Diplomacy & Crisis News

Caleb Larson

World War II, Americas

One woman and five of her children were killed in Oregon after finding a balloon that had likely lain on the ground for weeks.

Here's What You Need to Know: Tokyo tried to find new weapons as it grew more desperate.

Sitting on the far eastern rim of the Pacific, the United States mainland was virtually invulnerable to Japanese attack during the Second World War. Even long-range bombers didn’t have the necessary range to fly from mainland Japan or the many islands under Japanese control to the West Coast. Rather than increasing bomber range, the Japanese decided to get create and equip rubberized silk balloons with bombs, and float them through the air to the United States. 

Jet Stream

In 1920, a jet stream was observed Japan. A jet stream is a fast-moving band of air that moves similarly to ocean currents. It was noticed that in winter, the jet stream moved fast, and in a westerly direction over Japan, the Pacific, and to the North American continent. Japanese engineers realized that balloons could be launched to carry bombs across the Pacific and hit the United States. 

Over the course of the war, over 9,000 balloons were launched. Their payload was either a 15-pound anti-personnel fragmentation bomb or a heavier 26-pound incendiary device. They were cheap to make and simple to use—their goal was to start forest fires, kill U.S. citizens or damage infrastructure. 

High Tech

The technological problems that had to be overcome were substantial. The large balloons would expand when exposed to sunlight, causing them to rise. At night, cooler ambient temperatures would make the rubberized silk contract, and the balloon would fall. 

In order to keep the balloon’s altitude constant, a nozzle was fitted to the balloon that could vent hydrogen if it rose too high. The balloon also carried onboard ballast, bags of sand that would be automatically jettisoned by an altimeter-controlled firing mechanism. These bags were attached to a metal ring—bags were dropped in opposite pairs to keep the ring and balloon vertically balanced. 

This being pre-GPS, the balloon was fitted with a three-day timer, at which point the balloon would likely be somewhere over North America. On the third day, a small explosive charge would detonate, sending its explosive payload to the ground. 

Strange Payload

The U.S. military was worried. Balloons, shrapnel fragments, and reports of mysterious explosions were reported up and down the West Coast, and in places as far away as Canada’s Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan, Yukon, as well as Texas, Wyoming, Montana, Mexico, and even Detroit. 

One newspaper article described a balloon found in Montana by a woodchopper and his son. “The bag itself is of high grade processed paper. There appeared on the balloon Japanese characters indicating completion of construction at the factory on Oct. 31, 1944. Attached to the side of the balloon was an incendiary device with a fuse apparently intended for its destruction. A typical balloon rope structure attached to the flange around the bag ended in an elastic type cable at the bottom which had been severed.” 

Though the description of the bag was accurate, its purpose was unclear. “No determination has been made of the use for which it was intended,” perplexing American officials. 

It was initially suspected that the balloons must have been launched from the West Coast by Japanese submarines, or even German prison of war camps, or Japanese internment camps. An examination of the sand in the ballast bags established their Japanese origin, settling the mystery. 

Aftermath

Although the balloon bombs did not do much damage, a press blackout prevented news agencies from reporting on the balloon phenomena to protect the American public from any adverse psychological effects. One woman and five of her children were killed in Oregon after finding a balloon that had likely lain on the ground for weeks. It was the only fatal incident caused by the balloons.

Caleb Larson holds a Master of Public Policy degree from the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy. He lives in Berlin and writes on U.S. and Russian foreign and defense policy, German politics, and culture.

This article first appeared in 2020.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Damian Purcell

Coronavirus,

mRNA vaccines are good for preventing more than just the coronavirus. 

Here's What You Need to Remember: mRNA vaccine technology has been described as disruptive and revolutionary. If we can overcome these challenges, we can potentially change how we make vaccines now and into the future.

The world’s first mRNA vaccines — the COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna — have made it in record time from the laboratory, through successful clinical trials, regulatory approval and into people’s arms.

The high efficiency of protection against severe disease, the safety seen in clinical trials and the speed with which the vaccines were designed are set to transform how we develop vaccines in the future.

Once researchers have set up the mRNA manufacturing technology, they can potentially produce mRNA against any target. Manufacturing mRNA vaccines also does not need living cells, making them easier to produce than some other vaccines.

So mRNA vaccines could potentially be used to prevent a range of diseases, not just COVID-19.

Remind me again, what’s mRNA?

Messenger ribonucleic acid (or mRNA for short) is a type of genetic material that tells your body how to make proteins. The two mRNA vaccines for SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, deliver fragments of this mRNA into your cells.

Once inside, your body uses instructions in the mRNA to make SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins. So when you encounter the virus’ spike proteins again, your body’s immune system will already have a head start in how to handle it.

So after COVID-19, which mRNA vaccines are researchers working on next? Here are three worth knowing about.

1. Flu vaccine

Currently, we need to formulate new versions of the flu vaccine each year to protect us from the strains the World Health Organization (WHO) predicts will be circulating in flu season. This is a constant race to monitor how the virus evolves and how it spreads in real time.

Moderna is already turning its attention to an mRNA vaccine against seasonal influenza. This would target the four seasonal strains of the virus the WHO predicts will be circulating.

But the holy grail is a universal flu vaccine. This would protect against all strains of the virus (not just what the WHO predicts) and so wouldn’t need to be updated each year. The same researchers who pioneered mRNA vaccines are also working on a universal flu vaccine.

The researchers used the vast amounts of data on the influenza genome to find the mRNA code for the most “highly conserved” structures of the virus. This is the mRNA least likely to mutate and lead to structural or functional changes in viral proteins.

They then prepared a mixture of mRNAs to express four different viral proteins. These included one on the stalk-like structure on the outside of the flu virus, two on the surface, and one hidden inside the virus particle.

Studies in mice show this experimental vaccine is remarkably potent against diverse and difficult-to-target strains of influenza. This is a strong contender as a universal flu vaccine.

2. Malaria vaccine

Malaria arises through infection with the single-celled parasite Plasmodium falciparum, delivered when mosquitoes bite. There is no vaccine for it.

However, US researchers working with pharmaceutical company GSK have filed a patent for an mRNA vaccine against malaria.

The mRNA in the vaccine codes for a parasite protein called PMIF. By teaching our bodies to target this protein, the aim is to train the immune system to eradicate the parasite.

There have been promising results of the experimental vaccine in mice and early-stage human trials are being planned in the UK.

This malaria mRNA vaccine is an example of a self-amplifying mRNA vaccine. This means very small amounts of mRNA need to be made, packaged and delivered, as the mRNA will make more copies of itself once inside our cells. This is the next generation of mRNA vaccines after the “standard” mRNA vaccines seen so far against COVID-19.

3. Cancer vaccines

We already have vaccines that prevent infection with viruses that cause cancer. For example, hepatitis B vaccine prevents some types of liver cancer and the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine prevents cervical cancer.

But the flexibility of mRNA vaccines lets us think more broadly about tackling cancers not caused by viruses.

Some types of tumours have antigens or proteins not found in normal cells. If we could train our immune systems to identify these tumour-associated antigens then our immune cells could kill the cancer.

Cancer vaccines can be targeted to specific combinations of these antigens. BioNTech is developing one such mRNA vaccine that shows promise for people with advanced melanoma. CureVac has developed one for a specific type of lung cancer, with results from early clinical trials.

Then there’s the promise of personalised anti-cancer mRNA vaccines. If we could design an individualised vaccine specific to each patient’s tumour then we could train their immune system to fight their own individual cancer. Several research groups and companies are working on this.

Yes, there are challenges ahead

However, there are several hurdles to overcome before mRNA vaccines against other medical conditions are used more widely.

Current mRNA vaccines need to be kept frozen, limiting their use in developing countries or in remote areas. But Moderna is working on developing an mRNA vaccine that can be kept in a fridge.

Researchers also need to look at how these vaccines are delivered into the body. While injecting into the muscle works for mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, delivery into a vein may be better for cancer vaccines.

The vaccines need to be shown to be safe and effective in large-scale human clinical trials, ahead of regulatory approval. However, as regulatory bodies around the world have already approved mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, there are far fewer regulatory hurdles than a year ago.

The high cost of personalised mRNA cancer vaccines may also be an issue.

Finally, not all countries have the facilities to make mRNA vaccines on a large scale, including Australia.

Regardless of these hurdles, mRNA vaccine technology has been described as disruptive and revolutionary. If we can overcome these challenges, we can potentially change how we make vaccines now and into the future.

Archa Fox is an Associate Professor and ARC Future Fellow, The University of Western Australia

Damian Purcell is a Professor of virology and theme leader for viral infectious diseases, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters

Peter Suciu

Tanks,

After more than 100 years since the first tanks rolled into action during the Battle of the Somme in the First World War, the tank continues to evolve.

Here's What You Need To Remember: While the MBT will remain a key component of the U.S. Army, the days of tanks in the United States Marines Corps are numbered, after it was announced that the Marines would eliminate its entire tank force within the next decade. The USMC, which is undergoing a transformation to be a more nimble force, will have closer integration with the U.S. Navy – and thus will increase rocket artillery and anti-ship missiles.

After more than 100 years since the first tanks rolled into action during the Battle of the Somme in the First World War, the tank continues to evolve, but it is unlikely that these metal behemoths will likely disappear anytime soon. As the weapons systems improve and more autonomous functionality comes into play, the main battle tank (MBT) is proving that it is going to be hard to replace.

Simply put, the tank can do things only a tank can do. Despite the increasingly high price tags, research suggests tanks are a worthwhile investment. A new poll from the UK-based Army Technology found that 74 percent of respondents believe a main battle tank is worth the cost, while only 26 percent disagreed.

The main battle tank, which has been a mainstay of militaries around the world, essentially grew out of the medium tank in the 1960s. However, in recent years with the focus on the Global War on Terror and asymmetric counter-insurgent operations, the tank was seen by many to be a relic from the Cold War.

Now due to changes in geopolitics, the tank is once again being seen as a necessary weapon – both as a deterrent and a potential offensive platform – with is why many militaries are either developing a new generation of MBT or upgrading existing tank forces. As Army Technology noted, there is a Franco-German effort to develop a replacement for the French Leclerc and Leopard tanks respectively, while the UK are planning to extend the service life of its Challenger II.

The U.S. Army began upgrading the M1 Abrams in 2017 and the plan is to have the long-serving MBT able to fight through 2020. It has seen a steady stream of upgrades meant to keep it at least on par, if not ahead of the adversaries, and this included the addition of a larger and more powerful 120mm gun in 1986, while a layer of depleted uranium was added to the armor in 1988.

The latest version, now designated M1A2C (formerly the M1A2 SEPV3), could be the final upgrade, it did offer some twenty-first-century enhancements to the Cold War-era tank. This included an ammunition datalink that allowed the crew to set the distance for a shell to explode – ensuring that it detonates within a building rather than going straight through it. The –C model also features better infrared sights, a remotely-operated .50 caliber machine gun and auxiliary power unit.

However, while the MBT will remain a key component of the U.S. Army, the days of tanks in the United States Marines Corps are numbered, after it was announced that the Marines would eliminate its entire tank force within the next decade. The USMC, which is undergoing a transformation to be a more nimble force, will have closer integration with the U.S. Navy – and thus will increase rocket artillery and anti-ship missiles.

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

Image: Flickr.

Doug Bandow

North Korea Nuclear Weapons, Asia

If the DPRK creates a nuclear arsenal numbering in the hundreds, then the consequences could be cataclysmic for the United States, unless Washington abandons its interventionist addiction.

The Day of the Sun, North Korea’s celebration of the birth of the country’s founder, Great Leader Kim Il-sung, passed without international incident. However, the future might not be so pacific.

The latest report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) warned that North Korea will remain a potential nuclear threat, given the living Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un’s active nuclear weapons program. ODNI warned that the North might resume testing of either long-range missiles or nuclear weapons this year, abandoning the moratorium imposed three years ago along with the first Kim-Trump summit.

Even more sobering is the joint report from the Rand Corporation and South Korea’s Asan Institute about potential North Korean nuclear developments. Obviously, the future is uncertain, but the assessment is ominous: “by 2027, North Korea could have 200 nuclear weapons and several dozen intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and hundreds of theater missiles for delivering the nuclear weapons.”

This would move the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea into the second rank of the world’s nuclear powers. Although lagging behind the United States and Russia, its arsenal would approach that of China and France, approximate that of the United Kingdom, and exceed those of India, Israel, and Pakistan. That would make the DPRK the most powerful, problematic state on the planet.

It is worth considering what the North could do with such a force. Pyongyang enjoyed conventional superiority when invading South Korea in 1950 and threatening a repeat for years afterward. However, the DPRK’s eventual economic malaise and the Republic of Korea’s market-oriented “miraculous” growth transformed the peninsula’s power balance.

