Diplomacy & Crisis News

The UN’s humanitarian coordination office, said on Friday that it was doing its utmost to secure aid access to Ethiopia’s Tigray region, after a deal was struck to reach displaced civilians, following weeks of fighting between federal and regional forces.

La concentration des gisements de minerais le long des « points chauds » de l'Afrique australe : « ceinture de cuivre » (Shaba et Zambie), Rhodésie, Afrique du Sud et Namibie. / Afrique australe, Rhodésie du Sud 1890-1980, Zimbabwe, Afrique du Sud, Malawi, Zaïre 1971-1997, Namibie, Angola, Mozambique, (...) / Afrique australe, Rhodésie du Sud 1890-1980, Zimbabwe, Afrique du Sud, Malawi, Zaïre 1971-1997, Namibie, Angola, Mozambique, Botswana, Matières premières, Cuivre, Géopolitique, Charbon - Afrique

Suite au sondage réalisé sur ce blog, nous avons le plaisir de vous offrir en avant-première l’article du numéro d’hiver 2020-2021 de Politique étrangère (n° 4/2020) – disponible dès lundi 7 décembre – que vous avez choisi d'(é)lire : « La Turquie : une puissance émergente qui n’a pas les moyens de ses ambitions », écrit par Jana Jabbour, docteur en science politique et enseignante à Science Po Paris.

À l’été 2020, la posture de plus en plus agressive de la Turquie sur la crise
libyenne et sur les enjeux énergétiques en Méditerranée orientale a retenu
l’attention de l’opinion internationale et suscité l’ire des pays européens,
France en tête. Les déclarations polémiques du président turc à propos
de la Libye – « ces terres où nos ancêtres ont marqué l’histoire » –, les
points marqués par Ankara en Tripolitaine, ainsi que l’activisme diplomatico-militaire de la Turquie en Méditerranée orientale ont démontré le pouvoir de nuisance de cette puissance régionale, et aggravé ses tensions avec l’Union européenne (UE) et l’Organisation du traité de l’Atlantique nord (OTAN).

Bien que la diplomatie turque paraisse agressive, anti-occidentale, voire
irrationnelle, le positionnement d’Ankara sur les crises du Moyen-Orient
et de l’Afrique du Nord, et les enjeux énergétiques en Méditerranée orientale, repose en réalité sur une doctrine stratégique et un objectif clairs : faire de la Turquie une puissance régionale majeure et un État pleinement souverain dont la conduite n’est dictée que par ses intérêts nationaux.

La Turquie, puissance moyenne émergente en quête de statut

L’expansionnisme régional turc sous le règne du Parti de la justice et du développement (AKP) et du président Erdogan est souvent interprété de façon réductrice comme le reflet d’une diplomatie « néo-ottomane » visant à restaurer la grandeur ottomane de la Turquie, et à reconstituer une sphère d’influence dans les territoires ayant jadis appartenu à la Sublime Porte. Les références de plus en plus nombreuses, dans le discours de l’AKP, à l’islam et à la civilisation islamique, le rapprochement d’Ankara vis-à-vis de la Russie et de l’Iran, les furieuses sorties d’Erdogan contre les dirigeants européens, ont contribué à nourrir ces soupçons de « néo-ottomanisme », et donné l’impression d’un changement d’axe de la diplomatie turque dans le sens d’une rupture avec l’Europe et l’Occident.

En fait, la diplomatie turque semble mue par des dynamiques plus complexes. Au tournant du XXIe siècle, la Turquie a accédé au rang de puissance moyenne émergente. Elle mène donc une « diplomatie de puissance émergente », caractérisée par une affirmation de soi aiguë, une quête de statut à l’échelle internationale, et un désir d’indépendance et d’autonomie dans la conduite de ses relations internationales. En tant que puissance émergente, la Turquie suit une logique de diversification de ses relations et de son réseau de partenariats et d’alliances, afin de maximiser ses intérêts dans un monde multipolaire. En tissant des liens avec des acteurs antagoniques du système international (UE/Russie, Iran/Israël, OTAN/Russie/Iran), Ankara cherche à devenir un acteur incontournable des relations internationales.

L’affirmation accrue d’Ankara au Moyen-Orient et en Afrique du Nord rentre dans le cadre de cette diplomatie de puissance émergente. En adoptant une posture proactive, et en s’affirmant comme puissance régionale dans cette région clé pour les équilibres géopolitiques mondiaux, Ankara entend accroître son poids sur la scène internationale pour devenir un État-pivot et un acteur-clé de la gouvernance mondiale. En ce sens, le Moyen-Orient est conçu de façon instrumentale comme une zone d’influence, une arrière-cour et un tremplin, nécessaires pour l’affirmation de la Turquie comme puissance sur la scène internationale. D’où l’insistance des diplomates turcs, tout au long des années 2000, sur la métaphore du tir à l’arc : « Il faut concevoir notre politique au Moyen-Orient à travers la métaphore du tir à l’arc ; plus nous tirons fort au Moyen-Orient et plus loin nous atterrirons en Europe. » D’où leur insistance, aussi, sur la métaphore des cercles concentriques : la Turquie déploie sa stratégie de puissance d’abord dans un premier cercle – le Moyen-Orient – pour rayonner, à partir de là, en Europe et dans le monde. En ce sens, dans la réflexion stratégique turque, la dimension régionale de la diplomatie est arrimée à la dimension globale ; la politique arabe de la Turquie est étroitement liée à la quête de statut et de puissance à l’échelle mondiale.

Un autre objectif stratégique guide la diplomatie d’Ankara : celui de faire de la Turquie un carrefour énergétique (hub) en Méditerranée. Cette dimension énergétique est en effet cruciale pour comprendre le comportement d’Ankara sur la scène régionale et internationale. Économie émergente en pleine expansion, la Turquie connaît une forte croissance de sa demande énergétique – d’environ 7 à 8 % par an –, alors qu’elle ne dispose que de très peu de ressources sur son territoire. Elle importe plus de 90 % de sa consommation totale d’hydrocarbures, ce qui entraîne une forte augmentation de sa facture énergétique et aggrave sa dépendance vis-à-vis de ses principaux fournisseurs, l’Iran et la Russie. Compte tenu de cet état de fait, la diplomatie turque est sous-tendue par un double objectif : d’une part assurer la sécurité énergétique du pays en diversifiant les sources d’importations et en tissant de bonnes relations avec les voisins riches en hydrocarbures (Irak, Qatar, Azerbaïdjan) ; d’autre part renforcer le positionnement de la Turquie en Méditerranée orientale, de façon à permettre au pays d’exploiter les nouvelles ressources d’hydrocarbures qui y sont découvertes, dans une zone délimitée au Nord par les côtes turques, à l’Est par les côtes syriennes, libanaises, israéliennes et la bande de Gaza, à l’Ouest par les îles grecques de Rhodes et de Crète, au Sud par les côtes égyptiennes, et au centre par l’île de Chypre.

L’engagement d’Ankara en Libye et en Méditerranée orientale

C’est dans le cadre de cette réflexion stratégique que l’activisme diplomatico-
militaire récent de la Turquie en Libye et en Méditerranée orientale prend tout son sens. […]

Lisez le texte dans son intégralité ici.

Amoureux de bandes dessinées, de belles lettres et de beaux-arts, Alex Chauvel et Guillaume Trouillard ont réuni leurs talents afin de concevoir un livre-accordéon qui se déploie pour une magnifique balade en quatre tableaux dans la Chine ancienne . Le sage Song Jiang, installé sur la « montagne de (...) / Chine, Livre, Bande dessinée, Art - 2020/12

Après six ans de conflit, les populations musulmanes des villes algériennes investirent soudain la rue pour réclamer l'indépendance. Les protestations pacifiques de décembre 1960 prirent de court tant les autorités françaises que le FLN. Malgré la répression, le mouvement mit en échec les tentatives du (...) / Afrique du Nord, France, Algérie, Guerre d'Algérie 1954-1962, Mouvement de libération, Autodétermination des peuples, Colonialisme, Mouvement de contestation, Répression, Indépendance - 2020/12

This article is the English version of : Jean-Baptiste Jeangène-Vilmer, « Diplomatie des armes autonomes : les débats de Genève », published in Politique étrangère, Vol. 81, Issue 3, 2016.

Autonomous weapon systems – “Killer robots” in the popular culture – are weapon systems that can select and attack targets without human intervention. The first informal experts’ meeting on lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) was organized in 2014 at the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) in Geneva, on the initiative of France, which also presided over the meeting. The last of these annual meetings took place April 11–15, 2016, under German presidency for the second consecutive year. It confirmed the growing interest in the subject from states and civil society: 95 states participated in the debates, alongside several UN institutions, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), numerous NGOs from around the world, and 34 international experts (compared to 90 states and 30 experts in April 2015, and 87 state and 18 experts in May 2014).

At this meeting states for the first time unanimously adopted general recommendations for the fifth CCW Review Conference, which will take place December 12–16, 2016. The recommendations included the creation of a Governmental Group of Experts (GGE) beginning in 2017, cementing the transition from informal meetings (2014–2016) to a formal process.

Three years of meetings have left civil society and several states increasingly impatient, and so this year there was a clear desire to achieve results. Already anti-LAWS NGOs had indicated that they would no longer be fooled by certain states’ delaying strategies, which have been attempting to drag out the subject of LAWS at the CCW, where the consensus-based decision-making allows them to exert a level of control, rather than meaningfully advancing the discussion.

In particular, there was a growing desire to move forward without resolving all the conceptual problems, against the wishes of states like China, which suggested that “first, we must know what autonomy means” before being able to discuss LAWS. Canada’s statement that it “does not find it useful to debate the meaning of autonomy out of context” captured the wishes of many states to move toward “more concrete” matters.

The April 2016 meeting confirmed that the main topics of discussion have remained unchanged over the last three years, namely, issues of definition, human control, responsibility, and legal review. Rather than going to the root of these questions, this paper will address the procedure, negotiations, the balance of power, and generally the diplomatic dimension of the last round of Geneva debates.

What are we talking about ?

Unlike previous years, this time the question was less the definition of LAWS or autonomy but rather of whether it was even necessary to define them. The delegations initially divided themselves into two camps: those who made the definition a prerequisite condition for any discussion (which was interpreted by others, particularly civil society, as a way of blocking discussion), and those who agreed to leave the definition until later. A consensus was reached that an exhaustive and final definition at this stage was impossible, but that nevertheless a provisional working definition should be used to move discussions forward.

Analyzing definitions in disarmament treaties supports this gradual approach: the definitions, which are not always based on the same criteria (effects, functions, usage, or possible targets of the weapons), are generally among the very last issues to be settled. However, the case of LAWS is special, which limits the relevance of such precedents. As Brazil usefully recalled, this time the weapon being defined does not yet exist. The weapons previously prohibited had existed for decades and their effects were perfectly known. They could therefore be banned without a precise definition. The absence of shared experience or understanding make LAWS different. […]

Read the rest of the article here.

>>> More articles of Politique étrangère are available for reading
on Cairn International <<<

Kyle Mizokami

Security,

Among the latest innovations is a new generation of pistol-caliber rifles, which combines smaller pistol calibers with a rifle or carbine-length weapon.

Here's What You Need to Know: Pistol caliber carbines (PCCs) are not new.

The explosion of interest in the modern sporting rifle, as well as the natural pace of industry innovation, has driven the firearms industry to field semi-automatic rifles in an increasingly broad number of configurations. One of the latest innovations is a new generation of pistol-caliber rifles, which combines smaller pistol calibers with a rifle or carbine-length weapon.

Pistol caliber carbines (PCCs) are not new: some of the more famous from recent history include the Ruger .44 Magnum carbine and 9mm rifles. The adaptability of the AR-15 platform—as well as those offered by manufacturers including Beretta, Kel-Tec and CZ—has made it possible to adapt them to calibers including 9mm Luger, 10mm Auto, .40 Smith & Wesson and even .45 ACP. These are five of the best PCCs out there.

Quarter Circle 10 Pistol Caliber Carbine

The modular nature of the AR-15 weapon system makes it possible for designers to concentrate on perfecting a pistol caliber action without concern for the rest of the weapon. From the consumer side, a familiarity with AR rifles makes adoption of an AR-based PCC a relatively easy matter. Several manufacturers offer their own AR-based pistol-caliber carbine, and Texas-based Quarter Circle 10’s PCCs are representative of industry trends.

Quarter Circle PCCs are primarily based on the AR-15, but use a blowback operating system instead of the AR platform’s direct impingement system. In other words, the recoil generated from the gun firing drives the action instead of burned gunpowder gasses. Like many AR-based vendors, Quarter Circle’s designs accept Glock magazines and magazines derived from Colt’s 9mm line of carbines. The QC carbines and pistol receivers come in 9mm Luger, .40 Smith & Wesson, and .45 ACP, while the weapon can use existing rifle stocks, carbine stocks, and pistol braces.

Beretta Cx4 Storm

Just as AR-15 owners can smoothly transition to AR-based pistol caliber carbines, the Beretta Cx4 allows those familiar with Berettas to quickly adopt a shoulder-fired weapon. The Storm has the same set of controls as Beretta pistols—an appealing feature to police agencies and individuals that already use Beretta weapons. The Cx4 takes magazines in the grip, like a Beretta pistol, instead of a separate magazine well in front of the trigger control group.

The Cx4 can also use magazines from the company’s Px4 and 90 series handguns, including the famous Beretta 92. This allows the Cx4 to use magazines with capacities as large as twenty rounds. The Cx4’s other features include light recoil, ambidextrous controls, a chrome hammer forged barrel for durability, a 16.6-inch long magazine and Picatinny rail for attaching aiming accessories that runs along the top of the receiver. Beretta’s PCC is available in 9mm Luger and .40 Smith & Wesson. The weapon weighs 5.6 pounds unloaded.

