 1941. In April 1940, it consisted of two regiments, each having only one battalion.

The 1st Regiment was commanded by Colonel Bruno Bräuer. The 1st Battalion, commanded by Captain Erich Walther, constituted the airborne assault force for the invasion of Denmark and Norway. One of four companies was employed to seize airfields and bridges in Denmark, while the other three companies were used in the invasion of Norway.

Company 4, commanded by Captain Walther Gericke, had two primary missions in Denmark. One platoon of 36 troops, commanded by 1st Lieutenant Eckleben, parachuted directly onto the two airfields at Aalborg (Aalborg East and West) at 7:15 am on April 9 from three Junkers Ju-52s and secured them without resistance for the landing of an infantry battalion. The paratroopers also seized the bridge over Limfjord north of Aalborg without opposition.

The mission of the rest of Company 4 was to capture the 3,200-meter Storstrøm Bridge connecting Falster Island with Seeland Island and hold it until the arrival of Group Buck, led by Colonel Buck, commander of the 305th Infantry Regiment. The bridge consisted of two spans. The longest span by far was the one from Falster to a small island called Masnedö. A much shorter span connected Masnedö to Seeland. There was an old fort on Masnedö that the Germans believed was active and needed to be captured in order to secure the bridge.

Company 4 was scheduled to make its parachute assault on Masnedö at 6:15 am from nine Ju-52s, capture the fort, and secure both bridge spans. The assault was delayed 20 minutes due to weather conditions, but the paratroopers quickly captured the fort, which was not manned. Simultaneous with the arrival of the paratroopers, engineers from Group Buck were landed on Falster from ships and secured the bridge between Falster and Masnedö. The paratroopers, meeting no resistance, proceeded to secure the second span between Masnedö and Seeland.

Unexpected Difficulties

The German assault units for the attack on Norway consisted of six task forces. Task Force 5, to be landed by ship, had the mission of capturing Oslo and the Norwegian government early on the morning of April 9. The Germans believed that this would lead to a Norwegian surrender and a peaceful occupation of the country. This plan was frustrated when Task Force 5 met unexpected resistance as it approached the capital’s last line of defense, the Oscarborg fortress complex. The task force’s flagship, the brand new heavy cruiser Blücher, was sunk by gunfire and torpedoes and about 1,000 sailors and soldiers were killed.

The Germans also planned to capture Fornebu Airport southwest of Oslo by parachuting two airborne companies directly on the airfield. The 1st and 2nd Companies of the 1st Parachute Regiment, commanded respectively by 1st Lieutenant Herbert Schmidt and Captain Kurt Gröschke, were carried in 29 Ju-52s. The plan called for these troops to seize the airfield quickly, allowing German transport aircraft to land two infantry battalions and an engineer company from the 324th Infantry Regiment.

The German airdrop at Fornebu was cancelled when the aircraft carrying the paratroopers encountered heavy fog over the drop zone. Most aircraft turned around and landed at Aalborg, captured by the Germans that morning. One aircraft crashed into the ocean, and 12 paratroopers from Company 1 were lost along with the plane’s crew. Three planes carrying paratroopers did not return to Aalborg but joined the transport aircraft that later landed at Fornebu. The paratroopers at Aalborg were brought to Norway on April 13.

The landing of transport aircraft at Fornebu was predicated on German paratroopers having secured the airfield. Through a communications failure or a misunderstanding of orders, some of the transport aircraft continued on to Fornebu after the airdrop was cancelled, and they landed along with a squadron of German Messerschmitt 110 fighters, the protective force for the airdrop. The Messerschmitts did not have sufficient fuel to return to either Germany or Denmark.

The German planes landed despite heavy Norwegian fire, which resulted in two German aircraft destroyed and five severely damaged. This was in addition to five shot down or forced to make emergency landings as a result of aerial fights with seven Norwegian Gloster Gladiator fighters stationed at Fornebu. The number of Germans killed is not given, but the Norwegians were forced to withdraw at 8:30 am when they exhausted their ammunition. The Germans quickly took control of the airfield and signaled for subsequent waves to land. Oslo was surrendered to the Germans at 2 pm.

Sola Airfield: A Primary Strategic Objective

Stavanger is the fourth-largest city in Norway, and Sola Airfield, about 10 kilometers southwest of the city, was the best airfield in the country in 1940. Sola was a primary strategic objective since it was critical for air operations against naval forces in the North Sea and was located only 300 miles from Scapa Flow, Great Britain’s most important naval base.

The German plan called for the seizure of Sola Airfield by Company 3, 1st Parachute Regiment, on the morning of April 9. The company was commanded by 1st Lieutenant Freiherr Heinz Henning von Brandis. The paratroopers would be dropped directly on the airfield from 12 Ju-52s. These aircraft along with the Ju-88 bombers and Me-110s were on a one-way mission since they did not have sufficient fuel to return to Germany or Denmark. Follow-up forces, consisting of the regimental staff and two battalions of the 193rd Infantry Regiment commanded by Colonel Karl von Beeren, were to air-land as soon as the airfield was in German hands. The Norwegian Army depot at Madlamoen, three miles from Stavanger, was to be occupied as soon as Sola was secured.

The 1st Battalion, 2nd Norwegian Infantry Regiment was located at Madlamoen. It had arrived there on March 29, after less than three months training in eastern Norway. The battalion was assigned to Colonel G. Spørck, commander of the 8th Norwegian Infantry Regiment.

Sola Airfield was alerted to the possibility of a German attack around noon on April 8. However, the battalion at Madlamoen was not alerted until 1:30 am on April 9. One infantry platoon and one heavy weapons platoon from this battalion, a total of 64 men, were at Sola on April 9. The heavier defensive weapons consisted of four infantry machine guns and six machine guns used in an air defense role.

An Army bomber squadron of eight aircraft was stationed at Sola. This squadron was in the process of moving to eastern Norway to be replaced at Sola by a reconnaissance squadron. The exchange had already started with the departure of the ground crews. Because of these transfers, there were 10 Norwegian aircraft at Sola on April 9.

Construction of concrete bunkers at Sola had begun, but only one was completed by the day of the invasion. Most of the Norwegian troops from the two platoons were in open positions at the north end of the field near the hangars and administrative buildings. The completed bunker on the eastern side of the field was occupied with one antiaircraft machine gun. Three antiaircraft machine guns were located at the northwest corner of the airfield and two at the southeast corner, all in uncovered positions.

The Assault on Sola

The German assault on Sola Airfield began with dive-bomber attacks intended to eliminate Norwegian resistance while minimizing damage to facilities. Eight Ju-88s appeared just as nine Norwegian aircraft were in the process of taking off for eastern Norway. German reports that most Norwegian aircraft were destroyed are inaccurate. One aircraft was hit and unable to take off while another was damaged on takeoff and forced to make an emergency landing. The remaining seven aircraft arrived safely in eastern Norway.

The Norwegian machine guns opened an intense fire against the German planes, but the small-caliber rounds had no effect on the Ju-88s. The water-cooled Norwegian machine guns overheated, causing the guns to jam to the point where only single rounds could be fired. The heavy German bombing and strafing and the inability to inflict any damage on the German planes were morale breakers for the two Norwegian platoons, which withdrew rather hastily.

The second phase of the attack began with the arrival of a formation of 10 Ju-52s. There had been 12, but one returned to Germany while another landed in Denmark. Approximately 110 paratroopers exited the aircraft at low altitude, between 200 and 250 feet. Most landed in an area covered by the machine gun in the only completed concrete bunker.