North Korea retains a quantitative military edge, and the mass of even older artillery and tanks concentrated on the capital of Seoul would wreak enormous damage. However, the apparent conventional advances unveiled in the North’s October military parade could not disguise the Kim regime’s essential weakness when facing modern, technologically advanced adversaries. Wartime is full of surprises, but there is no doubt that the ROK and United States, and perhaps even South Korea alone, would defeat the North, though the “collateral damage,” as mass death and destruction is commonly called, would be enormous.

However, the North Koreans are raising the stakes by developing nuclear weapons and seeking to reach the U.S. mainland. Observed the Rand/Asan report: “their nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs have become their means for empowering their regime and working toward dominance. Today, even a few of the likely dozens of North Korean nuclear weapons could cause millions of fatalities and serious casualties if detonated on ROK or U.S. cities.” To that could be added the possibility of strikes on Tokyo and other Japanese cities, as well as Guam, an American territory that hosts U.S. military forces.

The increase in both quantity and sophistication would increase Pyongyang’s malign options. To the good, nothing suggests that Kim or anyone else in the DPRK’s leadership is suicidal. They do not desire to leave this earth atop a radioactive funeral pyre in Pyongyang.

However, in most wars, at least one participant miscalculates badly and often disastrously. Desperation would increase the likelihood of poor judgment and obvious blunders. The report raises the fearsome possibility of calculated recklessness: “the North Korean regime faces internal instabilities and is determined and ruthless; we cannot rule out North Korea trying to manage its internal problems by waging a limited or major diversionary war in which it would use nuclear weapons.” Such would be a prescription for escalation and destruction.

What to do in response? The authors offer a couple of remarkably bad ideas. For instance, “The ROK and the United States need to strengthen the ROK-U.S. alliance.” Is there anything more common than a public policy organization, especially one receiving U.S. government funding, advocating the “strengthening” of each and every alliance? Washington could be paired with Monaco or Eswatini, and op-eds, studies, and books would pour forth proposing ways to expand, extend, improve, advance, and, of course, strengthen the absolutely vital relationship at issue.

However, the U.S.-Korean alliance, along with the presumed American nuclear umbrella, is the problem in this case. Promising to use nuclear weapons on Seoul’s behalf works as long as the North does not have nuclear weapons or at least the capability to hit the United States with them. During the Cold War Moscow believed Washington’s threat to use nuclear weapons to protect Europe: the superpower confrontation was global and America believed that its security required preserving the continent’s independence from Soviet control.

The United States and North Korea are not similarly locked in a conflict, let alone one worldwide, and South Korea does not play a similarly critical role in the global balance of power. No U.S. interest in the ROK is worth risking a nuclear exchange involving the American homeland. Far from being an answer to an increased DPRK nuclear threat, the alliance could scarce survive it. Even a conventional war could go nuclear if South Korea and America appeared set on liberating the North, like in 1950. Then Kim would risk little demanding an allied halt and withdrawal or else.

Another Rand/Asan suggestion is even more frightening. The authors wrote: “The ROK and the United States also could use threats to pressure North Korea. For example, the United States could warn the North that if it appears to have fielded an unacceptable number of nuclear weapons (maybe 80 to 100), the ROK and U.S. might be forced to prepare to execute preemptive counterforce or decapitation attacks, or both.”

Such a policy would make the regime more suspicious and fearful. Pyongyang would have reason to act in even greater secrecy, more fully hiding weapons and disguising leadership movements. And emphasize more survivable weapons, such as submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Kim and his successors also might reduce already limited international contact, including future summitry.

Even worse, such an approach would make clear to the North what today it might merely suspect, that its military forces, conventional and nuclear alike, are essentially “use it or lose it.” Thus, in any conflict, real or imminent, the DPRK might decide that it must act quickly and decisively, and perhaps preemptively.

The possibility of North Korea becoming a serious nuclear power should energize diplomatic efforts to cap its arsenal. Whether or not Washington is willing to publicly admit that its effort to prevent the North from becoming a nuclear state is kaput, the Biden administration should focus on freezing North Korean efforts.

Equally important, the United States must consider the price it is willing to pay to defend its allies. Especially in a world in which most of America’s friends are well able to protect themselves and are not critical to America’s survival. The only existential military threat facing the United States today is nuclear war. Thus, there is nothing more important for Washington than precluding, deterring, thwarting, or otherwise defeating such an attack. Which requires avoiding involvement in any war which the DPRK perceives as posing an existential threat, meaning any conflict with America.

Despite a world filled with conflict and upheaval, the United States is more secure today than at virtually any other point in American history. The primary dangers come from getting entangled in other nations’ conflicts, such as on the Korean Peninsula. The results were awful in 1950. If the DPRK creates a nuclear arsenal numbering in the hundreds, then the consequences could be cataclysmic for the United States, unless Washington abandons its interventionist addiction.

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World and co-author of The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations with North and South Korea.

Image: Reuters

Peter Suciu

military, Asia

Chinese submarines pose a serious threat and should not be underestimated.

Here's What You Need to Know: The Type 093A Shang-II isn’t the world’s best attack submarine, but it should highlight the fact that Beijing continues to make progress on all fronts. Just as China’s PLAN is becoming a force to be reckoned with in terms of carriers, so too could it be a serious submarine force.

The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is now the largest naval force in the world, and a lot of attention has been paid to its two aircraft carriers, while a third flattop is reportedly on the way. This is in addition to its naval expansion, which includes assault carriers, cruisers and destroyers.

However, the more significant threat from Beijing may not be the carriers or other surface vessels, or even its aircraft carrier “killer” missiles—but rather its Type 093A attack submarine.

The first iteration of the Type 093 dates all the way back to 2005, but it was not without problems—and it offered little improvement over its problem-plagued, noisy predecessor, the Type 091. However, the Type 093 has been steadily improved.

It now seems that with the enhancements the Type 093 is well on its way to being a world-class attack submarine.

According to submarine expert H I Sutton, writing for Naval News, the Type 093A Shang-II class is the most powerful attack submarine in China’s arsenal today. The roughly 7,000 ton nuclear-powered submarine is roughly the same size as the Royal Navy’s Astute-class, which puts it in between the French Navy Suffren-class and the U.S. Navy’s Virginia-class.

While nuclear-powered submarines tend to be louder than their diesel-electric counterparts, the Type 093A reportedly uses some of its larger size for noise-reducing features including acoustic stealth. Improvements in reactor coolant pump design may have helped reduce the Shang-class’ acoustic signature.

Beijing hasn’t shared any specific details, but Chinese sources have reported that its teardrop hull with a wing-shaped cross-section provides both improved speed and stealth. A 2009 U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) report listed the Chinese Type 093 as being noisier than the Russian Navy’s Project 671RTM submarines, which entered service with the Soviet Navy in 1979. However, the Type 093A could be far quieter due to its altered hull form.

The Type 093A is also reported to be quite well armed, and is capable of carrying the YJ-18 anti-ship cruise missiles. It is a solid-fuelled rocket that can be launched from a buoyant launch canister. The missile lacks a solid booster and has an operational range of only about forty-two kilometers, but it is still a serious threat to enemy warships.

The submarine can also carry the YJ-82 anti-ship missile, rocket mines and torpedoes including the Yu-6 thermal torpedoes. The heavyweight thermal torpedo, which is essentially the Chinese counterpart of the American Mark 48 torpedo, is wire-guided and has active/passive acoustic-homing and wake-homing sensors.

The Type 093A Shang-II isn’t the world’s best attack submarine, but it should highlight the fact that Beijing continues to make progress on all fronts. Just as China’s PLAN is becoming a force to be reckoned with in terms of carriers, so too could it be a serious submarine force.

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 article is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

Warfare History Network

, Europe

United States antisubmarine aircraft played an unsung but vital role in this campaign.

Here's What You Need to Remember: This triumph came with a heavy cost. During their time in England, USAAF antisubmarine squadrons lost 12 planes and 102 men due to enemy action, accidents, or causes unknown. Navy patrol bomber losses over the bay amounted to 16 aircraft and 157 crewmen. In return, American sub hunters received credit for sinking 13 U-boats from February 1943 to the end of Biscayan operations 18 months later.

“Am over enemy submarine in position …”

Cut off in mid-transmission, this contact report came from a U.S. Navy patrol bomber operating over the Atlantic Ocean some 95 miles north of Cape Peñas, Spain, at 0316 hours on November 12, 1943. Repeated attempts to restore radio communications with the Consolidated PB4Y-1 Liberator, nicknamed Calvert n’ Coke, all went unanswered. Controllers finally listed the aircraft as overdue—presumed missing.

When Air Sea Rescue planes reached the Liberator’s last reported position, no evidence of the bomber or its 10-man crew could be spotted. Searchers did discover two fresh oil slicks—one large and one small—five miles apart. A fight to the death had occurred there, but it would take years for investigators to learn the truth about this fateful nighttime encounter.

The mysterious disappearance of Calvert n’ Coke marked just one incident in the three-year Bay Offensive, fought between Allied antisubmarine forces and the U-boats of Admiral Karl Dönitz’ Kriegsmarine during World War II. From June 1941 until August 1944, thousands of airmen and sailors patrolled the Bay of Biscay, an Atlantic gulf along the coast of France and Spain. Most of these sub hunters wore British Commonwealth uniforms, but several groups of American aviators also played an important role in this campaign.

Ugly interservice rivalries, however, almost grounded the effort before it began. Senior officers in the U.S. Navy and Army Air Forces, deeply suspicious of each other and at odds over even the most minor matters of doctrine and tactics, seriously undermined the nation’s antisubmarine effort. Hard-pressed British commanders stood by helplessly while their American counterparts quarreled and postured. In the meantime, long-range strike aircraft pledged by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to join the Bay Patrol instead sat parked on U.S. runways.

The Bay of Biscay: “the Trunk of the Atlantic U-Boat Menace”

Following the fall of France in 1940, German submarine forces started operating from bases along the Biscayan coast. As the war intensified, upward of 100 U-boats sailed to and from massive concrete-roofed pens at Brest, Lorient, St. Nazaire, La Pallice, and Bordeaux every month. These undersea predators proved extraordinarily difficult to defeat and by 1941 were sinking a large percentage of the war matériel, fuel, and food that Great Britain needed to stay in the war.

Something had to be done about Germany’s U-boats, and soon. Air Chief Marshal Sir Philip Joubert, in charge of the Royal Air Force (RAF) Coastal Command, put his Operational Research Section (ORS) to work on the problem. The ORS consisted of British scientists and mathematicians charged with advising operational commanders on technological solutions. Already, ORS’s out-of-the-box thinkers could claim credit for developing a reliable magnetic detonator fitted to aerial depth charges and a more effective camouflage pattern for low-flying patrol aircraft. Their work on increasing the lethality of air-delivered antisubmarine munitions through improved explosive filler and shallower detonation settings had, by the middle of 1941, begun to pay dividends in angry North Atlantic waters.

Noting that a large percentage of U-boats transited the 300- by 120-mile Bay of Biscay en route to or returning from their patrol areas, Coastal Command analysts recommended launching an air campaign to catch them as they moved across this narrow sea corridor. Enemy submarines surfaced often to charge their batteries; it was while on top that these U-boats were most vulnerable to attack.

Air Marshal Joubert’s staff further observed that air patrols need not destroy subs to successfully combat them. The mere presence of Allied planes overhead would cause a prudent U-boat commander to crash dive immediately. Constantly submerging to avoid patrol bombers slowed a boat’s progress across the Bay (surfaced, a Mark VIIC U-boat could make 17 knots while its top speed submerged averaged only 7.3 knots), thus markedly reducing its overall operating range.

The Bay of Biscay, then, was where Allied airmen would most likely find a regular concentration of German submarines. Air Marshall Sir John Slessor, who replaced Joubert as air commander of Coastal Command in February 1943, described it as “the trunk of the Atlantic U-boat menace, the roots being in the Biscay ports and the branches spreading far and wide to the North Atlantic convoys, to the Caribbean, to the eastern seaboard of North America, and to the sea lanes where the faster merchant ships sail without escort.”

Finding the Right Aircraft For the Mission

Coastal Command’s No. 19 Group, flying from bases along England’s southwestern tip, took on the task of chipping away at that trunk. First, they needed proper tools for the job. Due to the distances involved (Cape Finisterre on the bay’s southernmost point measured 800 air miles from British airfields in Cornwall), long-range aircraft were essential. Patrol planes also needed to carry an adequate payload of 250-pound depth charges and fly fast enough to catch a surfaced U-boat before it could dive.

Multi-engined bombers, therefore, answered No. 19 Group’s requirements. Unfortunately, the Wellington, Whitley, and Halifax aircraft most suited for Coastal Command’s Biscay Offensive were also greatly sought after by RAF Bomber Command and its influential commander, Air Marshal Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris. Joubert’s Coastal Command fared poorly in obtaining the necessary number of heavy bombers for antisubmarine work.