CZ Scorpion EVO3 S1 Carbine

The CZ Scorpion EVO3 S1 Carbine shares its name with a older weapon, the Czechoslovakian Vz. 61 Skorpion machine pistol. The small and compact Skorpion—chambered in .380 and taking twenty-round magazines—was popular with Soviet-aligned vehicle crews, rear area service personnel and terrorist groups. The new EVO3 S1 carbine shares the name but otherwise has little in common with the old weapon.

The EVO3 carbine has an overall length of thirty-four inches and features a metal receiver with a fiber-reinforced polymer exterior. It features ambidextrous controls. The barrel is 16.2 inches, cold hammer forged and is factory installed with a compensating muzzle break or faux suppressor. The ½-28 threads allow user installation of a third-party muzzle brake, compensator or suppressor. CZ’s pistol caliber carbine has a MLOK-compatible handguard for attaching weapon accessories, including lights and lasers.

Kel-Tec Sub-2000

One of the more unorthodox-looking weapons on the market is the Kel-Tec Sub-2000 carbine. Like the Cx4, the Sub-2000 looks like a pistol with an elongated barrel and shoulder stock, with a magazine well in the grip. It also features Picatinny accessory rails above and below the barrel.

Kel-Tec’s offering differs in having a specific talent: folding down for compact storage. By rotating the barrel upwards and back, the Sub-2000 essentially folds over onto itself for an overall length of just sixteen inches and a height of seven inches. Once in the compact configuration, the carbine can be secured that way with a built-in lock and key system.

The Sub-2000, like other weapons on this list, has a 16.25-inch barrel. Thanks to a skeletal, minimalist configuration the weapon weighs just 4.25 pounds. The weapon comes in both 9mm Luger and .40 Smith & Wesson variants, and furthermore can be ordered to accept Glock 17, 19, 22, 23, Smith & Wesson M&P, Sig Sauer P226, and Beretta 92 or 96 magazines.

Heckler & Koch USC 45

German gunmaker Heckler & Koch tends to place restrictions on its sale of its paramilitary and military-style long guns. The H&K USC 45, the civilian version of the UMP 45 submachine gun, is one such weapon that is once again back on the American market.

The UMP45 submachine gun was designed to complement the world-famous MP5 submachine gun in Heckler & Koch’s product line. The UMP is a newer design meant to take greater advantage of modern materials—particularly polymers—resulting in a weapon that is lighter than the MP5 yet capable of handling heavier, higher recoil calibers. The UMP is a blowback submachine gun and is available in 9mm, .40 Smith & Wesson and .45 ACP versions.

The civilian USC 45 is available in .45 ACP and has a cold hammer forged sixteen-inch barrel, ambidextrous controls and large trigger well for use with gloves. It has a fixed webbed stock, accepts ten-round magazines and includes a weaver rail for attaching accessories.

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

This article first appeared in 2018.

Image: Heckler & Koch

Charlie Gao

Security, Europe

Could it make it into 007's arsenal?

Here's What You Need to Remember: Detachment A was about as close to a real “James Bond” unit as it got in the Cold War military.

While the most famous product of Carl Walther GmbH in fiction is the PPK pistol used by James Bond, Walther actually made a line of submachine guns that were the weapon of choice of real covert operatives during the Cold War. The Walther Maschinenpistole (MP) line—in either the MP Lang (MPL) or MP Kurz (MPK) format—was used by numerous police agencies, special forces units, and counterterror teams during the Cold War, due to its compact yet controllable design, accuracy and light weight. But what made the Walther MP the best of its time? Why did later SMGs like the H&K MP5 replace it?

The operating mechanism of the Walther MPs is fairly conventional. Like most submachine guns of the WWII era, it is an open bolt blowback design, meaning that upon pulling the trigger the bolt would move forwards, strip a round from the magazine, chamber it, then fire. Unlike the older guns, the Walther MP uses an interesting layout where the majority of the bolt mass is contained within a tube above the barrel, reciprocating above it with a little blocky protrusion under the main cylindrical bolt mass that handled feeding, firing and extracting the cartridge with the actual bolt face. The result of placing this heavy bolt above the barrel was that recoil and muzzle climb was reduced versus other designs, and the gun was allowed to be much more compact. It also featured other ergonomic improvements like a selector/safety (including a semi-automatic mode) that could be easily actuated by the thumb, and a left-side cocking handle making it easy for an operator to cock it after an empty reload. Sights were simple but adequate, one aperture sight for long-range shooting, and one post and notch sight for close-range work. Rounding out the features of the Walther MP was a simple but sturdy folding stock, a brisk yet controllable rate of fire at 550 rounds per minute, and light weight (6.17 lbs for an MPK, compared to 7.1 lbs for a WWII Sten Mk. II or 8.75 lbs for an MP40).

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This combination of features made the Walther MP, specifically the MPK, extremely attractive for covert police and military units worldwide. 1st SFOD “Delta Force” used Walther MPKs, notably during Operation Eagle Claw, the failed Iranian hostage rescue attempt and during training during the 1970s. The other unit that participated in the raid, Detachment A, who managed to infiltrate Iran prior to the failed heliborne assault, also used Walther MPKs. Detachment A was about as close to a real “James Bond” unit as it got in the Cold War military, in the combination of fieldcraft, direct action and surveillance skills. Members of the detachment often operated in plain clothes, assisting the police in busting criminals that crossed the Berlin border. In the event of war, they would attempt to infiltrate East Berlin, possibly by means of underground, water-filled tunnels. On such missions, the MPK was the weapon of choice. German Navy units (Kampfschwimmer) tasked with similar missions of underwater sabotage and infiltration in the waterways of Germany during the Cold War also preferred the MPK. German police units also used them, notably during the 1972 Munich hostage crisis. While it was not a big success on the export market, it also found favor in the Republic of South Africa, arming the Special Task Force of the South African Police Service under the name HMK. MPKs also served in small numbers in various other militaries.

While the MPK was replaced in service in almost every unit listed above by the H&K MP5, the Walther was known to have some advantages over the MP5. James Stejskal, a Detachment A veteran, described the MPK as being more reliable in dirty and dusty conditions than the MP5. However, the MP5 edged out the MPK on accuracy, likely due to the MP5 being a closed bolt design. In the end, the MP5 is very similar on many design features to the MPK, both use left side cocking handles, have ergonomic thumb selectors, and make use of aperture sights. The Walther MP ended its production run in 1980, having been superseded by the MP5.

Charlie Gao studied political and computer science at Grinnell College and is a frequent commentator on defense and national-security issues.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

James Clark

Security,

Scavenger 6 is designed to solve a specific problem that could arise in a post-apocalyptic situation: Ammo.

Here's What You Need to Know: Let’s hope the apocalypse doesn’t come before this rifle goes on sale.

In a post-apocalyptic scenario where survival is dependent upon scavenging resources, it pays to be prepared. That’s the thinking behind Scavenger 6, a new rifle that can fire 21 different calibers of ammunition.

Though rifle hardly seems a fitting term. It looks like a cross between a .44 Magnum and an M1A1 carbine, and the crazy thing is that’s not inaccurate.

Scavenger 6 was designed and created by Air Force veteran Tim Ralston, who rose to prominence as an inventor and survivalist after appearing on the National Geographic Channel’s “Doomsday Preppers,” a reality television show about post-apocalyptic scenarios and survival planning.

The rifle can fire 21 different calibers of ammunition just by switching out the cylinder barrel, referred to as a CB. However, Ralston notes that if there’s a specific caliber you want, it can be custom ordered, though there are some exceptions: No .50-cal ammo, guys, don’t be ridiculous.

“Because the cylinder and barrel are one, I can get really creative about boring out the cylinder to whatever I want,” explained Ralston.

Scavenger 6 has three multi-caliber CBs, which fire six different rounds — one of each. The multi-caliber CBs are designed to fulfill three unique roles. There’s a hunting CB, which lets you fire ammunition like .223 and .308; a battle CB, which chambers 5.56 and .308, among others; and a survival CB, which is designed to fire ammunition you’re most likely to find lying around.

According to Ralston, Scavenger 6 is designed to solve a specific problem that could arise in a post-apocalyptic situation: Ammo.

“Ammo’s going to be the number-one-sought-after commodity in a post-apocalyptic scenario,” Ralston explained to Task & Purpose.

Fortunately, the world’s not ending just yet, but that doesn’t mean Scavenger 6 isn’t useful.

In addition to the multi-caliber CBs, the rifle comes with standard CBs that are tailored to a specific caliber and can chamber six rounds of that size. So, say, for example, you’re a military aviator and you want a backup weapon in case you’re ever shot down behind enemy lines, you could get a CB that fires 5.56, one that fires 9mm, and another that fires 7.62. You can also customize Scavenger 6 for specific purposes. If you’re headed deep into the wilderness, you may want a .44 Magnum for putting down large animals that pose a threat, as well as a .22 for hunting smaller animals for food.

On top of firing 21 calibers with one weapon system, Scavenger 6 can mount a scope, a foregrip, and has a folding buttstock. Ralston also has plans to add a mount for a strobe light and a laser on the foregrip.

The weapon is in its final stages, with the finished product expected mid-October. Ralston says he plans to officially put Scavenger 6 on the market by January 2017.

Let’s just hope the apocalypse doesn’t come before it goes on sale.

This article by James Clark originally appeared at Task & Purpose. Follow Task & Purpose on Twitter.

This article first appeared in 2016.

Image: Flickr

TNI Staff

Security, Asia

Beware.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The UFD also has a covert counterpart that trains infiltrators and attempts to sow dissent and chaos in the South. “The 225th Bureau is responsible for training agents to infiltrate South Korea and establishing underground political parties focused on fomenting unrest and revolution,” the Pentagon report states. North Korean intelligence apparatus is one of Pyongyang’s strong suites. Indeed, Pyongyang’s security services have demonstrated their ability to strike far from home as was shown during the assassination of Kim Jong-Nam—elder half-brother to the North Korean despot—in Malaysia. The Kim regime’s intelligence apparatus is ruthless and effective and could be used to good effect during any conflict on the Korean peninsula.

North Korea maintains an extensive intelligence collection and security apparatus—as might be expected of a totalitarian regime such as the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Pyongyang maintains two main agencies—one focused on external intelligence collection and clandestine operations and another focused on counterintelligence. There are also two smaller organizations dedicated solely to infiltrating South Korea. “North Korean intelligence and security services collect political, military, economic, and technical information through open-source, human intelligence, cyber, and signals intelligence capabilities,” reads a Pentagon report to Congress about Pyongyang’s expected capabilities in 2015. “North Korea’s primary intelligence collection targets remain South Korea, the United States, and Japan.”

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North Korea’s primary external intelligence agency is the Reconnaissance General Bureau—which seems to be modeled on the Soviet/Russian GRU military intelligence agency. “The Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB) is North Korea’s primary foreign intelligence service, responsible for collection and clandestine operations,” the Pentagon report reads. “The RGB is comprised of six bureaus with compartmented functions including operations, reconnaissance, technology and cyber, overseas intelligence, interKorean talks, and service support.”

North Korea’s internal security agency—though it might have some foreign intelligence functions too—is the Ministry of State Security. Not coincidentally, it shares the same name as the Soviet Union’s Stalinist-era Ministry of State Security—Ministerstvo Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti in Russian—the MGB. Indeed, the North Korean agency was modeled on the Soviet-era organization.

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“The Ministry of State Security (MSS) is North Korea’s primary counterintelligence service and is an autonomous agency of the North Korean government reporting directly to Kim Jong Un,” the Pentagon report states. “The MSS is responsible for operating North Korean prison camps, investigating cases of domestic espionage, repatriating defectors, and conducting overseas counterespionage activities in North Korea’s foreign missions.”

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North Korea also maintains two other units specifically designed to infiltrate the South. One is overt, while the other group is covert. “The United Front Department (UFD) overtly attempts to establish pro-North Korean groups in South Korea such as the Korean Asia-Pacific Committee and the Ethnic Reconciliation Council,” the report states. “The UFD is also the primary department involved in managing inter-Korean dialogue and North Korea’s policy toward South Korea.”

The UFD also has a covert counterpart that trains infiltrators and attempts to sow dissent and chaos in the South. “The 225th Bureau is responsible for training agents to infiltrate South Korea and establishing underground political parties focused on fomenting unrest and revolution,” the Pentagon report states.

North Korean intelligence apparatus is one of Pyongyang’s strong suites. Indeed, Pyongyang’s security services have demonstrated their ability to strike far from home as was shown during the assassination of Kim Jong-Nam—elder half-brother to the North Korean despot—in Malaysia. The Kim regime’s intelligence apparatus is ruthless and effective and could be used to good effect during any conflict on the Korean peninsula.

This first appeared several years ago and is being reposted due to reader interest. 

Image: Reuters. 

Stratfor Worldview

Security, Asia

The North Korean military's most powerful tool is artillery.

Here's What You Need to Know: Even subtracting the most dated portions of the North Korean stockpile — which may not be in operational condition — it still has more than 1,000 ballistic missiles that could strike across South Korea.

North Korea is powerless to prevent a U.S. strike on its nuclear program, but retaliation is well within its means. The significant military capability that North Korea has built up against South Korea is not advanced by Western standards, but there are practical ways Pyongyang could respond to aggression.

The North Korean military's most powerful tool is artillery. It cannot level Seoul as some reports have claimed, but it could do significant damage. Pyongyang risks deteriorating its forces by exposing them to return fire, however, which significantly restricts their use. Less conventional methods of retaliation, such as sabotage or cyber warfare, are less risky but also limit the shock that North Korea would desire.