The lone machine gunner, Private Gallus Johansen, made up for his comrades’ lack of determination. The Germans who landed within the field of fire of the Norwegian machine gun were rather helpless and had difficulty finding cover and retrieving the weapons canisters that landed on the airfield. Until they could retrieve the canisters, they were armed with only pistols and grenades. A substantial number of Germans were killed or wounded.

The German losses were between 10 and 40, according to Norwegian reports. The German casualty reports also vary greatly from a low of three killed and eight wounded to 18 killed and about 30 wounded.

It did not take the paratroopers who landed outside Johansen’s field of fire long to work their way behind the bunker and throw hand grenades through its firing aperture. Johansen was wounded and captured after the Germans used explosives to open the bunker door. The airfield was under German control by 9 am. The Norwegian losses were a few lightly wounded and 40 prisoners, mostly air corps personnel.

Colonel Spørck decided not to move the battalion at Madlamoen against Sola because it was his only active unit and he wanted to preserve it as a covering force for the mobilization of the 8th Infantry Regiment. With total German air dominance, this was probably the best decision. The battalion at Madlamoen moved eastward to avoid entrapment on the Stavanger Peninsula. The evacuation of the base was completed before the Germans arrived at 11 am.

Meanwhile, the third phase of the German operation, air-landing part of the 193rd Infantry Regiment, started shortly after 9 am. Approximately 200 aircraft brought in two battalions in the course of the day. Stavanger was occupied by the German troops without resistance during the afternoon.

Führungschaos

The critical situation in Norway and the slow progress of the drive from Oslo brought on a crisis in the German high command. The German troops in the various beachheads were isolated because Weserübung had failed to achieve its most important objective—a Norwegian surrender. Rumors of planned Allied landings at Åndalsnes and Namsos reached the Germans beginning on April 13.

Hitler’s primary military advisers, General Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht—Armed Forces High Command), and Maj. Gen. Alfred Jodl, chief of Operations at OKW, received a full preview of Hitler’s sometimes irrational behavior when confronted with bad news later in the war.

The word führungschaos (leadership chaos) in Jodl’s diary gives an apt description of the tension and excitement at the highest echelons. Jodl wrote in his diary, “We are again confronted with complete chaos in the command system. Hitler insists on issuing orders on every detail; any coordinated effort within the existing military command structure is impossible.”

Arguments erupted between Hitler and Keitel, Jodl, and Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, the commander of the German Navy. The disagreements between Hitler and Keitel became so heated on April 19 that Keitel walked out of the meeting. Hitler wanted Raeder to use two large ocean liners to bring a division to Trondheim. Raeder told Hitler that the whole German Navy would be required to escort the two liners and that the result would likely be the loss of the Navy, the liners, and the division. Hitler relented but insisted on the use of all means to quickly open a land route between Oslo and Trondheim.

The Germans established an air bridge between Oslo and Trondheim starting on April 14. In addition to much-needed supplies, the airlift brought one engineer and five infantry battalions to Trondheim by April 20.

To further speed the link up between their separated forces, the Germans launched an airborne operation in the Norwegian rear at Dombås. This was an important road and railroad junction, where the railroad and roads from Oslo to Trondheim intersect with those leading west to Åndalsnes. While the primary goal of the operation about 225 kilometers behind Norwegian lines at the southern end of Lake Mjøsa was to prevent Allied forces from reaching the southern front, it would also serve as a blocking position for any Allied attempt against Trondheim.

The airborne operation was launched on April 14. It was executed in all haste, without adequate intelligence—aerial reconnaissance could not be carried out because of bad weather—no time for planning, and inadequate forces. When it appeared that the airborne operation against Dombås might be cancelled because of bad weather, General Karl Kitzinger, commander of Air Region Norway as of April 15, sent his chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Wilhelm Süssmann, to the airport to ensure the operation—ordered by Hitler through the OKW—was carried out.

Fifteen German aircraft carried the reinforced Company 1, 1st Parachute Regiment (185 men). The company commander, 1st Lieutenant Herbert Schmidt, had the only map for the Dombås area. He used it to brief his five platoon leaders before the operation.

Landing in Dombås

Dombås is located in the mountains at an elevation of about 2,100 feet, but the surrounding mountains are much higher. The German paratroopers had no winter or camouflage clothing. The soldiers had provisions for only three days, and ammunition was limited to what could be carried. Each aircraft carried four weapon canisters that were dropped separately. These contained a large number of automatic weapons, including 22 MG-34 machine guns. Some of these canisters could not be located in the darkness after the drop.

The element of surprise was lost when the German aircraft stayed below the clouds and followed the railway on their flight to Dombås. They soon received antiaircraft fire from Norwegian forces, and one aircraft, carrying part of the communications platoon, was damaged by antiaircraft fire and forced to make an emergency landing near Lillehammer. All survived the crash, but the Germans opened fire on approaching Norwegian troops. One German was killed and three wounded in the exchange that followed. Thirteen Germans were captured.

The German aircraft had difficulties finding suitable drop zones in the Dombås area since there were only a few breaks in the cloud cover and they were receiving heavy fire from Norwegian forces. Furthermore, the aircraft had to return quickly to Oslo because of low fuel levels and approaching darkness. According to Norwegian sources, the drops took place shortly after 6 pm, while some German sources say they took place from 7:45 until after 10 pm.

The paratroopers were dropped in different locations over a 30-kilometer area around Dombås, from Lora about 25 kilometers west of Dombås to Folkstua eight kilometers to its northeast. Not a single platoon was able to assemble all its personnel.

Lieutenant Schmidt and the 12 paratroopers in his aircraft jumped into an area six kilometers south of Dombås, along the rail line and road, and some of the weapons canisters could not be located after the drop.

The aircraft carrying the 1st Platoon under Lieutenant Becker dropped its paratroopers in the Folkstua area eight kilometers northeast of Dombås. One trooper was killed as he became entangled in power lines, and six were badly injured as the high winds dragged them along the ground. Some of the weapons containers could not be found. The wounded were left at a local farm.

First Lieutenant Ernst Mössinger’s 2nd Platoon was dropped near the Lie farm about three kilometers south of Dombås. One paratrooper was killed on landing. One Ju-52 from Mössinger’s platoon was shot down, with four killed and three wounded. Some paratroopers managed to jump southeast of Dombås before the aircraft crashed. Most of those who jumped before the crash were wounded in action with Norwegian forces and surrendered on April 15. Lieutenant Mössinger was able to assemble about two-thirds of his platoon and link up with Lieutenant Schmidt.

The 3rd Platoon, under Sergeant Bobrowski, landed on Hill 1173 on the eastern outskirts of Dombås. Seven paratroopers mistakenly exited the aircraft too early, over the town of Dombås. Two were killed in fighting with Norwegian forces and the rest were captured. Bobrowski’s platoon encountered Norwegian forces four kilometers south of Dombås, and two paratroopers were killed. The remainder of the platoon linked up with Lieutenant Schmidt on April 15.

The 4th Platoon, under Feldwebel Alexander Uhlig, overshot the target area and landed about two kilometers southeast of Lora along the Dombås-Åndalsnes rail line. Uhlig started moving his men in the direction of Dombås.

The communications platoon of 24 men landed near Hill 1578 about 12 kilometers southwest of Dombås. One paratrooper exited the aircraft too early. He reached Dombås, covered his uniform with civilian clothes, and managed to avoid capture until April 29. The rest of the platoon dug into the snow for the night.

“Stupidity”

The return of the German aircraft developed into a catastrophe. Only five of the 15 aircraft made it back to Oslo. Two landed at Værnes Airfield near Trondheim. The rest were shot down or forced to make emergency landings as they ran out of fuel. One aircraft made an emergency landing in Sweden.