Flying boats like the Short Sunderland and American-designed Consolidated PBY Catalina possessed the necessary range, but their bulk and poor maneuverability limited these patrol planes’ utility against fast-diving U-boats. Coastal Command employed both types throughout the war with some success; however, another bomber then coming off U.S. assembly lines seemed a perfect fit for No. 19 Group’s Bay Offensive.

This aircraft was the Consolidated B-24 Liberator. Designed as a high-altitude strategic bomber, the Liberator’s impressive range, speed, and ordnance-carrying capacity also distinguished it as an ideal antisubmarine weapons system. In 1941 it represented the cutting edge of warplane technology; consequently, air chiefs everywhere wanted the Liberator for their own missions or theater of operations.

Hap Arnold’s Plans For an Independent Air Force

General Henry “Hap” Arnold, commanding the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF), was the man responsible for allocating land-based aircraft production. Arnold had an unenviable position—until American industry fully mobilized for the war there were never enough Liberators being built to satisfy global demand for these versatile bombers. And behind his amiable public façade, Hap Arnold kept a secret agenda regarding the Liberator.

For years, Arnold had been seeking to form an air force independent from the U.S. Army. The approaching conflict presented him with a unique opportunity to demonstrate how such a strategic bomber command could destroy the enemy’s industrial means to fight, thus decisively affecting the war’s outcome. To accomplish this mission Hap Arnold needed bombers, and plenty of them.

The first few Liberators sent to Great Britain through Lend-Lease went immediately to RAF Bomber Command. Only in late 1941 did Coastal Command receive a small allotment, which it immediately modified into very long-range (VLR) patrol aircraft. By this time U-boats were wreaking havoc on Allied merchant shipping, especially within a region called the Mid-Atlantic Air Gap, an area unreachable by land-based planes. One 12-plane squadron of VLR Liberators, each boasting a remarkable 1,150-mile patrol radius, soon began covering that gap.

But it soon became clear to the British that Hap Arnold was not about to offer up large numbers of Liberator aircraft despite an urgent need for them over the Eastern Atlantic. After the United States entered World War II, Arnold saw as his priority the need to build up the American strategic bomber force. Other users, such as the RAF and U.S. Navy, would have to wait until Liberator production capacity grew to meet their demands.

Allied Submarine-Fighting Technologies

The trickle of Consolidated Liberators flowing into Great Britain was paralleled by an exchange of British technological innovation with their American allies. One such device that greatly affected future operations in the Bay of Biscay was Air-Surface-Vessel (ASV) radar. In 1940, scientists at Oxford’s Clarendon Laboratories invented a microwave radio transmitter far superior to the long wave radar set then in use by British patrol planes and warships. Their “cavity magnetron” produced a 9.7 centimeter radio wave—a focused, high-resolution beam that, when mounted on an aircraft, proved highly effective at detecting surfaced submarines. As British manufacturers then lacked the capacity to mass produce this microwave radar, Prime Minister Winston Churchill agreed to share the technology with American engineers.

Called the Mark III by the British and the SCR-517 by American aviators, this new radar went into large-scale production by mid-1942. It came as a nasty surprise to the U-boat fleet as German warning receivers, calibrated for long-wave radar, could not detect its emissions. It took the Kriegsmarine two years and dozens of submarines lost before it fielded an effective countermeasure.

The Allies shared other sub-hunting innovations as well. The British Leigh Light, named for its inventor, a Coastal Command squadron leader, enabled Allied patrol planes to illuminate and attack U-boats at night. American-made radio altimeters proved crucial for maintaining a safe altitude over water during conditions of low visibility. Long-range navigation aids produced by both Allies assisted aircrews in accurately plotting their position over the vast Atlantic Ocean.

More top-secret antisubmarine devices in development included the Magnetic Anomaly Detector (MAD), which recorded variations in the Earth’s gravitational field caused by a submerged U-boat. An air-dropped sonar sensor called the sonobuoy showed great promise, as did an acoustic homing torpedo nicknamed Zombie. But the sub hunters’ most effective technological breakthrough was also the most highly classified: ULTRA, the decryption of German military signal ciphers.

Thanks to ULTRA, Allied codebreakers could read nearly every order that Admiral Dönitz gave to his U-boat commanders. Consequently, Coastal Command knew when enemy submarine traffic in the Bay of Biscay was likely to increase. Further, a chain of radio receivers called Huff-Duff (which stood for High Frequency Direction Finding, or HF/DF) helped triangulate a U-boat’s location to within a few miles whenever it broke radio silence to report in or request orders.

Initially, production delays and reliability issues limited the effectiveness of these new weapons. By June 1942, only five Vickers Wellington bombers had been fitted with Leigh Lights, and British-built Mark III centimetric radar would not appear until March of the following year. Worse still, Air Chief Marshal Joubert’s Bay Offensive was in danger of collapsing due to an inadequate number of long-range, radar-equipped patrol bombers. In 1941, RAF Coastal Command warplanes managed to sink just one U-boat in the Bay of Biscay. By the end of 1942, that number climbed to a mere seven submarines killed for thousands of flight hours spent patrolling the bay.

If Coastal Command did not yet possess suitable sub-hunting aircraft, there was an organization that did. The USAAF Antisubmarine Command began to receive in the autumn of 1942 factory-new B-24D Liberator bombers specially equipped to combat U-boats. Fitted with SCR-517 ASV radar, radio altimeters, and long-range navigational equipment, these aircraft were badly needed to reenergize Air Marshal Joubert’s Bay Patrol. It would, however, take British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s personal intervention to get them into the fight.

Bringing the USAAF To St. Eval

Writing to Harry Hopkins, President Roosevelt’s personal emissary, Churchill asked for a force of USAAF Liberators equipped with microwave radar to work with Coastal Command against U-boats in the Bay of Biscay. Roosevelt deferred the question to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, then commanding Allied forces in North Africa. Ike agreed to Churchill’s request with one caveat: that he reserved the authority to transfer USAAF antisubmarine aircraft from England to Mediterranean bases at any time. Starting on November 6, 1942, U.S.-marked sub-hunter B-24s started winging their way across the Atlantic Ocean toward Great Britain.

Just getting there proved no easy task. While the first three Liberators crossed without incident, ferocious winter storms battered another flight of six planes so badly that five of them had to turn back. One B-24 disappeared without a trace, while the remaining four regrouped to make an arduous but safer journey along the South America-Africa-England route. By November 27, the 1st Antisubmarine (A/S) Squadron occupied its new home, RAF Station St. Eval in Cornwall. Its sister unit, the 2nd A/S Squadron, would arrive in early January.

Conditions at St. Eval proved less than ideal. First, no one knew the Americans were coming. Living and working conditions were Spartan; wartime RAF rations of brussels sprouts and cabbage were described by one USAAF airman as “unbelievably bad,” while gloomy English weather made staying warm a constant struggle. Compounding matters, St. Eval’s ramps and parking areas were already clogged by three squadrons of Coastal Command bombers as well as other RAF aircraft. No hangars existed for maintenance, so mechanics had to work outside. Darkness came early, as did winter winds that numbed the ground crews struggling to keep their planes operational.

Equally challenging was St. Eval’s distance from U.S. supply depots. Couriers drove all day to reach the nearest USAAF warehouse, which may or may not have had on hand the required replacement part. The newly arrived sub-hunter outfits also lacked trained radar repair specialists, postal clerks, and other administrative staff necessary to keep a flying squadron running smoothly. Eighth Air Force lent the A/S units some 66 support personnel until their own ground echelons landed in mid-January.

Readying the American Flyers For Combat

The 1st and 2nd Antisubmarine Squadrons quickly adapted to Coastal Command’s tactics and procedures. The Americans learned they would operate under No. 19 Group, flying missions of 10 to 11 hours in duration out to the Bay of Biscay and back. Veteran British aircrews advised the novice sub hunters on how best to approach a wily U-boat, using low cloud cover or the sun to avoid observation. The RAF also warned their USAAF colleagues about a dangerous new threat, long-range Junkers Ju-88 fighters that had been spotted over the bay recently.

After a brief settling-in period, USAAF Liberators began flying operational patrols on November 16. The Americans’ first attack on a U-boat took place on December 29, when Captain Douglas Northrop dropped 12 250-pound depth charges on a rapidly submerging sub. That vessel escaped unscathed from Northrop’s strike, as did another U-boat attacked by Lieutenant Walter Thorne’s B-24 two days later. In both cases, the U-boats were detected by ASV radar but managed to crash dive under a barrage of aerial explosives.

January was spent readying the 2nd A/S Squadron for combat. Also that month the 1st Antisubmarine Group (Provisional) was organized with Lt. Col. Jack Roberts (formerly of the 1st A/S Squadron) taking command. The group received administrative support from the USAAF’s England-based VIII Bomber Command but took operational direction from RAF Coastal Command’s No. 19 Group.

Operation Gondola

Coastal Command had big plans for the American sub hunters. From February 6-15, 1943, the Liberators participated with other No. 19 Group warplanes in Operation Gondola, a high-density patrol over the Biscayan approaches. Intelligence suggested that during this period the Bay of Biscay would be filled with as many as 40 U-boats, all unprepared for the long-legged B-24s and their powerful new radar. Ranging far out into the bay, these U.S. Liberators were likely to surprise the enemy in areas they previously believed were safe from air attack.

This new tactic paid off immediately. On February 6, 1st Lt. David Sands caught a U-boat on the surface but overshot the target in his excitement and missed. Sands then made a second pass but managed to drop only two depth charges due to jammed bomb racks. Three days later, another B-24 piloted by 1st Lt. Emmett Hunto dove on a submarine too late. Hunto’s ordnance detonated behind the rapidly submerging boat, which survived unscathed.

February 10 saw several attacks made by 2nd A/S bombers. First Lieutenant John Kraybill pressed in three times on a sub despite heavy antiaircraft fire, only to be frustrated by malfunctioning bomb racks. Lieutenant William Sanford’s Liberator, nicknamed Tidewater Tillie, enjoyed better luck. Catching an unwary U-boat off the Spanish coast later that same morning, Sanford dropped nine 250-pound depth charges on it in three passes. The German submarine was last seen settling by its stern, followed shortly by a large dome-shaped bubble of air rising to the surface. Admiralty officials scored the boat as “probably sunk,” later upgraded to a confirmed kill after ULTRA intercepted German reports indicating U-519 had disappeared in that region without a trace. The USAAF received its first credited sinking of the campaign.

Recent research indicates that Lieutenant Sanford’s crew actually struck U-752 on its way home from operations in the North Atlantic, inflicting minor damage. The fate of U-519 remains unexplained.

Operation Gondola showed what radar-equipped antisubmarine aircraft could do when employed in a maximum effort saturation campaign. During this 10-day surge Allied patrol planes logged 2,260 hours over the bay, resulting in 18 sightings and seven attacks. American B-24s accounted for 72 percent of all U-boat detections and 57 percent of attacks made, with Sanford’s strike on February 10 marking Gondola’s one credited kill.

The USAAF Withdraws From Biscay Operations

Coastal Command’s newly appointed commander, Air Marshal John Slessor, appreciated what these capable U.S.-crewed Liberators could do. Therefore, he was shocked when in March the 1st A/S Group unexpectedly pulled out of St. Eval. For their part, USAAF commanders understood that the sub hunters’ time in England would be temporary—they determined the U-boat threat in North Africa took priority over Coastal Command’s requirements and transferred their most combat-tested A/S outfit to Morocco in response.

This abrupt reassignment deprived Slessor of a powerful asset just as his spring offensives, codenamed Enclose and Derange, were gaining momentum. No. 19 Group would have to carry on solely with British and Commonwealth air units, now receiving new Leigh-Light Wellingtons and four-engined Handley Page Halifax bombers equipped with centimetric Mark III radar sets. In March a squadron of British-marked antisubmarine Liberators also began flying out of St. Eval.

The coming of spring brought both milder weather to the North Atlantic and a corresponding increase in Allied convoy activity. As Admiral Dönitz’ submarines sortied out to strike those convoys, so did Air Marshal Slessor’s maritime patrol aircraft scramble to meet them over the Bay of Biscay’s constricted waters. British bombers sank one boat in March, two more during April, and an impressive seven subs caught transiting the bay during the height of operations in May.

King and Arnold’s Fight Over Anti-Submarine Missions

John Slessor derived great pride from the results of his Biscay Offensive, yet the energetic air marshal could not help but wonder how many more U-boats might have been sunk if a few American patrol bomber squadrons had “joined the party.” In June, Slessor traveled to Washington seeking a renewed U.S. commitment to his summer bay campaign, called Operation Musketry. He arrived to witness a long-simmering dispute over control of antisubmarine aircraft finally boil over between the chiefs of the U.S. Navy and Army Air Forces.

General Arnold and the Navy’s commander in chief, Admiral Ernest King, distrusted one another intensely. These two officers created and maintained a poisonous jurisdictional dispute regarding the employment of antisubmarine aircraft, a quarrel that extended back to the dark days following Pearl Harbor. While the U.S. Navy was responsible for protecting American coastal waterways, the only long-range aircraft then available for patrol and convoy escort duties belonged to the USAAF. In March 1942, Arnold agreed to temporarily place Army antisubmarine planes under naval control, at least until the Navy could obtain its own sub hunters. Yet neither Arnold nor King was happy with this arrangement.