After a strike, North Korea's most immediate and expected method of retaliation would center around conventional artillery. Many of the North's indirect fire systems are already located on or near the border with South Korea. By virtue of proximity and simplicity, these systems have a lower preparatory and response times than air assets, larger ballistic missiles or naval assets. Nevertheless, there are several critical limitations to their effectiveness.

Tube and Rocket Artillery

The biggest anticipated cost of a North Korean artillery barrage in response to an attack would be the at least partial destruction of Seoul. But the volume of fire that the North can direct against the South Korean capital is limited by some important factors. Of the vast artillery force deployed by the North along the border, only a small portion — Koksan 170-mm self-propelled guns, as well as 240-mm and 300-mm multiple launch rocket systems — are capable of actually reaching Seoul. Broadly speaking, the bulk of Pyongyang's artillery can reach only into the northern border area of South Korea or the northern outskirts of Seoul.

All forms of North Korean artillery have problems with volume and effectiveness of fire, but those issues are often more pronounced for the longer-range systems. Problems include the high malfunction rate of indigenous ammunition, poorly trained artillery crews, and a reluctance to expend critical artillery assets by exposing their positions.

Based on the few artillery skirmishes that have occurred, roughly 25 percent of North Korean shells and rockets fail to detonate on target. Even allowing for improvements and assuming a massive counterstrike artillery volley would be more successful, a failure rate as high as 15 percent would take a significant bite out of the actual explosive power on target. The rate of fire and accuracy of North Korean artillery systems is also expected to be subpar. This belief is founded on the observably poor performance of North Korean artillery crews during past skirmishes and exercises. Though inaccuracy is less noticeable in a tactical sense — especially as part of a "countervalue attack," where civilian areas are targeted — at the higher level an artillery retaliation rapidly becomes a numbers game.

Ineffective crews also rapidly curtail the potential for severe damage. Rate of fire is crucial to the survivability of artillery systems — the name of the game is to get the most rounds on target in the shortest period of time, lest your position be identified and destroyed before the fire mission is complete. Poor training translates to a greatly reduced volume of fire and a painfully limited duration of effectiveness.

The Barrage Principle

Although North Korea could technically open fire on South Korea with all of its artillery systems at once, this would open Pyongyang up to significant counter-battery fire and airstrikes that could rapidly reduce the artillery force it has so painstakingly built up. Instead, as other studies have shown, only a portion of North Korean artillery would be used at a time. This is particularly true for the advanced systems that are most important to Pyongyang: long-range artillery that is able to strike at Seoul. The heavier, more advanced systems are not only difficult to replace, but they are also priority targets for counter-battery fire and airstrikes. Even when firing, artillery systems would be able to do so only temporarily before relocating or otherwise trying to hide the system's firing location to avoid destruction.

Aside from constraints on range and volume of fire, North Korea has to decide what targets to hit in South Korea. There are two realistic options: a counterforce attack or a countervalue attack. In a counterforce attack, North Korea would target South Korean and possibly even U.S. military facilities near the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and north of Seoul. A countervalue attack, on the other hand, is intended to shock South Korea by causing significant civilian casualties and damage to economically critical infrastructure. If North Korea opted for a countervalue attack, the lack of focus on South Korean and U.S. military targets would reduce Pyongyang's ability to limit any response. (Typically, the easiest way to counteract enemy artillery is to destroy it in place.) Engaging civilian targets and infrastructure would not only limit the effectiveness and sustainability of the North Korean artillery volley itself, but it would also open up Pyongyang to more significant counteraction targeting. A mix of both counterforce and countervalue responses may mitigate this risk but would in turn lower the overall effectiveness of the mission compared to full commitment.

Regardless of these considerations and constraints on the North Korean side, if Pyongyang embraces the worst-case scenario for Seoul — the indiscriminate targeting of the capital and its suburbs — the damage would still be significant. Some research claims that overall damage and casualties in Seoul would be minimal, but those studies have relied on very conservative data, especially regarding the effective range of North Korean artillery systems. Many findings do not take into account newly deployed, modernized 122-mm multiple launch rocket systems with extended range, or the much more capable 300-mm multiple rocket launchers. If projectile flight distances reach proven ranges (or commonly accepted ones) and involve these new systems, then the northern portion of Seoul could be saturated with fire. Even areas south of the Han River could be within range of 170-mm self-propelled guns, 240-mm multiple rocket launchers or 300-mm multiple rocket launchers, depending on their position on the North Korean side of the DMZ. If every one of Pyongyang's 300-mm multiple rocket launcher systems were directed against Seoul, their range would be sufficient to rain fire across the city and beyond. A single volley could deliver more than 350 metric tons of explosives across the South Korean capital, roughly the same amount of ordnance dropped by 11 B-52 bombers.

This is an extreme scenario, however, and one in which North Korea chooses to expose all of its most advanced rocket artillery systems simultaneously, suffers no failures, and chooses to direct all of them against Seoul itself. Yet in northern parts of Seoul, well within range of Koksan 170-mm self-propelled guns and 240-mm multiple rocket launchers, a more intense volume of fire could be achieved even if North Korea is prudent enough not to expose all of its capable artillery pieces. Infrastructure damage in Seoul, particularly its northwestern areas, would be difficult to prevent in the event of an immediate saturation of artillery fire. That said, underground shelters and concerted evacuation efforts, which would be initiated immediately in the event of an attack, could greatly reduce civilian casualties. It is also unlikely that North Korean artillery fire would be sustained at great volume. Even an initial mass volley imposes great risk to the artillery systems themselves, making them vulnerable to counter-battery fire. This means casualty rates would drop significantly after the initial barrage, limiting potential civilian casualties to thousands of dead rather than tens of thousands, as has been speculated in some instances.

Ballistic Missiles

In addition to its conventional artillery capabilities, North Korea also has a large stockpile of ballistic missiles with much greater ranges. These missiles vary from older Scud variants to North Korean versions of the Russian-designed system. There are also a number of self-developed longer-range missiles in the North Korean arsenal. Even the lowest-range Scud ballistic missiles would be capable of striking anywhere in South Korea. The main factors constraining the use of these systems, therefore, are volume of fire, equipment failures and depletion of stockpiles.

Even subtracting the most dated portions of the North Korean stockpile — which may not be in operational condition — it still has more than 1,000 ballistic missiles that could strike across South Korea. These range from Scud-based Hwasong missiles to Nodong and Taepodong projectiles. The Hwasong and Nodong missiles are the most important for achieving volume of fire, especially considering North Korea's limited ability to launch Taepodong missiles. The Taepodong is restrained by Pyongyang's dependence on large surface infrastructure, found in only two locations in North Korea. The long preparation times before launch make the larger missiles extremely vulnerable to counterstrikes, and the Taepodong does not deliver significant advantages over the Nodong missiles.

When assessing the damage that could be done by North Korean ballistic missile strikes, much depends on how they would be used. In conjunction with conventional artillery strikes, ballistic missiles could provide significant extra firepower directed at Seoul and surrounding areas. North Korea could also use these weapons to expand the indirect fire threat to the entirety of South Korea. This means that there would be less concentration of firepower as a whole but that a diverse spread of locations throughout the country would be subject to infrastructure damage or casualties.

Moreover, ballistic missiles could strike U.S. military positions beyond the Korean Peninsula, specifically in Japan. Whatever the targets, Pyongyang's existing ballistic missile stockpile could easily deliver approximately 1 kiloton (1,000 metric tons) of high explosives, as well as other nonconventional munitions — chemical, biological or even nuclear. Because of the inaccuracy of different North Korean missile systems, these strikes would most appropriately be used against urban centers or other wide-area targets. If employed against specific military facilities at longer ranges, a significant amount of misses would occur.

As with conventional artillery, North Korea will also be forced to show restraint in the use of these systems. Survivability may be less of a challenge because of the predominance of mobile launcher systems, but unlike conventional artillery munitions, ballistic stockpiles are limited — as is the ability to replenish them, which would draw on significant resources. Every missile spent by North Korea in an immediate retaliation scenario will diminish the leverage it maintains immediately after the retaliation. Furthermore, the high potential for failed launches, as demonstrated by frequent unsuccessful missile tests across a variety of platforms, could further damage Pyongyang's ability to influence through its ballistic missile stockpile.

The most significant threat from North Korea's ballistic missile stockpile is the potential for a nuclear strike. Some estimates indicate North Korea may have between two and five nuclear warheads at its disposal already, at least some of which could be made to fit on a Nodong missile. Even a single nuclear strike against a South Korean population center would result in catastrophic shock and incur an immense cost. Though a nuclear strike would not automatically guarantee Seoul's capitulation, South Korea and the United States factor the possibility of such a strike heavily into their considerations of a strike on the North's nuclear program.

Editor's Note

This is the fourth installment of a five-part series that originally ran in May 2016 examining the measures that could be taken to inhibit North Korea's nuclear weapons program. The purpose of this series is not to consider political rhetoric or noninvasive means of coercion, such as sanctions. Rather, we are exploring the military options, however remote, that are open to the United States and its allies, and the expected response from Pyongyang. Part five can be found here.​

In the final installment of this series, we will explore other, unconventional retaliatory options open to North Korea and conclude with an assessment of the likelihood and severity of military action against Pyongyang.

Part 1: Assessing the North Korean Hazard

Part 2: Derailing a Nuclear Program by Force

Part 3: What the U.S. Would Use to Strike North Korea

Part 4: How North Korea Would Retaliate

Part 5: The Cost of Intervention

How North Korea Would Retaliate is republished with the permission of Stratfor Worldview, a geopolitical intelligence and advisory firm.

Image: Reuters

Adam Makos, Marcus Brotherton

Military History, Asia

Marine combat veterans tell all about the dangerous and deadly work in some of the war’s toughest fighting.

Here's What You Need to Remember: On August 6, 1942, the men of Maj. Gen. Alexander Vandegrift’s U.S. 1st Marine Division watched from the railings as their troopship, the USS George F. Elliott, steamed into the waters north of Guadalcanal in the South Pacific’s Solomon Islands. They had come to seize the island’s semi-completed airfield at Lunga Point from the Japanese before it became operational. With Guadalcanal’s airfield, the Japanese could bomb the shipping lanes to Australia and choke the continent, putting Australia at risk for Japanese invasion.

Among the thousands of troops nervous with anticipation about the battle to come were four Marines from H Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment––Jim Young, Sid Phillips, Roy Gerlach, and Art Pendleton––dressed in their steel helmets and green cotton-twill uniform (the Marines’ familiar, mottled-green camouflage uniforms had not yet been issued). This is their story.

“This was the real deal.”

Jim Young: “We were awakened around three in the morning on August 7, 1942, the day we were to fight the Japs. Breakfast was at 5:00 am. The food was steak and eggs. After eating, which was hard to do, we went up on deck to watch the bombardment of Guadalcanal. It was unbelievable, and the noise was horrendous! Most of us were scared and bewildered. We couldn’t even hear each other without yelling.

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“We received orders to go below and get everything ready to disembark. The sea was rough and dangerous. Due to the waves, boats were dropping six to 10 feet, just as men were ready to get in them. Or if the boat didn’t drop, it came roaring up. A man was crushed between the landing craft and the side of the ship. Lots of guys were hurt that way.

“One of the men from my gun crew, a Marine Pfc., had made it into the landing craft and had his hand on the craft’s rail when our wiremen stated to lower metal coils of communication wire from the ship. A line broke and the heavy coil of wire hit his arm and snapped it. They hoisted him back aboard.

“It was go time. The engines on the landing craft were all roaring at full throttle. We were on our way in and everyone was nervous.”

Sid Phillips: “There was a flag flying on the stern of every landing craft. I looked over the side at the flags, and my friend Carl Ransom was doing the same thing. You could see a whole line of them. It looked like they reached to the end of the world. I got a lump in my throat. Ransom did, too. As he wiped his eyes, he said, ‘That salt spray makes your eyes water, don’t it?’

“We had never had that happen before, never in training, and I never saw it [a U.S. flag on every landing craft] happen again after that. They were too good a target. A big old red, white, and blue thing like that shouts, ‘Here I am! Here I am!’ Our Colonel Cates [Clifton B. Cates, CO of the 1st Marine Regiment] was a very patriotic Marine. If there was an order given to fly a flag on every landing craft, I’m sure Cates gave that order.

“I noticed that morning how everybody’s cartridge belt was full and bulging. You could see the shiny brass cartridges here and there in the belt. You had two clips of five rounds in each of those pockets. When we had made practice landings in the Fiji Islands, they never issued any live ammunition. We made the landings with empty, flat, cartridge belts. They didn’t want some idiot firing his rifle into someone. Things were different now. This was the real deal.

“When we came ashore at Guadalcanal, we were in that landing craft where the front end would drop down…. We had the front ramp because otherwise we couldn’t get that mortar out of the boat. We were expecting a life-and-death struggle with hand-to-hand combat on the beach. When the ramp went down, we found our guys on the beach laughing at us and opening coconuts. We came out of the landing craft ready to fight and they just laughed. They had done the same thing a few minutes before. There were no Japs in our vicinity at all.”

Roy Gerlach: “I didn’t go in on the first wave. I was a mortar man assigned to the mortar platoon, but I spent a lot of time as a cook. In the Marine Corps, you were assigned to the job you were supposed to do, and then if you could do something else, you did that, too. Whenever there was action, I was on the mortars. But if they needed a cook, well, I did that, too….

“I don’t remember much about coming in to the beach. There were no Japs there. They’d all taken off to the hills. Right away we found all these coconuts. They fell out of the trees. We took our bayonets, bored holes in the coconuts, and drank the milk. But it made the guys sick. Too much fresh milk, I guess.”

“The heat was so oppressive.”

Sid Phillips: “All the first day we struggled through the jungle to reach a hill called the Grassy Knoll, a mile inland. We had no good maps for Guadalcanal at all. They had some maps drawn up by some Australian people who had been on Guadalcanal. These crude maps were named by the Australians. They even had the names mixed up for the Tenaru and Ilu Rivers.

