Diplomacy & Crisis News

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« Le Monde diplomatique » a publié le mois dernier un article sur les facteurs économiques et sociaux du problème algérien. Il se trouve que ce texte, résumé d'un ouvrage paru en 1960 aux Presses Universitaires de France (« Sociologie de l'Algérie », par Pierre Bourdieu), a été adressé par un inconnu (...) / Algérie, Citoyenneté, Identité culturelle, Minorité nationale, Nationalisme, Colonisation - 1961/07

United Nations agencies in Timor-Leste are supporting response efforts, as floods and landslides left widespread damage across the country, including in the capital, Dili.  

The kingdom has attempted to play down a weekend of turmoil that ended with a former royal heir under house arrest.

Kyle Mizokami

Russian Submarines, Europe

The Oscars needed to be fast to intercept American nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, and that meant they too needed nuclear propulsion.

Here's What You Need to Remember: In the end, the sinking of the Kursk appears to have been caused by a simple, freak accident of chemistry. The tragedy only reinforces how dangerous life aboard a submarine really is, and how important safety is in the underwater realm.

In 2000, a Russian submarine designed to sink aircraft carriers became a victim of its own arsenal. The cruise-missile submarine Kursk suffered a massive explosion and sank after an onboard torpedo accidentally detonated. The accident was the worst naval disaster suffered by post–Cold War Russia.

The Soviet Union’s greatest adversaries at sea were the aircraft carriers of the U.S. Navy. With their versatile air wings, American carriers could frustrate the Warsaw Pact’s plans wartime plans, doing everything from escorting convoys across the Atlantic to bombing Soviet Northern Fleet bases above the Arctic Circle. They also carried nuclear weapons, making them exceptionally dangerous to the Soviet coastline.

The Soviets’ solution was the construction of the Oscar-class submarines. Some of the largest submarines ever constructed, they displaced measure 506 feet long with a beam of nearly sixty feet—nearly twice that of the Soviet Union’s Alfa-class attack submarines. At 19,400 tons submerged, they were larger than the American Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarines.

They were large for a reason: each Oscar carried two dozen huge P-700 Granit missiles. The P-700 was a large missile designed to kill large ships. The P-700 was thirty-three feet long and nearly three feet wide. Each weighed 15,400 pounds each, most of which was fuel for the ramjet-powered engine which propelled the missile at speeds of Mach 1.6 to a range of 388 miles. The missile packed either a 1,653-pound conventional high explosive warhead, enough to damage an aircraft carrier, or a five-hundred-kiloton nuclear warhead, enough to vaporize a carrier. The missiles would be fed targeting data from the Legenda space surveillance system, which would hunt fast-moving carrier battle groups from orbit.

The missiles were concealed beneath the hull in two rows of twelve, in silos pointed upward at a seventy-degree angle. It was this arsenal that earned them the then-unusual SSGN designation in the West, with the G standing for “guided missile.”

If that weren’t enough, the Oscars had a large complement of torpedoes. Each submarine had four standard-diameter 533-millimeter torpedo tubes that could launch standard homing torpedoes, SS-N-15 “Starfish” antisubmarine missiles or SS-N-16 “Stallion” antiship missiles. It also had two oversized 650-millimeter torpedo tubes for launching Type 65-76A torpedoes against larger ship targets. Together the six tubes were armed with twenty-four torpedoes.

The Oscars needed to be fast to intercept American nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, and that meant they too needed nuclear propulsion. Each was powered by two OK-650 nuclear reactors that together provided 97,990 shipboard horsepower. This accelerated the submarines to up to fifteen knots on the surface and a speedy thirty-three knots underwater.

Twenty Oscar-class submarines were planned, but only thirteen were built before the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union. K-141, also known as Kursk, was laid down in March 1992 and commissioned into the Russian Northern Fleet in December 1994.

On August 15, 2000, the Kursk was on exercise with major elements of the Russian Northern Fleet, including the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov and battlecruiser Pyotr Velikiy. Kursk, which was fully loaded with Granit missiles and torpedoes, was scheduled to make a simulated attack on an aircraft carrier. At 11:28 a.m., an underwater explosion was detected followed two minutes later by a second, larger explosion. One Russian account claims that the twenty-eight-thousand-ton battlecruiser Pyotr Velikiy shook from the first explosion, and a Norwegian seismic station recorded both explosions.

Kursk had suffered two massive explosions and sank in 354 feet of water at a twenty-degree vertical angle. An explosion had ripped through the front of the hull, tearing a terrible gash along the upper bow. Still, at least twenty-three of the 118 crew had survived the sinking, as a note penned by one of the ship’s senior officers, Lt. Capt. Dmitri Kolesnikov, indicated. The note was dated exactly two hours after the initial explosion. Rescue efforts by Russian—and later British and Norwegian—teams failed to rescue the survivors.

A Russian inquiry into the accident concluded that one of the Kursk’s Type 65-76A torpedoes had exploded. A faulty weld in a torpedo or damage to a torpedo during movement had caused it to leak hydrogen peroxide. Like many torpedoes, the Type 65 used hydrogen peroxide as an underwater fuel. Unfortunately, hydrogen peroxide becomes explosive when it comes into contact with a catalyst, such as organic compounds or fire. A similar accident is thought to have sank HMS Sidon, a Royal Navy submarine, in 1955.

Conspiracy theories regarding the sinking of the Kursk are rife on the Russian Internet. Many allege that nearby American attack submarines sank the Kursk with Mark 48 torpedoes. While technically possible (in absence of the evidence of an internal torpedo explosion) there is no remotely plausible motive for such an attack during a period of good U.S.-Russian relations. Why attack the Kursk? Why was only the Kursk sunk, and not the Kuznetsov and Pyotr Velikiy? Why would the Russian government cover up the attack?

In the end, the sinking of the Kursk appears to have been caused by a simple, freak accident of chemistry. The tragedy only reinforces how dangerous life aboard a submarine really is, and how important safety is in the underwater realm. Finally, the rush to conspiracy is a warning that, had this incident occurred during a genuine crisis, such an accident could cause a dangerous escalation that could lead to war.

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

This first appeared in November 2016 and is being reposed due to reader interest. 

Image: Wikipedia.

Robert Farley

Russo-Japan War, Asia

Land combat between Russian and Japanese forces in 1904 and 1905 was recognizably modern.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The Battle of Yalu River, the Siege of Port Arthur, and the Battle of Sendepu differ from 20th century land combat only in emphasis. Both Japanese and Russian forces suffered enormous casualties in efforts to take prepared defenses. The Battle of Mukden, fought in March 1905, produced a total of nearly 150,000 casualties.

The Russo-Japanese War commenced over 100 years ago, lasting eighteen months before a US-brokered truce mercifully put it to rest. The war killed upwards of 125,000 people, and sharply limited Russian influence in Northeast Asia. Japan gained control of Korea, and gained a long-term foothold for influencing events in Manchuria and China.

Writers have ascribed many legacies to the conflict, some of which we can set aside. Victory against Japan probably would not have prevented the collapse of Imperial Russia and the founding of the Soviet Union; the Revolution happened for other reasons. Moreover, the conflict did not give the Central Powers a “window of opportunity” for defeating Russia in Europe; we now know that Vienna and Berlin over-estimated, rather than under-estimated, Russian power in 1914. Defeat might conceivably have broken Japanese militarism for a time, but the weakness of China and of the European colonial empires would likely have proven too tempting for Tokyo in any case.

Still, the Russo-Japanese War may indeed have been a “regional” conflict, but Northeast Asia is a remarkably important region, home to three of the largest economies of the 21st century. The war set the terms upon which Russia, China, Korea, and Japan would contest control of the region over the course of the 20th century. The conflict also had important legacies for the conduct of war. The power of conscript and rapid fire weapons would prefigure the experience of 20th century land combat, while fighting between “castles of steel,” would lend key lessons for naval planners in both World Wars.

The Politics of Northeast Asia: 

The waning power of the Qing dynasty in the 19th century set the state for Russo-Japanese conflict in Northeast Asia. Although Japanese success at sea was not replicated to the same extent on land, the Japanese victory did place stark limits on the extent of Russian power in the Pacific. Even after the Soviets won a decisive victory over Japan at Khalkin Gol, and crushed the Kwantung Army in the waning days of World War II, circumstances prevented permanent territorial aggrandizement. Had the Russians maintained their position in Asia in 1905, this might have turned out much differently.

With the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, and the ensuing collapse of the Chinese state, China was unable to resist foreign encroachments upon its territory.  Fortunately for China, Russia remained in such disorder that it could not take advantage to its own territorial aggrandizement, and in any case Japanese power held Russia in check.

Japan, however, took advantage of Chinese disorder. In 1931 the Japanese Kwantung Army occupied Manchuria and declared it independent of China, installing the last emperor of the Qing dynasty in what became Manchukuo.  Neither Communist nor Nationalist Chinese forces had the strength the contest this move, but the Soviet invasion of August 1945 quickly annihilated the Kwantung Army. Rather than maintain Manchukuo as a Soviet satellite, the Russians looted in, then used it to bolster the position of the People’s Liberation Army. In 1949, the Chinese Communist Party took control of most of China, including Manchuria but not including either Taiwan or Mongolia.

Had Russia prevailed in 1905, then either Russia or the Soviet Union, instead of Japan, might well have detached Manchuria, just as the Soviets detached Mongolia. Under such circumstances, it’s unlikely that any Chinese government would have been able to recover the territory; the Soviet Union was in no mood for reparations in 1945. Whether incorporated directly into Russia or simply into the Soviet sphere, Manchuria might now remain politically separated from the rest of China.  Conversely, a Korea more capable of playing Russian influence off Japanese might have been able to retain its independence.

Of course, much remains unknowable. A defeated Japan might have taken advantage of the opportunity provided by the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1918 to seize what it could not take in 1904.  Even this, however, might have produced a different configuration of power in Northeast Asia than eventually held.

Decisive Naval Battle: 

Fought in late May, 1905, the Battle of Tsushima remains the great battle of annihilation of the steam age, and possibly the single greatest naval victory of all time. Admiral Heihachiro Togo’s decision to offer battle at Tsushima remains an unremarked-upon curiosity. The Russian fleet was, in numbers, considerably superior to the Japanese, and in the technology of its most advanced ships qualitatively equal.  The first rate Russian battleships were of modern design, and the Russian 12” gun well regarded, even at long ranges.

To be sure, Togo had major advantages. His ships were well drilled, and his sailors in top condition.  The Russian squadron had endured a series of traumatic adventures in its interminable journey around Eurasia, and wasn’t in fighting shape. Nevertheless, offering battle represented a real risk. A single well-placed shot could have destroyed one of Togo’s battleships, probably tipping the result inexorably in the Russian favor.

Moreover, it’s unclear what precisely the Russian fleet could have done to change the verdict of the war. The geographic situation strongly favored Japan, as the Russian fleet could only disrupt communications if it deployed in force; otherwise, Togo could destroy it piecemeal. The Russians could have raided Japan or harassed the Japanese fishing fleet, but without a proximate base could neither have forced battle nor prevented Japan from supplying and augmenting its fielded forces on the mainland.

Nevertheless, Togo forced battle on the exhausted Russian fleet, and used two major advantages to great effect. The speed and coherence of the Japanese line allowed it to conduct what has become known as the “Togo Turn,” a maneuver which crossed the Russian “T” and effectively allowed the Japanese to double up on the lead Russian warships. The most powerful Russian battleships were destroyed in echelon, while the Japanese tracked down most of the escapees the next day.

In addition to its military impact, the victory had a great morale effect, serving as an international signal of Japan’s prowess, and Russia’s decay. The defeated Russian admiral was treated as a hero by opponents of the Czar, who argued that the corrupt, incompetent Russian government had needlessly sent thousands of brave young men to their deaths.

Whatever its effect on the war, Tsushima was enormously influential abroad. In the short term, this accelerated the trend towards fast, all-big-gun battleships. In the longer term, it helped ensconce the idea of a single, decisive battle in the minds of naval theorists and practitioners.  A concentrated Japanese fleet had prevailed over a concentrated Russian fleet through superior tactics and training, completely destroying the latter in the process.  The victory left Russia effectively without maritime recourse, no longer in a position to threaten Japanese communications with the mainland.

This is the victory that Jellicoe and Scheer sought at Jutland, and the victory that the admirals of the IJN wanted to inflict on the battleships of the U.S. Navy in the Second World War. Conversely, it was the defeat that the Italians desperately wanted to avoid in the central Mediterranean, and that the British feared off the Falklands. Tsushima, combined with a bastardized form of Mahanianism, influenced naval thought for generations, and remains important today.

Ground Combat: 

Most historical analysis of the Russo-Japanese War has focused on naval heroics, with the Battle of Tsushima taking a central place. In many ways, however, the legacy of the land war has proven more enduring. The transformative effect of military technology on the land warfare slowly became apparent across the nineteenth century. The Crimean War, the American Civil War, and the Franco-Prussian War were all “transitional” wars, progressive steps from the (graduated) plateau of eighteenth century infantry combat to the plateau of “modern system” combat.

Land combat between Russian and Japanese forces in 1904 and 1905 was recognizably modern. Although the airplane would not have an impact until the next decade, most of the pieces associated with the 20th century “Revolution in Military Affairs” were set in place. Most notably, this included the combination of mass, conscript armies with the advent of modern, rapid-fire weapons that could effectively clear the field, leading to the phenomenon of the “empty battlefield.” Armies have struggled to solve the problem of the empty battlefield since 1905, developing a cascade of innovations, from trenches, to tanks, to sophisticated artillery barrages, to storm troopers, to (in their own way) strategic bombers.

The Battle of Yalu River, the Siege of Port Arthur, and the Battle of Sendepu differ from 20th century land combat only in emphasis. Both Japanese and Russian forces suffered enormous casualties in efforts to take prepared defenses. The Battle of Mukden, fought in March 1905, produced a total of nearly 150,000 casualties.