The brilliant, irascible King saw Arnold’s increasing involvement in antisubmarine warfare as a grab for power, an attempt by the USAAF to intrude on what was traditionally a Navy mission. Hap Arnold feared the Navy’s interest in obtaining long-range Liberators was merely a cover for involving itself in strategic bombing operations, which he viewed as the Army Air Forces’ purview. For months the two chiefs danced like boxers around this issue, each spitefully rejecting any attempt at improving antisubmarine organization or cooperation.

Opposing tactical doctrines provoked more ill feelings between the two services. Naval policy dictated that patrol planes closely guard merchant convoys, while USAAF guidelines prescribed a more free-ranging, offensive-minded air operation. King scoffed at the Army’s methodology, likening it to searching for a needle in a haystack. He further argued that by sticking to the convoys patrol planes would be more likely to find the U-boats stalking them.

On the other hand, naval district commanders kept USAAF sub-hunting aircraft out operating over their districts long after German U-boats had moved into more productive waters. Flexibility, the greatest advantage of aerial antisubmarine warfare, remained an unexploited asset so long as patrol bombers were prohibited from following their U-boat prey across sea district boundaries.

Negotiating a Resolution to the Conflict

The two sides may never have reached agreement if it were not for a new factory being built in Renton, Washington. In 1942, Boeing Aircraft raised this structure to make the Navy’s PBB-1 Sea Ranger patrol plane. General Arnold thought it would be better served manufacturing B-29 Superfortress bombers for the USAAF, and in exchange for the Renton facility offered the Navy a percentage of future Liberator deliveries. This deal meant the Navy would finally obtain a land-based patrol aircraft while the Army got its Superfortress plant.

The Navy took another step toward accepting full control of the American antisubmarine effort when, on May 10, 1943, Admiral King stood up the Tenth Fleet. It was a paper fleet, wholly without ships or airplanes, but one that represented King’s determination to finally defeat the U-boat peril. Tenth Fleet had as its charter the mission of directing and coordinating all Navy sub-hunter activities worldwide. Curiously, in all of Tenth Fleet’s organizational charts there was no mention of the U.S. Army Air Force’s Antisubmarine Command or its 286 aircraft.

What happened next surprised no one. In a June conference held between Arnold and senior naval officials, an arrangement was made in which the Army would turn over its antisubmarine-equipped B-24s in exchange for an equal number of unmodified Liberators originally allocated to the Navy. Admiral King formalized the pact, writing to Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall on June 14, “The Navy will be prepared to take over all antisubmarine air operations by 1 September 1943.”

26 U-Boats Sunk

This horse trade did not signal an immediate end to USAAF sub-hunter activities. While in Washington, Air Marshal Slessor had persuaded King to release the Army’s 479th Antisubmarine Group for duty over the bay. Four full squadrons of B-24s (the 4th, 6th, 19th, and 22nd A/S) were set to arrive at St. Eval starting in mid-July, while Navy Liberators (PB4Y-1s in naval parlance) would follow along as soon as their crews could be trained.

The American planes deployed just as Operation Musketry reached its operational crescendo. Much had changed since the first USAAF antisubmarine squadrons in England pulled up stakes four months earlier. Admiral Dönitz’ U-boats were now traveling surfaced in groups during daylight hours and slugging it out with Allied bombers thanks to new quad-barrel 20mm antiaircraft cannons hastily mounted to their conning towers. Even more dangerous was the air threat—swarms of Ju-88 heavy fighters prowling the bay in search of unwary patrol planes. German gunfire compounded the normal hazards of weather, fatigue, and mechanical malfunction faced by all Allied sub hunters.

At least the situation at St. Eval had improved. Learning from past mistakes, Colonel Howard Moore’s 479th Group deployed with adequate maintenance, administrative, and logistics support. In August, the Americans moved to RAF Station Dunkeswell, 100 miles down the road in Devonshire. This newly constructed base, dubbed Mudville Heights by the airmen living there, would remain the hub of U.S. antisubmarine activity for the rest of the war.

Operational patrols commenced on July 13, and soon thereafter the 479th scored its first U-boat kill. On July 20, 1st Lt. Charles Gallmeier’s bomber surprised the surfaced U-558, delivering seven depth charges close aboard. The German vessel fought back, though, its well-aimed antiaircraft fire wounding one of Gallmeier’s gunners as well as disabling an engine. A British Halifax then finished off the U-boat, which went down with all 43 hands.

Team tactics resulted in another kill on July 28, when B-24s piloted by Major Stephen McElroy (commanding officer of the 4th A/S Squadron) and 1st Lt. Arthur Hammer joined a British Liberator to fight U-404 in an epic six-hour battle. The hard-fighting submarine damaged all three sub hunters before succumbing to a barrage of 27 depth charges.

The July Massacre ended for USAAF flight crews five days later when Captain Joseph Hamilton’s B-24 helped Canadian pilots sink U-706 about 400 miles west of the St. Nazaire sub pens. On August 2, Dönitz pulled the plug on his disastrous fight-back tactics. Hereafter, German submarines would hug the Spanish coast—where ASV radar proved less effective—surfacing only to recharge their batteries and then only at night. The Kriegsmarine also greatly restricted submarine operations, preserving its fleet while new wonder weapons were fielded—weapons that could change the course of the war.

Coastal Command’s summer Bay Offensive resulted in 26 U-boats killed by air between April and August 1943. Seventeen more had been damaged, significantly degrading the German Navy’s offensive capability. The U-boats were all but defeated, or so said Prime Minister Churchill when he boasted the Kriegsmarine had not sunk a single Allied merchant ship on North Atlantic convoy routes between May 1 and September 15, 1943. No. 19 Group contributed to this victory by whittling away at the Biscayan “trunk” with aggressive, coordinated attacks on enemy submarines.

Ju-88s Strike Back

Sub-hunter aircraft continued to prowl the bay throughout August and September, but by then Dönitz’s remaining U-boats rarely ventured from their pens. Instead, patrol bomber crews faced increasing numbers of Luftwaffe heavy fighters—cannon-armed Ju-88s operating in packs. The USAAF’s first clash with them occurred on July 26, when a Liberator commanded by Lieutenant S.M. Grider encountered nine fighters over the bay. Thinking quickly, Grider escaped undamaged by ducking into some low-hanging clouds.

The Americans’ luck would not last. On August 8, marauding Ju-88s shot down Captain R.L. Thomas’ bomber, killing all aboard. Ten days later they pounced on another B-24, this one with the luckless Grider aboard as check pilot. Grider and his aircraft commander, Lieutenant Charles Moore, managed to successfully ditch their stricken plane, no simple task given the Liberator’s propensity for breaking apart upon hitting the water. Six survivors were rescued by a British warship after spending four days bobbing around the bay on life rafts.

Altogether, the 479th A/S Group lost four B-24s to enemy fighters during 16 recorded air-to-air encounters. American gunners claimed five German warplanes in return, demonstrating that these battles were not always one sided. Yet the USAAF’s ungainly patrol bombers made excellent targets for prowling Ju-88s despite Coastal Command’s efforts to provide escort coverage.

The Navy Takes Over For the USAAF

Into this hazardous operational environment entered a new group of aviators when on August 17 the first PB4Y-1 Liberators of U.S. Navy Bomber Squadron 103 (VB-103) touched down at St. Eval. After several weeks spent familiarizing themselves with Coastal Command procedures, the Navy crews moved to Dunkeswell where they relieved the soon-to-be disbanded USAAF sub-hunter squadrons. By September 5, the PB4Y-1s of VB-105 began arriving, with VB-110 closing on the United Kingdom starting on September 24.

They were commanded by Captain (later Commodore) William Hamilton of Fleet Air Wing Seven (FAW-7), who located his headquarters in nearby Plymouth. The Navy commenced operations on August 30, and by November 1 had taken over all patrol duties from the Army. Most USAAF antisubmarine crews received new combat assignments with the Eighth Air Force while their specialized B-24s were repossessed by Navy flying squadrons.

Although experienced at overwater navigation from previous assignments, these naval aviators soon discovered the Bay of Biscay held many unique perils. On September 2, skulking Ju-88s shot down a Liberator commanded by Lieutenant Kenneth Wickstrom; no aircrew survived. Two days later, a dozen German fighters mauled Lieutenant James Alexander’s PB4Y-1 off the Iberian Peninsula. Alexander somehow managed to ditch his bullet-ridden plane, enabling the 11 men aboard to escape into rubber dinghies. Rescued by Spanish fishermen some 36 hours later, they eventually returned to duty.

The Naval Technology War

There were few U-boats left for FAW-7’s flight crews to hunt. Husbanding most of its submarines for the coming cross-Channel invasion, the Kriegsmarine started to fit them with a revolutionary new defensive technology. The Schnorkel (German slang for “nose”) allowed a U-boat to operate submerged while still taking in air from above, thus theoretically eliminating the need for it to surface altogether. Allied commanders worried how their hundreds of aircraft and thousands of aviators would find submarines no longer visible on ASV radar systems.

Navy sub hunters also introduced some new weaponry to the Bay Patrol. Their Liberators now carried sonobuoys, air-delivered sonar transmitters able to detect U-boats moving under water. Once the sub’s location was marked, PB4Y-1 crews could then drop a Zombie, also known as the Mk 24 acoustic homing torpedo, on their unsuspecting prey.

Furthermore, the “MADCATS” of VP-63 operated their Magnetic Anomaly Detector-equipped PBY Catalinas over the Biscayan gulf for a time. Airmen used this apparatus to identify the gravitational disturbance caused by a submerged metal object like a U-boat and then dropped depth charges on the contact. Their PBYs proved easy pickings for Luftwaffe fighters, though, and the MADCATS soon moved to the Mediterranean’s calmer waters where their specialized gear worked more effectively.

The Fate of the Calvert n’ Coke

Liberators of FAW-7 joined Commonwealth aircraft in an all-day encounter with U-996 on November 10. Caught on the surface by two Wellington bombers, this resilient U-boat then withstood attacks by three U.S. Navy PB4Y-1s before a Czech-manned Liberator disabled it with rocket fire. Unable to dive, U-996’s crew finally scuttled its sub two miles off the Spanish coast.

As mentioned previously, the last flight of Calvert n’ Coke took place on November 12, 1943, when that VB-103 Liberator failed to return from a night patrol mission. Naval officials listed all 10 members of Lieutenant Ralph Brownell’s crew as missing in action but did not solve the mystery of their unexplained disappearance until after the war ended. Investigators examining captured German war diaries discovered the airmen had, in fact, sunk U-508 on that lonely patch of ocean before meeting their doom.

In December, all three patrol squadrons took part in an unusual battle against German surface ships, catching the blockade runners Osorno and Alsterufer as they traversed the bay bound for Asian waters. Heavily escorted by German destroyers, the two raiders traded blows with Coastal Command aircraft for three days starting on Christmas Eve 1943. Punished by relentless depth charge, bomb, machine-gun, and rocket attacks from dozens of Allied warplanes, neither vessel made it to port. One VB-110 PB4Y-1, commanded by Lieutenant W. Parish, was shot down while making a low-level strike against the Alsterufer on December 26.

These moments of excitement notwithstanding, most missions over the bay passed uneventfully. “The chief enemy of the patrol plane pilot is boredom,” recalled VB-105’s Owen Windall. “Boredom begets inattention, then indifference. Hundreds of hours are spent at sea with nothing to look at but an endless expanse of waves and sky.” Other hazards included miserable winter weather, which contributed to the loss of several FAW-7 Liberators. Most of all, crewmen feared ice—if enough of it accumulated on the wings of their heavily loaded PB4Y-1s they would fall out of the sky without warning.

Operation Cork: Sealing Off the English Channel For D-Day

The first American U-boat kill utilizing Zombie munitions occurred on January 28, 1944, when a VB-103 Liberator nicknamed The Bloody Miracle caught U-271 on the surface west of Ireland. Lieutenant George Enloe and crew put six depth charges across the sub’s beam and followed up with a lethal homing torpedo after they observed the vessel crash dive beneath them. Strike photos revealed first evidence of a Schnorkel, troubling news for the Allies then preparing to invade Normandy.

For D-Day, Coastal Command, now led by RAF Air Chief Marshal Sholto Douglas, planned to seal off all approaches to the English Channel with saturation air patrols. The aptly named Operation Cork would, if successful, prevent Dönitz’ U-boats from getting anywhere near the Allied fleet by creating an “unclimbable fence” of air antisubmarine forces for them to face.

Reinforced for Normandy with 25 squadrons, No. 19 Group began flying Cork missions on June 5. Navy Liberators, temporarily augmented by detachments from Gibraltar-based VB-114, were assigned to patrol a region off the Cherbourg Peninsula. The pace was intense. Directed to cover individual sectors of ocean twice an hour, each squadron generated seven missions per day compared to two or three flown previously.