The Germans had the misfortune of landing near the location of the Norwegian 2nd Battalion, 11th Infantry Regiment. The Norwegians had moved this unit to Dombås on April 13 to take part in the planned Allied operation against Trondheim. The isolated groups of German paratroopers, with no maps and in over six feet of snow, soon found themselves under attack by superior forces.

Lieutenant Schmidt tried to reach Dombås on April 14 in a commandeered vehicle but ran into two truckloads of Norwegians from the 11th Infantry. The Germans attacked, forcing the Norwegian troops to retreat. However, Lieutenant Schmidt and one paratrooper were seriously wounded and another was captured. The move against Dombås was abandoned. The wounded paratroopers eventually died.

The Germans entrenched themselves on two farms, Ulekleiv and Hagevoll, in excellent positions that dominated the surrounding landscape. Lieutenant Schmidt’s group grew to 63 when the men from Bobrowski’s 3rd Platoon joined them on April 15. Although suffering from a severe stomach wound, Schmidt did not relinquish command.

The German airdrop near Dombås worried the Norwegian authorities since members of the government and the royal family were located nearby and the gold reserve of the Norwegian Central Bank was being evacuated by train from Lillehammer to Åndalsnes. Intelligence was scarce, and the Norwegians had only the vaguest idea of the size and location of the German force.

General Otto Ruge, commander of the Norwegian Army, was critical of the disorganized and piecemeal actions by his troops. He wrote that the first force sent against the Germans allowed itself to be ambushed and that a second attempt by larger forces on April 15 repeated the “stupidity.”

Buying Time

Two platoons of Norwegian troops, commanded by Captain Eilif Austlid, were involved in security operations for members of the government. This force was ambushed by Schmidt’s men, and two Norwegians were killed. Captain Austlid personally led a counterattack that reached to within a few meters of the German positions. He and four of his soldiers were killed, and the counterattack failed. Twenty-eight Norwegians were captured. During the day the German paratroopers cut the rail and telephone lines.

The Norwegians renewed their attacks on April 16 with one company of the 5th Infantry Regiment from the south while a company from the 11th Infantry Regiment, supported by mortars, attacked from the north. There was a break in the fighting when the Germans sent a prisoner they had captured the previous day to the Norwegian lines under a flag of truce. Lieutenant Schmidt, through the returned soldier, informed the Norwegians that their fire endangered the lives of Norwegian prisoners that the Germans had in their positions, and he demanded that the Norwegians surrender.

The response by the Norwegian commander was to send a German sergeant they had captured to Schmidt’s position with a demand that the Germans surrender.

Lieutenant Schmidt had an ulterior motive for entering into these pointless negotiations. He had concluded that the position he occupied had become untenable, and he tried to gain time to move his men to new positions during the night. The German disengagement benefited from a sudden blizzard that, along with the darkness, concealed their movements. The Germans attacked and drove back the force opposing them in the north, then disengaged and withdrew south toward Dovre. The withdrawing Germans encountered a platoon-sized Norwegian security force at a bridge but drove it back in a sharp night attack.

Other Norwegian forces meanwhile continued to mop up German paratroopers who had not managed to join Schmidt. Lieutenant Becker’s platoon approached Dombås from the northeast and ran into units of the 11th Infantry Regiment. One paratrooper died in the ensuing fight, and the rest surrendered.

Sergeant Uhlig’s 4th Platoon tried to reach Dombås from the west. One paratrooper was killed in an engagement with Norwegian troops. Uhlig decided that he had no option but to surrender his 22 men near Kolstad on April 16. One day earlier, Lieutenant Gerhold’s communications platoon had descended the northern slope of the mountains on which they had landed, intending to reach the Dombås-Åndalsnes road and approach Dombås from the west. They were soon surrounded by Norwegian troops, and 23 were captured near the Bottheim railroad station about nine kilometers from Dombås.

Surrounded Without Support

The main German force sought new positions at daybreak on April 17, settling on the small Lindse farm about 800 meters from the main road and less than 300 meters from the railroad. The stone barn on the farm became the main German position. The Norwegians believed that most of the Germans were still at Ulekleiv, and they continued to send reinforcements to that area. The 1st Battalion, 11th Infantry Regiment was replaced by the 2nd Battalion of the same regiment. A 40mm antiaircraft gun was also brought in.

The Norwegians realized at the end of the day that the whole German force had withdrawn to new positions. The fact that Norwegian forces were ambushed on the morning of April 17 by the Germans at Lindse provided the final proof that the Germans had escaped the encirclement at Ulekleiv. Major Kjøs and part of the vanguard of the Norwegians caught in the ambush were captured, and other Norwegian forces withdrew to Dover.

By morning of April 18, the Germans were again surrounded in their new positions with the 1st Battalion, 11th Infantry Regiment to the north and the reinforced Company 1 of the 5th Infantry Regiment to the south. The Norwegians also used the antiaircraft gun against the German positions. They began their attack early on April 18, and the situation soon became desperate for the Germans.

The only relief received by the paratroopers arrived on April 18, when a Ju-52 dropped badly needed supplies. The supply containers were dropped without parachutes, and 90 percent became unusable.

Reichsmarshal Hermann Göring, commander of the Luftwaffe, refused to send reinforcements despite urgent requests. Still hoping for an early link-up with the forces in Trondheim, General Nickolas von Falkenhorst, German commander in Norway, planned a second airborne operation on April 16 to bypass the Norwegian defenses in the Lake Mjøsa area. The operation was cancelled after the Luftwaffe declined to participate because of “technical difficulties.”

The German paratroopers at Lindse were completely surrounded by the morning of April 19. The Norwegians had also obtained reinforcements in the form of a howitzer mounted on a flatbed rail car and operated by a crew of British Royal Marines. The German ammunition supply was running low, and Schmidt sent his second in command, Lieutenant Ernst Mössinger (he also commanded the 2nd Platoon) to negotiate an acceptable surrender. The Norwegian commander, Major Arne Sunde, demanded an unconditional surrender, and the Germans complied at 11:30 am on April 19.

Consequences of the Operation

Forty-five Germans became Norwegian prisoners, among them six severely wounded. The wounded were sent to a Norwegian hospital in Ålesund, while those who were not wounded, including others mopped up by Norwegian forces, were sent to a prisoner-of-war camp near the city of Kristiansund. The prisoners were freed by German forces on May 6, and many later participated in operations at Narvik under the command of Lieutenant Mössinger.

The exact number of German casualties in the operation is not known but it is believed to include 23 killed (including pilots), 25 badly wounded, and 14 missing. Norwegian losses are placed at 20 killed and about 20 wounded.

The German airborne operation at Dombås, although a failure, had important psychological consequences. Norwegian and Allied commanders tied up badly needed forces in anticipation of similar threats in other areas. The operation also had repercussions at the highest level of the German armed forces. Court-martial charges were brought against General Süssmann for having allowed the badly prepared operation to proceed in weather conditions unsuitable for airborne operations. The charges were dropped in June 1940, probably due to Göring’s intervention.

Securing Narvik

Narvik is located 210 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, and the distance to Oslo is approximately 1,450 kilometers. Narvik is an excellent ice-free port, and Swedish iron ore was shipped through this town when the Baltic Sea was frozen.

The Germans did not plan to use airborne forces at Narvik. The city was well beyond the range of all but specialized German aircraft until they could secure suitable airfields in central Norway. Furthermore, the Germans believed they would meet only token resistance. When this assumption failed to materialize, Maj. Gen. Eduard Dietl and his 2,000 troops from the 3rd Mountain Division found themselves isolated about 600 kilometers from the nearest friendly forces in Trondheim.

The Germans captured Narvik and the nearby military depot on April 9, but were unable to secure Bardufoss Airfield because of stiffening resistance from rapidly mobilizing Norwegian units that went on the offensive within two weeks of the landing. The British were also bringing forces into the region.