To be sure, much has changed; the advent of the aircraft and the widespread use of the radio would change the means of land combat within fifteen years of the Russo-Japanese War. Still, the forms of battle are essentially recognizable, in a way that the battles of the American Civil War are not.

Conclusion

World War I and World War II so transformed the maps of both Europe and Asia that discerning the influence of antecedent conflicts like the Russo-Japanese War can be hard. Still, the setback that the Japanese dealt to the Russians in 1904-05 helped shape the contours of Asian politics for a century. Surprisingly, given the relative backwardness of the Russian and Japanese economies in 1905, it also served as the world’s first taste of modern, industrial warfare.

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

This first appeared in 2014 and is being reposted due to reader interest. 

Image: Wikipedia.

Wealthy democratic governments have pushed liberal market principles aside in the face of vaccine shortages.

Robert Farley

Security, Asia

If the United States was deeply surprised to find itself at war with the People’s Republic of China, a country that hadn’t even existed the year before, it was even more surprised to find itself losing that war. It happened then and it could happen again.

Here’s What You Need to Remember: In November 1950, China and the United States went to war. Thirty-six thousand Americans died, along with upwards of a quarter-million Chinese, and half a million or more Koreans. If the United States was deeply surprised to find itself at war with the People’s Republic of China, a country that hadn’t even existed the year before, it was even more surprised to find itself losing that war. The opening Chinese offensive, launched from deep within North Korea, took U.S. forces by complete operational surprise. The U.S.-led United Nations offensive into North Korea was thrown back, with the U.S. Army handed its worst defeat since the American Civil War.

The legacies of this war remain deep, complex and underexamined. Memory of the Korean War in the United States is obscured by the looming shadows of World War II and Vietnam. China remembers the conflict differently, but China’s position in the world has changed in deep and fundamental ways since the 1950s. Still, as we consider the potential for future conflict between China and the United States, we should try to wring what lessons we can from the first Sino-American war.

Initiation: 

In early 1950, the politics of the Cold War had not yet solidified around a pair of mutually hostile blocks. Nevertheless, the contours were visible; the Soviets had spent several years consolidating control of Eastern Europe, and the Chinese Communist Party had ridden the victories of the People’s Liberation Army to power in Beijing. The stage was set for a zero-sum interpretation of the global struggle between Communist and non-Communist powers. It was just such an interpretation that dominated Washington’s thinking as North Korean forces escalated the Korean civil war with a massive invasion across the 38th parallel.

Inside the United States, tension over the collapse of Nationalist China remained high. The Nationalist government possessed an extremely effective public-relations machine in the United States, built around the Soong family’s relationship with Henry Luce. This influential domestic lobby helped push the United States towards both intervention and escalation, while at the same time undercutting the advice of experts who offered words of caution about Beijing’s capabilities and interests.

The initial Chinese victories in the late fall of 1950 resulted from a colossal intelligence failure on the part of the United States. These failures ran the gamut from political, to strategic, to operational, to tactical. The politicization of American expertise on China following the establishment of the PRC meant that U.S. policymakers struggled to understand Chinese messages. The United States also misunderstood the complex relationship between Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang, treating the group as a unitary actor without appreciating the serious political differences between the countries.

On an operational level, advancing U.S. forces paid little heed to warnings of Chinese intervention. The United States failed to understand the importance of the North Korean buffer to Beijing, failed to detect Chinese preparations for intervention, failed to detect Chinese soldiers operating in North Korea and failed to understand the overall strength of the Chinese forces. This lack of caution stemmed from several sources. The U.S. military, having had experience with Chinese Nationalist forces during World War II, had little respect for the capabilities of the PLA, especially outside of Chinese borders. Americans overrated the importance of air superiority at the tactical and operational level, not to mention the relevance of nuclear weapons at the strategic level.

Conduct: 

The People’s Liberation Army appreciated the significance of U.S. air superiority over the battlefield, as well as the effectiveness of U.S. armor and artillery. The PLA (or PVA, as the expeditionary force in North Korea was dubbed) attempted to fight with the hybrid insurgent tactics that it had used to prevail in the Chinese Civil War. This involved using light infantry formations, designed to move and attack at night, in order to avoid U.S. airpower and concentrated American firepower. These tactics allowed the PLA to surprise U.S. forces, which were uncertain of the magnitude of Chinese intervention until it was too late to do anything but retreat.

Similarly, the United States fought with the tactics (and often the weapons) that it had used in World War II. Although North Korean armor and artillery had outmatched unprepared U.S. ground forces in the opening weeks of the war, by the time of the Chinese counteroffensive, the United States was fielding mobile, armored forces and employing combined arms tactics. These weapons and tactics allowed the United States to inflict severe losses on Chinese forces, even as it gave up wide swaths of territory.

The U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy expected to conduct sea and air operations in what we now refer to as a permissive environment, without significant interference from Communist forces. The Navy was right; the Air Force was wrong. Expecting overwhelming advantages in training and material, the U.S. air forces found cagey Communist forces equipped with the MiG-15 interceptors, which could outfight American piston-engined aircraft and most early jets. Formations of B-29s attempted to conduct daylight precision bombing raids of North Korea, finding that MiG-15s could cut them to pieces. U.S. forces, fresh from the bloody organizational fights that had birthed the U.S. Air Force, also struggled to develop a compatible, cooperative ground-air doctrine. Still, despite the problems, the United States managed to establish and hold air superiority for most of the war, using that freedom to inflict severe damage on Chinese and North Korean forces, infrastructure and logistics.

Lessons and Legacies: 

The most important legacy of the first Sino-American War is the enduring division of the Korean Peninsula. Following the exhaustion of the Chinese counteroffensive, neither side really threatened to throw the other off the peninsula. The relationships between Seoul, Washington, Beijing and Pyongyang have changed mightily over the years, but the conflict remains frozen along the geography established in 1953.

Many of the problems have stayed the same, despite the fundamental transformations that have overtaken global politics. Beijing has grown tired of the antics of its North Korean client, just as South Korea has grown significantly in wealth and power. But North Korea can still threaten the security and prosperity of the Republic of Korea, and threats to the DPRK are still felt in Beijing.

China and the United States remember this conflict much differently. For the United States, the Korean War represents an odd aberration; a war fought for justice but without satisfactory resolution. Americans’ most enduring memory of the conflict came through the television show M.A.S.H., which used the war as a proxy for talking about U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Even this memory has begun to fade, however.

For China, the war represents a remarkable victory over imperialism in the face of overwhelming odds. It introduced the People’s Republic of China to the international system with a (literal) bang. At the same time, the legacy of the war complicated China’s international situation. In part because of the memory of Chinese intervention, but also in combination with China’s domestic politics, the United States managed to keep the PRC isolated from the international system into the 1970s. Today, the PRC poses a quasi-imperial threat to neighbors all along its vast periphery, while at the same time representing one of the three major tent-poles of the growing global economy.

Militarily, the political, social and technological conditions that produced mass infantry warfare in Korea in the 1950s no longer hold. The United States has grown accustomed to fighting opponents who excel in hybrid warfare, but the People’s Liberation Army has been out of that business for decades. The ground forces of the PLA are now transitioning between mechanized and postmechanized warfare, while the air and sea forces are in the process of perfecting the world’s most extensive anti-access/area denial system. If conflict were to happen again, China would challenge U.S. control of the air and seas in a way that it never did during the Korean conflict.

The most interesting, useful lessons may involve botched war termination. The Korean War dragged on for nearly two years after the settlement of the key strategic issues became clear. Nevertheless, poor communication between Washington and Beijing, combined with reputational concerns on both sides, inflated minor issues—such as POW repatriation—and extended the war well beyond its productive limits. That the United States viewed its conflict with China as a proxy war complicated the problem, as American policymakers became obsessed with the message that every action sent to the Soviet Union. In any future conflict, even as political questions associated with escalation and reputation loom large, Beijing can likely count on having Washington’s full, focused attention.      

Conclusion

There was nothing good about the last Sino-American War, not even the “peace” that resulted from it. The experience of this war, now nearly forgotten on both sides, should serve as a grim lesson for policymakers in both Washington and Beijing. The Korean War was anything but accidental, but miscalculation and miscommunication both extended and broadened the war beyond its necessary boundaries.

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

Image: Reuters

This article was first published in 2014.

Robert Farley

Russia Cold War, Europe

In retrospect, Soviet defeat seems overdetermined.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The United States certainly enjoyed tremendous advantages in 1945, including the world’s most robust economy, an advanced technological base, a well-developed set of internal economic infrastructure, and a relatively appealing sociopolitical model. But few who actively fought the Cold War believed in American invincibility.

Could the Soviets have won the Cold War? In retrospect, Soviet defeat seems overdetermined. The USSR suffered from a backwards economy, an unappealing political system, and unfortunate geography. But even into the 1980s, many Cold Warriors in the West worried that Red Victory was imminent.

We can think of Red Victory in two ways; first, if the fundamental rules of the competition between the United States and the USSR had operated differently, and second if Moscow and Washington had made different strategic decisions along the way.

Changing the Rules

The idea of socio-political “rules” that dictate how the world works runs counter to a lot of work in the social sciences. Still, certain social and political experiments initiated at the start of the Cold War ran aground on the shoals of social and human capacity. If we imagine the loosening of some of these “rules” then the Soviet and American experiments might have performed differently.

It was not obvious that central planning would fail as dismally as it did. Some economists, often working from the experience of World War II, believed that central governments could process information with sufficient speed and accuracy to successfully allocate resources across a society. This included the allocation of capital (human and resource) to technological innovation. In a wartime context, this worked well enough; the state could direct investment away from consumer goods and towards critical military production and innovation. In peacetime, the system worked less well, as workers and consumers demanded better treatment.

As it turned out, of course, state central planning fell short of the various forms of capital allocation found in the West, especially where innovation was concerned. This eventually had an impact on military innovation, as civilian technological contributed to military advances. Eventually, the United States could rely on its productive civilian economy not only to out-produce the Soviets in consumer goods, but also to produce more effective weapon systems.

On the other hand, if the American system had proven less resilient to economic and social pressures, then the United States might have had to give up on the Cold War. During the 1960s, this looked distinctly possible. Although the economy continued to perform well, social conflict over civil rights, and over Vietnam War, threatened to cause serious damage to U.S. democracy. Informed by a version of Marxist orthodoxy, Soviet planners expected that class conflict and economic stagnation would produce precisely this outcome, but in reality it happened for reasons that they could not have predicted. The crisis of the West emerged not from economic dislocation, but from its opposite; the 1950s and 1960s were an economic “golden age” according to Thomas Piketty, who observed that inequality in wealth and income began to accelerate in the 1970s. The social upheaval that threatened to destroy the West in the 1960s stemmed from the decay of systems of social and political inequality, rather than from a stagnating economy.

Related to this, we now think of the U.S. commitment to a certain level of civil liberties as one of its greatest Cold War strengths. The far greater tolerance in the United States (which ran far short of absolute) for political dissent created an altogether stronger and more attractive social system, while also synergizing with the economic system to enable consistent economic growth and technological innovation. At the time, however, many (both in the West and in the USSR) believed that tolerance for civil and political liberties exposed social and political weakness; the repressive Soviet system could better weather internal dissent than the relatively open American system.

Finally, the United States drew a tremendous amount of strength from the international economic system that it created at the end of World War II. This system eventually extended across the developing world, and supplied the West with the labor forces and raw materials necessary to vastly outperforming their Communist counterparts. If revolutionary models had proven more appealing in the postcolonial world, the balance of economic power might have shifted. In reality, while the Soviet political and economic model had some appeal across the developing world, would-be revolutionaries still found themselves embedded within a larger system that pushed them into collaboration with the West.

Strategic Decisions

What about changes that don’t involve breaking the world open and tinkering with the mechanisms? In this case the immense vulnerability of the USSR weighs against success, but there are still some strategies that might have played out more effectively.

If the Soviets had undertaken much more aggressive measures in the first two decades of the Cold War, they might have shattered the NATO alliance and prevented the development of the transatlantic coalition that won the Cold War. A general Red Army offensive into Western Europe in the 1950s or 1960s almost certainly would have enjoyed tremendous short-term success. The problem was twofold; the Americans had a nuclear advantage that could devastate the Soviet homeland, and the Soviets could barely afford to maintain the empire they had, to say nothing of expanding it into Western Europe. But the Soviets appreciated that the first might have been a bluff, and if they had calculated the long-term odds differently, might have gambled on the second. Bringing millions of sullen Germans, Frenchmen, and Italians under the Soviet boot might not have increased Soviet power in the long-run, but it would have dealt a blow to the architecture of the American-led post-war global system.

Another alternative would have involved deliberately retreating from central planning in the 1950s and 1960s, rather than in the late 1980s. China undertook this policy with great success at the end of the 1970s, producing enormous economic growth. Such an effort might not have generated a tremendous amount of foreign direct investment (as it did in China) but would at least have unshackled a moribund economic system. And the Chinese Communist Party has managed, thus far, to hold the lid on political dissent. Undertaking these steps before falling too far behind might have saved the USSR, at least for a time.

What about American decisions? The United States could have decided not to wage the Cold War at all. The Soviets seemed willing to accept the Finlandization of much of Western Europe, and in the absence of a U.S. presence Moscow might have renewed its old ties with Paris. As a result of reduced tension between the United States and the USSR, the Soviets would presumably have dedicated fewer resources to their war machine, reducing pressure on the rest of the economy. Of course, moving off a war footing might have produced social instability and pressure for internal change of repressive Soviet policies.