Forty-three of Admiral Dönitz’ Biscay-based U-boats sortied against the invasion fleet in the weeks following D-Day. They failed miserably. By June 23, Coastal Command planes had killed nine U-boats and damaged 11 more.  Unable to move without being detected, the surviving non-Schnorkel-equipped submarines could only cower helplessly on the ocean floor. Just five vessels fitted with this new breathing device managed to make it past the escort screen, torpedoing three warships and five freighters before being driven off by British destroyers.

The Successful but Costly Bay Offensive

Thanks to Coastal Command, Allied forces were largely free to cross the English Channel without fear of U-boat attacks. In August, what remained of Germany’s submarine fleet in France transited the Bay of Biscay one final time as American ground troops approached their bases. The three-year Bay Offensive concluded victoriously for the Allies.

This triumph came with a heavy cost. During their time in England, USAAF antisubmarine squadrons lost 12 planes and 102 men due to enemy action, accidents, or causes unknown. Navy patrol bomber losses over the bay amounted to 16 aircraft and 157 crewmen. In return, American sub hunters received credit for sinking 13 U-boats from February 1943 to the end of Biscayan operations 18 months later.

United States antisubmarine aircraft played an unsung but vital role in this campaign. American technology and manufacturing capacity, including long-range Liberator bombers and the Zombie acoustic homing torpedo, contributed a significant amount of striking power to the Bay Patrol. Yet victory was ultimately measured by the determination, fighting spirit, and sacrifice demonstrated by thousands of Allied airmen. These aviators proved themselves to be the deciding factor in this deadly cat-and-mouse game fought between Coastal Command and German U-boats in the Bay of Biscay.

This article originally appeared on the Warfare History Network. Originally Published December 15, 2018.

Image: Wikipedia,

Peter Suciu

military, Europe

Snipers have always been controversial, and have grown in ferocity over time.

Here's What You Need to Remember: By World War II the technology of the weapons—and more importantly the telescopic sights—had developed considerably, and nearly every combatant power saw the need for those snipers who could kill from a distance. 

They are the subject of movies, feared by the enemy in wartime, declared national heroes by some and just generally hated by Michael Moore. They are the military men and women who became snipers. 

While perhaps not as famous today as now-deceased Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, names such as Soviet Red Army snipers Klavdiya Kalugina and Vasily Zaytsev, U.S. Marine Sergeant Carlos Norman Hathcock II and Australian William “Billy” Sing are still quite well known among history buffs for their ability as marksmen and deadly killers.

Snipers have always been controversial. Whether true or not, there is a scene in 1970 film Waterloo that takes place prior to the famous battle in which a British soldier asks the Duke of Wellington if he can “take a crack at” the French Emperor Napoleon who had just arrived across the field. The Duke (played by Christopher Plummer) responds, “Absolutely not.” 

In the nineteenth-century the idea of a marksman taking a well-aimed shot at an officer—or worse a general—was considered unsporting to say the least. That isn’t to say it wasn’t employed on the battlefield. American marksmen played a crucial role in the American Revolution. While the British Regulars were issued the very fine and widely-respected Brown Bess smoothbore musket, American soldiers (including militia) were armed with early long rifles—and it made a huge difference. Trained British soldiers armed with the Brown Bess were accurate to 80 yards, while American riflemen could hit targets at 300 yards.

The Americans also employed new tactics, and instead of lining up in tight ranks the soldiers used concealment and hid in trees and shrubs. They were anything but “sporting” aiming for the NCOs and officers when possible, and if afforded the opportunity even taking a crack at a general.

By the Napoleonic Wars the British employed Rifles Companies, most notably the 95th Rifles made famous by the Sharpes series of books and TV movies. These were marksmen but not true “snipers” however. It would be another generation before the true sniper came to be.

Even before the term was adopted during the American Civil War, Confederate sharpshooters employed tactics similar to what the Americans had used against the British. Needless to say this didn’t sit well with the Union forces, who eventually countered with similar methods. Sniping, while still not known by that term, evolved further during the Anglo-Boer War as Boer marksmen began to make concealment as important as the actual marksmanship.

The British countered with similar tactics, but also employed men who were well practiced in field craft, map reading and observation. This is also when the term “sniper” came to be known – from the 19th century practice of using rifles to shoot small birds (snipe) from a very long distance. 

Sniping also evolved in the trenches of the First World War. At its onset only the German Army issued a scoped rifle to marksmen, but soon nearly all the combatants saw the need for men who could shoot and kill at a distance. British Major Hesketh-Prichard had been a big-game hunter, and by some accounts was the world’s best rifle shot. He was charged with creating a course entitled, “The First Army School of Sniping, Observing and Scouting.”

One issue that remained was that the military rifles used by the British military weren’t ideal for the role of a sniper, so Hesketh-Prichard sourced civilian rifles, which he often funded out of his own pocket. 

However, by World War II the technology of the weapons—and more importantly the telescopic sights—had developed considerably, and nearly every combatant power saw the need for those snipers who could kill from a distance. 

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and website. He is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com.

This article first appeared earlier this year and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

Peter Suciu

military, Europe

The Iskander-M tactical missile system was designed to strike adversary low-sized and site targets to a range of up to 500 kilometers.

Here's What You Need to Remember: In addition to Iskander missiles based on the Russian mainland, the platform has been deployed to the semi-exclave Kaliningrad, where the missiles continue to threaten parts of Poland, Sweden, Germany, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Latvia. The mobile missile carriers, which have long been a Russian military hallmark, also provide the opportunity to choke off parts of the Baltic Sea.

The 9K720 Iskander mobile short-range ballistic missile system was developed during the final years of the Cold War, but it wasn’t tested until 1996 and only entered service in 2006. It has seen use in the Russo-Georgian War and the Syrian Civil War, but now the platform, which was designed to evade missile defenses, could be on the way out by the end of the decade.

Tass reported that Russia has already laid out the groundwork for a new weapon to replace the Iskander.

“The Iskander-M will comply with modern requirements for quite a long time and will remain the basic weapon for the missile forces and artillery at least until 2030,” Russia’s Missile Forces and Artillery Chief Lt-Gen. Mikhail Matveyevsky said in an interview with the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper. “As for the future weapon, we can say that quite substantial scientific groundwork is already available today for its development.”

The Iskander-M tactical missile system was designed to strike adversary low-sized and site targets to a range of up to 500 kilometers. It is equipped with two solid-propellant single-stage guided missiles, and targets can be located by satellite and aircraft as well as by conventional intelligence including an artillery observer or from aerial photos scanned into a computer. The missiles can be retargeted during flight. The optically-guided warheads can also be controlled via an encrypted radio transmission, including those from an AWACS or a drone.

The platform has also been adapted for use as an anti-ship platform. In the summer of 2019, Russia conducted two simulated “electronic launches” of the Iskander-M against targets in the Black Sea.

Iskander-M Potential Upgrades

The tactical missile system’s potential “has been tapped (upgraded) by more than a half,” the general added, but at the same time suggested that instead of further pushing it to its full potential, the Russian military is currently carrying out scientific work on the concept of an advanced rocket artillery armament.

Efforts are also reportedly underway for upgrading the capabilities of existing weapons systems. Russian artillery troops have been already receiving the upgraded Tornado-G medium-caliber multiple launch rocket systems and modernized Tornado-S launchers.

Export Platform

Even if the Russian military develops a replacement, the Iskander-M could find an export market. Several countries have expressed interest in the platform including Syria, Iran and the United Arab Emirates—but it is uncertain if the UAE still has interest. To date only Armenia and Algeria have received the Iskander systems, in 2016 and 2017 respectively.

In addition to Iskander missiles based on the Russian mainland, the platform has been deployed to the semi-exclave Kaliningrad, where the missiles continue to threaten parts of Poland, Sweden, Germany, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Latvia. The mobile missile carriers, which have long been a Russian military hallmark, also provide the opportunity to choke off parts of the Baltic Sea.

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 article is being republished due to reader interest.​

Image: Wikipedia.

Peter Suciu

F-35, Asia

It is likely Beijing stole much of the data to make the J-31 from the United States, but that doesn't mean this copy can actually compete with the F-35.

Here's What You Need to Know: It is also likely too early to tell if the J-31 can actually go toe-to-toe with the American and allied F-35s and it has been reported that the Chinese fighter has received largely negative reviews when it has been seen at air shows.

There is the old saying that "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" – and whether that is true or not, in the world of military hardware there have certainly been a lot of imitations, particularly in aircraft. The People's Republic of China has been among the nations that have arguably been most "sincere" in terms of military flattery in that case.

Of course the Chinese learned a key lesson from the Soviet Union, which didn't develop its best early Cold War bomber – Boeing did.

The reason that the Tupolev Tu-4 looked so much like the United States' Boeing B-29 Superfortress was that the Soviet airplane was completely reverse-engineered from one of three repairable B-29 aircraft that were forced to crash land in Soviet territory at the end of the Second World War.

The Chinese have taken this further and it's hard not to see the "influence" of the Lockheed Martin F-22 in the Chinese Chengdu J-20, or the Russian Sukhoi Su-33 in the Chinese Shenyang J-15 – but now it is quite obvious that Beijing's fifth-generation J-31 is essentially little more than a Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter stamped "Made in China."

As Kris Osborn wrote this week for FoxNews, "Virtually all photos and renderings of the J-31, since first unveiled, revealed a striking resemblance to the U.S. F-35. This does not come to the surprise of many in the U.S., given China's well-known and documented cyberespionage efforts."

It is likely Beijing stole much of the data to make the J-31 from the United States, but that doesn't mean this copy can actually compete with the F-35. While Chinese officials have compared the J-31 to the F-35, it isn't clear if the Chinese aircraft will have the same stealth abilities of the American fifth-generation fighter.

The J-31 has a stealth aerodynamic design and likely has stealth coating – but there are other factors to consider including radar-absorbent coating materials and the use of internal weapons bays.

It is also likely too early to tell if the J-31 can actually go toe-to-toe with the American and allied F-35s and it has been reported that the Chinese fighter has received largely negative reviews when it has been seen at air shows.

That said it could still likely challenge America's fourth-generation non-stealth fighters, but the issue is how it will perform with the F-35 that truly matters. 

Even less clear at this point is if the J-31 will be inducted as a carrier-based naval fighter – and if so if it could operate from the People's Liberation Army Navy's (PLAN's) two carriers, which both utilize a ski-jump flight deck – or if it is intended for foreign customers to compete with the F-35.

In the latter case that could be where this look-a-like aircraft could be the biggest threat as it could be offered to countries that can't buy the real deal F-35 or simply may desire a slightly more affordable version for their arsenals.

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 article first appeared earlier this year.

Image: Reuters

Caleb Larson

Su-27,

The Su-27 was designed as a direct competitor to the American F-14 and F-15 families of aircraft.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Therein lies the Su-27’s success: a capable and agile airframe that has grown and improved in increments, into the broad Flanker-family of aircraft that are still in service today, both within former Warsaw Pact countries, but also widely distributed within the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa.

The legendary Sukhoi design bureau has notched a number of notable successes when designing airframes for the Soviet Union and for the Russian Federation. Notable among those is the Cold War-era Su-27 design which just keeps on ticking. Why?

High-low Mix

No conversation about the Su-27 is compete without its origin story, its troubled birth in the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War.

The Su-27 is a Soviet design that adhered to the high-low mix theory of air combat, in which a larger number of smaller, less capable and less expensive aircraft are complimented by a smaller number of more capable (and therefore more expensive) aircraft.

This arrangement serves as a force multiplier, allowing the total number of aircraft to be as effective as a larger number of aircraft. The original Su-27 high-low compliment was the MiG-29, which is aerodynamically similar, albeit a much smaller airframe and considerably less capable.

The Su-27 was designed as a direct competitor to the American F-14 and F-15 families of aircraft. Its capable design reflects this. The Su-27 has a top speed of about Mach 2.35, and has up to ten hardpoints for missiles or bombs.

As long-range air superiority fighter, the Su-27 was intended to keep an eye on the Soviet Union’s borders, protecting against American/NATO bomber incursions, as well as be a multirole fighter.

Given its (at the time) long-range capabilities, the Su-27 was also intended as an escort fighter for Soviet long-range bombers such as the Tu-160 “Blackjack”, Tu-22M “Backfire”, and Tu-95 “Bear” — additional Soviet-era designs that continue to serve in their original bomber roles with Russia today.

Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee

It is exceptionally agile: the Su-27, and later more advanced variants of the family are flown by the Russian Knights, an aerobatic demonstrator team similar to the Blue Angels in the United States.

This is due to the Su-27’s super maneuverability: the airframe is capable of Pugachev’s Cobra, a super maneuver in which an aircraft flying at low-to-moderate speed quickly raises its nose, the airframe acting as a large airbrake and rapidly decelerating, then lowering its nose and accelerating away.