“So the game plan was to go to the Grassy Knoll and get the high ground. The thing that stands out so clear in my memory was the heat, the incredible heat in the jungle, with no breeze. And we had just come from winter in New Zealand, so it was a severe climate change. We just griped and bitched. In that jungle, it’s so hot, and you’re carrying a 60-pound pack when you come ashore. Extra ammunition, packs of food for four days, a change of clothing. You drop your bedding and keep going. The heat was so oppressive.

“We were issued one canteen then. We’d been taught water discipline. You were only supposed to take small sips of water and roll the water around in your mouth before you swallowed. You were never supposed to guzzle water. Everybody nearly died of thirst that first day. We ate crackers, cans of hash—there was no water in the food; it just dried you out more and made you more thirsty. At the end of the first day, we were exhausted, halfway up the Grassy Knoll. They told us to lie down where we were, dig a foxhole, shut up, and go to sleep. So we did.”

Jim Young: “When morning came, we were ordered back to the beach to set up defenses in an effort to repel any Jap attempt to land. One of our lieutenants was bitten in the face by a scorpion during the night. He had swollen up so much that he was completely blind and had to be led by the hand on the long march back to the beach.

“As we approached the beach, about 10 Japanese torpedo bombers skimmed the water and headed for the convoy. They were so low we could see the faces of the pilots and the big red meatballs on their wings. They did not care about us on the beach. They went straight for the convoy of ships. One plane headed directly for our ship, the Elliott. It crashed into the water first and bounced up and slammed into the ship.”

Roy Gerlach: “We didn’t have no galley for the first three or four weeks because our cooking equipment sunk with the Elliott. I wasn’t on the ship then, but I saw it all. Most of the troops were on shore by then. But the unloading of the ship wasn’t done yet. There was one shipman I knew on the Elliott. He always used to say, ‘I’m gonna be here when you go, and I’ll be here when you get back.’ He wasn’t.”

Sid Phillips: “People ask me when we first contacted the enemy. We were strafed by enemy planes almost immediately on Guadalcanal. You dig a foxhole and try to dig it as deep as you can, just try to bury yourself with the earth. The strafing never ended on Guadalcanal. They were always coming in, bombarding us. We considered that contact with the enemy.”

Jim Young: “The Jap Zeros would come swooping over us. I could actually see the pilots, the faces in those airplanes. You could see them turn their heads and look down at you. Sometimes they were grinning.”

“The Savo sea battle was like watching a summer storm from a beach.”

Sid Phillips: “The day after we landed, we captured the airfield. When I first saw the airfield, I was surprised that there weren’t many buildings except for this pagoda-looking thing. That served as the tower. The runway wasn’t very visible unless you were up in the air. There were no wrecked Japanese planes. The place was empty. We went over there and looked at the pagoda. We were some of the first Americans to walk into that building.

“The first American planes we saw come in there were the B-17 Flying Fortresses. Sometimes two, sometimes three. They would stop, refuel, and leave. The Flying Fortresses came in before we had any Navy or Marine planes at all.”

On August 9, from its bivouac on a hilltop over the beach, H Company witnessed a violent naval battle between the U.S. and Japanese navies. This, the Battle of Savo Island, produced so many sunken ships off the island’s shore that the waters gained the name Iron Bottom Sound.

Sid Phillips: “The Savo sea battle was like watching a summer storm from a beach. You would hear this rumble of naval gunfire and see what looked like flashes of lightning. You’ve seen distant lightning where the sky lights up? It was that sort of thing. You couldn’t see any real details of the naval battle, but when a ship would blow up, we cheered. We assumed it was our boys doing the whipping. The next morning we saw one American cruiser creep slowly by, right offshore, with part of its bow blown off. Somebody said it was the Chicago.

“We were then told about the disaster. We lost four cruisers that night. You could maybe see a ship smoking, three miles away. Our supply ships were still in the harbor, but they were pulling out. Leaving us. They hadn’t even unloaded half our supplies. But they had to get the hell out of there.

“At that moment we felt that we might be considered ‘expendable.’ It had occurred in the Philippines. It had occurred at Wake Island. It had occurred at Guam. It had occurred at every stage of the war in the Pacific up to Guadalcanal, so yes, we felt expendable.”

Jim Young: “Without our ships, we were alone on the island. There was no food except for what we had in our backpacks––K rations. After sending out search parties to look for food, we found stores of Japanese rice and oats which would hold us over until the Navy could return with more supplies. It took a strong stomach to eat this because the rice and oats were crawling with maggots and worms. We found that if we dumped the rice and oats in water then all the bugs would float to the top where we could skim them off.

“We bivouacked at the end of a coconut plantation, near a meadow with a patch of trees. The trees were lime trees, and we made limeade. We used warm water and we had no sugar. This stuff was terrible, but it was something different to drink. This meadow had the oddest plants I’ve ever seen. If you took a walk through them, it looked like a well-worn path, but 20 minutes later there was no trace of where you’d walked.

“In the days that followed, we still hadn’t seen the Japs up close, but the air raids continued. We had an old gunnery sergeant, 50 years old, real nice guy and a real Marine. We called him Gunny Dixon. Gunny told us to dig foxholes. When we were finished, he took one look at them and started to laugh. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘They don’t look deep enough to me. I bet by the end of the week they will be deep enough to stand in.’ How right he was! Bombers flew over us, and we couldn’t do a thing about it. We had no guns that could reach them, and we had no airplanes. The bombs falling had a whistling sound as they came down.

“One day the Jap bombers came from a different direction. They had always bombed the airstrip from the takeoff point to the liftoff point, but this day they came straight from the sea toward our tree grove. This time they were after us, and not the airstrip. I was watching them with field glasses, and I could see the pattern of bombs exploding and knew it would surely hit us. I yelled a warning, and we just made it to our foxholes in time. It was impossible to stand in the foxhole. The earth was shaking like an earthquake. Big chunks of earth filled the air, and the smell of cordite was overpowering. It’s hard to believe that no one was killed.

“We found a Jap bunker near us that held about 20 of us. It was very dark inside, and while using it during an air raid one day one of the guys let out a loud scream. It scared all of us, and we scrambled for the exit even though the air raid was still in progress. A six-foot-long lizard was up on the roof of the bunker, and its scaly tail had flopped down and touched the Marine’s face. He thought it was the guy next to him so he reached up to brush it away. When he felt the tail, he went ape. We all got a kick out of it when it was over.

“At night the Japs sent a lone bomber that kept flying around for hours before he decided to drop his bombs. They did this to keep us from getting any rest. We called him ‘Washing Machine Charley’ because of the sound of his engine.

“The bombing raids never ceased. After a while, we were shelled from Jap cruisers and subs as well. What made us mad is that we could see the Japs scurrying around their decks and manning the guns. But we had nothing that we could reach them with. All of our long-range guns were on the ships that took off when the naval battle took place.”

“… the next night the whole island seemed to be deserted…”

Sid Phillips: “The rifle platoons, they had daily patrols. Fifteen to 20 men would go out with an officer, scouting, trying to find out if there were any Japs in a particular area. In the mortar platoon we seldom went on patrols.

“But we did go out after a Marine patrol had been ambushed and the survivors came back to our lines. So they put together a 300-man patrol to go back out there to recover our dead. They wanted one 81mm mortar to come along, so they came to the mortar platoon and said, ‘Number four gun is going.’ That was me. Lieutenant “Benny” Benson, he was the lieutenant for our gun, went with us.

“The riflemen were on the point, watching for the enemy. In the mortar squad we trudged along behind them with that damn heavy stuff. We went about five miles out, carrying that mortar the whole way. You either carry part of the mortar or the ammunition. If you were an ammunition carrier, you carried a cloverleaf of ammunition on your shoulder.

“It was a strenuous march in the tropics. There were no roads. To be on the ground in a dense jungle, you did not even need to see combat to have a miserable time. You might have hiked way out and way back and had to ford several streams and walked through water waist-deep where your clothes got soaked and your feet didn’t dry out and your pants chafed your crotch. You just can’t convey that misery in words.

“When we reached the area where the ambush had occurred, the mortar platoon stopped 150 yards from the site and set up our mortar. If the Japs were gonna ambush this big patrol, we were gonna give our guys mortar support. You could just look where our guys were, and we would have fired beyond them. But the Japs had vacated the area.

“We never did get up to the actual site of the ambush, but this old Marine sergeant came walking back, and Benny knew him real well because Benny was an old Marine, too—30 years old was ancient in our minds. Benny said, ‘What’s the scoop up there?’ and this sergeant said that all the Marines had been beheaded and had their genitals stuffed in their mouths. They brought our dead back on canvas stretchers, their bodies covered by ponchos.

“Our hatred for the enemy burned from early on. We had heard about the Bataan Death March, where they bayoneted American prisoners who fell exhausted by the roadside. We had talked to the 90mm antiaircraft battery that was near our bivouac—they were a defense battalion that had been at Pearl Harbor.

“Then there was the Goettge patrol. A few days after we landed on Guadalcanal, some Jap prisoner told Colonel Frank Goettge that the Jap’s buddies wanted to surrender five miles west of our lines, where the Matanikau River met the sea. Goettge took a patrol of 25 men out to take their surrender. But it was an ambush. Goettge and his men were butchered. Only three of them escaped by swimming back to our lines.

“Was he an idiot for thinking the Japs would surrender? No, we just didn’t really understand the enemy yet. Surrender was out of the question for a Jap unless he was knocked unconscious. But even then, if you saw an unconscious Jap, you’d be very cautious because he might be only pretending. He might try to kill you.

“Japan soon proved a brutal enemy. They ignored the Geneva Convention. They tortured prisoners of war, then killed them. Hell, they would torture a body and mutilate it even after a guy was dead. A hatred between the Marines and the Japanese rapidly developed. We never took a prisoner, never in my battalion, that I know of.”

On August 20, bad news came to the Marines, word that the Japanese were landing fresh troops to retake the airfield. That same day a new armada of planes was heard in the sky.

Sid Phillips: “It was late in the afternoon, and we were at our mortar position when we heard airplanes circling the field. We ran for cover. They came in from the south over those ridges. The roar of all the airplanes was deafening. They were loud by themselves, but when you have the sky full of them—wow! Someone screamed that they were our planes.

“We just went wild. I looked up and saw a blue-gray SBD dive bomber with the letters ‘USMC’ painted on the underside of the wing. We flung our helmets way up in the air. We were beating on each other. Some of the guys were crying with joy they were so happy. We hadn’t had any friendly planes except those two or three Flying Fortresses that came in. We had been strafed regularly by the Japanese Zeros. Seeing our planes told us that Uncle Sam had decided we were going to fight for this miserable island.”

On August 21, 1942, the Marines and the Japanese Army would meet in the first major battle of Guadalcanal. The Japanese had landed 900 soldiers of the elite Ichiki Detachment, who marched west along the beach, toward the airfield. The Marines of H Company waited for the enemy along the west bank of a small river they called “Alligator Creek,” or “the Tenaru.” [Actually, the stream was the Ilu River.]

Jim Young: “We took turns manning defense lines at night. It was scary. The jungle was thick in front of us, and the nights were black. We heard all kinds of noises, and some of us would fire a few rounds in front of us just in case Japs were sneaking up on us. The trouble was that everyone got jumpy when someone fired, and the whole line would open up. You would think a hell of a battle was going on.

“Well, the general got fed up with all the shooting and nothing to show for it. He issued an order that if any more of that wild firing happened, he wanted to see dead Japs, or that unit would catch all the working parties. Let me tell you, the next night the whole island seemed to be deserted, it was so quiet. The only sound came from ‘Washing Machine Charley.’”

“The Battle of the Tenaru [River] was the first real fight on the island.”

Sid Phillips: “The Battle of the Tenaru [River] was the first real fight on the island. Our lines ran north and south from the ocean back to where the airfield began. We did not have a perimeter around the airfield; we didn’t have that many men.

“We were stretched out in these holes, every seven yards, two men with rifles, two men with rifles, then maybe six men with a machine gun, their position covered with logs and dirt, then two men with rifles, and two men with rifles, and so on. The jungle around you was so thick, you didn’t know who was where, or what was where. You would lie there and listen to all those different damn jungle noises.

“One of those iguanas, three feet long, could be scurrying around, wrestling and making noise. You would wonder, Is that a damn Jap or is that an iguana? So you stayed awake. You didn’t want to give a false alarm. After a while, you would get used to it, and you began to take pride in the idea that you could tell a land crab from a creeping Jap, you know.

“The mosquitoes were eating us alive. There was no repellent or anything. We just lay in those holes and fed those mosquitoes all night long. We’d been living on rice and nothing else for a long time there. Everybody was wore out, exhausted before long. Every two hours you were supposed to switch off on watch with the guy in your foxhole. We were always on edge.

“Because things were so spooky, they would take our squad leader, Sergeant Carp from Brooklyn, and put him up on the perimeter. He carried the BAR [Browning Automatic Rifle], and they wanted his firepower up there. Plus, he had been in the Marine Corps about three years and was an old timer that they considered much wiser than us kids. They put him up on the perimeter every night with that BAR.”

On the H Company line, a Marine named Art Pendleton led one of 12 machine gun squads.

Art Pendleton: “I was a corporal. I had joined the Marine Corps in January 1942 in Worcester, Massachusetts. Before that I was a pretty ordinary guy, a country boy from central Massachusetts—horse-and-buggy country. I enjoyed school. Never had any such thing as an affair with a girl (until I got into the Marine Corps). Never would touch a drop of alcohol. Never even heard of drugs. It was a whole different way of life. Women were also much different. If you ever saw a woman in the barroom in our town, it would be a story to tell.