With its enormous economic resources, the United States had the advantage of making tragic mistakes, as the experience of Vietnam illustrates. It could have been worse; the United States could have decided to bog itself down in an effort to save the Chinese Nationalist regime in the 1940s and 1950s. Such a decision would not only have proven tremendously costly in blood and treasure; it would also have raised dangerous questions about U.S. imperial aims, and about the wisdom of U.S. strategic policymaking. The Soviets could have bled the Americans much more effectively than they did in either Korea or Vietnam, although it’s unclear whether it would have been enough to force the United States to scale down its international commitments.

Final Shots

The United States certainly enjoyed tremendous advantages in 1945, including the world’s most robust economy, an advanced technological base, a well-developed set of internal economic infrastructure, and a relatively appealing sociopolitical model.

But few who actively fought the Cold War believed in American invincibility. Rather, they believed that U.S. victory (or even survival) depended on carefully calibrated investment in particular military technologies, as well as extensive interventions in the domestic politics of foreign countries (with the Korean and Vietnamese Wars representing the most extravagant such interventions). Even in the 1980s, when the signs of Soviet decay became increasingly evident, few believed that the USSR would either collapse or withdraw from the conflict.

In any event, Soviet weakness ran deeper than almost anyone expected. Even to the extent that “new Cold Wars” are developing between the United States and Russia, or the United States and China, few want to replicate Soviet mistakes. But it would also be an error to discount the perceptions of those who waged both sides of the Cold War.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is author of The Battleship Book. He serves as a Senior Lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and The Diplomat. This article first appeared several years ago.

Image: Reuters.

Robert Farley

Chinese Military, Asia

These weapons were reversed engineered or else copy technology that was stolen from America or Russia.

Key point: Beijing knows that having a modern military makes a big difference. This is how China went about getting high-end platforms through nearly any means necessary.

As the People’s Republic of China (PRC) emerged from war and revolution in 1949, it became apparent that the Chinese economy lacked the capacity to compete with the U.S. or the U.S.S.R. in the production of advanced military technology.  Transfers from the Soviet Union helped remedy the gap in the 1950s, as did transfers from the United States and Europe in the 1970s and 1980s. Still, the Cultural Revolution stifled technology and scientific research, leaving the Chinese even farther behind.

Thus, China has long supplemented legitimate transfers and domestic innovation with industrial espionage.  In short, the PRC has a well-established habit of pilfering weapons technology from Russia and the United States.  As the years have gone by, Beijing’s spies have become ever more skillful and flexible in their approach. Here are five systems that the Chinese have stolen or copied, in whole or in part:

J-7:

In 1961, as tensions between the USSR and the PRC reached a fever pitch, the Soviets transferred blueprints and materials associated with its new MiG-21 interceptor to China. The offering represented an effort to bridge part of the gap, and suggest to China that cooperation between the Communist giants remained possible.

The offering didn’t work. Sino-Soviet tensions continued to increase, nearly to the point of war in the late 1960s. The Chinese worked from the blueprints and other materials, and eventually produced the J-7, a virtual copy of the MiG-21.  The Chinese eventually sold the J-7 (F-7 export variant) in direct competition with the MiGs sold by the Soviets.  Indeed, after the US-PRC rapprochement of the early 1970s, the Chinese sold J-7s directly to the Americans, who used them as part of an aggressor squadron to train US pilots to fight the Soviets.

J-11:

The collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s heralded a thaw in Russia-China relations.  Russia no longer had strong reasons to withhold its most advanced military technology from the Chinese.  More importantly, the huge Soviet military industrial complex needed customers badly, and the Russian military could no longer afford new equipment. For its part, the PRC needed new sources of high technology military equipment after Europe and the United States imposed arms embargoes in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Accordingly, the 1990s saw several huge arms deals between Moscow and Beijing.  One of the most important involved the sale, licensing, and technology transfer of the Su-27 “Flanker” multirole fighter. The deal gave the Chinese one of the world’s most dangerous air superiority fighters, and gave the Russian aviation industry a lifeline.

But the era of good feelings couldn’t hold.  Details remain murky and disputed, but the Russians claim that the Chinese began violating licensing terms almost immediately, by installing their own avionics on Flankers (J-11, under Chinese designation).  The Chinese also began developing a carrier variant, in direct violation of agreed-to terms.  The appropriation of Russian technology undercut the relationship between Russia and China, making the Russians far more wary of transferring their crown jewels to the Chinese military.

J-31:

Even before the Snowden leaks established extensive Chinese industrial espionage, Americans analysts suspected that China was stealing information associated with the F-35.  The likely reality of this theft became clear when information about the J-31 stealth fighter became available.  The J-31 looks very much like a twin-engine F-35, without the VSTOL capabilities of the F-35B.

The J-31 also presumably lacks much of the advanced avionics that have the potential to make the F-35 a devastating fighter.  Nevertheless, the J-31 may eventually operate from carriers, and could potentially compete with the Joint Strike Fighter on the export market.

UAVs:

In 2010, China lagged woefully behind the United States in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology.  Since that time, the Chinese have caught up, and are now producing drones capable of competing with US models on the international arms market.  How did the Chinese catch up so fast?

According to US intelligence, Chinese hackers appropriated technology from several sources, including the US government and private companies (General Atomics) associated with the production of UAVs. The newest Chinese UAVs closely resemble US aircraft visually and in performance, a remarkable turn-around time for China’s aviation industry.

Night Vision Technology:

After the Vietnam War, the United States military decided that it would invest heavily in an effort to “own the night.”  This led to major advances in night vision technology, including equipment that allowed individual soldiers, armored vehicles, and aircraft to see and fight in the dark. This equipment has given the US a huge advantage in several conflicts since the 1980s.

China is seeking to end this advantage, and has geared some of its espionage efforts towards acquiring and replicating US tech in this area.  This has included some cyber-theft, but also several old-style ops in which Chinese businessmen illegally acquired export-controlled tech from US companies.

The Last Salvo:

The United States has become increasingly aggressive about slowing down or halting China’s industrial espionage efforts. This has included indictments of PLA officers, broad condemnations of Chinese spying, and targeted reprisals against some Chinese firms. But given the extensive commercial contacts between China and the United States, stopping the flow of technology is virtually impossible. Moreover, China has developed a large, innovative technology economy in its own right. Indeed, as Chinese technology catches up with American (and in some cases exceeds Russian) we may see the Chinese run into the same problems with foreign espionage.

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

Image: Reuters.

Robert Farley

World War II History, Europe

Berlin would have loved to have developed the ultimate weapon, but it failed and America beat both the Axis and its fellow Allies to getting the bomb.

Key point: The Nazis won quickly at first with plenty of shock and awe. Yet as the war went on, it turned out that they did not have the time and resources to devote to costly wonder weapons.

In the early years of World War II, it looked as if Germany might have the luxury to spend its time developing a new generation of super-weapons. The Nazis haphazardly pursued the idea of building an atomic bomb, with an eye toward eventual conflict with the United States. However, the immediate demands of war, combined with Western Allied sabotage, undercut the program, leaving it at the basic research stage by war’s end.

But what if the Germans had devoted more attention to the program, or had lucked into more substantial breakthroughs?  What could the Nazis have done with an atomic weapon?

Context for Construction:

The American atomic weapons program cost an enormous amount of money, and took human capital away from other important projects. But the United States, unique among the great powers of World War II, believed that the war would last long enough to justify complex projects. 

Germany did not have this luxury, especially after it became apparent that the Soviet Union would not collapse in 1941. For Germany to seriously consider taking the atomic plunge, it needed favorable war conditions that would allow the development of long-term research projects. In the event, jets, submarines, and rockets took up a greater portion of the Reich’s scarce engineering resources.

The German program faced other obstacles. Western Allied attacks on the German industrial economy took their toll, even if they could not push Germany out of the war. Sabotage, like the attacks on heavy water processing plants in Norway, also curtailed German progress. The nature of the Nazi regime also made scientific progress difficult. Many of the best nuclear scientists disliked the Nazis, and took steps to escape Europe. The Germans could not draw on Europe’s scientific expertise to the same extent as the Americans. Nevertheless, the Nazi regime did make substantial progress on a number of engineering frontiers, and could have developed a weapon in time.

Solving the basic theoretical and engineering problems wouldn’t have suddenly turned Germany into a major nuclear power, however. The German program concentrated on enriched uranium, a simpler project that eliminated some of the more tricky problems faced by the United States.  However, the need for stocks of uranium (some of which had been seized from Belgium), and the extensive industrial complex needed to enrich, would have made it difficult for the Germans to produce a large number of devices.

Delivery:

Even if the Germans had managed to develop an atomic weapon, delivery would have been a problem. For tactical use against ground targets, the Wehrmacht could have engineered a way to deliver the devices, but anything at longer range would have been a struggle.

The Luftwaffe lacked an advanced heavy bomber capable of hitting targets in England or Russia, much less the United States. Designed to fight in support of the Wehrmacht, the German air force had toyed with the idea of heavy bombers in the 1930s, but concentrated on lighter, smaller planes as war approached. Surely, the German could have developed a strategic bomber given enough time; Junkers, Heinkel, and Focke Wulf all worked on large bomber projects during the war. But such aircraft were enormously complex and expensive, with long lead times. The B-29 program reputedly cost more than the atomic bomb itself, and even B-29s required modification in order to carry atomic weapons. The best candidate available to the Luftwaffe would have been the He 177, capable of carrying a device considerably smaller than the “Little Boy” bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Could submarines have delivered the devices? Conceivably. A nuclear torpedo was probably beyond the means of the Kriegsmarine, but a submarine sufficiently close to its target could probably deliver the warhead in a small boat. But getting into position was no mean task; by 1943, Allied anti-submarine warfare was devastating Germany’s submarine fleet. Only the Type XXI submarines could have approached useful targets with any degree of certainty, and these boats did not appear until late in the war.

The V-2 ballistic missiles represented the most obvious potential delivery vehicles. They could deliver payloads at range, with little chance of interception, and with enough accuracy for an atomic warhead. However, V-2s had a startling launch failure rate, making them a sketchy option for an atomic payload. They also lacked the ability to carry heavy payloads; reducing a warhead to sufficiently small size, and reinforcing it such that it could handle the rigors of launch, flight, and separation, were tasks likely beyond Nazi Germany in any useful timeframe.

Use of the Weapon:

How would the Germans have used the atomic bomb, if they had managed to construct it? It depends, naturally, on Germany’s tactical situation when it developed the weapon, and on the delivery systems it had available.

Obvious strategic targets include London and Moscow, and the Luftwaffe could probably have delivered them successfully with a fair degree of confidence. An attack on either would have proved devastating. In the case of Moscow, a surprise strike that decapitated the Soviet leadership might have caused very serious problems, although the Red Army would undoubtedly have continued to fight. In the West, the V-2 campaign had a serious impact on British morale, and an atomic device would have had an even more devastating impact. It’s worth keeping in mind, however, that the Combined Bomber Offensive was delivering atomic levels of destruction to the Reich from 1943 on, and that this effort failed to force a German surrender. In any case, the center of gravity of the Western Allied war effort had passed to the other side of the Atlantic, and the United States was likely out of reach.

If hard-pressed by the Red Army, Germany could have used its weapons for tactical effect. An atomic weapon could have had a devastating impact on armored columns, staging areas, or command centers, although with a small number of warheads the Germans would have had to take great care in target selection. The Red Army moved on such a massive scale that even an atomic attack might not have upset its grandest offensives.

On the naval side, the Bikini atom bomb tests demonstrated that modern naval units could survive atomic attacks, if imperfectly. As with the war in the East, atomic bombs could have dented the Western Allied naval advantage, but likely not to the extent of severing the trans-Atlantic lifeline. Major amphibious operations, such as the Normandy Invasion, would have proven far juicier targets, although they would have required very judicious decisions on the part of the Germans.

The Final Salvo:

Nazi Germany could have developed nuclear weapons if it had won the war. It could not develop them as war-winning weapons, both because of the demands of the project and the limitations of early atomic devices. Only the United States could combine the economic resources and the long-time horizon necessary to develop the bomb, while at the same time developing a fleet of bombers capable of delivering it.

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

Image: Reuters.

Matthew Moss

Rifles,

Civilian shooters often innovate when the military doesn’t.

Here's What You Need to Remember: People come in different sizes, and Colt expected shooters to hold the guns at different positions on their arms. But with plans to tuck the tiny rifles inside airplanes, an individual couldn’t properly calibrate it for his or her own shape and size.

Military aircrews always have to train for the possibility of crashing behind enemy lines. In the event of this disaster scenario, the pilots and crews must rely on the kinds of weapons—mainly pistols and knives—they can carry on their persons or stuff into small survival kits.

In the late 1960s, the famous Colt firearms company hoped to give fliers a tiny assault rifle instead. But the final version was awkward, inaccurate and difficult to use.

In 1969, engineers at Colt offered the U.S. Air Force a unique lightweight gun, primarily for bomber crews. Since the unusual-looking rifle had no butt stock, shooters would have had to brace the so-called Individual Multi-Purpose Weapon against their bicep.

“Consideration was … given to what an aircrewman might have with him when he bailed out or what he might find on the ground which could serve as a stock,” stated an official Air Force report. “The only practical solution was the man’s arm.”

Two years before, the Air Force’s Strategic Air Command had outlined a number of basic requirements for this new weapon. At the time, the flying branch still used World War II-era survival rifles.

These crude rifles shot .22-caliber bullets and small shotgun shells. While functional, the guns were only good for killing snakes or hunting small game.

“Capable of killing a man at 100 yards,” was SAC’s first demand for the new firearm, the technical study noted. The old war-era rifle wouldn’t do.

More than lethal, the Air Force wanted its next survival weapon to be extremely compact. The gun couldn’t be any longer than 13 inches, or more than one inch wide.

For a highly practical reason—the weapon needed to fit inside the cramped confines of a cockpit. Crews needed to be able to grab the guns quickly in an emergency, too.