Perpetual Half-life

Like many interesting Soviet tank, aircraft, and weapons designs, steady incremental improvements have increased their service lives

There are also a dizzyingly wide array of Su-27 variants developed both for the Soviet Union as well as for the Russian Federation, and for export. The Flanker family of aircraft are also essentially improvements on the initial Su-27 design that incorporate better avionics, extended range, or additional capabilities, like ground attack.

Therein lies the Su-27’s success: a capable and agile airframe that has grown and improved in increments, into the broad Flanker-family of aircraft that are still in service today, both within former Warsaw Pact countries, but also widely distributed within the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa.

Despite the growing proliferation of stealth aircraft, the Su-27 will likely stay in service in conflict scenarios of lower intensity, against adversaries that do not have stealth aircraft or advanced air defenses.

Caleb Larson is a Defense Writer with The National Interest. He holds a Master of Public Policy and covers U.S. and Russian security, European defense issues, and German politics and culture.

Image: Reuters.

Peter Suciu

F-22, Middle East

Currently, the United States Air Force is the only operator of the aircraft.

Here's What You Need to Remember: For now, it seems likely the Israeli Air Force will have to “make do” with its F-35I Adir aircraft, which by some accounts is the best fighter in the skies today. It is the only F-35 variant to enter service heavily tailored to a foreign country’s specifications.

Even before Joe Biden became president-elect, it looked quite unlikely that Israel would be acquiring any Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor fighters. News had circulated that the Israeli military had expressed interest in the F-22 as the advanced stealth aircraft could allow its air force to maintain its “qualitative military edge” (QME), which the United States is legally required to preserve. This followed the agreement by the United States to sell the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II to the United Arab Emirates.

The story, which was first reported by the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat, cited internal sources that senior Israeli defense officials sought to acquire the F-22 as it was designed for greater air-to-air combat capability than the F-35.

Currently, the United States Air Force is the only operator of the aircraft. It is flown by units of the 1st Fighter Wing out of Langley Air Force Base, Virginia; the 3rd Fighter Wing at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska; and the 154th Fighter Wing at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii.

A significant issue is that the F-22 cannot be exported under U.S. federal law, which is meant to protect its stealth technology and other classified technologies. While a 2010 defense authorization bill did include a provision that required the Department of Defense (DoD) to prepare a report on the costs and feasibility for the export of an F-22 variant, Congress has not lifted the export ban.

However, the biggest issue is that the F-22 program ended in 2011. To date, only 195 aircraft have been produced and it is unlikely that production would resume due to the high cost.

Defence-Blog reported that Israeli defense officials have only denied reports that there was interest in the fighter, and said it is “not currently on the table.” However, there have been the arguments made that as President Donald Trump is likely a lame duck he could approve the sale.

That of course doesn’t really make it true—or more importantly address the feasibility issues, notably that the aircraft isn’t being produced. Restarting the program would likely be astronomically costly to say the least, while another issue is that the aircraft in service are largely considered overdue for an upgrade.

“These reports are based on an assessment that Trump is willing to do almost anything—including diplomatic and security intervention—in order to promote arms deals and to help friends,” Yossi Melman, intelligence and strategic affairs correspondent at the Haaretz newspaper, reported.

For now, it seems likely the Israeli Air Force will have to “make do” with its F-35I Adir aircraft, which by some accounts is the best fighter in the skies today. It is the only F-35 variant to enter service heavily tailored to a foreign country’s specifications.

The Israeli fighters feature an overriding Israeli-built C4 program that runs “on top” of Lockheed’s operating system. One of F-35’s key capabilities comes from its superior ability to soak up data with its sensors and share it with friendly forces. Compatibility with datalinks used by friendly Israeli air and ground forces is thus an important aspect from Israel’s perspective as it tracks the position of hostile surface-to-surface rocket launchers and surface-to-air missiles systems.

The Adir has also been certified to carry major Israeli-developed weapons systems in its internal weapons bay. This includes the Python-5 short-range heat-seeking air-to-air missile, and the Spice family of glide bombs, which combine electro-optical, satellite, and man-in-the-loop guidance options that offer greater targeting versatility and have a range of up to sixty miles.

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 article first appeared two months ago and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Robert Beckhusen

Security, Middle East

Military customers scratch their heads looking at it.

Here's What You Need To Remember: "Fire superiority” is shooting more bullets at the enemy, accurately, than he is shooting back at you. This gun was designed to achieve that.

The Israeli company Silver Shadow recently attracted attention for its double-barreled AR-type rifle, the Gilboa DBR Snake. For the most part, it’s an AR, uses AR parts, and fires the 5.56-millimeter AR round. Except that it has two separate barrels, two magazines and two ejection ports — with two triggers as if two AR rifles had smashed into each other.

The two triggers are to make the Snake legal for civilian use in the United States, as We Are the Mighty‘s Blake Stilwell noted, citing ATF regulations for machine guns. But it’s easy enough to pull both, firing two rounds at once.

It’s the civilian market, primarily in America, where this gun should find buyers. Military customers are highly unlikely to view this rifle as very practical.

But let’s back up for a moment. The U.S. military has studied double-barreled semi-automatic rifles for potential combat use before. The Pentagon’s Project Salvo, which began in 1951, aimed to produce a next-generation infantry rifle suitable for modern warfare while embodying the lessons of World War II.

One of these lessons is the importance of what the military calls “fire superiority” — shooting more bullets at the enemy, accurately, than he is shooting back at you. If you have fire superiority, the sheer volume of fire limits an enemy’s room to maneuver, pinning them down and making them easier to attack on their exposed flanks. Heavy fire can also inflict casualties through shrapnel and ricochet.

Ultimately, Project Salvo led to the AR series of rifles and its first military adaptation, the selective-fire M-16, with semi-automatic, three-round burst and fully-automatic modes.

There were several far-flung concepts put into development testing as part of Project Salvo. There was a flechette-firing shotgun — never adopted — designed to shred enemy soldiers with dozens of darts. Project Salvo also involved experiments with double-barreled rifles including the 5.56-millimeter Winchester Salvo, produced in 1957.

The Winchester Salvo, like the modern Snake, has two ejection ports with one on each side of the receiver. (That’s a lot of flying brass.) There are two magazines, and the rifle’s unloaded weight comes to 11.8 pounds. It’s difficult to compare the weight to a modern AR rifle given the wide variety of variants and their accessories, but the Salvo is a few pounds heavier than an “average” AR.

The G3, a heavy NATO battle rifle from the Cold War, weighs nine pounds — about as much as a Gilboa DBR Snake. That makes the Snake a bit on the heavy side, but not unreasonable.

One problem with the Winchester Salvo came with its 5.56-millimeter cartridge — an unusual and experimental duplex cartridge which carried two bullets, one behind the other, for four total bullets firing every time the shooter pulled the trigger. This added recoil — too much of it.

The Snake doesn’t use duplex ammunition, but it faces a same basic questions of efficiency, weight, and waste. Ammunition adds weight, yet two bullets traveling side-by-side are still traveling toward the same target. The enemy will likely not know the difference from a standard, single-barrel AR as the rounds snap around them.

The result is twice the ammunition, and cost, for a similar suppressive effect. Better to have a lightweight rifle — with a single barrel. And if soldiers need extra firepower, they can always flip the selector switch to a three-round burst.

This first appeared in 2018 and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Caleb Larson

Soryu-Class, Asia

Anyone who says Japan's navy is a paper tiger hasn't met these. 

Here's What You Need To Remember: The Sōryū-class is also the first class of Japanese submarines that uses air-independent propulsion technology. Though the class is diesel-electric, some of the subs can switch from louder diesel engines to quieter Sterling engines.

The Japanese Navy, or as they’re officially known, the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF), is slated to operate a total of twelve Sōryū-class submarines. These diesel-electric attack submarines were originally introduced into service with the JMSDF in the mid- to late-2000s and have several interesting features.

The Sōryū-class was the first Japanese submarine class built by Japan to use lithium-ion batteries. Historically, batteries onboard submarines have been built similarly to the battery that powers your car—lead-acid batteries. Lithium-ion batteries have a size a power storage advantage in that they can have a greater power output despite being much smaller and more light-weight than their lead-acid predecessors.

Lithium-ion batteries also usually recharge faster than lead-acid batteries, which reduces time on the surface—a particularly vulnerable place for submarines—and underwater endurance is therefore greatly increased. Some sources claim that underwater endurance may have been doubled by switching to lithium-ion batteries and could be as long as two weeks. If true, the class’ endurance is quite good.

The Sōryū-class is also the first class of Japanese submarines that uses air-independent propulsion technology. Though the class is diesel-electric, some of the subs can switch from louder diesel engines to quieter Sterling engines.

The Stirling engines used by the Sōryū-class were adapted from engines used in Sweden. The unique engine uses bottled liquid oxygen so that the engine’s diesel fuel can combust. The advantage of this propulsion system is that it runs much quieter than a traditional diesel engine. Furthermore, its range is estimated to be around 6,100 miles or about 9,800 kilometers.

Though the class does not have vertical missile launch tubes, they can launch U.S.-supplied Harpoon anti-ship missiles via the six torpedo tubes in the class’ hull. The missile skims the sea surface to evade enemy radar and has a prodigious 170+ mile (or about 280+ kilometer) range. In addition, the submarines are armed with torpedoes and can lay anti-submarine and anti-ship mines.

Future Export

Until very recently, Japan adhered to a self-imposed weapons export restriction that prevented the sale of weapons or weapon systems abroad. But, as the island nation has recently demonstrated by its muscle-flexing in response to an increasingly assertive China, exports might again be on the menu for Japan.

Both India and Australia have expressed interest in acquiring Japanese submarine technology, if not fully built submarines. Though it would be a break from the recent past, it would not be entirely shocking if Japanese submarines are seen in other countries’ navies in the future.

Caleb Larson is a Defense Writer with The National Interest. He holds a Master of Public Policy and covers U.S. and Russian security, European defense issues, and German politics and culture.

Image: Wikipedia.

Peter Suciu

Nuclear Weapons,

The longest missing nuclear weapon hasn't been seen in 71 years, and it is unlikely it will be found anytime soon.

Here's What You Need to Remember: While this should be as scary as suggested, the good news is that in the past 50 plus years, no other nuclear weapons have been lost – at least that we know of.

The 1996 John Woo film Broken Arrow features a quite memorable line – uttered by character actor Frank Whaley – "I don't know what's scarier, losing nuclear weapons, or that it happens so often there's actually a term for it." In fact, the term "Broken Arrow" does refer to the loss of a nuclear weapon and it has happened more than once.

Between 1950 and 1980, there have been 32 documented nuclear weapon accidents that involve the unexpected accidental launching, firing, detonating, theft or loss of the weapon. To date, six U.S. nuclear weapons have been lost and shockingly never recovered. Below you will find a breakdown of the situations that lead to this shocking statistic.

February 13, 1950

The longest missing nuclear weapon hasn't been seen in 71 years, and it is unlikely it will be found anytime soon.

It was lost when the crew of a United States Air Force Convair B-36 bomber was conducting a mock nuclear strike and was en route from Eielson Air Force Base (AFB), Alaska to Carswell AFB, Texas, when it developed engine trouble. Not wanting to have a crash with a nuclear warhead, the crew was ordered to drop its 30-kiloton Mark 4 (Fat Man) bomb into the Pacific Ocean.

According to the "official" report, the bomb didn't contain the plutonium core necessary for a nuclear detonation, but it still contained a substantial amount of uranium.

March 10, 1956

Six years after losing the first bomb, two nuclear cores were lost when a B-47 bomber likely crashed in the Mediterranean Sea while en route from MacDill AFB, Florida to Ben Guerir Air Base, Morocco. The aircraft had successfully completed its first aerial refueling, but it failed to make contact with a tanker for a second refueling and was reported missing.

The exact weapon wasn't disclosed, but the B-47 typically carried the 3,400-kilogram Mark 15 nuclear bomb. No trace of the plane nor the cores has ever been found.

February 5, 1958

During a simulated combat mission near Savannah, Georgia, another Air Force B-47 bomber carrying a Mk 15 weapon collided with an F-86. After multiple attempts to land, the bomber crew was given the green light to jettison the bomb to reduce weight, and also to ensure it wouldn't explode during an emergency landing. The bomb, which was dropped over the Wassaw Sound near the mouth of the Savannah River, wasn't recovered.

January 24, 1961

Somewhere near Goldsboro, North Carolina, a uranium core is likely buried in a field. It had been one of the cores for a pair of 24-megaton nuclear bombs that were on a B-52 that crashed shortly after takeoff. What is especially unsettling about this incident is that three of the four arming mechanisms on the bomb that was recovered had been activated.

The second bomb's tail was discovered 20 feet below ground in the muddy field, and when efforts to find the core failed to uncover it, the military did the next best thing. The United States Army Corps of Engineers purchased a 400-foot circular easement over the buried components to restrict digging.