The Germans made a concerted effort to supply the Narvik forces starting within a few days of the landing. These were primarily by long-range aircraft, seaplanes, and aircraft with modified fuel capacity. Eleven Ju-52s landed on a frozen Hartvig Lake on the evening of April 13 with a battery of mountain artillery from Berlin. Three aircraft were damaged while landing, and one was destroyed by Norwegian aircraft. The remaining Ju-52s froze into the ice, and all, except one, were unable to take off and were eventually captured by the Norwegians. After this ill-fated experience on the lake, the Germans turned to airdrops and the use of seaplanes.

Germany received permission from Sweden to send supplies and personnel to General Dietl through Sweden on April 17 and 18, provided they were of “a humanitarian nature.” It is estimated that the provisions received by this route in April were sufficient to sustain 4,000 troops for three months. Some military personnel apparently disguised as Red Cross workers were also brought in. The Germans were not permitted to transport weapons, ammunitions, or reinforcements through Sweden.

Despite organizing the 2,100 sailors from the crews of destroyers sunk by the British in recent naval actions into infantry units, reinforcements became the most critical problem after Norwegian forces drove the Germans from the high mountain plateau on May 22. The front was near collapse, pressure was mounting, the line of retreat was threatened, and the trickle of reinforcements was not sufficient to replace losses or turn the tide of battle.

Reinforcing the Narvik Pocket

With his forces near collapse, Dietl needed additional troops to shore up the front and give some of his mountain troops a chance to rest. General Falkenhorst had no further airborne forces and asked OKW on May 15 for one parachute battalion. He argued persuasively that the valiant efforts by the troops in Lieutenant General Valentin Feurstein’s 2nd Mountain Division, driving north from Trondheim, would be in vain if Narvik could not be held until they arrived.

Falkenhorst’s request produced results. Hitler ordered the rest of the 1st Battalion, 1st Parachute Regiment, under Captain Walther, to Narvik. This force had participated in the operations in Holland on May 10. It was anticipated that this unit should start arriving in Narvik within a week or 10 days.

In the meantime, Falkenhorst’s command had carried out expedited and abbreviated parachute training for some of the mountain troops. The first group of these—65 men from Company 2, 137th Mountain Infantry Regiment—parachuted into the Bjørnefjell area adjacent to the Swedish border where Dietl’s headquarters was located on May 23. The Germans expected 10 percent casualties in the operation, but only two soldiers sustained minor injuries. Another drop of mountain troops was made the following day—this time involving 55 troops from Company 1 of the 137th. Fifty-four troops from Company 1, 137th arrived by parachute on May 25, as did 44 troops from Company 2, 138th Regiment. These were rushed to Narvik before May 28 when an Allied and Norwegian amphibious assault captured that city.

The remainder of the 1st Battalion, 1st Parachute Regiment began arriving on May 26, when 81 men parachuted into the Bjørnefjell area. Inclement weather delayed the next lift until May 28 when 46 paratroopers were dropped. Another 134 arrived on May 29, and the remaining 46 were deployed on June 2. Although 599 troops arrived in the Narvik area between May 23 and June 2, Dietl concluded that he needed another 1,500 to 2,000 men to replace losses and hold out.

The airdrop of weapons and ammunition for the Germans at Narvik was not without mishap. The airdrop of 15 captured Polish antitank guns was unsuccessful as all weapons became unserviceable. About 30 percent of the infantry weapons that were airdropped were badly damaged and unusable. A slightly lower percentage of the ammunition parachuted into the Narvik pocket was damaged to the point where it was useless.

The OKW was searching frantically at the end of May and early June for ways to bring Dietl the reinforcements he needed to hold out until General Feurstein arrived from the south. Dietl was promised—as soon as the weather permitted—two parachute battalions, about 1,800 men and practically the whole German airborne force, and another 1,000 mountain troops who were to be given a quick parachute course.

Norwegian Armistice

In early June, OKW planned a new operation to bring relief to the Narvik pocket. This involved landing a strong force about 90 miles north of Narvik at the same time as paratroopers captured Bardufoss Airfield. The plan included the transport of about 6,000 troops and a dozen tanks to Lyngefjord aboard the fast ocean liners Bremen and Europa.

Raeder pointed out to Hitler that the operation could not be launched before June 20, too late to help Dietl, and he suggested that it would be quicker and easier for the Luftwaffe to seize Bardufoss with a parachute and glider force and then bring in troops by transports. Hitler decided that both operations, Lyngefjord and Bardufoss, were to be carried out simultaneously.

The final Norwegian offensive against Dietl was under way at the end of May, but support from Allied forces was not forthcoming because of their decision to evacuate Norway on May 24. The evacuation from Dunkirk was under way, and it was decided that all available forces were needed to defend Great Britain. The news was kept from the Norwegians for security reasons.

Any chance of forcing a German surrender or driving Dietl’s forces into internment in Sweden came to an end on June 1, when the Norwegians were informed about the British evacuation. Requests from the Norwegians for a postponement of the evacuation or air support and supplies for Norwegian forces to continue their offensive were denied. In the end, the Norwegian government opted for exile. An armistice with the Germans was concluded on June 10.

Aftermath of the Norwegian Operations

Colonel Bruno Oswald Bräuer was promoted to major general in 1942, and he commanded the 9th Airborne Division in 1945. He relinquished his command for medical reasons in April of that year. Bräuer was captured by the British and extradited to Greece where he was tried for crimes dealing with the deportation of Jews. He was executed by firing squad in Athens on May 20, 1947.

Captain Erich Walther participated in the airborne operations in Holland between the initial invasion of Denmark and Norway and his later involvement at Narvik. Walther rose rapidly in rank and ended the war as a major general. He was captured by the Soviets in May 1945 and died in a POW camp in 1947.

Captain Kurt Gröschke rose to the rank of colonel and was the commander of the 15th Parachute Regiment in 1945. He was captured by the British and released in 1946.

First Lieutenant von Brandis and his company participated in the airborne operation against the Dordrecht bridges in Holland on May 10, 1940. The company was decimated in heavy fighting, and Lieutenant von Brandis was killed.

Dombås holds the unfortunate distinction of being the place where the first U.S. military casualty of World War II, Captain Robert M. Losey of the Army Air Corps who served on the defense attaché’s staff in Helsinki, Finlnd, lost his life. Losey had been ordered to Norway to assist in the evacuation of the embassy staff and other U.S. citizens. He was killed by a bomb fragment on April 21, 1940. Hermann Göring sent a letter of regrets and condolences to the commander of the U.S. Army Air Corps, Major General Henry H. Arnold, a few days after the incident. The citizens of Dombås erected a memorial to Captain Losey in 1987.

First Lieutenant Herbert Schmidt recovered from his wounds and wrote a book about the Dombås operation in 1941, Die Fallschirmjäger von Dombas. Schmidt was killed by the French Resistance in 1944.

Major General Wilhelm Süssmann commanded the 7th Air Division during the invasion of Crete in 1941. He was killed when the glider in which he was riding crashed.

This article first appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Peter Suciu

Economics, Americas

Well, cheaper, anyways.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The aircraft’s maker, Lockheed Martin, has also done its part to bring the sustainability cost per flying hour down by some 40 percent—meaning that the F-35 costs less to fly per hour, which is notable as the hours flown each year are set to increase.

On the one hand, the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter is the arguably the most lethal and versatile aircraft of the modern era. Three unique variants have been produced so that the aircraft can fit the needs of the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy and United States Marine Corps. It is an agile aircraft that has radar-jamming abilities, supersonic speed and stealth capabilities. It has been widely adopted by American allies and partners and could remain in service well into the 2070s.