Before coming up with its stock-less survival weapon, Colt toyed around with a tiny M-16 for pilots. The company trimmed down the standard battle rifle’s barrel, stock and even the pistol grip to create the Model 608.

But to meet the Air Force’s space constraints, bomber crews would have had to break the gun in half—making it unusable. As a result, the flying branch’s own weaponeers decided that getting rid of the stock was the only real solution.

“Folding, telescoping, detachable, and wire skeleton stocks were considered,” the report stated. “All of these except the wire skeleton exceeded either weight, volume, or dimensional restrictions.”

A stubby M-16 wouldn’t work, so technicians continued to experiment with various pistols and modified rifles. And the Air Force focused on a new bullet—the .221 Remington.

“The caliber .221 cartridge was chosen for the demonstrator because it produced a weapon midway between the weapons of ultimate interest, a caliber .17 survival rifle and a 5.56-millimeter rifle/submachine gun,” stated the technical overview.

Colt took this basic concept and ran with it. The new semi-automatic gun — known as the IMP-221, meaning Individual Multi-Purpose and .221 caliber — was extremely compact.

The weapon weighed less than four pounds and was only an inch wide. However, the mini-rifle was still more than two inches longer than the Air Force wanted. To shorten the gun down to this length, Colt’s designers put the IMP-221’s trigger right up near the front of the gun. The main firing mechanism sat in the frame’s rear.

The pistol grip swiveled left and right, so the gun and its 30-round magazine could rest neatly on an airman’s forearm. The sights rotated so the shooter could aim straight.

By 1971, Colt had tweaked the design even more. The gun now had special bracket that held—and could lock onto—the shooter’s arm.

“Demonstrations proved the basic concept was not only feasible but exceeded expectations,” the Air Force report declared. “Further efforts will be made to improve … and to modify the design for quantity production.”

Unfortunately, the Air Force evaluators had discovered the weapons were highly inaccurate. As the shooter swiveled around with the rifle locked in place, the motion threw off the gun’s freely-moving sights.

Another problem was adjust for individuals. People come in different sizes, and Colt expected shooters to hold the guns at different positions on their arms. But with plans to tuck the tiny rifles inside airplanes, an individual couldn’t properly calibrate it for his or her own shape and size.

“An effort should be made to improve the sights, either by a simple design breakthrough, or by adding enough hardware to provide adequate sighting for all shooters,” the technical report recommended.

Colt and the Air Force abandoned plans for a .17-caliber version. Instead, Colt modified the guns to shoot standard 5.56-millimeter ammunition.

The final variants—given the official moniker GUU-4/P—incorporated many more parts from existing M-16 rifles, and used the same magazines. Frustrated by continued difficulties, the Air Force eventually scrapped the whole plan.

Former Special Forces soldier Mack Gwinn, Jr. and his company Gwinn Firearms eventually acquired the unique design.

Gwinn went on to sell his own version, the Bushmaster Arm Pistol, to civilian shooters. He also put the gun’s basic parts into a more conventional package to create the Bushmaster Rifle. Today, Gwinn’s old company—now renamed Bushmaster Firearms—makes AR-15 and M-16 variants for private customers, police and soldiers.

But the arm pistols never proved popular with civilians. As one can see from videos across the Internet, they’re more of a novelty than anything else—and no one can agree on how to hold them at the range.

Civilian shooters often innovate when the military doesn’t. But no one has ever figured out the best way to shoot the Air Force’s tiny assault rifle.

This first appeared in WarIsBoring several years ago.

Image: Flickr.

James Holmes, Robert Farley

Weapons, Americas

Here's a long list of modern military marvels.

Here's What You Need to Know: These weapons are not to be trifled with.

(This is a series of 5 pieces combined for your reading pleasure that have ranked as some of our most popular ever.)

5 Best Battleships:

Ranking the greatest battleships of all time is a tad easier than ranking naval battles. Both involve comparing apples with oranges. But at least taking the measure of individual men-of-war involves comparing one apple with one orange. That's a compact endeavor relative to sorting through history to discern how seesaw interactions shaped the destinies of peoples and civilizations.

Still, we need some standard for distinguishing between battlewagons. What makes a ship great? It makes sense, first of all, to exclude any ship before the reign of Henry VIII. There was no line-of-battle ship in the modern sense before England's "great sea-king" founded the sail-driven Royal Navy in the 16th century. Galley warfare was quite a different affair from lining up capital ships and pounding away with naval gunnery.

One inescapable chore is to compare ships' technical characteristics. A recent piece over at War Is Boring revisits an old debate among battleship and World War II enthusiasts. Namely, who would've prevailed in a tilt between a U.S. Navy Iowa-class dreadnought and the Imperial Japanese Navy's Yamato? Author Michael Peck restates the common wisdom from when I served in mighty Wisconsin, last of the battleships: it depends on who landed the first blow. Iowas commanded edges in speed and fire control, while Yamato and her sister Musashi outranged us and boasted heavier weight of shot. We would've made out fine had we closed the range before the enemy scored a lucky hit from afar. If not, things may have turned ugly.

Though not in so many words, Peck walks through the basic design features that help qualify a battleship for history's elite -- namely guns, armor, and speed. Makes sense, doesn't it? Offensive punch, defensive resiliency, and speed remain the hallmarks of any surface combatant even in this missile age. Note, however, that asymmetries among combat vessels result in large part from the tradeoffs naval architects must make among desirable attributes.

Only sci-fi lets shipwrights escape such choices. A Death Star of the sea would sport irresistible weaponry, impenetrable armor, and engines able to drive the vessel at breakneck speed. But again, you can't have everything in the real world. Weight is a huge challenge. A battleship loaded down with the biggest guns and thickest armor would waddle from place to place. It would make itself an easy target for nimbler opponents or let them run away. On the other hand, assigning guns and speed top priority works against rugged sides. A ship that's fleet of foot but lightly armored exposes its innards and crew to enemy gunfire. And so forth. Different navies have different philosophies about tradeoffs. Hence the mismatches between Yamato and Iowa along certain parameters. Thus has it always been when fighting ships square off.

But a battleship is more than a machine. Machines neither rule the waves nor lose out in contests for mastery. People do. People ply the seas, and ideas about shiphandling and tactics guide their combat endeavors. Great Britain's Royal Navy triumphed repeatedly during the age of sail. Its success owed less to superior materiel -- adversaries such as France and the United States sometimes fielded better ships -- than to prolonged voyages that raised seamanship and gunnery to a high art. Indeed, a friend likes to joke that the 18th century's finest warship was a French 74-gun ship captured -- and crewed -- by Royal Navy mariners. The best hardware meets the best software.

That's why in the end, debating Jane's Fighting Ships entries -- lists of statistics -- for Iowa, Yamato, and their brethren from other times and places fails to satisfy. What looks like the best ship on paper may not win. A ship need not outmatch its opponents by every technical measure. It needs to be good enough. That is, it must match up well enough to give an entrepreneurial crew, mindful of the tactical surroundings, a reasonable chance to win. The greatest battleship thus numbers among the foremost vessels of its age by material measures, and is handled by masterful seamen.

But adding the human factor to the mix still isn't enough. There's an element of opportunity, of sheer chance. True greatness comes when ship and crew find themselves in the right place at the right time to make history. A battleship's name becomes legend if it helps win a grand victory, loses in dramatic fashion, or perhaps accomplishes some landmark diplomatic feat. A vessel favored (or damned) by fortune, furthermore, becomes a strategic compass rose. It becomes part of the intellectual fund on which future generations draw when making maritime strategy. It's an artifact of history that helps make history.

So we arrive at one guy's gauge for a vessel's worth: strong ship, iron men, historical consequence. In effect, then, I define greatest as most iconic. Herewith, my list of history's five most iconic battleships, in ascending order:

Bismarck:

The German Navy's Bismarck lived a short life that supplies the stuff of literature to this day. Widely considered the most capable battleship in the Atlantic during World War II, Bismarck sank the battlecruiser HMS Hood, pride of the Royal Navy, with a single round from her main battery. On the other hand, the leadership's martial spirit proved brittle when the going got tough. In fact, it shattered at the first sharp rap. As commanders' resolve went, so went the crew's.

Notes Bernard Brodie, the dreadnought underwent an "extreme oscillation" in mood. Exaltation stoked by the encounter with Hood gave way to despair following a minor torpedo strike from a British warplane. Admiral Günther Lütjens, the senior officer on board, gathered Bismarck crewmen after the air attack and "implored them to meet death in a fashion becoming to good Nazis." A great coach Lütjens was not. The result? An "abysmally poor showing" in the final showdown with HMS Rodney, King George V, and their entourage. One turret crew fled their guns. Turret officers reportedly kept another on station only at gunpoint. Marksmanship and the guns' rate of fire -- key determinants of victory in gunnery duels -- suffered badly.

In short, Bismarck turned out to be a bologna flask (hat tip: Clausewitz), an outwardly tough vessel that shatters at the slightest tap from within. In 1939 Grand Admiral Erich Raeder lamented that the German surface fleet, flung into battle long before it matured, could do little more than "die with honor." Raeder was righter than he knew. Bismarck's death furnishes a parable that captivates navalists decades hence. How would things have turned out had the battlewagon's human factor proved less fragile? We'll never know. Doubtless her measure of honor would be bigger.

Yamato:

As noted at the outset, Yamato was an imposing craft by any standard. She displaced more than any battleship in history, as much as an early supercarrier, and bore the heaviest armament. Her mammoth 18-inch guns could sling 3,200-lb. projectiles some 25 nautical miles. Armor was over two feet thick in places. Among the three attributes of warship design, then, Yamato's designers clearly prized offensive and defensive strength over speed. The dreadnought could steam at 27 knots, not bad for a vessel of her proportions. But that was markedly slower than the 33 knots attainable by U.S. fast battleships.

Like Bismarck, Yamato is remembered mainly for falling short of her promise. She provides another cautionary tale about human fallibility. At Leyte Gulf in October 1944, a task force centered on Yamato bore down on the transports that had ferried General Douglas MacArthur's landing force ashore on Leyte, and on the sparse force of light aircraft carriers, destroyers, and destroyer escorts guarding the transports from seaward assault.

Next ensued the immortal charge of the tin-can sailors. The outclassed American ships charged Yamato and her retinue. Like Lütjens, Admiral Takeo Kurita, the task-force commander, appeared to wilt under less-than-dire circumstances. Historians still argue about whether he mistook Taffy 3, the U.S. Navy contingent, for a far stronger force; lost his nerve; or simply saw little point in sacrificing his ships and men. Whatever the case, Kurita ordered his fleet to turn back -- leaving MacArthur's expeditionary force mostly unmolested from the sea.

Yamato met a quixotic fate, though less ignominious than Bismarck's. In April 1945 the superbattleship was ordered to steam toward Okinawain company with remnants of the surface fleet, there to contest the Allied landings. The vessel would deliberately beach itself offshore, becoming an unsinkable gun emplacement until it was destroyed or its ammunition was exhausted. U.S. naval intelligence got wind of the scheme, however, and aerial bombardment dispatched Yamato before she could reach her destination. A lackluster end for history's most fearsome battlewagon.

Missouri:

Iowa and New Jersey were the first of the Iowa class and compiled the most enviable fighting records in the class, mostly in the Pacific War. Missouri was no slouch as a warrior, but -- alone on this list -- she's celebrated mainly for diplomatic achievements rather than feats of arms. General MacArthur accepted Japan's surrender on her weatherdecks in Tokyo Bay, leaving behind some of the most enduring images from 20th-century warfare. Missouri has been a metaphor for how to terminate big, open-ended conflicts ever since. For instance, President Bush the Elder invoked the surrender in his memoir. Missouri supplied a measuring stick for how Desert Storm might unfold. (And as it happens, a modernized Missouri was in Desert Storm.)

Missouri remained a diplomatic emissary after World War II. The battlewagon cruised to Turkey in the early months after the war, as the Iron Curtain descended across Europe and communist insurgencies menaced Greece and Turkey. Observers interpreted the voyage as a token of President Harry Truman's, and America's, commitment to keeping the Soviet bloc from subverting friendly countries. Message: the United States was in Europe to stay. Missouri thus played a part in the development of containment strategy while easing anxieties about American abandonment. Naval diplomacy doesn't get much better than that.

Mikasa:

Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō's flagship is an emblem for maritime command. The British-built Mikasa was arguably the finest battleship afloat during the fin de siècle years, striking the best balance among speed, protection, and armament. The human factor was strong as well. Imperial Japanese Navy seamen were known for their proficiency and élan, while Tōgō was renowned for combining shrewdness with derring-do. Mikasa was central to fleet actions in the Yellow Sea in 1904 and the Tsushima Strait in 1905 -- battles that left the wreckage of two Russian fleets strewn across the seafloor. The likes of Theodore Roosevelt and Alfred Thayer Mahan considered Tsushima a near-perfect fleet encounter.

Like the other battleships listed here, Mikasa molded how subsequent generations thought about diplomacy and warfare. IJN commanders of the interwar years planned to replicate Tsushima Strait should Japan fall out with the United States. More broadly, Mikasa and the rest of the IJN electrified peoples throughout Asia and beyond. Japan, that is, proved that Western imperial powers could be beaten in battle and ultimately expelled from lands they had subjugated. Figures ranging from Sun Yat-sen to Mohandas Gandhi to W. E. B. Du Bois paid homage to Tsushima, crediting Japan with firing their enthusiasm for overthrowing colonial rule.

Mikasa, then, was more than the victor in a sea fight of modest scope. And her reputation outlived her strange fate. The vessel returned home in triumph following the Russo-Japanese War, only to suffer a magazine explosion and sink. For the Japanese people, the disaster confirmed that they had gotten a raw deal at the Portsmouth Peace Conference. Nevertheless, it did little to dim foreign observers' enthusiasm for Japan's accomplishments.Mikasa remained a talisman.