December 5, 1965

Somehow an A-4E Skyhawk attack aircraft, loaded with a one-megaton thermonuclear weapon, managed to roll off the deck of the USS Ticonderoga and fell into the Pacific Ocean. The pilot, plane and bomb quickly sank in 16,000 feet of water and were never seen again.

However, it wasn't until 15 years later that the U.S. Navy even admitted the accident had taken place, and only noted it happened 500 miles from land. However, that wasn't true – as the carrier was about 80 miles from Japan's Ryuki island chain. As a result of that accident, the Japanese government now prohibits the United States from bringing nuclear weapons into its territory.

Spring 1968

The final bomb to be lost and not recovered occurred sometime in the first half of 1968, and involved the loss of the U.S. Navy's nuclear attack submarine USS Scorpion, which sank about 400 miles to the southwest of the Azores Islands. In addition to the tragic loss of the 99 crewmembers, the submarine was carrying a pair of nuclear-tipped weapons, which had yields of up to 250 kilotons.

While this should be as scary as suggested, the good news is that in the past 50 plus years, no other nuclear weapons have been lost – at least that we know of.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He regularly writes about military small arms, and is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com.

Image: "US nuclear weapons test in Nevada in 1951" by International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Denis Mole

Nuclear Submarines, Asia

The claim that Australia can’t have nuclear-powered submarines because it doesn’t have a nuclear industry has never been tested.

In Adelaide’s The Advertiser newspaper on 7 March, former defence minister Christopher Pyne said, ‘Then there is the nonsensical argument that the Attack Class submarines are no good because they aren’t nuclear. Almost all of these arguments are driven by people who either know nothing at all about submarines and defence or have outdated information that is no longer relevant.’ Pyne must therefore believe that Australia’s current and recent submarine commanding officers know nothing about submarines.

The 2016 defence white paper called for Australia’s future submarines to be ‘regionally superior’. As a former commander of the submarine force, I don’t know any submarine commanding officer over the past 30 years who has any doubt that, overall, nuclear-powered submarines are superior to diesel submarines of similar vintage. Australia’s new Attack-class submarines will probably be superior to most diesel submarines in our region, but they won’t be superior to China’s nuclear-powered submarines entering service in the 2040s and beyond. China’s navy is numerically larger than the US Indo-Pacific fleet now and is forecast to be more powerful than the American fleet by 2035. Australia’s 12th Attack-class submarine won’t enter service until around 2054 and will be in service until about 2080.

Pyne went on to say, ‘Australia does not have a nuclear industry. One cannot be created overnight.’ Pyne might have the cart before the horse. The Americans had their first nuclear-powered submarine in service before their first nuclear power station. The nuclear power station program in the US had been languishing until Captain, later Admiral, Hymen G. Rickover was appointed to head the nuclear reactor development for both naval and civil applications. In the early years, it was trained nuclear submariners leaving navy service and going into the commercial power sector that allowed that industry to grow rapidly.

The claim that Australia can’t have nuclear-powered submarines because it doesn’t have a nuclear industry has never been tested. An Australian ability to manufacture and reprocess nuclear fuel wouldn’t be essential in order to own and operate nuclear-powered submarines. Modern American and British submarines are built with nuclear fuel to last the life of the vessel. Japan has 33 nuclear reactors in power stations but doesn’t manufacture or reprocess nuclear fuel. This is also true of many countries in Europe and the Middle East that have nuclear power. Australia buys advanced combat aircraft and weapons that are manufactured overseas, so why not nuclear reactors and the whole-of-life fuel they require? Nuclear-powered submarines could be built in Australia with imported reactors.

Notwithstanding that reactors and fuel can be purchased from other countries (the OPAL reactor at Lucas Heights is from Argentina), why doesn’t Australia have a larger and more diverse nuclear industry? Of the top 20 economies (Australia is 13th), 17 have nuclear power. Australia, Italy and Saudi Arabia are the three exceptions. Italy imports 16% of its electricity from adjacent countries, more than half from France where it is produced from nuclear power. Saudi Arabia is acquiring nuclear power. And, as various countries commit to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, it’s noteworthy that no major economy intends doing so without nuclear power in the mix.

Diesel submarines have been around for about 120 years and nuclear submarines have been around for about 65 years, so neither form represents new technology. With a choice between the two technologies, the leading Western maritime powers of the US, UK and France all adopted the nuclear option with no diesel attack submarines, because nuclear power is the more effective and superior technology.

At the time when replacements for Australia’s Oberon-class submarines were being developed in the 1980s, it’s almost certain that neither the US nor UK would have sold nuclear submarines to Australia. With the Cold War at its peak, their focus was on the Soviet Union and the possibility of maritime warfare in the North Atlantic. France was just starting to develop its first nuclear-powered attack submarines. But what about when it came time to explore options to replace the Collins-class submarines?

The 2009 defence white paper announced that the Collins class would be replaced and Australia’s submarine force would be expanded to 12 boats. The defence minister at the time, Labor’s Joel Fitzgibbon, directed the department that, in developing options, it was not to bring forward any nuclear proposal. Three years later, when he was no longer defence minister, Fitzgibbon admitted it was a mistake ruling out a nuclear option; however, neither of his successors altered the ‘no nuclear’ guidance to the department. Consequently, when the Coalition government came to power in 2013, only conventional options had been developed.

The notion of conventionally powered submarines’ suitability for Australia in the second half of this century needs to be challenged. The Attack-class program should proceed as replacements for the six Collins-class submarines to avoid a capability gap; however, options to acquire nuclear-powered submarines for the additional six boats and eventually replacements for the six Attack-class submarines should be pursued immediately.

Submarines could lead to a broad nuclear industry in Australia. This possibility will be the subject of a seminar to be held at ASPI on Thursday 15 July, jointly hosted by the Submarine Institute of Australia and UNSW Canberra. More information is available here.

Denis Mole served in the Royal Australian Navy for more than 35 years, commanding submarines and attaining the rank of commodore. He has recently retired from the commercial marine and defence support sector.

Image: Reuters.

Robert Beckhusen

Security, Asia

Chinese announcements of military prowress have circulated in the press with varying degrees of skepticism and hyperbole.

Here’s What You Need to Remember: China is talking up its military prowess.

To hear Chinese state media tell it, the soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army will go into battle in the future wearing an array of high-tech gizmos. In their hands will be enormous weapons combining a rifle with a 20-millimeter grenade launcher akin to the old — and canceled — American OICW. On top of that, they will have heads-up displays and networked positioning systems so Chinese troops can monitor each other digitally, almost like a video game.

It looks impressive, and Chinese announcements of the system have circulated in the press with varying degrees of skepticism and hyperbole. A more skeptical take recently came from the military news wire Shephard Media, which pointed out that China is claiming the 20-millimeter hybrid weapon, dubbed QTS-11, can fire air-bursting grenades lethal within a radius of 7.7 meters.

Be wary of such claims. The U.S. version of this weapon from years ago, the OICW, also included a 20-millimeter grenade launcher but the U.S. military found it to be ineffective. A grenade’s lethality primarily comes from shrapnel, but the pieces of flying metal were often too light and often dispersed upwards and away from the target. Ultimately, the U.S. military lost interest, though the OICW did inspire the M320 grenade launcher and the problematic — and now canceled — XM25 (see picture above).

South Korea developed its own tricked-out future rifle called the K11 and adopted it into service. But the K11 was plagued with problems from the fire-control system to the optics and the barrel — it wobbled. Another issue is that the K11 is huge and heavy at 13 pounds unloaded. So like the OICW, the result is a big, bulky rifle with an underpowered grenade launcher. And like the American version, it’s expensive.

Armies tend to like reliable, effective and affordable rifles — all factors where these hybrid weapons have been found lacking.

In any case, the Chinese QTS-11 is reportedly in service in limited numbers with the Sky Wolf Commandos, a special operations force in the Chinese army’s Western Theater Command. Chinese state television described the move as part of a training program to “adapt to future informatised warfare.”

This was in reference to the electronic gadgets that come with the system — a “full digitalized integrated soldier combat system, including detection and communications,” Chinese state media added.

If this sounds familiar, it should.

Years ago the U.S. Army worked on its Land Warrior program which attempted to equip networked soldiers with battery-powered devices such as smartphones and integrated helmets as if troops were operating in a science-fiction movie. The larger goal was to peer through the “fog of war” with soldiers digitally marking enemies on digital maps, while also being able to track the location of fellow soldiers to reduce friendly fire incidents.

It hasn’t been easy. The need to lug heavy batteries with a finite amount of energy, and unreliable connectivity, has bedeviled developers. But the Army kept working on it. The program turned into Nett Warrior and then Precision Fires-Dismounted — or PF-D — for artillery gunners. The U.S. Army believes smartphones are a cheap and practical tool to help forward observers pick targets, send the information back to the guns stationed miles away, which then rain down shells.

That may be where China’s own experiments in this technology end up. The U.S. Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office, meanwhile, has speculated the Chinese announcements may serve as a form of propaganda, noting that the Sky Wolf Commandos are stationed near the Indian border, where China routinely times military declarations for geopolitical purposes.

China also announced that its military is developing an “Ironman-like, weight-bearing suit mocked as a ‘wearable skeleton’ to carry heavier gear.”

We’ll see. Exoskeletons are extremely difficult engineering challenges that try to augment something humans are already evolved to do — resulting in tiring out the human operator instead of strengthening them. Still, perhaps the Chinese military will develop a machine or weapon that has more success. Or maybe it’s just a psychological mind-game.

This article was first published earlier in 2019.

Sebastien Roblin

History, Eurasia

The submarine infiltrations appeared to cease with the end of the Cold War—but not for good.

Here’s What You Need To Remember: On the morning of October 28, 1981, two Swedish fishermen were hauling their catch back to Karlskrona when they noticed a mysterious oil slick. One Bertil Sturkmen later returned to the area to investigate, and at 10 a.m. came across a startling sight: a seventy-six-meter long submarine wedged on its starboard side against the sharp rocks of Torumskär island. An officer was standing on the submarine’s conning tower, staring at him through binoculars—and holding a machine gun.

Sturkmen sailed back to Karlskrona and notified the nearby Swedish naval base, which harbored two of Sweden’s three coastal defense flotillas. Karlskrona was well protected from attack due to its position in a shallow bay shielded by a belt of rocky islands which demanded careful circumnavigation. Somehow, the submarine had wended it way through this daunting aquatic obstacle course to a point only six miles away from the base.

The patrol boat Smyge reached the grounded vessel by 11 a.m., and Comm. Karl Andersson managed to converse with crew members in German—who informed him that the submarine had strayed off course due to a faulty navigation system.

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The boat in question was S-363, a Soviet Whiskey-class coastal patrol submarine—thus giving the incident its moniker “the Whiskey on the Rocks.” (At the time, the submarine was widely misidentified as U-137.) The short-range diesel-electric submarine had a crew of 56 and had been designed in the 1940s with snorkel and battery technology derived from the Nazi Type XXI “electric boat.” The Soviet Union built more than two hundred of the submarines.

Sweden’s long Baltic coastline faced Leningrad and Soviet bases in the Baltic states and Poland. Though international law states that a country’s territorial waters extend twelve nautical miles (fourteen miles) away from its mainland and island possessions, Soviet submarines had been detected intruding into Swedish waters on numerous occasions during the 1960s and 1970s. Swedish vessels had opened fire on them several times without apparent effect.

Sweden was theoretically neutral during the Cold War, but Stockholm’s perceived closeness to the West apparently motivated Soviet intelligence-gathering activities. The Swedes returned the favor by shadowing Soviet ships and aircraft with their own jets and submarines, occasionally leading to tense situations: for example, in 1985 a standoff between Swedish Viggen and Soviet Su-15 interceptors resulted in a deadly crash.

In fact, the evening before, on October 27, the Swedish submarine Neptune and two helicopters had been testing a new type of torpedo which may have been of considerable interest to the Soviets. It was around that time that S-363 ran aground. Her crew gunned her diesel engines trying to escape—producing a din which was heard ashore.

As news of S-363’s grounding spread, journalists and boats surrounded the submarine. Stockholm demanded the right to interrogate her captain, Anatolij Gustjtjin. Moscow claimed S-363 had entered Swedish waters seeking aid, though of course, S-363 had not issued a distress signal.

Swedish radars then detected a task force of a dozen Soviet ships approaching S-363. Led by Admiral A. Kalinin, the fleet included the missile destroyer Obraztsovy, and older gun-armed destroyer, two anti-ship missile boats, a frigate and a tug.

While the submarine Neptune did its best to slow down the approaching fleet, the icebreaker Thule was moved into position to block access to S-363. As the Soviet task force continued to approach, radar-guided coastal guns activated their targeting radars, which were designed to hop multiple frequencies to evade counter-battery fire. This finally prompted the Soviet warships to halt. A lone tug continued approaching, however, until Swedish torpedo boats barred its progress.