On the other hand it is the most expensive military platform to date and by the end of the program could cost $1.5 trillion dollars. To put that in perspective, as of August 31, the federal debt held by the public was $20.83 trillion.

From another perspective, that $1.5 trillion figure would be for the life of the aircraft, which is expected to be from now until the 2070s and could account for 3,000 or more aircraft.

Last month, Congress took another look at the costs of the F-35 during an oversight and accountability hearing, and in the spotlight was the Joint Strike Fighter's logistical IT system. According to DefenseNews, the Department of Defense (DoD) Office of the Inspector General had reported earlier this year that millions of additional dollars were spent in the form of labor hours by military personnel to manually track the plane's spare parts as the electronic logistical one continued to have problems.

Software upgrades could be on the way.

Earlier this month it was announced that the Tech Refresh 3 program for the fifth-generation stealth fighter will include an upgrade of the jet's core processor and memory as well as replacement of its Panoramic Cockpit Display. Other “improvements” will include a radar upgrade along with some hardware tweaks to the hardware for the weapons-handling.

Maturing Aircraft Means Lower Costs 

As Steven P. Bucci, visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, noted in his story for Defense News, the DoD has been able to leverage its buying power and that has driven down the cost of each F-35A to around $80 million a full year earlier than planned. That means the fifth-generation F-35 now costs less than the F-15EX, a less capable but still significantly updated fourth-generation aircraft, which costs around $88 million each.

Moreover, the aircraft’s maker, Lockheed Martin, has also done its part to bring the sustainability cost per flying hour down by some 40 percent—meaning that the F-35 costs less to fly per hour, which is notable as the hours flown each year are set to increase.

Yet, it isn't all good news for the F-35 and Lockheed Martin. Last month the UK announced that it could reduce its order of the advanced stealth aircraft by half. The aircraft has also become a sticking point in the Middle East peace process as Israel has expressed concerns over the United Arab Emirates plans to acquire the F-35.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Flickr.

Alex Hollings

Security, Americas

With the addition of 21st century avionics and more capable engines, it seems likely that the F-15 will maintain its advantage of the competition.

On Tuesday, the first ever F-15EX took to the skies in a test flight that brought the U.S. Air Force that much closer to fielding what may be the most capable 4th generation fighter on the planet. The F-15 has been in service for more than 45 years to date, and is widely regarded as the most successful air superiority fighter in history.

“Today’s successful flight proves the jet’s safety and readiness to join our nation’s fighter fleet,” said Prat Kumar, Boeing vice president and F-15 program manager.

“Our workforce is excited to build a modern fighter aircraft for the U.S. Air Force. Our customer can feel confident in its decision to invest in this platform that is capable of incorporating the latest advanced battle management systems, sensors and weapons due to the jet’s digital airframe design and open mission systems architecture.”

The last time the U.S. Air Force took delivery of an F-15 was in 2004, but the aircraft’s design has not stagnated in the 17 years since. Boeing, who absorbed the F-15 program when they merged with McDonnell Douglas in 1997, has been updating and improving the F-15 for foreign sales throughout. In fact, foreign purchasers in Saudi Arabia and Qatar have funneled more than $5 billion into improving the F-15 Eagle as America moved on to sourcing more advanced, stealth fighters. The result of all this time and money is an incredibly capable iteration of the F-15 that couples advanced avionics with the low maintenance cost of non-stealth fighter.

Most of the world still relies on 4th generation fighters for engagements in the sky, which means the F-15EX may have some stiff competition… but this new bird isn’t resting on the F-15’s historic laurels. Instead, it just may be the baddest fighter of its generation anywhere on the planet.

Why doesn’t the Air Force just buy more F-35s?

In this era of flying stealth supercomputers like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and F-22 Raptor, many have questioned the wisdom of purchasing a slew of new old fighters. The F-15EX does not boast any stealth capabilities, nor does it have the same knack for sensor fusion that has earned the F-35 the unofficial nickname of “quarterback in the sky.” Despite this apparent lack of capability, the Air Force is procuring F-15EXs at a cost of around $87.7 million each, as compared to the now lower F-35 price of just $77.9 million per aircraft.

This price differential only emboldens the F-15EX’s critics, who point out that the F-35 offers a far wider variety of capabilities and is considered much more survivable in contested airspace (thanks to its stealth capabilities). When you only consider those figures, the F-15EX may seem like a pretty poor choice.

However, the reality of military acquisitions and combat capability are far more nuanced than a side-by-side tale of the tape might represent. While the F-15EX may indeed cost more per airframe than the latest batch of F-35s, it may actually be the savvier purchase. The F-35 is intended to have an operational lifespan of around 8,000 hours, whereas each F-15EX is expected to last 20,000. In other words, in order to fly the same number of hours as an F-15EX, the Air Force would need to purchase not one, but three F-35As.

That price reduction is further bolstered by operational costs. Keeping a high performance fighter in tip-top shape is expensive and time consuming, but in that portion of the ledger, the F-15EX once again shines. The Air Force expects to spend around $29,000 for every hour the F-15EX is in the air, far cheaper than the F-35’s figures recorded in 2018 of around $44,000 per hour. Now let’s do a bit of back-of-the-envelope math to assess how much these aircraft will actually cost in a fight.

The F-15EX costs $87.7 million per aircraft, and can fly for up to 20,000 hours at a cost of $29,000 per hour. So $29,000 per hour x 20,000 hours + $87.7 million for the aircraft comes out to a pretty serious $667.7 million dollars.

In order to match that operational lifespan, it would take three F-35As. So the math would look like $44,000 per hour x 20,000 hours + $233.7 million for three F-35s… and it comes out to more than a jaw dropping $1.1 billion. The F-15EX, then, offers a saving of around $446 million per aircraft over the lifespan of the jet (if things were this simple, anyway).

To give the F-35 a slightly more realistic shake, let’s use larger volumes of aircraft, rather than 1:1 comparisons. The Air Force plans to purchase at least 144 F-15EXs, but for the sake of simple math, let’s call it 100. The above per-aircraft cost times a hundred comes out to $66,770,000,000 spent on aircraft and 2,000,000 flight hours. You would need 250 F-35s to match the same flight hour total, which combined with operating costs come to $109,925,000,000. In this more realistic comparison, the F-15EX offers a less pronounced advantage, but still comes to the tune of some $43,155,000,000 in savings over the span of the program. $43 billion is certainly nothing to scoff at.

Now, it’s important to note here that this math is egregiously simplified: Lockheed Martin and the Air Force are already working tirelessly to reduce the operating costs of the F-35 (because the Air Force says they can’t afford them if they don’t).

The cost per hour of the F-35 is sure to drop in the years to come — and just as importantly, the F-35 is a stealth platform built largely to engage ground targets. The F-15EX, on the other hand, is an air superiority fighter designed to duke it out in the skies. Both of these aircraft are capable of either role, but at a fundamental level, these jets simply aren’t built to do the same jobs. It might help to think of them as NASCAR and Formula 1 racers: Both are extremely capable platforms, but they’re each highly specialized for their specific use. The new F-15EXs the Air Force buys won’t fill F-35 spots, but will instead replace aging F-15s in America’s existing arsenal.

What makes this new F-15 better than our old ones?

The United States currently maintains a fleet of around 230 F-15s in various trims (C/D). These jets represent the crux of America’s fourth generation air intercept fighters. The F-22 Raptor was intended to serve as a replacement for the F-15, but the program was canceled after just 186 Raptors were delivered.