Victory:

Topping this list is the only battleship from the age of sail. HMS Victory was a formidable first-rate man-of-war, cannon bristling from its three gun decks. But her fame comes mainly from her association with Lord Horatio Nelson, whom Mahan styles "the embodiment of the sea power of Great Britain." In 1805 Nelson led his outnumbered fleet into combat against a combined Franco-Spanish fleet off Cape Trafalgar, near Gibraltar. Nelson and right-hand man Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood led columns of ships that punctured the enemy line of battle. The Royal Navy crushed its opponent in the ensuing melee, putting paid to Napoleon's dreams of invading the British Isles.

Felled on board his flagship that day, Nelson remains a synonym for decisive battle. Indeed, replicating Trafalgar became a Holy Grail for naval strategists across the globe. Permanently drydocked at Portsmouth, Victory is a shrine to Nelson and his exploits -- and the standard of excellence for seafarers everywhere. That entitles her to the laurels of history's greatest battleship.

Surveying this list of icons, two battleships made the cut because of defeats stemming from slipshod leadership, two for triumphs owing to good leadership, and one for becoming a diplomatic paragon. That's not a bad reminder that human virtues and frailties -- not wood, or metal, or shot -- are what make the difference in nautical enterprises.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College

*****

5 Best Aircraft Carriers:

Anyone who's tried to compare one piece of kit—ships, aircraft, weaponry of various types—to another will testify to how hard this chore is. Ranking aircraft carriers is no exception. Consulting the pages of Jane's Fighting Ships or Combat Fleets of the World sheds some light on the problem. For instance, a flattop whose innards house a nuclear propulsion plant boasts virtually unlimited cruising range, whereas a carrier powered by fossil fuels is tethered to its fuel source. As Alfred Thayer Mahan puts it, a conventional warship bereft of bases or a coterie of logistics ships is a "land bird" unable to fly far from home.

Or, size matters. The air wing—the complement of interceptors, attack planes and support aircraft that populate a carrier's decks—comprise its main battery or primary armament. The bigger the ship, the bigger the hangar and flight decks that accommodate the air wing.

Nor, as U.S. Navy carrier proponents like to point out, is the relationship between a carrier's tonnage and number of aircraft it can carry strictly linear. Consider two carriers that dominate headlines in Asia. Liaoning, the Chinese navy's refitted Soviet flattop, displaces about sixty-five thousand tons and sports twenty-six fixed-wing combat aircraft and twenty-four helicopters. Not bad. USS George Washington, however, tips the scales at around one hundred thousand tons but can operate some eighty-five to ninety aircraft.

And the disparity involves more than raw numbers of airframes. George Washington's warplanes are not just more numerous but generally more capable than their Chinese counterparts. U.S. flattops boast steam catapults to vault larger, heavier-laden aircraft into the wild blue. Less robust carriers use ski jumps to launch aircraft. That limits the size, fuel capacity, and weapons load—and thus the range, flight times and firepower—of their air wings. Larger, more capable carriers, then, can accommodate a larger, more capable, and changing mixes of aircraft with greater ease than their lesser brethren. Aircraft carriers' main batteries were modular before modular was cool.

And yet straight-up comparisons can mislead. The real litmus test for any man-of-war is its capacity to fulfill the missions for which it was built. In that sense George Washington, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, may not be "superior" to USS America, the U.S. Navy's latest amphibious helicopter carrier, or to Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force "helicopter destroyers"—a.k.a. light aircraft carriers—despite a far more lethal air wing and other material attributes. Nor do carriers meant to operate within range of shore-based fire support—tactical aircraft, anti-ship missiles—necessarily need to measure up to a Washington on a one-to-one basis. Land-based implements of sea power can be the great equalizer. Like any weapon system, then, a great carrier does the job for which it was designed superbly.

And lastly, there's no separating the weapon from its user. A fighting ship isn't just a hunk of steel but a symbiosis of crewmen and materiel. The finest aircraft carrier is one that's both well-suited to its missions and handled with skill and derring-do when and where it matters most. Those three indices—brute material capability, fitness for assigned missions, a zealous crew—are the indices for this utterly objective, completely indisputable list of the Top Five Aircraft Carriers of All Time.

5. USS Midway (CV-41):

Now a museum ship on the San Diego waterfront, Midway qualifies for this list less for great feats of arms than for longevity, and for being arguably history's most versatile warship. In all likelihood she was the most modified. Laid down during World War II, the flattop entered service just after the war. During the Cold War she received an angled flight deck, steam catapults, and other trappings befitting a supercarrier. Indeed, Midway's service spanned the entire Cold War, winding down after combat action against Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1991. Sheer endurance and flexibility entitles the old warhorse to a spot on this list.

4. USS Franklin (CV-13):

If Midway deserves a place mainly for technical reasons, the Essex-class carrier Franklin earns laurels for the resiliency of her hull and fortitude of her crew in battle. She was damaged in heavy fighting at Leyte Gulf in 1944. After refitting at Puget Sound Navy Yard, the flattop returned to the Western Pacific combat theater. In March 1945, having ventured closer to the Japanese home islands than any carrier to date, she fell under surprise assault by a single enemy dive bomber. Two semi-armor-piercing bombs penetrated her decks. The ensuing conflagration killed 724 and wounded 265, detonated ammunition below decks, and left the ship listing 13 degrees to starboard. One hundred six officers and 604 enlisted men remained on board voluntarily, bringing Franklin safely back to Pearl Harbor and thence to Brooklyn Navy Yard. Her gallantry in surviving such a pounding and returning to harbor merits the fourth position on this list.

3. Akagi:

Admiral Chūichi Nagumo's flagship serves as proxy for the whole Pearl Harbor strike force, a body composed of all six Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) frontline carriers and their escorts. Nagumo's was the most formidable such force of its day. Commanders and crewmen, moreover, displayed the audacity to do what appeared unthinkable—strike at the U.S. Pacific Fleet at its moorings thousands of miles away. Extraordinary measures were necessary to pull off such a feat. For example, freshwater tanks were filled with fuel to extend the ships' range and make a transpacific journey possible—barely.

The Pearl Harbor expedition exposed logistical problems that plagued the IJN throughout World War II. Indeed, Japan's navy never fully mastered the art of underway replenishment or built enough logistics ships to sustain operations far from home. As a result, Nagumo's force had too little time on station off Oahu to wreck the infrastructure the Pacific Fleet needed to wage war. And, admittedly, Akagi was lost at the Battle of Midway, not many months after it scaled the heights of operational excellence. Still, you have to give Akagi and the rest of the IJN task force their due. However deplorable Tokyo's purposes in the Pacific, her aircraft-carrier force ranks among the greatest of all time for sheer boldness and vision.

2. HMS Hermes (now the Indian Navy's Viraat):

It's hard to steam thousands of miles into an enemy's environs, fight a war on his ground, and win. And yet the Centaur-class flattop Hermes, flagship of a hurriedly assembled Royal Navy task force, pulled it off during the Falklands War of 1982. Like Midway, the British carrier saw repeated modifications, most recently for service as an anti-submarine vessel in the North Atlantic. Slated for decommissioning, her air wing was reconfigured for strike and fleet-air-defense missions when war broke out in the South Atlantic. For flexibility, and for successfully defying the Argentine contested zone, Hermes rates second billing here.

1. USS Enterprise (CV-6):

Having joined the Pacific Fleet in 1939, the Yorktown-class carrier was fortunate to be at sea on December 7, 1941, and thus to evade Nagumo's bolt from the blue. Enterprise went on to become the most decorated U.S. Navy ship of World War II, taking part in eighteen of twenty major engagements of the Pacific War. She sank, or helped sink, three IJN carriers and a cruiser at the Battle of Midway in 1942; suffered grave damage in the Solomons campaign, yet managed to send her air wing to help win the climatic Naval Battle of Guadalcanal; and went on to fight in such engagements as the Philippine Sea, Leyte Gulf, and Okinawa. That's the stuff of legend. For compiling such a combat record, Enterprise deserves to be known as history's greatest aircraft carrier.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College

*****

5 Best Submarines: 

There have been three great submarine campaigns in history, and one prolonged duel. The First and Second Battles of the Atlantic pitted German U-boats against the escorts and aircraft of the United Kingdom and the United States. The Germans very nearly won World War I with the first campaign, and badly drained Allied resources in the second. In the third great campaign, the submarines of the US Navy destroyed virtually the entire commercial fleet of Japan, bringing the Japanese economy to its knees. US subs also devastated the Imperial Japanese Navy, sinking several of Tokyo’s most important capital ships.

But the period most evocative of our modern sense of submarine warfare was surely the forty year duel between the submarines of the USSR and the boats of the various NATO navies. Over the course of the Cold War, the strategic nature of the submarine changed; it moved from being a cheap, effective killer of capital ships to a capital ship in its own right. This was especially the case with the boomers, submarines that carried enough nuclear weapons to kill millions in a few minutes.

As with previous “5 Greatest” lists, the answers depend on the parameters; different sets of metrics will generate different lists. Our metrics concentrate on the strategic utility of specific submarine classes, rather than solely on their technical capabilities.

• Was the submarine a cost-effective solution to a national strategic problem?

• Did the submarine compare favorably with its contemporaries?

• Was the submarine’s design innovative?

And with that, the five best submarines of all time:

U-31:

The eleven boats of the U-31 class were constructed between 1912 and 1915. They operated in both of the periods of heavy action for German U-boats, early in the war before the suspension of unrestricted warfare, and again in 1917 when Germany decided to go for broke and cut the British Empire off at the knees. Four of these eleven boats (U-35, U-39, U-38, and U-34) were the four top killers of World War I; indeed, they were four of the five top submarines of all time in terms of tonnage sunk (the Type VII boat U-48 sneaks in at number 3). U-35, the top killer, sank 224 ships amounting to over half a million tons.

The U-31 boats were evolutionary, rather than revolutionary; they represented the latest in German submarine technology for the time, but did not differ dramatically from their immediate predecessors or successors. These boats had good range, a deck gun for destroying small shipping, and faster speeds surfaced than submerged. These characteristics allowed the U-31 class and their peers to wreak havoc while avoiding faster, more powerful surface units. They did offer a secure, stealthy platform for carrying out a campaign that nearly forced Great Britain from the war. Only the entry of the United States, combined with the development of innovative convoy tactics by the Royal Navy, would stifle the submarine offensive. Three of the eleven boats survived the war, and were eventually surrendered to the Allies.

Balao:

The potential for a submarine campaign against the Japanese Empire was clear from early in the war. Japanese industry depended for survival on access to the natural resources of Southeast Asia. Separating Japan from those resources could win the war. However, the pre-war USN submarine arm was relatively small, and operated with poor doctrine and bad torpedoes. Boats built during the war, including primarily the Gato and Balao class, would eventually destroy virtually the entire Japanese merchant marine.

The Balao class represented very nearly the zenith of the pre-streamline submarine type. War in the Pacific demanded longer ranges and more habitability than the relatively snug Atlantic. Like their predecessors the Gato, the Balaos were less maneuverable than the German Type VII subs, but they made up for this in strength of hull and quality of construction. Compared with the Type VII, the Balaos had longer range, a larger gun, more torpedo tubes, and a higher speed. Of course, the Balaos operated in a much different environment, and against an opponent less skilled in anti-submarine warfare. The greatest victory of a Balao was the sinking of the 58000 ton HIJMS Shinano by Archerfish.

Eleven of 120 boats were lost, two in post-war accidents. After the war Balao class subs were transferred to several friendly navies, and continued to serve for decades. One, the former USS Tusk, remains in partial commission in Taiwan as Hai Pao.

Type XXI:

In some ways akin to the Me 262, the Type XXI was a potentially war-winning weapon that arrived too late to have serious effect. The Type XXI was the first mass produced, ocean-going streamlined or “true” submarine, capable of better performance submerged than on the surface. It gave up its deck gun in return for speed and stealth, and set the terms of design for generations of submarines.

Allied anti-submarine efforts focused on identifying boats on the surface (usually in transit to their patrol areas) then vectoring killers (including ships and aircraft) to those areas. In 1944 the Allies began developing techniques for fighting “schnorkel” U-boats that did not need to surface, but remained unprepared for combat against a submarine that could move at 20 knots submerged.

In effect, the Type XXI had the stealth to avoid detection prior to an attack, and the speed to escape afterward. Germany completed 118 of these boats, but because of a variety of industrial problems could only put four into service, none of which sank an enemy ship. All of the Allies seized surviving examples of the Type XXI, using them both as models for their own designs and in order to develop more advanced anti-submarine technologies and techniques. For example, the Type XXI was the model for the Soviet “Whiskey” class, and eventually for a large flotilla of Chinese submarines.

George Washington:

We take for granted the most common form of today’s nuclear deterrent; a nuclear submarine, bristling with missiles, capable of destroying a dozen cities a continent away. These submarines provide the most secure leg of the deterrent triad, as no foe could reasonably expect to destroy the entire submarine fleet before the missiles fly.

The secure submarine deterrent began in 1960, with the USS George Washington. An enlarged version of the Skipjack class nuclear attack sub, George Washington’s design incorporated space for sixteen Polaris ballistic missiles. When the Polaris became operational, USS George Washington had the capability from striking targets up to 1000 miles distant with 600 KT warheads. The boats would eventually upgrade to the Polaris A3, with three warheads and a 2500 mile range. Slow relative to attack subs but extremely quiet, the George Washington class pioneered the “go away and hide” form of nuclear deterrence that is still practiced by five of the world’s nine nuclear powers.