“That all impacts your character, I suppose. When I boarded the train in Boston to go to Parris Island [the Marine Corps’ boot camp and training center in South Carolina], there were lots of other men there from all over New England. One fellow who ended up in H Company with me came from Southborough, Massachusetts, which was just a short distance from where I lived. His name was Whitney Jacobs.

“Jacobs was a hairy little guy and powerfully strong but not the kind of person that you would think of being a Marine. The rules and regulations for joining at that time were stringent. You couldn’t be an African American, which was sad. [Not until June 1942 did the Marine Corps accept its first black recruits. By the war’s end, more than 19,000 black Marines would serve with distinction.]

“You had to have all of your teeth except for two, you had to be a certain weight, a certain height, you had to have certain education, and the list goes on and on. You wouldn’t think that little Whitney Jacobs would have ever made it, but he did.

“The night of our first battle with the Japanese, our machine-gun emplacement was on the beach looking out at the ocean while others were on the riverbank. There was only one likely place that the Japanese could breach our lines—the sandspit. The sandspit was part of the beach that separated the river from the ocean. The sandspit was like a dam. The river trickled over it all the time. The only time the river would run freely over it was when I suppose there was a heavy rain.

“Right behind the sandspit the river got deep. We knew the Japanese could walk across that bit of sand if they attacked, so we strung some barbed wire on some poles there. It was like a 90-degree angle. We were about the only gun that was that close to the sandspit.

Whitney Jacobs, who was a rifleman, was near the river. Riflemen and the machine guns and BARs were right up front. Whitney thought that he heard something out of place in the night. He fired without waiting for orders. That one shot started the battle because the Japanese were there, trying to cross the river.”

Jim Young: “Around 1:30 am on August 21, a few shots were fired up on our defense line at the Tenaru River. The tempos of firing increased with a few machine-gun bursts. Then all hell broke loose.”

Sid Phillips: “The Japanese unit had come marching down the beach, moving west, and when they got to the Tenaru River, they spread out and formed a front. Some of them waded through the creek quietly. It was black as dark. When the Japs hit, Sergeant Carp and his foxhole companion, a Marine named Beer, had fallen asleep. They were just so exhausted and so tired. A Jap officer jumped in their hole and hacked them up, killing them both, until someone shot him. When the firing started, the darkness became almost as bright as day. A wall of fire poured from our lines. A real roar. We knew the real enemy was here. They were disciplined and vicious.”

Art Pendleton: “The Japanese had landed nearly 1,000 men of the best that they had from the Ichiki Detachment. They tried to come across the sand first but ran into our barbed wire, so they had to cross the river. It was neck deep in spots. The Japanese put themselves to a big disadvantage from the start.”

“Marine, tonight you die!”

Jim Young: “A screaming horde of Imperial Japanese soldiers tried to cross. They came in waves of 50 and 100 men at a time. We had about 90 men on the defense line.

“Japs who could speak English were screaming, ‘Marine, tonight you die!’ and ‘Blood for the emperor!’ We started yelling back at them, ‘F—k your emperor!’ and ‘Go to hell!’––anything we could possibly think of.

“The Japs threw coconuts in the river. That way, it was hard to tell if you were shooting at a coconut or a Jap’s head. Then they charged across the water. Some of them got through our line and were bayoneting our men.

“On the front lines, one of my close friends, Crotty from New York, was in a two-man foxhole. A Japanese officer had snuck through the line and came at him from the back of the foxhole. The other Marine in the foxhole with Crotty had put a bandolier of ammo across the back of the foxhole and rolled onto his back to reach for it. When he looked up he saw the Jap officer with his saber raised over his head. The Marine drew his knees to his chest to protect himself. The Jap’s saber hit him in the kneecap and split his knee down through the shinbone.

“Crotty heard his buddy scream and turned around. He shot just before the Jap could bring the blade down for the second hit. The bullet went up through the Jap’s rib cage and came out under his armpit. He fell on them.

“Our lieutenant, Benson, was yelling for us to prepare to move the mortars into action. We were powerless for the moment. A mortar required light to see where you’re aiming, so we just waited, watching the flashes, praying for the hint of dawn. I thought to myself …You wanted to see Japs, well, here they are.”

Art Pendleton: “My gun was on the beach when the battle started. John Rivers and Al Schmid’s machine-gun emplacement was on the bank of the river. John Rivers was a very nice guy and very tough––a former boxer. He had given up a chance to be a champion lightweight prizefighter to enlist instead.

“We had four heavy machine guns in our platoon, and his happened to be right in the spot where the Japanese came across the river. John was right in the middle of it. The Japanese never should have hit us there. They were in water up to their neck getting across the river. Hell, they were fodder for us.”

Jim Young: “John [Rivers] was the gunner and Al [Schmid] was his loader. Even though they had boxed one another on the deck of the ship, they worked together well. Their gun was in a sandbagged pit on the riverbank, and the Japs were attacking them like herds of cattle. Johnny was mowing them down until he was shot in the face and killed.

“Al took over as gunner and kept fighting until the Japs threw a grenade into his gun pit and wounded him and his ammo bearer. Blinded, Al resumed firing with the ammo bearer shouting in his ear, directing his fire.

“A guy from North Carolina named Pfc. Steve Boykin, a very nice gentleman, got hit up there on the line. His one leg, the whole back of it was almost blown out. His men slid him back off the line and set him against a tree. One of the Japs got through and got to him and stuck him with a bayonet but didn’t kill him. The Jap was killed. Somehow Boykin survived.”

Art Pendleton: “As the battle raged on, Whitney realized that one of our machine guns had stopped firing, the one that had been devastating the enemy. You can’t fire a machine gun steady because if you do the enemy will zero in on you. But when you’re in that kind of a situation, you don’t use common sense. You’re firing for your life.

“Whitney crawled a few feet to the silent gun emplacement. He stayed on his stomach and peered into that emplacement and called out. Inside, John Rivers was dead, and Al Schmid, who was blinded and in bad shape, answered him. Whitney shouted, ‘Don’t shoot—I’ll go get help.’ So he backed off and reported to the officer in charge. Right away our lieutenant called my gun in because I was about 100 feet from that point.

“We rushed to move. The gunner carried the gun, and the assistant gunner carried the tripod. When running up to the line to get a look at where we’re going, a hand grenade, I believe, went off between my legs. It lifted me up in the air a little bit, but it didn’t touch me. I thought, Wow! How lucky can you be?

“Everything seemed so confusing. We were directed to Rivers’ gun position. No one was in it. I don’t know where Rivers’ body went or where Schmid went. They were destined to get knocked out because they were firing so heavily. Rivers’ gun was totally destroyed, so I just threw it out of the emplacement. That machine gun killed many, many, many Japanese. I put my gun in its place. We were in the middle of it now.

“The Jap officers had these fancy sabers and were swinging them in the air trying to scare the hell out of us. Our guys were way beyond being scared. They were there to kill everybody. You forget about being scared when your life is at stake. There’s no such thing as scared.

“I started firing as soon as I got the gun set up. If you didn’t, you were going to get killed. Rivers’ position was the focus of the whole Japanese attack. The Japs were all over the place.”

“Those flares were probably one of the most dangerous things in the battle.”

Sid Phillips: “As the battle raged, our 81mm mortar platoon––all four tubes––was facing the beach in case there was a landing coming in from the ocean. So the attack was coming from our right flank. Our lieutenant moved us toward the battle, up parallel to the river. Our foxholes were all over. Our machine guns were so well dug in you could hardly see them at all in the dim light. As we moved up in the dim light, we kept falling in foxholes. To fall in a foxhole with a mortar tube or base plate can be painful as hell. It could kill a man if it fell on him.”

Jim Young: “We set up the mortars in the coconut grove parallel with the river. We had no defensive cover for protection. It was like being in the middle of a football field. We had to work fast because the Japs spotted us and started shelling us. The lieutenant was worried that we may not have enough clearance through the coconut leaves. I told him I thought I could get through. I fired the first round and knocked a palm leaf off a tree, but the shell didn’t explode, so the lieutenant gave the order to ‘fire for effect.’ This means to fire as fast as you can.

Sid Phillips: “There was a pile of Japanese dead right out in front of our new mortar position, about 30 yards away. They had killed them before we got up there. We were trying to hit an area about the size of six football fields on the other side of the river. We just kept blanketing the whole area over there.”

Roy Gerlach: “Our front lines kept the Japs backed up in the river. I was with the 81mm mortars; I carried shells to the guns. Our mortar fired a three-inch-wide shell that you dropped down into the tube and it shot up into the air. It reached out over our lines and came down and killed anyone for 30 yards. No, it never bothered me being a Mennonite and being in the war. I guess I was more broadminded.”

Art Pendleton: “The thing that impressed me more than anything were the flares. When they would shoot a flare in the air, you could hear it pop when it lit. When they ignited, it was a very bright light. Then the parachute opened, and the flare would very slowly float down to earth. No matter what you were doing, everybody stopped. You didn’t move a hair. If you dared to move, you were going to get shot. We lit flares, and so did they. It was just to check positions and see who was where. Those flares were probably one of the most dangerous things in the battle.”

Sid Phillips: “We were firing heavy, 15-pound shells. It is a deafening explosion when that thing goes off. You just can’t believe it. If you shot the biggest firecracker ever, it was a thousand times louder than that. We were actually awed by the results of that 15-pound shell. At Camp Lejeune we had one day of firing live ammunition, but the range was over 2,000 yards away. We had never had any close-up firing until that battle.”

Jim Young: “We saw Japs, their clothes on fire from our mortar bursts, running to the sea and river to put the fire out. Our number-four gun had a misfire and had to be taken out of action; Corporal Mugno’s ramrod for cleaning the mortar tube had a sock wrapped around the end of it that came off and fouled the gun. It was utter chaos.”

Art Pendleton: “At one point they tried to flank us at the sandspit. My gun wasn’t shooting at the sandspit at all since that was covered by another gun on our left. That was also covered by the 37mm cannon. The 37mm was a lightweight cannon, but they had canister shot for it, the same as you would shoot game birds with. It was not one bullet; it was many pieces of metal flying through the air, like a giant shotgun. It was firing again and again.

“I wasn’t worried about the sandspit. I wasn’t even thinking about it. We had our hands full just taking care of what was in front of us. They had to cross the river and climb up the bank in order to get to us. We slaughtered them.”

Sid Phillips: “During the battle, Colonel Pollock [Lt. Col. Edwin A. Pollock, CO of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines] came running over to our gun and said, ‘Who is the gunner here?’ I held my hand up and he said, ‘Well, boy, use me as the range stakes.’ He ran out about 40 feet in front of the gun and held his hand up. I put the sights on zero deflection, and we dragged the gun so that we had him lined up. Then I noticed beyond him through the trees was an abandoned American amphibian tank on the enemy side of the river. The Japs had gotten a machine gun into that thing and were firing from inside it.

“Pollock said to try 300 yards. Our shot was right on, but it was a little bit beyond the target. We lowered our mortar down, and our third round landed right in the tank. Everybody along the line cheered like a touchdown in a football game.”

Art Pendleton: “Near the end of the battle, Colonel Pollock, who was a great man, came to me and said, ‘Stop firing.’ I said, ‘I’m trying to take out a couple of guys that I’m seeing running there.’ He said, ‘Don’t. We don’t know what’s over there, and we might open up another Rivers situation here.’ He knew the fight was over and didn’t want us getting ourselves killed or the other Marines who were surrounding the enemy from different directions at that time. He was our colonel, and I respected him a lot.”

Sid Phillips: “The Japs tried to pick us off with a 75mm howitzer cannon they had wheeled up. It had iron wheels on it, and they drove us away from our mortar once. They also fired those grenade launchers, those knee mortars, at us. When those things went off, it sounded like you had slapped two pieces of two-by-four together. A crack! And if it hit close it would scare the hell out of you.”

“… the Jap dead were piled three to five feet high.”

Jim Young: “The battle wound down, and it grew light. In the end, the Jap dead were piled three to five feet high. There must have been a hundred or more bodies in front of our 37mm cannon that was located on the sandspit, which was the only way the Japs could attack without going through the creek.”

Art Pendleton: “I can remember looking at these Japanese soldiers who were caught in the barbed wire, and their heads were blown open and the brains and innards was dripping out of their heads. That scene is still with me nearly every day, 70 years later.

“The Japanese soldier was very different from what you would consider the Japanese population. They’re a kind, generous, easygoing nation of people who love nice things and are very delicate in their artistry, music, and everything else. Their soldiers, however, were brainwashed to the point where suicidal attacks were nothing for them, nor were acts of unspeakable brutality. We were a bunch of American kids. Our social system was different, and we were brainwashed, inasmuch as you do what you’re told to do and don’t question orders, but if someone told us to throw our lives away we weren’t ready to give it up. There’s a big difference.”

Jim Young: “Two hundred bodies were piled up in front of the gun position of Johnny Rivers and Al Schmid. Schmid survived the battle, although he was blinded. I could hardly believe I was seeing so many dead enemy soldiers. Some just looked like they were sleeping. Others were mangled. Some were burnt.”

Sid Phillips: “General Vandegrift and his staff came right up behind our guns. Vandegrift was the top dog on Guadalcanal. He was within 10 feet of us. A corporal followed behind General Vandegrift with a 12-gauge pump shotgun, and he kept the shotgun at port arms; I don’t even know if it was on safety, but all he had to do was point that thing and fire it. He stayed right with the general, and that’s when my buddy Ransom said, ‘Phillips, if you want to get your ass kicked, just go over there and stand between the general and that corporal.’