The new F-15EXs boast updated cockpit systems, an enhanced sensor suite and data fusion capabilities, and the ability to carry up to 29,500 pounds of ordnance split into 12 air-to-air hard points or 15 air-to-ground hard points. Its new twin engines aren’t just more efficient, they’re also more powerful, making the fastest fighter in America’s inventory even faster.

The F-15EX isn’t stealthy, but it does boast an electronic warfare suite that will help make it more survivable in contested airspace. Its streamlined pilot interface borrows from some 5th generation technology, integrating information into easier to manage displays that allow the pilot to focus more on the battle space than the gauge cluster. This not only improves pilot performance, it also reduces fatigue on long missions.

In order to keep pace with new weapons as they emerge, the F-15EX leverages what Boeing calls an Open Mission System architecture designed specifically to be able to absorb new tech as it reaches the field. Importantly, however, the new F-15s retain around 80% of the old F-15 design, making them easy for maintainers to adapt to. Instead of having to train for an entirely new platform, they need only to train for the more modern additions to a jet they’re already intimately familiar with.

How does the F-15EX stack up against the top fighters from other countries?

Despite its upgrades, the new F-15EX remains squarely within the 4th generation of fighters. There are currently four operational 5th generation fighters on the planet: America’s F-35 and F-22, Russia’s Su-57, and China’s J-20. If the F-15EX were to square off against these platforms, it would be at a huge disadvantage–and platforms like the F-35 or F-22 would likely be able to engage and destroy the F-15 before its pilot was even aware of their presence. Questions remain about the stealth and avionics found in the J-20 or Su-57, but even if their stealth isn’t quite as advanced, they’d still have a real leg up on the F-15EX.

But to be honest, the chances of such an engagement are incredibly small. Russia’s troubled Su-57 program has seen setback after setback, and to date, there are only around 13 of the fighters in existence. Production is expected to pick up, but Russia lacks the funds to really field a large scale fleet of these stealthy fighters. China’s J-20 has also faced woes in its engine compartment, though China has managed to field more than 50 of these jets already. The new J-20B will incorporate thrust vector control (like America’s F-22) and is expected to be an even more capable aircraft… but again, it exists in extremely limited numbers.

Their rarity notwithstanding, if American jets were to square off against Chinese or Russian ones, America would leverage its fleet of hundreds of F-35s and F-22s. There would be no reason to send the F-15 into such a fight. However, F-15EXs could see a great deal of use in the uncontested airspace of trouble spots like Syria and Iraq, where stealth is as unnecessary as it is expensive.

But what about the 4th generation fighters that make up the backbone of Chinese and Russian air forces? The Su-35, operated by both Russia and China, as well as the J-10 operated by China are both considered to be highly capable platforms, and the MiG-29 operated by a number of nations is also considered rather formidable (among others). However, the F-15 has already squared up against a number of capable fighters and emerged on top. In fact, of the 104 air-to-air duels the F-15 has entered, it has lost exactly zero of them. Not too shabby.

With the addition of 21st century avionics and more capable engines, it seems likely that the F-15 will maintain its advantage of the competition.

Alex Hollings is a writer, dad, and Marine veteran who specializes in foreign policy and defense technology analysis. He holds a master’s degree in Communications from Southern New Hampshire University, as well as a bachelor’s degree in Corporate and Organizational Communications from Framingham State University.

This article first appeared on Sandboxx News.

Image: Boeing / YouTube

David Axe

Security, Americas

Fewer squadrons, but more planes per squad.

Here's What You Need to Remember: But in cannibalizing the 95th Fighter Squadron, the Air Force reduces its overall squadron count to 311, down one compared to late 2018. The reduction runs counter to the flying branch's stated goal of expanding to 386 squadrons over the next decade or so, an expansion that could require the Air Force to buy hundreds of additional aircraft potentially costing tens of billions of dollars.

There was a silver lining in the hurricane that devastated Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida's panhandle region in October 2018.

The storm forced the U.S. Air Force to redeploy Tyndall's resident squadrons of F-22 Raptor stealth fighters -- and gave the flying branch the chance to boost the size of other F-22 units, making them more efficient.

In that sense, Hurricane Michael helped the Air Force to accomplish something that the Government Accountability Office had argued the flying branch should do. Equip each front-line unit with no fewer than 24 planes.

"The Air Force’s organization of its small F-22 fleet has not maximized the availability of these 186 aircraft," the GAO warned in a 2018 report.

But there's a downside. Growing five front-line F-22 squadrons at the expense of the sixth squadron also undermines the Air Force's ambitious plan to expand the overall force from 312 to 386 squadrons.

Hurricane Michael wreaked havoc on Tyndall, uprooting trees, flattening buildings and ripping the roofs off of hangars. Prior to the storm, two Tyndall squadrons -- the 43rd Fighter Squadron, which is a training unit, and the combat-coded 95th Fighter Squadron -- together operated 55 F-22s.

With its complex avionics and delicate stealth coating, the F-22 is a difficult airplane to maintain. Tyndally airmen were able to fly out just 38 of the 55 Raptors prior to the storm. The remaining 17 jets -- nearly a tenth of all F-22s -- rode out the wind and rains in hangars. Some suffered damage.

Airmen quickly repaired many of the jets. Official photos depicted small numbers of F-22 departing Tyndall on Oct. 21 and 24, 2018. The last three F-22s left Tyndall on Nov. 16.

With Tyndall likely to need years of work costing billions of dollars, the Air Force announced that all F-22s would relocate to other bases. The 43rd Fighter Squadron, the training unit, set up shop with 28 F-22s at Eglin Air Force Base in western Florida.

That's three fewer F-22s than the squadron possessed prior to the storm, implying that at least three Raptors suffered storm damage requiring long-term repairs.

The combat-coded 95th Fighter Squadron meanwhile dispersed its own F-22s to the three other bases with front-line Raptors. "We have recommended that the best path forward to increase readiness and use money wisely is to consolidate the operational F-22s," Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said.

Langley in Virginia, Elmendorf in Alaska and Hickam in Hawaii together house five F-22 squadrons. At the time of the storm, Langley's two squadrons each had 23 F-22s. Elmendorf's two squadrons together possessed 47 Raptors. Hickam's sole squadron, an Air National Guard unit, operated 20 F-22s.

Spreading the 95th Fighter Squadron's 24 F-22s across the other five units would allow the surviving units to maintain 24 jets of their own, Air Force Times reported. In fact, the five squadrons between them needed just seven extra Raptors to boost their inventories to 24 planes apiece.

The balance of the 95th's jets -- 17 Raptors -- likely are undergoing repairs for storm damage or are going into the Air Force's attrition reserve. Lockheed Martin built just 195 F-22s before production ended in 2011. Eight were test models. By 2018 just 183 F-22s were operational.

Leaving aside the recent hurricane damage, accidents have destroyed at least two front-line F-22s and two test planes and badly damaged several others. Raptors are in such short supply that the Air Force spent tens of millions of dollars and four years repairing one F-22 that suffered damage during a training flight at Tyndall in 2012.

The flying branch likewise invested millions of dollars and years of labor restoring an old test-model F-22 for an additional few years of trials. In breaking up the 95th Fighter Squadron and redistributing its planes, the Air Force arguably improved the overall force.

Since fighters often operate in four-plane formations, 24-plane units can launch more sorties than an 18-plane squadron can do. Moreover, a squadron typically can manage 24 planes as easily as it can manage 18 planes. Thus a unit with more jets makes more efficient use of its manpower. "Larger, traditional Air Force squadrons and deployable units provide a better balance of equipment and personnel," the GAO explained.

But in cannibalizing the 95th Fighter Squadron, the Air Force reduces its overall squadron count to 311, down one compared to late 2018. The reduction runs counter to the flying branch's stated goal of expanding to 386 squadrons over the next decade or so, an expansion that could require the Air Force to buy hundreds of additional aircraft potentially costing tens of billions of dollars.