Meanwhile, Swedish ships conducted gamma-ray spectroscopic analyses of S-363 and detected trace amounts of what appeared to be Uranium 238—suggesting that a nuclear weapon was on. Back in the 1950s, the Soviet Union had developed several nuclear torpedoes, including smaller types designed to knock out multiple enemy vessels, as well as a larger type for nuking naval bases and coastal cities—a concept which has recently seen a renaissance. Indeed, the Whiskey-class S-144 had tested a T-5 anti-ship nuclear torpedo with a five-kiloton warhead in 1957.

After days of protracted negotiations, Captain Gustjtjin, accompanied by political officer Vassily Besedin, submitted himself to a six-hour interrogation aboard the torpedo boat Vastervik on November 2. He insisted that S-363 had experienced a breakdown of its four different navigational systems and drifted a hundred miles off course from the coast of Poland. However, given that entering that far into Karlskrona Bay required numerous precise maneuvers, his Swedish interlocutor noted such a mistake was “worthy of the Guinness Book of World Records.”

Meanwhile, a storm broke out, obscuring Swedish radars. When it cleared, two vessels were detected approaching Swedish waters. Assuming a renewed Soviet incursion, Prime Minister Falldin had naval strike planes scrambled and coastal guns put on standby to open fire in defense of territorial waters. But after twenty minutes, it was discovered that the contacts were German merchant ships.

Finally, after a ten-day standoff, Moscow permitted the Swedes to extricate the grounded submarine. Swedish tugs put the Soviet sub back to water and handed her off to Admiral Kalinin’s task force. S-363 returned to port on November 7.

Political officer Besedin later told a Swedish journalist:

"Our officers were ordered to blow up the submarine together with its crew if the Swedish military forces tried to take possession of the boat. These orders would have been completed.

"Onboard, in the torpedo tubes, there were torpedoes with nuclear warheads. The effect of detonating such nuclear warhead is about the same as the impact of the bomb released over Hiroshima [15 kilotons]. It is terrible to think of all the destruction and the long-term consequences it would have had for Sweden as a whole."

Karl Andersson has questioned Besedin’s account, however, arguing that the submarine would have been scuttled by destroying the propeller shaft and valves, not detonating onboard nuclear warheads.

Besedin also insisted that a navigational error had occurred due to damage from an earlier collision, forcing S-363’s crew to rely on less accurate methods. Another theory is that the submarine was testing a new, unreliable inertial navigation system.

The episode precipitated a decade of intensified submarine hunts by the Swedish Navy. However, despite deploying numerous torpedoes, depth charges and mines at numerous dozens of contacts, no Soviet submarines were apparently destroyed. Stockholm also began working on upgrading the stealth and endurance of its coastal defense submarines by developing advanced Air-Independent Propulsion technology.

The submarine hunt aroused domestic controversy. Swedish right-wingers saw the U-137 incident as evidence of the Soviet Union’s ill-intentions and the need to build up military deterrence. Some left-wing Swedes implied the Swedish Navy was jumping at shadows and suggested the submarine sightings were actually NATO submarines provoking the Swedes against the Soviets.

The submarine infiltrations appeared to cease with the end of the Cold War—but not for good. As relations between Russia and the West sharply deteriorated in 2014 over Moscow’s seizure of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine, the Swedish Navy spent a week attempting to track a mini-submarine that reportedly sighted multiple times in Swedish waters.

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

Image: Reuters.

Kris Osborn

Missile Defense, Americas

American destroyers already have systems to track and try to shoot down regular ballistic missiles; could they be adapted to new hypersonic weapons?

Key point: The Navy wants to be able to protect itself from a wide variety of threats. Here is how the service could track and try to take out newer and faster missiles.

Having a U.S. Navy destroyer able to take out intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a radical development that multiplies defenses in unprecedented ways. 

The mid-course phase of flight during which an ICBM travels through space toward its descent back into the earth’s atmosphere, is typically a twenty-minute process depending upon launch origin and trajectory. That period of the ICBM’s flight is longer than any boost phase ascent or terminal phase descent onto a target, offering the best opportunity to shoot it down.

But ICBMs are designed to survive through a salvo the use of countermeasures such decoys or other methods of ensuring an ICBM passes through space. This means that an ability for a defender to take multiple intercept “shots” would be of enormous tactical value. Ground-based interceptors (GBIs) can travel great distances, yet they are land-launched and restricted in terms of point of origin. 

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

A Navy-ship fired SM-3 IIA, recently demonstrated to be capable of destroying ICBMs, brings new geographical launch possibilities. For example, a group of Aegis-capable Navy destroyers could fire SM-3s from the middle of the Pacific Ocean at ICBMs speeding through space for the United States from China. While an ICBM is likely to be at a higher altitude in space during the major portions of the mid-course phase, the period of time just after it leaves the earth’s atmosphere, or the minutes right before it reenters the earth’s atmosphere upon descent, present optimal windows for defense with the SM-3 IIA. A ship operating not far off the coast of the United States, or near enemy shores in the vicinity of a potential enemy launch location, could provide a unique opportunity for SM-3 IIA-armed destroyers to fire intercepts at ICBMs operating just above the boundary of the earth’s atmosphere. 

There is yet another interesting tactical possibility here which might include the idea that a highly-precise, larger and long-range SM-3 IIA interceptor could be used to intercept hypersonic weapons. Is it fast enough? Can ship-based radar track something at that speed? That may remain to be seen, however one interesting nuance can be found in the Pentagon’s current effort to accelerate defenses against hypersonic weapons.

Hypersonic boost-glide vehicles, which skim along the boundaries of the earth’s atmosphere, occupy what Principal Pentagon Director for Hypersonics Michael White recently described as “in between space,” meaning it was difficult for most interceptors or ship-based defenses to reach. The areas just above and below the earth’s atmospheric boundary may be too high for certain ballistic missile defenses, such as ship-fired SM-3s to reach, yet simultaneously be too low for space-traveling GBIs to hit. Could the newer SM-3 IIA reach this area? Why not? Especially if it is empowered by extended and networked radar tracking systems and had the engineering to travel at the necessary speeds to create a collision. 

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

Image: Reuters

Robert Farley

Anti-Ship Missiles, Asia

Long-range Chinese missiles threaten countries throughout the Pacific, but America might be the only country with the money, technology, and will to find ways to defend against them.

Key point: Beijing knows it can hold warships and bases throughout much of the Pacific at risk. But Washington also knows this and is working on anti-missile defenses.

An old adage of defense analysis is that a weapon system that has not been tested does not, in any meaningful sense, exist. Testing gives an organization confidence that the weapon will function as intended, helps to work out technological bugs, and offers an opportunity to integrate a particular weapon into a broader system of technologies. If that’s the case, then China’s DF-21D and DF-26B “carrier killer” missiles now appear to exist.

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

On August 26, as part of a broader exercise that involved Chinese air and naval forces, the PLA tested one each of the DF-21D and DF-26B missiles. The DF-21D is a road-mobile medium-range ballistic missile with a range of some 1,500 km, while the DF-26 is a road-mobile IRBM with a range of up to 4,000 km, making it a threat against warships and bases operating deep in the Pacific. Both missiles have terminal maneuvering capabilities that enable them to target ships underway, leading some to dub them “carrier-killers” for the threat that they pose to the big aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships of the United States, Japan, and Australia. As Tyler Rogoway notes, China has conducted some tests of its carrier-killer missiles before, but the integration of the launches into a larger set of naval and air activities suggests the development of doctrine and real operational capability.

The United States apparently observed the exercise via a U-2 overflight, to the extreme displeasure of the Chinese. Any such overflight of a live exercise would carry obvious risks, but the U-2 is designed for such missions and has conducted them since the early days of the Cold War. Of course, China could not hope to keep such testing secret, and indeed a visible demonstration of the missiles is half the point. The test of the missiles serves two purposes; to increase the effectiveness of the weapons themselves, and to warn the United States and others about China’s military prowess, an impression undeniably confirmed by the irritable U.S. reaction. 

The very existence of the missiles has produced a family of glib claims that the missiles have rendered the aircraft carrier obsolete. A ballistic missile capable of terminal maneuvering as it approaches an aircraft carrier undercuts the carrier’s primary defense, its mobility. But both of China’s missiles depend on an extensive set of sensors and communications nodes in order to find their target, maneuver towards them, and avoid any electronic or physical defenses that their victims can mount. This makes the integration of the weapons into a broader family of systems, including air, space, submarine, and surface, absolutely critical to their ability to have an impact. In case of war, the task of the U.S. military would be as much to blind the sensor’s that make China’s missiles lethal as to destroy the missiles themselves. 

Nevertheless, concern over China’s ability to hold U.S. carriers at risk has led to calls for “distributed lethality” which would spread strike capability across a larger range of air, surface, and submarine platforms, as well as the abrogation of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, which has allowed the United States to pursue the construction of its own medium and intermediate range cruise and ballistic missiles. 

All of this comes as tensions between China and the United States have grown in the Western Pacific. The recent U.S. deployment of two carrier battle groups in July confirmed U.S. interest in making a show of force in the region, just as rhetoric over China’s domestic policies and ongoing territorial assertiveness in the East and South China Seas has sharpened. In the looming U.S. presidential election, tensions with China have become a talking point on both sides, with President Donald Trump taking credit for aggressive military, diplomatic, and trade stances, and Vice President Joe Biden arguing for persuasive regional diplomacy to counter the Chinese threat. 

However, the potential of China’s missiles extends beyond the U.S.-Chinese relationship. Any missile that can hit a U.S. carrier can also hit one of Japan’s new aircraft carriers, or one of Australia’s new amphibious assault ships. Apart from the United States, no country in the region can hope to disrupt China’s system of anti-access systems, making the missiles a potential tool of regional military dominance. On the other hand, Japan seems increasingly willing to contemplate the development of its own offensive missiles, which would hold China’s ships and shorebound installations under similar risk.

Clearly, the United States has been aware of these missiles for a good long time. It seems that China is increasingly willing to demonstrate its full military capabilities both to Washington, and to the Western Pacific region. Whether this will result in increased tension or in a de-escalation remains to be seen.

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

Image: Reuters.

Caleb Larson

T-90 Tank, Europe

One of the T-90’s greatest strengths is its price.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Herein lies one of the strengths inherent to Russian arms exports: instead of focusing on selling the latest, greatest, and most technologically advanced equipment, the T-90 family focuses instead on tried-and-true technologies, incrementally improving them onto a compact, affordable platform.

The T-90 and associated variants are one hell of a tank — may be the best in Russian inventories. Relatively modern, they sport many levels of armor and capabilities, are easily upgradeable, and continue to supply armies all over the world.

Vlad Be Nimble, Vlad Be Quick

The T-90 family of tanks are a mix of old and new: the readily available and mass-producible T-72 hull was paired with a more advanced current from the T-80 family — firmly in the Russian design tradition of incremental changes rather than broad, new designs.

It also relies on traditional Russian tank design, standard since the Second World War: squat and low-profile hull and turret, which together offer opponents a smaller target to aim at.

An automatically loading cannon eliminates a loader crew member, bringing the total crew to three, which also aids in keeping the tanks small and compact, compared to the M1 Abrams, or the Leopard family, which are considerably larger and both require a crew of four, with loader.

Tanking on the Cheap

One of the T-90’s greatest strengths is its price. Although newer-model T-90MS is about 4.5 million dollars, the earlier — and cheaper — T-90 designs are still available for purchase and export, and cost considerably less, around 2.5-3.5 million dollars. According to another National Interest contributor, this is an attempt by Russia to “target the higher segments of the heavy armor market.”

For such an affordably priced tank, the T-90 features effective armor. In 2016, a T-90 was filmed in Syria taking a hit from an American-Designed TOW missile. While the TOW missile struck the tank, the T-90s Kontakt-5 armor (explosive reactive) detonated the missile, saving the tank from a knock-out hit. Not bad for an export tank.

Easily Upgradable

Herein lies one of the strengths inherent to Russian arms exports: instead of focusing on selling the latest, greatest, and most technologically advanced equipment, the T-90 family focuses instead on tried-and-true technologies, incrementally improving them onto a compact, affordable platform.

The Rosoboronexport website, the T-90's exporting entity, reflects this when describing the T-90MS, the latest T-90 variant:

“The tank features improved mobility and steerability achieved through the installation a higher-power engine, automatic gear shift control and wheel steering control. While retaining a low silhouette, optimal weight, high mobility and capability to cross the most difficult obstacles at high speed in stride, which are traditional for Russian tanks, the T-90MS has acquired a contemporary level of protection and survivability.”

That strategy has evidently worked: T-90 and associated variants have been exported to Algeria, Azerbaijan, India, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uganda, and Vietnam.

Caleb Larson is a Defense Writer with The National Interest. He holds a Master of Public Policy and covers U.S. and Russian security, European defense issues, and German politics and culture. This article is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Wikipedia.