And until 1967, the George Washington and her sisters were the only modern boomers. Their clunky Soviet counterparts carried only three missiles each, and usually had to surface in order to fire. This made them of limited deterrent value. But soon, virtually every nuclear power copied the George Washington class. The first “Yankee” class SSBN entered service in 1967, the first Resolution boat in 1968, and the first of the French Redoutables in 1971. China would eventually follow suit, although the PLAN’s first genuinely modern SSBNs have only entered service recently. The Indian Navy’s INS Arihant will likely enter service in the next year or so.

The five boats of the George Washington class conducted deterrent patrols until 1982, when the SALT II Treaty forced their retirement. Three of the five (including George Washington) continued in service as nuclear attack submarines for several more years.

Los Angeles:

Immortalized in the Tom Clancy novels Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising, the U.S. Los Angeles class is the longest production line of nuclear submarines in history, constituting sixty-two boats and first entering service in 1976. Forty-one subs remain in commission today, continuing to form the backbone of the USN’s submarine fleet.

The Los Angeles (or 688) class are outstanding examples of Cold War submarines, equally capable of conducting anti-surface or anti-submarine warfare. In wartime, they would have been used to penetrate Soviet base areas, where Russian boomers were protected by rings of subs, surface ships, and aircraft, and to protect American carrier battle groups.

In 1991, two Los Angeles class attack boats launched the first ever salvo of cruise missiles against land targets, ushering in an entirely new vision of how submarines could impact warfare. While cruise missile armed submarines had long been part of the Cold War duel between the United States and the Soviet Union, most attention focused either on nuclear delivery or anti-ship attacks. Submarine launched Tomahawks gave the United States a new means for kicking in the doors of anti-access/area denial systems. The concept has proven so successful that four Ohio class boomers were refitted as cruise missile submarines, with the USS Florida delivering the initial strikes of the Libya intervention.

The last Los Angeles class submarine is expected to leave service in at some point in the 2020s, although outside factors may delay that date. By that time, new designs will undoubtedly have exceeded the 688 in terms of striking land targets, and in capacity for conducting anti-submarine warfare. Nevertheless, the Los Angeles class will have carved out a space as the sub-surface mainstay of the world’s most powerful Navy for five decades.

Conclusion

Fortunately, the United States and the Soviet Union avoided direct conflict during the Cold War, meaning that many of the technologies and practices of advanced submarine warfare were never employed in anger. However, every country in the world that pretends to serious maritime power is building or acquiring advanced submarines. The next submarine war will look very different from the last, and it’s difficult to predict how it will play out. We can be certain, however, that the fight will be conducted in silence.

Honorable Mention: Ohio, 260O-21, Akula, Alfa, Seawolf, Swiftsure, I-201, Kilo, S class, Type VII

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is a Visiting Professor at the United States Army War College. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

*****

5 Best Bombers:

Bombers are the essence of strategic airpower. While fighters have often been important to air forces, it was the promise of the heavy bomber than won and kept independence for the United States Air Force and the Royal Air Force. At different points in time, air forces in the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and Italy have treated bomber design and construction as a virtually all-consuming obsession, setting fighter and attack aviation aside.

However, even the best bombers are effective over only limited timespans. The unlucky state-of-the-art bombers of the early 1930s met disaster when put into service against the pursuit aircraft of the late 1930s. The B-29s that ruled the skies over Japan in 1945 were cut to pieces above North Korea in 1950. The B-36 Peacemaker, obsolete before it was even built, left service in a decade. Most of the early Cold War bombers were expensive failures, eventually to be superseded by ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

States procure bombers, like all weapons, to serve strategic purposes. This list employs the following metrics of evaluation:

• Did the bomber serve the strategic purpose envisioned by its developers?

• Was the bomber a sufficiently flexible platform to perform other missions, and to persist in service?

• How did the bomber compare with its contemporaries in terms of price, capability, and effectiveness?

And with that, the five best bombers of all time:

Handley Page Type O 400:

The first strategic bombing raids of World War I were carried out by German zeppelins, enormous lighter than aircraft that could travel at higher altitudes than the interceptors of the day, and deliver payloads against London and other targets. Over time, the capabilities of interceptors and anti-aircraft artillery grew, driving the Zeppelins to other missions. Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and others began working on bombers capable of delivering heavy loads over long distance, a trail blazed (oddly enough) by the Russian Sikorsky Ilya Muromets.

Even the modest capabilities of the early bombers excited the airpower theorists of the day, who imagined the idea of fleets of bombers striking enemy cities and enemy industry. The Italians developed the Caproni family of bombers, which operated in the service of most Allied countries at one time or another. German Gotha bombers would eventually terrorize London again, catalyzing the Smuts Report and the creation of the world’s first air force.

Faster and capable of carrying more bombs than either the Gotha IVs or the Caproni Ca.3, the Type O 400 had a wingspan nearly as large as the Avro Lancaster. With a maximum speed of 97 miles per hour with a payload of up to 2000 lbs, O 400s were the mainstay of Hugh Trenchard’s Independent Air Force near the end of the war, a unit which struck German airfields and logistics concentration well behind German lines. These raids helped lay the foundation of interwar airpower theory, which (at least in the US and the UK) envisioned self-protecting bombers striking enemy targets en masse.

Roughly 600 Type O bombers were produced during World War I, with the last retiring in 1922. Small numbers served in the Chinese, Australian, and American armed forces.

Junkers Ju 88:

The Junkers Ju-88 was one of the most versatile aircraft of World War II. Although it spent most of its career as a medium bomber, it moonlighted as a close attack aircraft, a naval attack aircraft, a reconnaissance plane, and a night fighter. Effective and relatively cheap, the Luftwaffe used the Ju 88 to good effect in most theaters of war, but especially on the Eastern Front and in the Mediterranean.

Designed with dive bomber capability, the Ju 88 served in relatively small numbers in the invasion of Poland, the invasion of Norway, and the Battle of France. The Ju-88 was not well suited to the strategic bombing role into which it was forced during the Battle of Britain, especially in its early variants. It lacked the armament to sufficiently defend itself, and the payload to cause much destruction to British industry and infrastructure. The measure of an excellent bomber, however, goes well beyond its effectiveness at any particular mission. Ju 88s were devastating in Operation Barbarossa, tearing apart Soviet tank formations and destroying much of the Soviet Air Forces on the ground. Later variants were built as or converted into night fighters, attacking Royal Air Force bomber formations on the way to their targets.

In spite of heavy Allied bombing of the German aviation industry, Germany built over 15,000 Ju 88s between 1939 and 1945. They operated in several Axis air forces.

De Havilland Mosquito:

The de Havilland Mosquito was a remarkable little aircraft, capable of a wide variety of different missions. Not unlike the Ju 88, the Mosquito operated in bomber, fighter, night fighter, attack, and reconnaissance roles. The RAF was better positioned than the Luftwaffe to utilized the specific qualities of the Mosquito, and avoid forcing it into missions in could not perform.

Relatively lightly armed and constructed entirely of wood, the Mosquito was quite unlike the rest of the RAF bomber fleet. Barely escaping design committee, the Mosquito was regarded as easy to fly, and featured a pressurized cockpit with a high service ceiling. Most of all, however, the Mosquito was fast. With advanced Merlin engines, a Mosquito could outpace the German Bf109 and most other Axis fighters.

Although the bomb load of the Mosquito was limited, its great speed, combined with sophisticated instrumentation, allowed it to deliver ordnance with more precision than most other bombers. During the war, the RAF used Mosquitoes for various precision attacks against high value targets, including German government installations and V weapon launching sites. As pathfinders, Mosquitoes flew point on bomber formations, leading night time bombing raids that might otherwise have missed their targets. Mosquitos also served in a diversionary role, distracting German night fighters from the streams of Halifaxes and Lancasters striking urban areas.

De Havilland produced over 7000 Mosquitoes for the RAF and other allied air forces. Examples persisted in post-war service with countries as varied as Israel, the Republic of China, Yugoslavia, and the Dominican Republic

Avro Lancaster:

The workhorse of the RAF in World War II, the Lancaster carried out the greater part of the British portion of the Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO). Led by Arthur Harris, Bomber Command believed that area bombing raids, targeted against German civilians, conducted at night, would destroy German morale and economic capacity and bring the war to a close. Accordingly, the Lancaster was less heavily armed than its American contemporaries, as it depended less on self-defense in order to carry out its mission.

The first Lancasters entered service in 1942. The Lancaster could carry a much heavier bomb load than the B-17 or the B-24, while operating at similar speeds and at a slightly longer range. The Lancaster also enjoyed a payload advantage over the Handley Page Halifax. From 1942 until 1945, the Lancaster would anchor the British half of the CBO, eventually resulting in the destruction of most of urban Germany and the death of several hundred thousand German civilians.

There are reasons to be skeptical of the inclusion of the Lancaster. The Combined Bomber Offensive was a strategic dead-end, serving up expensive four-engine bombers as a feast for smaller, cheaper German fighters. Battles were fought under conditions deeply advantageous to the Germans, as damaged German planes could land, and shot down German pilots rescued and returned to service. Overall, the enormous Western investment in strategic bombing was probably one of the greatest grand strategic miscalculations of the Second World War. Nevertheless, this list needs a bomber from the most identifiable bomber offensive in history, and the Lancaster was the best of the bunch.

Over 7000 Lancasters were built, with the last retiring in the early 1960s after Canadian service as recon and maritime patrol aircraft.

Boeing B-52 Stratofortress:

The disastrous experience of B-29 Superfortresses over North Korea in 1950 demonstrated that the United States would require a new strategic bomber, and soon. Unfortunately, the first two generations of bombers chosen by the USAF were almost uniformly duds; the hopeless B-36, the short-legged B-47, the dangerous-to-its-own-pilots B-58, and the obsolete-before-it-flew XB-70. The vast bulk of these bombers quickly went from wastes of taxpayer money to wastes of space at the Boneyard. None of the over 2500 early Cold War bombers ever dropped a bomb in anger.

The exception was the B-52.The BUFF was originally intended for high altitude penetration bombing into the Soviet Union. It replaced the B-36 and the B-47, the former too slow and vulnerable to continue in the nuclear strike mission, and the latter too short-legged to reach the USSR from U.S. bases. Slated for replacement by the B-58 and the B-70, the B-52 survived because it was versatile enough to shift to low altitude penetration after the increasing sophistication of Soviet SAMs made the high altitude mission suicidal.

And this versatility has been the real story of the B-52. The BUFF was first committed to conventional strike missions in service of Operation Arc Light during the Vietnam War. In Operation Linebacker II, the vulnerability of the B-52 to air defenses was made manifest when nine Stratofortresses were lost in the first days of the campaign. But the B-52 persisted. In the Gulf War, B-52s carried out saturation bombing campaigns against the forward positions of the Iraqi Army, softening and demoralizing the Iraqis for the eventual ground campaign. In the War on Terror, the B-52 has acted in a close air support role, delivering precision-guided ordnance against small concentrations of Iraqi and Taliban insurgents.

Most recently, the B-52 showed its diplomatic chops when two BUFFs were dispatched to violate China’s newly declared Air Defense Zone. The BUFF was perfect for this mission; the Chinese could not pretend not to notice two enormous bombers travelling at slow speed through the ADIZ.

742 B-52s were delivered between 1954 and 1963. Seventy-eight remain in service, having undergone multiple upgrades over the decades that promise to extend their lives into the 2030s, or potentially beyond. In a family of short-lived airframes, the B-52 has demonstrated remarkable endurance and longevity.

Conclusion

Over the last century, nations have invested tremendous resources in bomber aircraft. More often than not, this investment has failed to bear strategic fruit. The very best aircraft have been those that could not only conduct their primary mission effectively, but that were also sufficiently flexible to perform other tasks that might be asked of them. Current air forces have, with some exceptions, effectively done away with the distinctions between fighters and bombers, instead relying on multi-role fighter-bombers for both missions. The last big, manned bomber may be the American LRS-B, assuming that project ever gets off the ground.

Honorable Mention

Grumman A-6 Intruder, MQ-1 Predator, Caproni Ca.3, Tupolev Tu-95 “Bear,” Avro Vulcan, Tupolev Tu-22M “Backfire.”

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is a Visiting Professor at the United States Army War College. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

*****

What are the five greatest fighter aircraft of all time?

Like the same question asked of tanks, cars, or rock and roll guitarists, the answer invariably depends on parameters. For example, there are few sets of consistent parameters that would include both the T-34 and the King Tiger among the greatest of all tanks. I know which one I’d like to be driving in a fight, but I also appreciate that this isn’t the most appropriate way to approach the question. Similarly, while I’d love to drive a Porsche 959 to work every morning, I’d be hesitant to list it ahead of the Toyota Corolla on a “best of” compilation.

Nations buy fighter aircraft to resolve national strategic problems, and the aircraft should accordingly be evaluated on their ability to solve or ameliorate these problems. Thus, the motivating question is this: how well did this aircraft help solve the strategic problems of the nations that built or bought it? This question leads to the following points of evaluation:

Fighting characteristics: How did this plane stack up against the competition, including not just other fighters but also bombers and ground installations?

Reliability: Could people count on this aircraft to fight when it needed to, or did it spend more time under repair than in the air?

Cost: What did the organization and the nation have to pay in terms of blood and treasure to make this aircraft fly?

These are the parameters; here are my answers:

Spad S.XIII:

In the early era of military aviation, technological innovation moved at such speed that state of the art aircraft became obsolete deathtraps within a year. Engineers in France, Britain, Germany and Italy worked constantly to outpace their competitors, producing new aircraft every year to throw into the fight. The development of operational tactics trailed technology, although the input of the best flyers played an important role in how designers put new aircraft together.

In this context, picking a dominant fighter from the era is difficult. Nevertheless, the Spad S.XIII stands out in terms of its fighting characteristics and ease of production. Based in significant part on the advice of French aviators such as Georges Guynemer, the XIII lacked the maneuverability of some of its contemporaries, but could outpace most of them and performed very well in either a climb or a dive. It was simple enough to produce that nearly 8,500 such aircraft eventually entered service. Significant early reliability problems were worked out by the end of the war, and in any case were overwhelmed by the XIII’s fighting ability.