Critics have attacked the expansion plan as unaffordable. It's worth noting that, when the opportunity afforded itself after Hurricane Michael, the Air Force opted to have fewer but larger squadrons.

David Axe serves as the new Defense Editor of the National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels War Fix, War Is Boring and Machete Squad. This first appeared in 2019 and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

Charles K.S. Wu, Yao-Yuan Yeh, Fang-Yu Chen, Austin Wang

Security, Asia

Fears that Beijing will launch a full-blown invasion are likely overblown.

As Biden begins his presidency, it is time we review the perennial question—will China go to war with Taiwan?

Pessimists who argue that a cross-Strait war might break out recently, particularly during the Trump-Biden transition, base their arguments on two beliefs. First, unlike the Trump administration that was overly supportive of Taiwan and antagonistic toward China, the new President, Joe Biden, is likely to be more friendly to and, relatively, more tolerant of China’s hostile actions toward Taiwan. Second, the new administration could be just too busy to keep cross-Strait relations in check. Before the inauguration, the new administration was still bracing for the impact of a divided nation and was worried that similar incidents like the capital invasion could strike again. At the same time, American casualties from the pandemic were continually hitting record highs. China could undoubtedly have seized the moment for a surprise attack.

These reasons for believing they could have, or may still act, are cogent. True, in recent weeks, we did see China ramping up its military actions toward Taiwan, such as invading Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) repeatedly and excessively. However, close examination reveals that China crossing the median line is not new behavior; in fact, it seems so ritualized now that it could generate less anxiety than the new scares of a coronavirus outbreak in Taiwan. Simply put, for the Taiwanese public, these Chinese military “demonstrations” are symbolic and largely meaningless as they do not sway public attention and insert fears.

We do not believe that a cross-Strait hot war will happen anytime soon. In fact, several reasons are leading us to believe that such a possibility is unfounded. For starters, though not exactly on par with the United States, China’s international status has ascended significantly in recent years. In international politics, hegemons are supposed to care about their reputation; China should not be an exception. As Washington reneged on international agreements and scraped multilateral deals in the past several years, Beijing took the advantage to step in as a provider of the common goods to many countries (e.g., The Belt and Road Initiative). While this new role gives China more global influence, it inadvertently forces it to behave somewhat like a hegemon. In fact, to effectively replace America’s role, China needs to cultivate an image of a benign hegemon if it intends to prolong this status.

Note that we are not saying that China will become a benign hegemon, just like the United States. Instead, we argue that to continue to advance its national interests and win cooperation from others, especially Western democracies such as European states, China will likely want to present or at least feign an amicable and accommodating image. We are not making assumptions about China’s intentions in international politics. In fact, China may well be harboring a revisionist agenda based on aggression (looking at how Beijing is dealing with domestic dissidents and border disputes). These claims may well be true. However, on balance, to continue its global quest for supremacy, China would have to at least seriously consider being viewed as a cooperative rising hegemon by many, especially to European and other major powers, which could still block its rise. This rationale also explains why China vehemently objects to claims that accuse it of spreading the coronavirus worldwide. Over the past decade, China has been effortlessly trying to convey a benign image to foreign countries through its soft power and diplomatic and media means. This is known as the “Grand External Propaganda Strategy,” which was initiated in 2009 and emphasized by Xi Jinping. Simply put, China is undoubtedly making substantial efforts to shape its positive image worldwide.

The implications for a reputation-conscious China on a cross-Strait war is that it would force China to think twice or thrice before acting. A cross-Strait war—for the purpose of national unification while obliterating the efforts of self-determination of citizens in Taiwan and a solid democratic state in East Asia—is likely to wreck China’s effort at building its reputation of peacefully rising, especially if Taiwan does not provoke the conflict by proclaiming de jure independence. Regardless of how China might justify its actions (e.g., internal affairs), the invasion would certainly be viewed as an act of expansionism and norm-breaking by the international community. Thus, we predict that a shooting war is unlikely to materialize in the next several years, although existing military actions such as sending aircraft into Taiwan’s ADIZ are likely to continue, as they show the Chinese domestic audience that China is still attempting to unify Taiwan. Nevertheless, those actions are variants of a paper tiger.

Some might argue, however, at times, the internal pressure within China, such as ethnic tensions or economic strains, might lead the Chinese Communist Party to resort to diversionary use of force against Taiwan. But if history could provide examples, we could not find any. In fact, Taiwan is a poor target for several reasons. First, it would hurt China’s reputation, as stated before. Second, diversionary action and success in military action depend on nationalism targeted at a common external party/threat. Whereas strong nationalism against Japan was seen in the early 2000s, nation-wide protests asking the government to invade Taiwan were rare or nonexistent. Anti-Taiwan sentiment often becomes visible only when Chinese leaders covey messages to Taiwan’s administration, as a coercive signal, and when Chinese netizens and other digital “50 Cent Party” paid trolls are directed to flood into Taiwanese internet outlets. For these reasons, we doubt that Chinese authorities would be willing to muster popular support for a diversionary war against Taiwan.

In fact, for China to divert domestic criticism, logic would dictate that the United States would be the prime choice. The ages of humiliation, unfair treatment throguh trade and commerce, and even requests to improve its environment and human rights by the United States are ready narratives to construct a common Chinese foe; such an action might even be necessary for a Sino-U.S. hegemonic transition. However, China is reasonably hesitant to select the United States as a target as Beijing understands that, once successfully triggered, the mounting nationalism, anti-Americanism, and the U.S. retaliation might backfire to destabilize the regime. Thus, to strike a balance between the effectiveness of diversion and management of escalation or risks, China might instead resort to a target with more confidence to deal with, such as Japan or India, where negative public sentiments could be managed with more ease. But again, with India being a nuclear power and Japan under the mutual defense treaty with the Washington, China really should refrain itself from the use of force, no matter how severe the domestic turmoil is.

On top of the above reasons, do not forget that the U.S. implicit security commitment to defend Taiwan, stemming from the concept of strategic ambiguity, is likely to stay during Biden’s presidency. Strategic ambiguity has been and will continue to be a strong deterrent to China with the intention of maintaining the status quo. Although the U.S. does not explicitly utter the conditions under which it would come to Taiwan’s defense, both the U.S. and China know that the U.S. is likely to intervene in a cross-Strait conflict if China starts this war. It is undeniable that the U.S. still holds a significant military advantage, and China is very aware of this situation. In addition, compared to the Trump administration, the new administration is buoyed by a bi-partisan consensus on the U.S. relationship with China. In addition to maintaining its credibility at assisting Taiwan, the new administration can help keep cross-Strait relations at peace by including the issue in a multilateral framework. As the United States is preparing to reenter multilateral agreements such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and international organizations (e.g., the World Health Organization), there will be ample opportunities for America and China to exchange ideas, build confidence, and defuse tensions when it comes to Taiwan issues. There will be layers of buffers before each side meets each other on the battlefield.

In conclusion, despite numerous preoccupations that paint a bleak picture of cross-Strait relations, war is unthinkable and unlikely to happen for the following reasons. First, it would hurt China’s international reputation. Second, Taiwan does not serve as a good target for diverting domestic problems; there simply might be no viable options for China. Third, the war may attract unnecessary attention from the United States and force it to alter its strategic ambiguity policy. Keep in mind, as China continues to gain status and influence in the international society, it has to be more conscious of its reputation and avoid actions that tarnish it. Before the hegemon transition completes, if that day ever arrives, China would not want to be bogged down in a conflict that hurts its legitimacy. If the United States wants to contain the rise of China, instead of employing Trump’s style of confrontational and unilateral approach to China, it will need to gain a higher ground of reputation by reemphasizing its longstanding positions on democracy, human rights, and freedom. Policymakers and international observers certainly need to keep an eye on the future progression of cross-Strat relations, but for now, do not let the possibility of a cross-Strait wait keep you awake at night.