“Our tanks didn’t come up until maybe 10 o’clock in the morning. They passed right down the beach right there. You could have walked over and touched them. When the tanks got through, our whole 1st Battalion, A, B, C, D Companies of infantry, had circled around from the south, and they came around and drove all the Japanese survivors ahead of them out into the ocean. About 30 Japs ran out and jumped in the surf. Everybody kept firing at them until no more heads were visible.”

Jim Young: “At about two in the afternoon the next day, the temperature was around 95 degrees. We walked among them [the dead Japanese] looking for ones that were still alive. Several of our men had been shot by Japs who were only playing dead. The colonel issued orders to shoot any one of them that might be alive. The smell of death almost took your breath away. The chaplains were taking the dog tags off the dead Marines. They said we lost 40 men. It was one hell of a night, and we were glad it was over.”

Art Pendleton: “I can’t even begin to tell you how many bodies were in the river floating around after this battle. You could hardly see the water. We killed almost 800 of them. They were some of their best men that used to train on Mount Fujiyama. They’d put on full marching gear and run up the mountain and run down the mountain. We never would have won that battle if we didn’t have the advantage of the river.

“Their bodies were all over the place for two weeks. The crocodiles were ripping them apart. There were a few of them that survived and escaped back on their fast ships to the other side of the island. These men fought again, but they were all annihilated in the end.”

Sid Phillips: “After it was over, Colonel Pollock came over and told us we had done real well and shook hands with everybody.

“This Japanese unit that hit us there was half of the Ichiki Detachment, an elite unit. They first went ashore at Guam and captured our Marines there. Evidently they had gone through all the Marines’ personal gear because the Japanese packs were full of snapshots of American people—Marines and their girlfriends. We found about 100 of these snapshots after the battle.

“We collected up all the pictures of Americans and decided that the best thing to do was burn them. You wouldn’t want to send them to the families, even if you could identify them. We kept all the Japanese pictures. You’d never burn them. You could trade them to sailors on board ships for almost anything—clothes, chewing tobacco. Money had no value, but you could do a lot by trading souvenirs. I opened one Jap pack that had three Marine globe-and-anchor emblems in it. My friend Deacon Tatum got stuck with Carp’s BAR and had to clean his blood off of it.”

Art Pendleton: “I remember two riflemen, who were my friends. A big shell landed beside them and killed them both. It didn’t just kill them, it blew them to pieces. Their names were Barney Sterling and Arthur Atwood. They would both receive the Navy Cross posthumously. Our lieutenant gathered me and a couple of guys, and we got ponchos and picked up their body parts. We carried them up through the coconut grove and dug their graves right near the end of the Henderson Field airstrip. That was the beginning of the Marine cemetery on Guadalcanal. From that time on there were a lot of graves in there. I never cared about going back to Guadalcanal, but a friend told me it’s a big cemetery now.”

The Battle of Guadalcanal went on for another six months and ended in a decisive American victory. The Lunga Point airfield was renamed Henderson Field in honor of Marine aviator Major Lofton Henderson, killed at the earlier Battle of Midway. Today the airfield is known as Honiara International Airport (see WWII Quarterly, Fall 2011). The island was not declared secure until February 9, 1943. By then the American Marines and Army had lost 1,592 men killed and 4,283 wounded, while the Japanese were decimated: over 28,000 killed, missing, or dead from disease.

The outcome of the battle also marked the end of Japanese expansion in the Pacific and, from then until August 1945, Japan was on the defensive until its final defeat.

This article by Adam Makos & Marcus Brotherton originally appeared on Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Robert Beckhusen

Military History, North Africa

Weapons rushed into combat often make for poor weapons — and the Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Company’s self-propelled Bishop howitzer was exceedingly poor indeed.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The Bishop, Deacon, Sexton and Abbot provided plenty of fire support.

In 1940, the United Kingdom went to war with the Axis in North Africa and quickly encountered an unnerving tactical problem.

The nature of warfare in the flat, open desert inevitably favored tanks, which could easily outrun the range of supporting artillery that could not move unless towed. Limbering and unlimbering artillery was time consuming, so the British Army hastened development of a 25-pounder self-propelled howitzer called the Bishop.

Weapons rushed into combat often make for poor weapons — and the Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Company’s self-propelled Bishop howitzer was exceedingly poor indeed.

Foremost was the technical problem of affixing a howitzer onto a chassis. The company took a Valentine tank, a rugged workhorse of the British armored forces, and swapped the turret for an enormous, boxy superstructure which increase the vehicle’s height to 10 feet. That became the inspiration for its name, and gave the Bishop a tall profile.

A high profile for a howitzer was not a serious problem, in theory, as artillery is supposed to stay far away from the lines. But the Bishop couldn’t stay very far back given the howitzer’s limited vertical elevation which tapped out its firing range to 5,900 meters — well within the range of the fearsome German 88-millimeter gun and half the 25-pounder cannon’s normal maximum range.

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In the open desert, the Germans could see the Bishop coming, and with the right weapons, destroy it before it could get close enough to fire its own cannon.

As a result, British crews often parked the Bishop on ramps to add as much extra elevation as possible.

Nevertheless, ramp or no, the combination of relatively short range — for a howitzer — and the Bishop’s enormous size was a problem particularly in combination, because the Bishop was intended to also serve as an anti-tank weapon, as British tanks lacked the firepower to stand up to German Panzer III and IV tanks arriving to North Africa.

The Bishop superstructure’s interior was also cramped, making for an uncomfortable experience for the crew, and only 149 were produced in total between 1942 and 1943.

While the gun did see combat, including during the enormous Second Battle of El Alamein in November 1942, which helped break the Axis Powers’ back in North Africa, the British quickly moved on to better self-propelled guns including the U.S.-made 105-millimeter M7, dubbed “Priest” by the British, although that required a steady supply of American ammunition instead of the British industry’s 25-pounder shells.

However, it was the Bishop’s failure that helped spawn later successes, as the Bishop was part of a family of ecclesiastically-named howitzers.

Deacon

The AEC Mk I Gun Carrier “Deacon” followed the Bishop and was a decidedly lower-tech self-propelled gun than its heavier counterpart — with a significantly smaller armament of a single six-pound gun mounted on the back of a wheeled AEC Matador 4×4 truck.

The Deacon was lightly armored compared to the Bishop — some 20 millimeters of armor compared to 60 millimeters in the Bishop’s chassis. But one advantage possessed by the Deacon was its ability for the crew to cover the gun and disguise it as a regular truck.

The Deacon’s firing range of around 5,000 meters, and penetrating power, made it a capable tank-killer without the Bishop’s high profile. The Deacon’s maximum speed of 19 miles per hour was also slightly faster than the Bishop, which topped out at 15 miles per hour.

Sexton

Of Britain’s ecclesiastically-inspired howitzers, the Sexton — a church officer who watches over the graveyard — was perhaps the most appropriate. It was the most satisfactory of Britain’s war-time mobile howitzers, and was the most widely produced with more than 2,000 built between 1943 and 1945. It continued to serve for 11 more years after the war.

The Sexton solved two problems. First, it corrected the Bishop’s deficiencies including the gun, which had only a +15 degree elevation. The Sexton’s gun could reach up to +40, and the vehicle’s maximum speed was a brisker 25 miles per hour, comparable to a Sherman tank. Second, the Sexton carried one of Britain’s familiar 25-pounder guns, which was easier to supply than the U.S.-provided M7 Priests.

That the Sexton could keep up with Shermans came from the fact that the self-propelled gun was practically a Sherman. The British Army contracted the design to the Canadian Army, which developed the howitzer on the Ram and later Grizzly chassis — Canadian versions of the M3 and M4A1 Shermans, respectively.

The Sexton went on to see extensive combat use during World War II with both British and Canadian forces in Europe.

Abbot

The last of the church-themed British mobile guns, the FV433 Abbot SPG, became Britain’s contribution to self-propelled artillery during the Cold War soon after it entered production in the 1960s. It was not the only weapon of its type in the British Army, however, as it shared service with U.S.-made self-propelled M109 howitzers.

The Abbot was, of course, a generation beyond the Sexton with its fire-control computer, traversable turret, 105-millimeter howitzer capable of elevating upward to +70 degrees, and a significantly farther firing range of 10 miles. The British Army would ultimately retire the Abbot in the 1990s with the introduction of the AS-90, although India — the only other user — still fields around 80 Abbots, to be replaced with an Indian-manufactured variant of the South Korean K9 Thunder.

India, however, has has struggled to acquire artillery since the Bofors scandal in the 1980s, which helped bring down a government, and the recent death of two South Korean soldiers in a K9 mishap has clouded the arms deal.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Robert Kozinets

Politics, Americas

Both support for socialism and attacks on it appear to be on the rise.

The word “socialism” has become a trigger word in U.S. politics, with both positive and negative perceptions of it split along party lines.

But what does socialism actually mean to Americans? Although surveys can ask individuals for responses to questions, they don’t reveal what people are saying when they talk among themselves.

As a social media scholar, I study conversations “in the wild” in order to find out what people are actually saying to one another. The method I developed is called netnography and it treats online posts as discourse – a continuing dialogue between real people – rather than as quantifiable data.

As part of an ongoing study on technology and utopia, I read through more than 14,000 social media comments posted on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and YouTube in 2018 and 2019. They came from 9,155 uniquely named posters.

What I found was both shocking and heartening.

Loyalty and Fear

Both support for socialism and attacks on it appear to be on the rise.

Socialism can mean different things to people. Some see it as a system that institutionalizes fairness and citizen rights, bringing higher levels of social solidarity; others focus on heavy-handed government control of free markets that work more effectively when left alone. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, emphasized the right to quality health care, education, a good job with a living wage, affordable housing and a clean environment in a 2019 speech.

A 2019 Gallup Poll found that 39% of Americans have a favorable opinion of socialism – up from about 20% in 2010; 57% view it negatively.

Prominent elected “democratic socialist” officials include six Chicago City Council members, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders.

These and other advocates point to a version of socialism called the “Nordic model,” seen in countries like Denmark, which provide high-quality social services such as health care and education while fostering a strong economy.

Critics call socialism anti-American and charge that it undermines free enterprise and leads to disaster, often using the unrealistically extreme example of Venezuela.

President Trump has portrayed socialists as radical, lazy, America-hating communists. His son, Donald Trump Jr., has posted tweets ridiculing socialism.

During the 2020 election season, Republican Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell advised that his party could win by being a firewall against socialism. He was on point: Fear of socialism may have been a reason why the Republicans gained seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2020.

A ‘Tug of Words’

Although I wasn’t initially looking for posts on socialism or capitalism, I found plenty of them in my online investigation. Many were what I call a “tug of words” in which people asserted which system was better. People from opposite ends of the political spectrum made pithy observations, posted one-liners or launched strong, emotionally worded broadsides. There was often little dialogue – those who posted were shouting at each other as if using a megaphone.

I also found a large number of short, nonconversational, megaphone-like posts on visual social media like Instagram and Pinterest.

But some people were more circumspect. While they were often reactive or one-sided, they raised questions. For example, people questioned whether business bailouts, grants, lobbying or special tax treatment showed that capitalism’s “free markets” weren’t actually all that free.

And some considered what “socialism” actually means to people, linking that meaning to race, nationality and class.

Overcoming Primitive ‘Isms’

Amid all the sound and fury of people shouting from their virtual soapboxes, there were also the calmer voices of those engaging in deeper discussions. These people debated socialism, capitalism and free markets in relation to health care, child care, minimum wage and other issues that affected their lives.

One YouTube discussion explored the notion that we should stop viewing everything “through the primitive lens of the nonsensical ‘isms’ – capitalism, socialism, communism – which have no relevance in a sustainable or socially just and peaceful world.”

Other discussions united both left and right by asserting that the real problem was corruption in the system, not the system itself. Some used social media to try to overcome the ideological blinders of partisan politics. For example, they argued that raising the minimum wage or improving education might be sensible management strategies that could help the economy and working Americans at the same time.

New Forum for Discussions

As America’s post-election divisions fester, my work gives me reason for hope. It shows that some Americans – still a small minority, mind you – are thoughtfully using popular social media platforms to have meaningful discussions. What I have provided here is just a small sample of the many thoughtful conversations I encountered.

My analysis of social media doesn’t deny that many people are angry and polarized over social systems. But it has revealed that a significant number of people recognize that labels like socialism, free markets and capitalism have become emotional triggers, used by some journalists and politicians to manipulate, incite and divide.

To unify and move forward together, we may need to better understand the sites and discussion formats that facilitate this kind of thoughtful discourse. If partisans retreat to echo chamber platforms like Parler and Rumble, will these kinds of intelligent conversations between people with diverse viewpoints cease?

As Americans confront the financial challenges of a pandemic, automation, precarious employment and globalization, providing forums where we can discuss divergent ideas in an open-minded rather than an ideological way may make a critical difference to the solutions we choose. Many Americans are already using digital platforms to discuss options, rather than being frightened away by – or attacking – the tired old socialist bogeyman.

Robert Kozinets, Jayne and Hans Hufschmid Chair in Strategic Public Relations and Business Communication, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

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

Image: Reuters.

Robert Beckhusen

Military History, Europe

It was the first time the Canal Defense Light saw combat.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The Canal Defense Light was extremely bright at some 13 million candlepower — far surpassing the U.S. Army’s “ambush light” deployed in Vietnam.

In March 1945, the rapidly advancing U.S. Army’s 9th Armored Division — to its surprise — found itself at Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine at Remagan; one of the two surviving bridges into the heart of Germany. The bridge was a considerable prize and its capture would shorten the war. The Germans, desperate to stop the offensive, threw everything that had at the bridge in repeated attempts to destroy it.

German troops rigged the Ludendorff Bridge with explosives, which only partially detonated — failing to bring down the structure. Ground attacks, artillery and a 24-inch super-heavy Karl-Gerät mortar also failed. U.S. troops even captured a barge full of German soldiers carrying explosives as they floated down the river toward the bridge.