The S.XIII filled out not only French fighter squadrons, but also the air services of Allied countries. American ace Eddie Rickenbacker scored twenty of his kills flying an XIII, many over the most advanced German fighters of the day, including the Fokker D.VII.

The Spad XIII helped the Allies hold the line during the Ludendorff Offensive, and controlled the skies above France during the counter-offensive. After the war, it remained in service in France, the United States, and a dozen other countries for several years. In an important sense, the Spad XIII set the post-war standard for what a pursuit aircraft needed to do.

Grumman F6F Hellcat:

Of course, it is not only air forces that fly fighter aircraft. The F6F Hellcat can’t compare with the Spitfire, the P-51, or the Bf 109 on many basic flight characteristics, although its ability to climb was first-rate. What the F6F could do, however, was reliably fly from aircraft carriers, and it rode point on the great, decisive U.S. Navy carrier offensive of World War II. Entering the war in September 1943, it won 75% of USN aerial victories in the Pacific. USN ace David McCampbell shot down nine Japanese aircraft in one day flying a Hellcat .The F6F was heavily armed, and could take considerably more battle damage than its contemporaries. Overall, the F6F claimed nearly 5,200 kills at a loss of 270 aircraft in aerial combat, including a 13:1 ratio against the Mitsubishi A6M Zero.

The USN carrier offensive of the latter part of World War II is probably the greatest single example of the use of decisive airpower in world history. Hellcats and their kin (the Douglas SBD Dauntless dive-bomber and the Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bomber) destroyed the fighting power of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), cracked open Japan’s island empire, and exposed the Japanese homeland to devastating air attack and the threat of invasion.

In 1943, the United States needed a fighter robust enough to endure a campaign fought distant from most bases, yet fast and agile enough to defeat the best that the IJN could offer. Tough and reliable as a brick, the Hellcat fit that role. Put simply, the Honda Accord is, in its own way, a great car; the Honda Accords of the fighter world also deserve their day.

Messerschmitt Me-262 Swallow:

The Me 262 Schwalbe (Swallow, in English) failed to win the war for Germany, and couldn’t stop the Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO). Had German military authorities made the right decisions, however, it might at least have accomplished the second.

Known as the world’s first operational jet fighter, full-scale production of the Me 262 was delayed by resistance within the German government and the Luftwaffe to devoting resources to an experimental aircraft without a clear role. Early efforts to turn it into a fighter-bomber fell flat. As the need for a superlative interceptor become apparent, however, the Me 262 found its place. The Swallow proved devastating against American bomber formations, and could outrun American pursuit aircraft.

The Me 262 was hardly a perfect fighter: it lacked the maneuverability of the best American interceptors, and both American and British pilots developed tactics for managing the Swallow. Although production suffered from some early problems with engines, by the later stages of the conflict, manufacturing was sufficiently easy that the plane could be mass-produced in dispersed, underground facilities.

But had it come on line a bit earlier, the Me 262 might have torn the heart out of the CBO. The CBO in 1943 was a touch and go affair; dramatically higher bomber losses in 1943 could well have led Churchill and Roosevelt to scale back the production of four engine bombers in favor of additional tactical aircraft. Without the advantage of long-range escorts, American bombers would have proven easy prey for the German jet. Moreover, the Me 262 would have been far more effective without the constant worry of P-47s and P-51s strafing its airfields and tracking its landings.

Nazi Germany needed a game changer, a plane capable of making the price too high for the Allies to keep up the CBO. The Me 262 came onto the scene too late to solve that problem, but it’s hard to imagine any aircraft that could have come closer. Ironically, this might have accelerated Allied victory, as the Combined Bomber Offensive resulted in not only the destruction of urban Germany, but in the waste of substantial Allied resources. Win-win.

Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 “Fishbed”: 

An odd choice for this list? The MiG-21 is known largely as fodder for the other great fighters of the Cold War, and for having an abysmal kill ratio. The Fishbed (in NATO terminology) has served as a convenient victim in Vietnam and in a variety of Middle Eastern wars, some of which it fought on both sides.

But… the MiG-21 is cheap, fast, maneuverable, has low maintenance requirements. It’s relatively easy to learn to fly, although not necessarily easy to learn how to fly well. Air forces continued to buy the MiG-21 for a long time. Counting the Chengdu J-7 variant, perhaps 13,000 MiG-21s have entered service around the world. In some sense, the Fishbed is the AK-47 (or the T-34, if you prefer) of the fighter world. Fifty countries have flown the MiG-21, and it has flown for fifty-five years. It continues to fly as a key part of twenty-six different air forces, including the Indian Air Force, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, the Vietnamese People’s Air Force, and the Romanian Air Force. Would anyone be surprised if the Fishbed and its variants are still flying in 2034?

The MiG-21 won plaudits from American aggressor pilots at Red Flag, who celebrated its speed and maneuverability, and played (through the contribution of North Vietnamese aces such as Nguyễn Văn Cốc ) an important role in redefining the requirements of air superiority in the United States. When flown well, it remains a dangerous foe.

Most of life is about just showing up, and since 1960 no fighter has shown up as consistently, and in as many places, as has the MiG-21. For countries needing a cheap option for claiming control of their national airspace, the MiG-21 has long solved problems, and will likely continue to serve in this role.

McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle: 

What to say about the F-15 Eagle? When it came into service in 1976, it was immediately recognized as the best fighter in the world. Today, it is arguably still the best all-around, cost-adjusted fighter, even if the Su-27 and F-22 have surpassed it in some ways. If one fighter in American history could take the name of the national symbol of the United States, how could it be anything other than the F-15?

The Eagle symbolizes the era of American hegemony, from the Vietnam hangover to the post-Cold War period of dominance. Designed in light of the lessons of Vietnam, at a time where tactical aviation was taking control of the US Air Force, the F-15 outperformed existing fighters and set a new standard for a modern air superiority aircraft. Despite repeated tests in combat, no F-15 has ever been lost to an aerial foe. The production line for the F-15 will run until at least 2019, and longer if Boeing can manage to sell anyone on the Silent Eagle.

In the wake of Vietnam, the United States needed an air superiority platform that could consistently defeat the best that the Soviet Union had to offer. The F-15 (eventually complemented by the F-16) provided this platform, and then some. After the end of the Cold War, the United States needed an airframe versatile enough to carry out the air superiority mission while also becoming an effective strike aircraft. Again, the F-15 solved the problem.

And it’s a plane that can land with one wing. Hard to beat that.

A Contest Based on Parameters:

Again, this exercise depends entirely on decisions about the parameters. A different set of criteria of effectiveness would generate an entirely different list (although the F-15 would probably still be here; it’s invulnerable). Nevertheless, the basic elements of the argument are sound: weapons should be evaluated in terms of how they help achieve national objectives.

Honorable mentions include the North American Aviation F-86 Sabre, the Fokker D.VII, the Lockheed-Martin F-22 Raptor, the Messerschmitt Bf 109, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, the Supermarine Spitfire, the North American Aviation P-51 Mustang, the McDonnell Douglas EA-18 Growler, the English Electric Lightning, the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, the Sukhoi Su-27 “Flanker,” and the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is a Visiting Professor at the United States Army War College. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 2nd Class Scott Taylor

Robert Farley

North Korea, Asia

North Korea’s best hope for success in peace hinges, as it has for the past seventy years, on the potential collapse of the global capitalist system.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Even the much-vaunted artillery along the border will likely see quick attrition at the hands of hyper-accurate counter-battery attacks and other precision guided munitions. Once KPA forces are defeated in the field, there is little doubt that the ROK and the United States would take advantage of the opportunity to end the regime once and for all.

The most intense period of fighting in Korea ended some 60-plus years ago, but the divide across the Peninsula remains the world’s most visible legacy of the Cold War.  While the Republic of Korea (ROK) has become economically successful and democratic, North Korea has become a punchline. 

Nevertheless, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has continued to increase the sophistication of its ballistic missiles, has developed nuclear weapons, and maintains the world’s largest garrison state.  Pyongyang has also made clear that it isn’t afraid to provoke Seoul (and Seoul’s biggest supporter, the United States) with aggressive moves such as the sinking of the corvette Cheonan, and the bombardment of South Korean islands.

The general peace on the peninsula has more or less held since the 1950s. Still, while North Korea’s power has declined substantially relative to that of South Korea, the idea that Pyongyang might come to the conclusion that war could solve its problems still worries U.S. and South Korean planners. 

If North Korea faced a situation in which it determined that war was the only solution, how might it seek to crush the ROK, and deter the United States and Japan?

Timing is Everything…

North Korea’s best hope for success in peace hinges, as it has for the past seventy years, on the potential collapse of the global capitalist system. This sounds… optimistic, but consider that South Korea suffered badly during the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, that the capitalist world continues to suffer from the fallout from the 2008 Financial Crisis, and that Japan faces what appear to be insurmountable economic difficulties.

Even if a world economic collapse does not bring capitalism to its knees, another such crisis could put stress on the relationship between South Korea, Japan, and the United States. 

North Korean prospects in the war depend utterly on sidelining the United States in some fashion, either through the presentation of a fait accompli, or through high stakes deterrence.

The situation with Japan is more complex, but Tokyo views North Korea as sufficiently threatening that a war would almost certainly incur some kind of intervention, if not necessarily in direct support of RoK forces.

The other scenario under which DPRK might decide to attack would come in anticipation of a major U.S.-ROK attack against the North.  In such a situation, the North Korean leadership might decide that it has little to lose.  The military balance would, in such a context, strongly favor pre-emptive action on North Korea’s part.

In War…

The clearest path to North Korean victory in war depends on a quick defeat of South Korean forces, providing the United States and Japan with a fait accompli that Pyongyang will expect Beijing to back.

The North Korean attack would likely involve a classic 20th century combined arms assault, using artillery to disrupt RoK defenses and soften up positions (as well as create civilian panic), infantry to break holes in the South Korean lines, and mechanized forces to exploit those gaps.  The North Koreans could well add special forces (potentially deployed to South Korea before the initiation of hostilities) and regular forces deployed by tunnel to South Korean rear areas.

The Korean People’s Air Force is ancient, and has received no significant infusion of Russian or Chinese technology in years.  The force has very little counter-air capability relative to the Republic of Korea Air Force, and its fighters would find themselves easy prey for well-trained South Korean pilots flying sophisticated aircraft.  The KPA can expect very little ground support, either on the tactical or operational scales, and would likely struggle under South Korean air attacks. 

To remedy these problems, North Korea would likely reserve a large proportion of its land-attack cruise missiles and short-range ballistic missiles for attacks on South Korean air bases, in the hopes of destroying fighters on the ground and rendering facilities useless.

The Korean People’s Navy would play a dual role in the operation. Offensively, it would try to attack Republic of Korea Navy (ROKN) capital ships (including the Dokdo-class amphibs, and the Sejong the Great-class destroyers, the latter of which have anti-ballistic missile capabilities) with submarines and cruise missiles, while also attempting to disrupt port operations.  Defensively, the KPN would try to protect North Korea’s coastline from bombardment and amphibious assault, both of which had a great impact on the 1950 war.

Any North Korean invasion would also include attacks on South Korean ports, both to disrupt trade and to complicate the arrival of large-scale reinforcements.  These attacks would likely involve conventionally-armed ballistic missiles, although the DPRK might resort to nuclear or chem-bio weapons for some particularly lucrative targets (such as Busan). 

With luck (and the North Koreans would need tremendous amounts of luck) the Korean People’s Army (KPA) could disrupt U.S. and RoK forces sufficiently to seize control of the major entry and exit points to Seoul, at which point it could consider either trying to roll up the rest of the peninsula, or hold for a negotiated peace that would leave the DPRK in a stronger position.  This decision would hinge both on the tactical situation, as well as an assessment of whether North Korea’s national goals lie mainly in reunification, or in regime survival.

But Diplomacy Has a Role…

The longer the war continues, the grimmer North Korea’s prospects look. Consequently, Pyongyang needs the support of Beijing to end the war and secure its gains quickly.

Why would Beijing concede to act as guarantor of the fruits of North Korean aggression? 

Not because of any lingering affinity with the North Korean regime, but rather out of a desire to prevent further disruption and instability along its border.  Similarly, its frustrations with North Korea aside, China has little interest in the establishment of a U.S. or Japanese client across the whole of the Korean Peninsula.

In this situation, North Korea would hope that the prospect of war against China (and perhaps Russia) would deter the United States from pursuing the liberation of South Korea. This calculus is remarkably similar to that of Kim il-Sung in 1950, although in this case North Korea’s own nuclear arsenal (presumably directed at Japan) would provide some deterrent.

In Keeping the Peace...

This is the best case for North Korea, but it is important to recall that most analysts judge North Korea’s military as insufficient to defeat the forces of the RoK.  The static defenses along the DMZ, combined with the mobility and sophistication of RoK forces, mean that any offensive into South Korea is likely to bog down into a logistical disaster before it can capture Seoul.  At that point, attacks along the depth of the North Korean position, combined with a concerted assault on regime targets and the KPA’s command and control network, will likely isolate advance forces and leave them ripe for destruction.  

The North Korean air defense network is immense and robust, but not particularly sophisticated.  Even the much-vaunted artillery along the border will likely see quick attrition at the hands of hyper-accurate counter-battery attacks and other precision guided munitions. Once KPA forces are defeated in the field, there is little doubt that the ROK and the United States would take advantage of the opportunity to end the regime once and for all.

North Korean military officers know all of this, and surely appreciate the exceedingly low probability that an attack would see any kind of success, either short or long-term. But we can hardly rule out that political circumstances might shift such that North Korea becomes desperate enough to launch an attack, or that it imagines itself as having “one last great opportunity.”  At the very least, preparation rarely hurts.