Charles K.S. Wu (wu721@purdue.edu) is PhD candidate of Political Science at Purdue University. Twitter: @kuanshengtwn

Yao-Yuan Yeh (yehy@stthom.edu) is Associate Professor of International Studies and Chair of the Department of International Studies and Modern Languages at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. Twitter: @yeh2sctw

Fang-Yu Chen (chenfan6@msu.edu) is PhD in Political Science at Michigan State University. Twitter: @FangYu_80168

Austin Wang (austin.wang@unlv.edu) is Assistant Professor of Political Science at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Twitter: @wearytolove

Robert Farley

Security,

Big ships with heavy armor are unlikely to solve the A2/AD dilemma.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Big ships with effective systems of defense components, combined with a large number of extremely lethal offensive systems, can go a long way toward defeating a system of anti-access systems. In this sense, the “battleship” could return, although it will play a role more like a classic monitor (intended to fight against shore-based systems) than a line-of-battle-ship.

Is it time to bring back the battleship? 

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For decades, naval architects have concentrated on building ships that, by the standards of the World Wars, are remarkably brittle. These ships can deal punishment at much greater ranges than their early 20th century counterparts, but they can’t take a hit. Is it time to reconsider this strategy, and once again build protected ships? This article examines how these trends came about, and what might change in the future.

Why We Build Big Ships

The label “battleship” emerges from the older “ship of the line” formulation, in the sense that a navy’s largest ships participated in the “line of battle” formation that allowed them to bring their broadsides to bear on an opposing line. After the development of ironclad warships, the “battle ship” diverged from the armored cruiser based on expectations of usage; “battleships” were expected to fight enemy “battleships.” The modern battleship form settled around 1890, with the British Royal Sovereign class. These ships displaced about 15,000 tons, with two heavy guns each in turrets fore and aft, and steel armor. The rest of the navies of the world adopted these basic design parameters, which provided a ship that could both deal out and absorb punishment. The process of ensuring survivability was simplified, in these early battleships, by the predictability of the threat. The most likely vector of attack in the late 1890s came from large naval artillery carried by other ships, and consequently protective schemes could concentrate on that threat.

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The limitations of fire control meant that lethality didn’t increase much with size; HMS Lord Nelson, laid down 15 years later, displaced only 2000 tons more.  On roughly the same size hull, however, HMS Dreadnought took advantage of a number of innovations developed in the ensuing years, and with ten heavy guns became a far more lethal platform at roughly similar cost to previous ships. As a consequence, the survivability of smaller battleships dropped substantially, even against naval artillery.

From that point on, lethality and survivability increased dramatically with ship size, and the navies of the world responded accordingly. By 1915 the first line battleships of the Royal Navy would displace 27,000 tons; by 1920 the world’s largest battleship (HMS Hood) displaced 45,000 tons.  In 1921 international agreements would constrain warship size, although the Germans and Japanese in particularly imagined battleships of staggering proportions.

Why the Big Ships Went Out of Style

With the advent of the age of airpower (and missile power), size no longer dramatically increased lethality for surface warships. At the same time, a proliferation of threats made ensuring survivability more difficult. The huge battleships of the Second World War could not survive concerted air and submarine attack, and could not punch back at sufficient range to justify their main armament. Except for aircraft carriers, where lethality still increased with size, naval architecture took a turn for the petite. The chief surface ships of the U.S. Navy (USN) today displace less than a quarter that of the battleships of World War II.

Post-WWII ships also, broadly speaking, discarded the idea of armor as a means of ensuring survivability. There remains considerable debate as to how traditional battleship belt (side) armor could resist cruise missiles. Cruise missiles generally have less penetrating power than the largest naval artillery, although they have other advantages. Deck armor proved a more serious problem, and the demands of ensuring survivability from bombs, pop-up cruise missiles, and (more recently) ballistic missiles quickly outpaced the improved lethality of a large, heavily armored ship.  And perhaps most importantly, no one figured out how to eliminate (as opposed to ameliorate) the problem of underwater attack; torpedoes continued to pose a lethal threat to even the most heavily armored of warships.

Which isn’t to say that people haven’t tried. Several navies have played with the idea of large surface warships since the end of World War II. The Royal Navy considered redesigning and completing at least one member of the Lion class, abandoned in 1939. Studies eventually determined that the level of deck armor necessary to protect the ships from bombs would prove prohibitive. The Soviets maintained plans to build traditional gun-toting battleships into the 1950s, when the death of Stalin ended such a fantasy. France completed Jean Bart in 1952, and kept her in partial commission into the 1960s as a training and accommodation ship.

A new wave began in the 1970s, when the Soviet Union started construction on the Kirov class heavy missile cruisers, which quickly took on the name “battlecruisers.” The USN responded, in part, with the refurbishment of the four Iowa class battleships, which acquired long range missiles but remained in service for only a few years.

More recently, Russia, the United States, and China have all considered the construction of large surface warships.  The Russians periodically promise to build new Kirovs, a claim to take as seriously as the suggestion that Russia will build new Tu-160 strategic bombers.  One of the proposals for the CG(X) program involved a nuclear powered warship approaching 25,000 tons. The media has treated the Chinese Type 055 cruisers as a similar super-warship, but reports now indicate that the ship will displace around 12000-14000 tons, somewhat smaller than the US Zumwalt class destroyer.

What Has Changed?

Big ships still have some lethality advantages.  For example, bigger ships can carry larger magazines of missiles, which they can use for both offensive and defensive purposes.  Advances in gun technology (such as the 155mm Advanced Gun System to be mounted on the Zumwalt class destroyer) mean that large naval artillery can strike farther and more accurately than ever before.

But the most important advances may come in survivability.The biggest reason to build big ships may be the promise of electricity generation. The most interesting innovations in naval technology involve sensors, unmanned technology, lasers, and railguns, most of which are power intensive. Larger ships can generate more power, increasing not only their lethality (rail guns, sensors) but also their survivability (anti-missile lasers, defensive sensor technologies, close-defense systems). The missile magazines that large ships can carry allow them to draw together these elements and lethality and survivability better than their smaller counterparts.

What about a true successor to the classic battleship, designed to both deal out and absorb punishment?  Advances in materials design have certainly increased the ability of other military systems (most notably the tank) to survive punishment, and a serious effort to create an armored ship would undoubtedly result in a well-protected vessel. The problem is that passive systems need to protect a ship from a wide range of different attacks, including cruise missiles, torpedoes, ballistic missiles, and long-range guns. Keeping a ship well-protected from these threats, all of which it could anticipate facing in an anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) situation, would likely prove cost-prohibitive. It’s also worth noticing that while the battleships of yore could continue to sail and fight despite heavy damage to their various components, modern warship carry far more sensitive, deeply integrated technology, systems that might react poorly to otherwise-survivable ballistic missile strikes.

Parting Shots

Big ships with heavy armor are unlikely to solve the A2/AD dilemma.  However, big ships with effective systems of defense components, combined with a large number of extremely lethal offensive systems, can go a long way toward defeating a system of anti-access systems. In this sense, the “battleship” could return, although it will play a role more like a classic monitor (intended to fight against shore-based systems) than a line-of-battle-ship. And these new “battleships” will survive less because of their ability to absorb hits, than to avoid hits altogether.

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

This first appeared in 2015 and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Wikipedia.