Finally, and incorrectly believing the bridge had been destroyed, German commando Otto Skorzeny ordered Waffen SS frogmen to float down the river using oil drums, with their objective to blow up a nearby pontoon bridge. Along the way, beams from extremely bright Canal Defense Lights attached to American M3 Grant tanks illuminated the group — exposing them to U.S. fire which killed two frogmen. U.S. troops captured three others.

It was the first time the Canal Defense Light saw combat. The term “Canal Defense Light” itself was an odd one for giant lamp attached to a battle tank, but that was deliberate — an anodyne-sounding codename to confuse spies. First developed by Greek inventor Marcel Mitzakis, the British War Office took interest, ordering 300 lights for trials beginning in 1940.

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The actual devices themselves used a series of mirrors to reflect a powerful arc-light beam through narrow slit — making them challenging to disable with fire.

The British first used Matilda II tanks for the lights, and later, twin-cannon M3 Grant tanks supplied under Lend-Lease. Mitzakis derived the idea with Royal Navy Cmdr. Oscar De Thoren, inspired by naval searchlights. Their connection to the British military industry came through J.F.C. Fuller, an occultist-inspired military theorist and proponent of psychological warfare whose fascist sympathies later precluded him from the war effort.

The Canal Defense Light was extremely bright at some 13 million candlepower — far surpassing the U.S. Army’s “ambush light” deployed in Vietnam. The M3 Tanks with the blinding illuminators came to be known as CDL Tanks or “Gizmos,” with the CDL inside a rebuilt turret. One advantage of using the Grant tanks is that the tank’s main 75-millimeter cannon sat in the hull, allowing it to keep its main weapon.

The War Illustrated, a popular war-era magazine, reported that the lights did not live up to all of their promises. But they still had their uses — if they only saw limited service and only late in the war. During the crossing of the Rhine, CDL Tanks helped blind German defenses on the east bank of the river.

When C.D.L. tanks were used to light up a wide front they could turn night into local day and thus enable the pursuit of a defeated enemy to continue throughout the 24 hours. The aimed fire-power of the tanks themselves, even if not augmented by infantry, ordinary tanks and artillery, was impressive: direction-keeping on a night advance or assault was greatly facilitated and might prove decisive against an enemy on the run.

The U.S. military later ordered CDL Tanks for the invasion of Okinawa, but they arrived too late to participate in the battle and saw no further action.

This article originally appeared on Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Michael Peck

Security,

Pro-Russian media claims so.

Here's What You Need to Know: More than circumstantial evidence is needed to give the claims any credence.

Did a Russian anti-aircraft missile hit one of Israel’s new F-35 stealth fighters?

Pro-Russian media claimed that an Israeli F-35I was hit and damaged by a Russian-made S-200 surface-to-air missile during an Israeli air strike in Syria back in 2017. Israel says one of its F-35s was damaged—after colliding with a bird.

The story begins on October 16, when Israel announced that its aircraft had struck a Syrian SAM battery near Damascus that had fired two hours earlier on Israeli reconnaissance planes flying over Lebanon. The attack damaged the missile battery, and no Israeli aircraft were hit, according to Israel. Coincidentally or not, the incident happened the same day that Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, arrived in Israel for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

However, Southfront.org, a website that covers the Russian military and its intervention in the Syrian Civil War, suggested a different story. “According to the available information, the Syrian Defense Forces used a S-200 missile against the Israeli warplane,” Southfront claimed.

Southfront could not resist pointing out that a much-vaunted F-35 stealth fighter had been hit by a missile that dates back to the 1960s. “This Soviet-made missile is the most advanced long range anti-aircraft system operated by the Syrian military. Even in this case, it’s old-fashioned in terms of modern warfare.”

However, the evidence cited by Southfront seems rather tenuous. Hours after the Israeli military announced the strike on the Syrian missile battery, Israeli media reported that an Israeli F-35 had been damaged by a bird strike two weeks before (Google translation here). The plane reportedly landed safely, but the Israeli Air Force did admit that it wasn’t sure whether the plane will fly again. Israel has taken delivery of only seven F-35Is so far, with a total of fifty on order.

“The incident allegedly took place ‘two weeks ago’ but was publicly reported only on October 16,” Southfront noted. “However, Israeli sources were not able to show a photo of the F-35 warplane after the ‘bird collision.’”

Southfront didn’t explain why the Israeli Air Force would feel a need to release a photo of a damaged stealth aircraft. As U.S. defense website The Drive points out, the F-35 is just entering Israeli service now, and wouldn’t likely be flying missions over Syria just yet unless there was some kind of emergency (and Israel has plenty of F-15s and F-16s to handle those right now). Nor is it optimized for the kind of photographic reconnaissance missions that Israel flies over Lebanon.

As The Drive summed up rather neatly, “Although we cannot rule the possibility out entirely, as Freud would say—sometimes a bird strike is just a bird strike.”

In any event, what’s most interesting about this story isn’t whether an F-35 was hit by a Russian missile. Like the existence of UFOs, the story may or not be true, but we need more than circumstantial evidence to give it any credence.

No, the interesting part is that the F-35 has become such a symbol of U.S. technological prowess—or incompetence—that any rumor that an F-35 has been damaged or shot down in combat will draw attention. Russia and its boosters will pounce on any suggestion that an F-35 has been hit, and no doubt the pro- F-35 crowd will counter those suggestions accordingly.

Already there are reports—again, just reports—that Israeli F-35s have flown combat missions. Given that the U.S. and Israeli air forces are among the most active in the world, sooner or later the F-35 will really, truly see combat. But the rumors are out there now.

This is just the beginning.

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

This article first appeared in 2017.

Image: Flickr / U.S. Embassy Jerusalem

Marc Zimmer

Science, World

AlphaFold and its offspring will certainly change the way computational chemists work, but it won’t make them redundant.

Takeaways

• A “deep learning” software program from Google-owned lab DeepMind showed great progress in solving one of biology’s greatest challenges – understanding protein folding.

• Protein folding is the process by which a protein takes its shape from a string of building blocks to its final three-dimensional structure, which determines its function.

• By better predicting how proteins take their structure, or “fold,” scientists can more quickly develop drugs that, for example, block the action of crucial viral proteins.

Solving what biologists call “the protein-folding problem” is a big deal. Proteins are the workhorses of cells and are present in all living organisms. They are made up of long chains of amino acids and are vital for the structure of cells and communication between them as well as regulating all of the chemistry in the body.

This week, the Google-owned artificial intelligence company DeepMind demonstrated a deep-learning program called AlphaFold2, which experts are calling a breakthrough toward solving the grand challenge of protein folding.

Proteins are long chains of amino acids linked together like beads on a string. But for a protein to do its job in the cell, it must “fold” – a process of twisting and bending that transforms the molecule into a complex three-dimensional structure that can interact with its target in the cell. If the folding is disrupted, then the protein won’t form the correct shape – and it won’t be able to perform its job inside the body. This can lead to disease – as is the case in a common disease like Alzheimer’s, and rare ones like cystic fibrosis.

Deep learning is a computational technique that uses the often hidden information contained in vast datasets to solve questions of interest. It’s been used widely in fields such as games, speech and voice recognition, autonomous cars, science and medicine.

I believe that tools like AlphaFold2 will help scientists to design new types of proteins, ones that may, for example, help break down plastics and fight future viral pandemics and disease.

I am a computational chemist and author of the book The State of Science. My students and I study the structure and properties of fluorescent proteins using protein-folding computer programs based on classical physics.

After decades of study by thousands of research groups, these protein-folding prediction programs are very good at calculating structural changes that occur when we make small alterations to known molecules.

But they haven’t adequately managed to predict how proteins fold from scratch. Before deep learning came along, the protein-folding problem seemed impossibly hard, and it seemed poised to frustrate computational chemists for many decades to come.

Protein Folding

The sequence of the amino acids – which is encoded in DNA – defines the protein’s 3D shape. The shape determines its function. If the structure of the protein changes, it is unable to perform its function. Correctly predicting protein folds based on the amino acid sequence could revolutionize drug design, and explain the causes of new and old diseases.

All proteins with the same sequence of amino acid building blocks fold into the same three-dimensional form, which optimizes the interactions between the amino acids. They do this within milliseconds, although they have an astronomical number of possible configurations available to them – about 10 to the power of 300. This massive number is what makes it hard to predict how a protein folds even when scientists know the full sequence of amino acids that go into making it. Previously predicting the structure of protein from the amino acid sequence was impossible. Protein structures were experimentally determined, a time-consuming and expensive endeavor.

Once researchers can better predict how proteins fold, they’ll be able to better understand how cells function and how misfolded proteins cause disease. Better protein prediction tools will also help us design drugs that can target a particular topological region of a protein where chemical reactions take place.

AlphaFold is Born from Deep-Learning Chess, Go and Poker Games

The success of DeepMind’s protein-folding prediction program, called AlphaFold, is not unexpected. Other deep-learning programs written by DeepMind have demolished the world’s best chess, Go and poker players.

In 2016 Stockfish-8, an open-source chess engine, was the world’s computer chess champion. It evaluated 70 million chess positions per second and had centuries of accumulated human chess strategies and decades of computer experience to draw upon. It played efficiently and brutally, mercilessly beating all its human challengers without an ounce of finesse. Enter deep learning.

On Dec. 7, 2017, Google’s deep-learning chess program AlphaZero thrashed Stockfish-8. The chess engines played 100 games, with AlphaZero winning 28 and tying 72. It didn’t lose a single game. AlphaZero did only 80,000 calculations per second, as opposed to Stockfish-8’s 70 million calculations, and it took just four hours to learn chess from scratch by playing against itself a few million times and optimizing its neural networks as it learned from its experience.

AlphaZero didn’t learn anything from humans or chess games played by humans. It taught itself and, in the process, derived strategies never seen before. In a commentary in Science magazine, former world chess champion Garry Kasparov wrote that by learning from playing itself, AlphaZero developed strategies that “reflect the truth” of chess rather than reflecting “the priorities and prejudices” of the programmers. “It’s the embodiment of the cliché ‘work smarter, not harder.’”

CASP – the Olympics for Molecular Modelers

Every two years, the world’s top computational chemists test the abilities of their programs to predict the folding of proteins and compete in the Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction (CASP) competition.

In the competition, teams are given the linear sequence of amino acids for about 100 proteins for which the 3D shape is known but hasn’t yet been published; they then have to compute how these sequences would fold. In 2018 AlphaFold, the deep-learning rookie at the competition, beat all the traditional programs – but barely.

Two years later, on Monday, it was announced that Alphafold2 had won the 2020 competition by a healthy margin. It whipped its competitors, and its predictions were comparable to the existing experimental results determined through gold standard techniques like X-ray diffraction crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy. Soon I expect AlphaFold2 and its progeny will be the methods of choice to determine protein structures before resorting to experimental techniques that require painstaking, laborious work on expensive instrumentation.

One of the reasons for AlphaFold2’s success is that it could use the Protein Database, which has over 170,000 experimentally determined 3D structures, to train itself to calculate the correctly folded structures of proteins.

The potential impact of AlphaFold can be appreciated if one compares the number of all published protein structures – approximately 170,000 – with the 180 million DNA and protein sequences deposited in the Universal Protein Database. AlphaFold will help us sort through treasure troves of DNA sequences hunting for new proteins with unique structures and functions.

Has AlphaFold Made Me, a Molecular Modeler, Redundant?

As with the chess and Go programs – AlphaZero and AlphaGo – we don’t exactly know what the AlphaFold2 algorithm is doing and why it uses certain correlations, but we do know that it works.

Besides helping us predict the structures of important proteins, understanding AlphaFold’s “thinking” will also help us gain new insights into the mechanism of protein folding.

One of the most common fears expressed about AI is that it will lead to large-scale unemployment. AlphaFold still has a significant way to go before it can consistently and successfully predict protein folding.

However, once it has matured and the program can simulate protein folding, computational chemists will be integrally involved in improving the programs, trying to understand the underlying correlations used, and applying the program to solve important problems such as the protein misfolding associated with many diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cystic fibrosis and Huntington’s disease.

AlphaFold and its offspring will certainly change the way computational chemists work, but it won’t make them redundant. Other areas won’t be as fortunate. In the past robots were able to replace humans doing manual labor; with AI, our cognitive skills are also being challenged.

Marc Zimmer, Professor of Chemistry, Connecticut College

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

Image: Reuters.

WarIsBoring

Security,

The ship would have been a nightmare for the U.S. Navy.

Here's What You Need to Know: Russia's Ulyanovsk is a tantalizing “almost” of history.

Had she ever sailed, the Soviet supercarrier Ulyanovsk would have been a naval behemoth more than 1,000 feet long, with an 85,000-ton displacement and enough storage to carry an air group of up to 70 fixed and rotary wing aircraft.

With a nuclear-powered engine—and working in conjunction with other Soviet surface warfare vessels and submarines—the supercarrier would have steamed through the oceans with a purpose.

Namely, to keep the U.S. Navy away from the Motherland’s shores.

But the Ulyanovsk is a tantalizing “almost” of history. Moscow never finished the project, because it ran out of money. As the Cold War ended, Russia plunged into years of economic hardship that made building new ships impossible.

The Ulyanovsk died in the scrap yards in 1992. But now the Kremlin is spending billions of rubles modernizing its military—and wants a new supercarrier to rival the United States.

Big Goals, Bad Timing:

Builders laid the keel for the Ulyanovsk in 1988, just as the Soviet empire began to break apart. The ship was such a large project that builders wouldn’t have finished her until the mid ’90s.

Construction took place at the Black Sea Shipyard in Ukraine—often called Nikolayev South Shipyard 444. It’s an old facility, dating back to the 18th century when Prince Grigory Potemkin signed orders in 1789 authorizing new docks to repair Russian naval vessels damaged during the Russo-Turkish War.

The famous Russian battleship Potemkin—scene of the famous 1905 naval mutiny and the subject of Sergei Eisenstein’s classic film—launched from the same shipyard.

Early in the Soviet period, the shipyard constructed battleships. During the ’60s and ’70s, workers built Moskva-class helicopter carriers and Kiev-class carriers at South Shipyard 444.

But none of these ships came close to the Ulyanovsk.

Named after Vladimir Lenin’s hometown, everything about the supercarrier was huge, even by Russian standards.

Her propulsion system would have comprised four KN-3 nuclear reactors, a model originally used to power enormous Kirov-class battlecruisers, such as the heavy guided-missile cruiser Frunze. Ulyanovsk could have easily reached 30 knots while under way.

The carrier would have carried at least 44 fighters on board—a combination of Su-33 and MiG-29 attack jets configured for carrier operations. Ulyanovsk’s two steam catapults, ski-jump and four sets of arresting cables would have created a bustling flight deck.

The ship’s designers planned three elevators—each capable of carrying 50 tons—to move aircraft to and from the cavernous hanger deck. Plus, the carrier would have had helicopters for search-and-rescue work and anti-submarine warfare missions.

The Soviets planned a complement of 3,400 sailors—roughly half of the crew aboard an American Nimitz-class carrier, but sizable compared to other Soviet vessels.

Why Build It?:

That the Soviets even wanted a supercarrier was remarkable. The massive ships have never figured significantly in the Soviet or Russian naval inventory.

Currently, Russia has only one carrier—the significantly smaller Admiral Kuznetsov—launched in 1985. Multiple mechanical problems have plagued the ship ever since, and she doesn’t go anywhere without an accompanying tug vessel.

But there was a logic behind the Ulyanovsk. James Holmes, a professor of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College, explained that the Soviets wanted to create a defensive “blue belt” in their offshore waters.

The “blue belt” was a combination of land, sea and air power that would work together to thwart U.S. carrier and submarine forces. Russia could defend the homeland while providing safe patrol areas for ballistic-missile subs performing nuclear deterrent missions.

“Those ‘boomers’ need to disappear for weeks at a time into safe depths,” Holmes said. “Soviet supercarriers could have helped out with the air- and surface-warfare components of a blue-belt defense, chasing off U.S. Navy task forces that steamed into Eurasian waters.”

But pride and national honor also prompted the decision to build the Ulyanovsk.

“There’s also the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses aspect to carrier development,” Holmes continued. “If the U.S. is the world superpower and the U.S.S.R. wants to keep pace, then Soviet leaders want the same toys to demonstrate that they’re keeping pace. It sounds childish, but there are basic human motives at work here.”

“It’s not all about the roles and missions carriers execute,” he said. “It’s about national destiny and dignity.”

But by the mid ’90s, Russian naval vessels were rusting at their moorings, sailors served without pay and the United States stepped in to help deactivate Soviet-era nuclear submarines and provide security for the Russian nuclear arsenal.

“The Soviets weren’t dumb,” Holmes explained. “They wouldn’t spend themselves into oblivion to keep up with the Joneses, and as a great land power, they obviously had enormous claims on their resources to fund the army and air force. There was only so much to go around for ‘luxury fleet’ projects.”

“Bottom line, if you can’t afford to keep the existing fleet at sea, where are you going to get the money to complete your first nuclear-powered supercarrier, a vessel that will demand even more manpower that you can’t afford?”

Moscow’s Military Rises Again…or Not?:

But Russia now seems willing to revive its supercarrier dream. “The navy will have an aircraft carrier,” Russian navy chief Adm. Viktor Chirkov recently said. “The research companies are working on it.”

Other Russian media reports indicate that designers are in the early phases of planning a new carrier class that would be slightly larger than the Nimitz class—and capable of holding an air wing of 100 planes.

But economic problems — including a looming recession — and the expense of maintaining and modernizing the rest of the nation’s aging fleet makes it doubtful whether Russia can build such an expensive ship.

Holmes estimates the cost of a new Russian carrier could be as much as $8.5 billion and take up to seven years to complete. But the professor also said the Russian quest for a carrier is serious.

Great nations have carriers, Russia considers itself a great nation, and therefore the ship would be a symbol of national revival and destiny. In other words, a new carrier would be one more reason to forget the bad old days when the Soviet Union disintegrated.

“We think of the Soviet Union as a dreary place, but Russians also remember that it wielded great power,” Holmes continued. “That’s a potent memory.”

For Moscow’s navy, the failure of the Ulyanovsk project is one of the biggest, baddest memories of them all.

This first appeared in 2015.

Image: Reuters

Christopher Miskimon, Warfare History Network

History, Asia

Largely ignored in the West, Japan and China fought a bloody large-scale battle for the city of Shanghai from July to November 1937.

Here's What You Need to Know: In 1937, the Battle of Shanghai foreshadowed the grim urban combat in the Great War that was to come.

The 1930s was a decade full of World War II’s antecedents. Fighting broke out at various points around the globe during this decade, and many consider the period to be a training ground for 1939-1945. In particular, fighting broke out between several nations in Asia; among these the fighting between Japan and China was no doubt the largest. It was a bloody and vicious series of conflicts that essentially bled into World War II.

China had mass going for it. The Chinese could raise large armies, but training, equipment and unity were lacking. The country also needed foreign advisors to have any hope of well-organized and planned operations. The Japanese were, with exceptions, better trained and uniformly equipped. Being a more homogeneous nation they were better able to field disciplined formations and generally acted with professionalism in their planning. However, they could not hope to match the Chinese in numbers.

Largely ignored in the West, Japan and China fought a horrible large-scale battle for the city of Shanghai from July to November 1937. Though it happened at times, urban combat was not the norm during this period; Shanghai proved a terrible exception and provided a taste of things to come for anyone who was paying attention.

The battle began with small skirmishes and riots between various Chinese elements and local Japanese in Shanghai, some civilian, some military, mostly Japanese marines based near the International Settlement. Longstanding enmity meant the situation would eventually boil into open fighting, and now it did. The Japanese occupied a fortified position and had to keep the road to the nearby consulate and Japanese portion of the Settlement open. The Chinese sent in several of their best trained divisions to push their hated foes out of the city before enemy reinforcement could pour in.

Unfortunately for them, most Chinese formations were not yet fully trained and their attacks, though fierce, were poorly coordinated between their infantry, artillery, and what little armor there was. The battle began before Chiang Kai-shek’s troops were fully prepared. The Japanese, though outnumbered, were well coordinated, and Imperial Navy ships on the Yangtze River did terrible damage with their guns. Overhead, each nation’s air force vied for supremacy, but over time superior Japanese experience paid off.

Originally Published February 6, 2019

This article by Christopher Miskimon originally appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Sebastien Roblin

Military History, Asia

The Barb sank seventeen ships totaling ninety-seven thousand tons of shipping according to the most conservative count. Other tallies are considerably higher.

Here's What You Need to Remember: At midnight on July 23, the Barb slipped up to within a kilometer of the shore, and a landing party commanded by Lt. William Walke, paddled quietly to the beach. While three men took up guard positions—they encountered a sleeping Japanese guard in a watchtower, whom they left unharmed—the other five buried the demolition charge and managed not blow themselves up jury-rigging the detonation circuit. They were furiously rowing back to the Barb when a second train passed.

In the closing months of World War II, heavy losses and depleted fuel stocks kept many of Japan’s remaining combat aircraft grounded and warships in port, awaiting an anticipated amphibious invasion. Starting in July 1945, Allied battleships embarked on a series of naval bombardments of coastal cities in Japan in an effort to draw these forces out to battle—with little success. However, a week before the battleships began lobbing their massive shells, a legendary U.S. submarine toting a rocket launcher began its own campaign of coastal terror that foretold the future of naval warfare—and also engaged in the only Allied ground-combat operation on Japanese home-island soil.

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Submarines still made use of deck guns during World War II, most of them ranging between three and five inches in caliber. These were used to finish off unarmed merchant ships or sink smaller vessels that could evade torpedoes—but also were occasionally directed to bombard coastal targets, such as in early-war Japanese raids on the coasts of California and Australia. The problem was that a single gun was unlikely to inflict much damage in a short amount of time, and the submarines were highly vulnerable to air, sea and land attack as long as they remained surfaced.

In 1942, the German Kriegsmarine actually tested submarine rocket artillery that could be fired underwater, but gave up on the idea due to its impracticality. Rumors that Germany had modified their subs to launch V-2 ballistic missiles at the United States led to a vigorous and bloody submarine hunt in the closing weeks of World War II.

The U.S. Navy, meanwhile, considered a much cruder solution: taking one of the Mark 51 rocket launchers it used on some of its LSM landing ships and strapping it to the main deck of a submarine. The twelve spin-stabilized 127-millimeter rockets mounted on the launch rack could only be fired while surfaced, and had a maximum range of three miles. However, a full volley could be ripple fired in the space of five seconds. The fixed launcher was unable to traverse, so the entire submarine had to turn to adjust the aim laterally.

Capt. Eugene Fluckey of the Gato-class submarine USS Barb volunteered his boat to try out the experimental rocket launcher in 1945. At the time, the Navy was actually testing the weapon’s viability as an anti-kamikaze weapon, but Fluckey managed to cajole the R&D staff into releasing the Mark 51 in time for his patrol, making the Barb the only rocket-launching submarine of the U.S. Navy in the conflict. You can check out footage of the rocket launcher on the Barb here.

The Barb, which displaced 2,400 tons submerged, was one of the top-scoring Allied submarines of World War II. By the most conservative count, it sank seventeen ships totaling ninety-seven thousand tons of shipping. Other tallies are considerably higher.

In January 1945, on his fourth patrol as commander of the Barb, Fluckey snuck his boat into the shallow waters off of Namakwan Harbor off the coast of China and torpedoed six ships before hightailing away, an action that earned him the Medal of Honor. Despite this exploit, Fluckey was concerned it would be difficult to find much enemy shipping on his fifth and last war patrol, so he was keen on being well equipped to attack targets on land.

The Barb set sail from its base in Midway on June 8 loaded with one hundred rockets. It arrived off the Japanese home islands on June 20. At 2:30 am on June 22, it surfaced off of the town of Shari in northeastern Hokkaido Island, unleashing a volley of twelve rockets into the slumbering community. It then sailed northward to the coast of Southern Sakhalin Island, then known as the Japanese prefecture of Karafuto. (All of Sakhalin is presently administered by Russia.)

Over the following month, the Barb expended sixty-eight rockets on Shikuka, Shoritori and Kashiho, mostly firing late at night at near-maximum range. She also used her four-inch deck gun to bombard the towns of Kaihyo To, Shibertori and Chiri. The attacks targeted civilian industrial sites, including a cannery, seal rookery, lumber yard, paper factory and several small shipyards, as well as a military radio, radar and lighthouse stations. When Japanese seaplanes began hunting the sub during the day, Fluckey retaliated with a volley of rockets aimed at the Shikuka military airfield. The Barb’s guns also destroyed more than three dozen civilian sampans, while its homing torpedoes took out local trawlers, tugboats and a few large merchant ships.   

The Barb’s most famous exploit did not involve those weapons. Observing trains passing along the Japanese coastline, Captain Fluckey hatched a scheme to dispatch a landing party to blow up one of the trains by burying the Barb’s fifty-five pound scuttling charge (essentially a self-destruct device) under the tracks. Rather than using a timer, the explosives would be jury-rigged only to blow when the pressure of a passing train completed the circuit, a trick Fluckey likened to a childhood walnut-cracking prank. A landing party of eight was selected on the basis of their unmarried status and membership in the Boy Scouts. Fluckey believed the scouts would have better pathfinding skills.

At midnight on July 23, the Barb slipped up to within a kilometer of the shore, and a landing party commanded by Lt. William Walke, paddled quietly to the beach. While three men took up guard positions—they encountered a sleeping Japanese guard in a watchtower, whom they left unharmed—the other five buried the demolition charge and managed not blow themselves up jury-rigging the detonation circuit. They were furiously rowing back to the Barb when a second train passed.

Fluckey described what happened next in his autobiography Thunder Below!: “The engine’s boilers blew, wreckage flew two hundred feet in the air in a flash of flame and smoke, cars piled up and rolled off the track in a writhing, twisting mass of wreckage.”

All sixteen train cars derailed, killing 150 passengers. The Barb’s crew added a train to the tally of enemy ships sunk on their battle flag. Its landing party had just performed what would be the only U.S. ground operation on the Japanese home islands during World War II. The Barb continued its rampage along the Sakhalin coastline through July 26 before returning safely back to its base in Midway Island on August 2.

The Barb’s raids on the Japanese coast—and even those performed by Allied battleships—were premised on the Japanese military’s inability, by 1945, to effectively defend the home-island coastlines, which included a lack of coastal-defense guns. Many of the casualties of the Barb’s attacks were likely civilians in largely undefended towns. On the other hand, targeting civilian merchant ships was a standard practice undertaken by all sides in World War II.

While the rockets the Barb employed appear to have been effective, it’s not clear that they were superior to having another deck gun. But within a decade of the Barb’s last mission, new rocket-based technologies in the form of guided cruise and ballistic missiles drastically reduced the relevance of big guns on warships or coastal defenses. The new weapons could be launched by a submerged submarine a long distance from the shore, safe from immediate retaliation.

Thus the Barb’s last rocket-laden patrol presaged the future of undersea warfare. Submarines, such as the enormous Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, which has a variant carrying 154 land-attack cruise missiles, can pose a threat even to a nation with a well-defended coastline. The Barb’s month-long seaside rampage will remain a unique incident for some time to come.

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

This first appeared last year. 

Image: WIkimedia Commons