Robert Farley is a Senior Lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs.He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and The Diplomat. Follow him on Twitter:@drfarls. This first appeared several years ago. 

Image: Reuters. 

Kris Osborn

F-35, Americas

The system helps identify enemy threats in key regions around the globe.

Here's What You Need to Know: Upgrades include a portable memory device which can quickly be transferred from a ground station to the F-35 cockpit.

(This article first appeared in October 2018.)

The Pentagon's F-35 is conducting attacks, surveillance operations and combat missions with an updated on-board “threat library” of Mission Data Files engineered to identify enemy threats in key regions around the globe.

“The AORs (Areas of Responsibility) for current operations where our forces are -- currently have adequate Mission Data Files,” Vice Adm. Mat Winter, Program Executive Officer for the F-35 program, told a group of reporters.

Described as the brains of the airplane, the "mission data files" are extensive on-board data systems compiling information on geography, air space and potential threats-- such as enemy fighter jets -- in areas where the F-35 might be expected to perform combat operations, Air Force officials explained.

Despite some delays with development, involving software engineering and technical development at Eglin AFB, Fla., the process is now fully on track to finish by 2019, Winter said.

Naturally, Air Force senior weapons developers do not comment on specific threats in specific areas around the globe, developers do acknowledge the threat library will include all known and future threat aircraft -- which of course includes advanced Chinese and Russian 5th-generation fighters. For security reasons, Air Force officials do not wish to confirm this or specify any kind of time frame for their inclusion.

Overall, there are 12 geographical regions being identified to comprise the library, service developers say.

“We have not fully verified all Mission Data Files for all of the regions where we will operate, but we are slated to be ready by 2019,” Winter said.

The mission data files are designed to work with the aircraft's Radar Warning Receiver engineered to find and identify approaching enemy threats and incoming hostile fire. The concept is to use the F-35s long range sensors to detect threats - and then compare the information against the existing library of enemy threats in real time while in flight. If this can happen at a favorable standoff range for the F-35, it will be able to identify and destroy enemy air-to-air targets before being vulnerable itself to enemy fire. For example, the mission data system may be able to quickly identify a Russian MiG-29 if it were detected by the F-35’s sensors.

“There is continued collaboration between intelligence and acquisition teams,” Winter said.

The Mission Data Files are intended to support the F-35’s sensor fusion so that information from disparate sensor systems can be combined on a single screen for pilots to lower the cognitive burden and quicken the decision-making process. New modules for mission systems will integrate into the F-35s Distributed Aperture System sensors and Electro-optical Targeting System.

The threat warnings generated by the F-35s Mission Data Files are designed to integrate with other on-board electronics such as targeting sensors, Much of this draws upon computer algorithms increasingly supported by AI, Winter said.

“Our fusion engine gets advanced sensors technology to rapidly identify and track targets without the pilot having to do all the work. This fusion is enabled by Mission Data Files,” Winter explained.

This concept regarding integrated threat warnings and the Missile Data Files is further reinforced in a Lockheed Martin engineering paper from early this year called “F-35 Mission Systems Design, Development and Verification.”

The paper provides technical detail on a number of F-35 technologies, including analysis of a system called AN/ASQ-242 Communications, Navigation and Identification system, or CNI. CNI provides beyond-visual-range target identification, anti-jam technology, radio navigation and, of great significance to Mission Data Files -- “warning messaging” and “pilot audio alerts.” Part of its function includes “connectivity with off-board sources of information,” a function which bears great relevance to identifying specific enemy aircraft at great distances.

While many developers cite significant challenges when it comes to software development and integration for the F-35, the fighter is widely regarded as a “flying computer.” The “fusion” or technical integration on board the aircraft is engineered to access and leverage a wide range of data points and condense them for the pilot. In essence, surveillance, computer processing and targeting data are fused, as opposed to being stovepiped or separate sources. As a result, the technology also incorporates Identification Friend Foe (IFF) surveillance systems designed to quickly distinguish friendly from enemy aircraft.

The Pentagon is improving Mission Data File technology, in part, through an ongoing mission systems avionics upgrade, industry and military developers said.

It is part of a tech refresh effort for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that improves memory, storage, processing speed, display video and aircraft parametric data, industry developers said.

Lockheed Martin has been working with Harris Corporation to provide the computing infrastructure for new panoramic cockpit displays, advanced memory systems and navigation technology, senior Harris officials said in written statements.

The new hardware and software technology, to be operational on the F-35 by 2021, includes seven racks per aircraft consisting of 1,500 module components, including new antennas and weapons release systems.

Some of the components include an Advanced Memory System (AMS) engineered to improve data storage and generate higher resolution imagery to help pilots with navigational and targeting information.

Faster processors will also improve F-35 delivery of weapons enabled by the latest 3F software drop, such as the AIM-9X air-to-air missile. Improved radar warning receiver technology will more quickly identify enemy aircraft and integrate with the aircraft’s mission data files, or threat library.

The data processing increase is exponential, developers explain, as it enable measurements to take place in terabytes instead of megabits or megabytes.

The upgrades include a portable memory device which can quickly be transferred from a ground station to the F-35 cockpit.

While Air Force officials said that Mission Data File information on particular enemy platforms and specific global threat areas was naturally not available for security reasons, she did say the technology is now supporting the latest F-35 software configuration - called 3f.

"Mission data has been fielded in support of version 2B, 3i, and 3f," Air Force spokeswoman Emily Grabowski told Warrior earlier this year.

As the most recently implemented software upgrade, Block 3f increases the weapons delivery capacity of the JSF, giving it the ability to drop a Small Diameter Bomb, 500-pound JDAM and AIM 9X short-range air-to-air missile, service officials explained.

The Air Force is already working on a 4th drop to be ready by 2020 or 2021. Following this initial drop, the aircraft will incorporate new software drops in two year increments in order to stay ahead of the threat. The service is also working to massively quicken the pace of software upgrades as a way to respond quickly to new threats.

Block IV will include some unique partner weapons including British weapons, Turkish weapons and some of the other European country weapons that they want to get on their own plane, service officials explained.

Block IV will also increase the weapons envelope for the U.S. variant of the fighter jet. A big part of the developmental calculus for Block 4 is to work on the kinds of enemy air defense systems and weaponry the aircraft may face from the 2020’s through the 2040’s and beyond.

​In terms of weapons, Block IV will eventually enable the F-35 to fire cutting edge weapons systems such as the Small Diameter Bomb II and GBU-54 – both air dropped bombs able to destroy targets on the move.

The Small Diameter Bomb II uses a technology called a “tri-mode” seeker, drawing from infrared, millimeter wave and laser-guidance. The combination of these sensors allows the weapon to track and eliminate moving targets in all kinds of weather conditions.

The emerging 4th software drop will build upon prior iterations of the software for the aircraft.

Block 2B builds upon the enhanced simulated weapons, data link capabilities and early fused sensor integration of the earlier Block 2A software drop. Block 2B will enable the JSF to provide basic close air support and fire an AMRAAM (Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile), JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) or GBU-12 (laser-guided aerial bomb) JSF program officials said.

Following Block 2B, Block 3i increases the combat capability even further and the now operational 3F brings a vastly increased ability to suppress enemy air defenses.

Kris Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army - Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at CNN and CNN Headline News. 

This article first appeared in Warrior Maven in October 2018.

Image: U.S. Air Force photo by Todd Cromar

Warfare History Network

History, Americas

More than 2,000 men had died. Nearly half as many were wounded. Eighteen ships were damaged or sunk. But Pearl Harbor mobilized a sleeping superpower. 

Here’s What You Need to Remember: It was hard going, but the Navy tried to salvage what damaged ships it could so they could be repaired for action. Here's how they did it.

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The Pearl Harbor disaster presented the U.S. Navy with a sobering question: how to recover? More than 2,000 men had died. Nearly half as many were wounded. Eighteen ships were damaged or sunk.

“… None Of the Ships Sunk Would Ever Fight Again.”

“The scene to the newcomer was foreboding indeed. There was a general feeling of depression throughout the Pearl Harbor area when it was seen and firmly believed that none of the ships sunk would ever fight again.” This was a haunting sentiment from Captain Homer Wallin, the man who would lead the salvage effort.

Admiral Chester Nimitz, named Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC) days after the attack, flew to Hawaii to take command. He landed in Pearl Harbor on Christmas Day. His briefings had prepared him, or so he thought. Awestruck, he remarked, “This is terrible seeing all these ships down.” The ceremony installing Nimitz as CINCPAC was held on the deck of the Grayling, a submarine he had once commanded. Cynics commented that it was the only deck fit for the ceremony.

The days of the Battleship Navy were over. The Japanese made the point again on December 10, sinking the British battleship Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser Repulse off Singapore. Nimitz’s aircraft carriers were now the heart of his strategy. Yet with proper escort, the battleships could still be effective weapons. If they could be saved, Nimitz would give them work.

No Time Wasted For Salvage Effort

The salvage effort began on December 7 when crews manned hoses to fight the fires while the attack was still under way. These firefighters were aided by boats, tugs, and even a garbage hauler. Men from the fleet’s base force brought pumps to battle the flooding. Rescue teams searched for sailors trapped in the capsized battleships Oklahoma and Utah.

On January 9, 1942, Captain Wallin took charge of the Salvage Division, itself a new branch of the Navy Yard. A native of Washburn, ND, Homer Wallin had spent half his life training for this. Like many men raised far from the sea, he sought a naval career. He went to the U.S. Naval Academy in 1913, then served aboard the battleship New Jersey during World War I. He joined the Navy’s Construction Corps in 1918, and studied naval architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After completing his master of science degree in 1921, he spent the next 20 years in the New York, Philadelphia, and Mare Island Navy Yards, as well as at the Bureau of Construction and Repair in Washington, DC.

Salvage Triage

Wallin’s Salvage Division had three clear goals: Rescue the men who were trapped aboard the ships, assess the damage to each ship, and repair as many as possible. The task was to fix each enough to be able to travel to the larger yards on the West Coast for complete restoration.

The Japanese would come to regret leaving two vital areas of the harbor intact. The first was the fleet’s fuel supply—over 4.5 million gallons. The other was the Navy Yard, whose shops had a vast capacity to fix or build almost anything. “They built liberty boats, 25-foot motor whaleboats, any kind of harbor craft,” recalled Walter Bayer. “They could overhaul a 14- or 16-inch gun. Just pull them around on those big cranes, and handle them like they were toothpicks in those big buildings. They were enormous buildings. They still are.”

Bayer grew up on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. In 1940, he became a civil service employee and went to work in the compressed gases plant in the Navy Yard. He was an assistant supervisor by December 1941. After the attack, demand for his services soared. “When they organized to cut through the bottom of the Oklahoma—she had a double hull—the welders came to us to get acetylene and oxygen for their cutting torches. And they’d use it like water. It would just go in no time.”

Admiral Without Flag Ship Made Yard Commandant

The new commandant of the yard was Admiral William Furlong. He and Nimitz were in the same class at Annapolis. Until December 25, 1941, Furlong had been Commander Minecraft, Battle Force. His flagship, the mine layer Oglala, had been sunk off the yard’s main pier, 1010 Dock. Furlong gave Wallin everything he needed: personnel, equipment, and waterfront work space. With a fleet of small vessels roaming the harbor, Wallin could send men and machinery wherever he needed them. He had experts to remove ammunition and ordnance materiel. He had divers trained to operate inside sunken ships. Plus he had the Pacific Bridge Company, whose men were contracted to build Navy facilities across the Pacific.

One Navy diver was Metalsmith First Class Edward Raymer. He had joined the service to escape the quiet life in Riverside, Calif. In 1940, he trained at the diving school in San Diego. His work clothes were rubberized coveralls with gloves, a lead-weighted belt (84 pounds), lead-weighted shoes (36 pounds each), and a copper Helmet attached to a breastplate. Above water, the suit was awkward. Submerged, the weights counteracted the suit’s buoyancy, permitting the diver to move fairly easily. An air hose ran from the Helmet to a compressor monitored by men on the surface. The diver carefully moved the hose with him while working within sunken ships. He often worked in total darkness. He took directions from the surface via telephone cable and needed heightened senses of touch and balance to work with welding torches and suction hoses.

“Welcome To the Salvage Unit.”

On December 8, 1941, Raymer’s team flew to Pearl. “Welcome to the Salvage Unit,” a tired warrant officer told them. “You will be attached to this command on temporary additional duty, which may not be temporary from the amount of diving work you see before you.”

The team’s first assignment was to determine if men were trapped below the water level in the battleship Nevada. “To accomplish this,” Raymer remembered, “we lowered a diver from the sampan to a depth of 20 feet. Swinging a five-pound hammer, he rapped on the hull three times, then stopped and listened for an answering signal. We took turns for hours. No answering signal was ever heard.” Frustrating as this was, other search parties successfully freed men from the Oklahoma and Utah. The last of them were brought out by December 10.

“Lesser damaged” was the term applied to the condition of the battleships Pennsylvania, Maryland,and Tennessee; the cruisers Honolulu, Helena, and Raleigh; the repair ship Vestal; the seaplane tender Curtiss; and the destroyer Helm.

USS Pennsylvania Returned To Duty

Pennsylvania was in Dry Dock Number One during the attack, behind the destroyers Downes and Cassin. One bomb hit the battleship, damaging a 5-inch gun and passing through two decks before exploding. The blast wrecked bulkheads, hatches, pipes, and wiring. Her hull and power plant were sound, though. On December 12, she went to the Navy Yard. The damaged gun was replaced with one from the West Virginia, whose decks were awash after she settled into the mud on the bottom of Battleship Row, the victim of several Japanese torpedoes. On December 20, the Pennsylvania sailed for Puget Sound, Wash.

A bomb had struck the pier beside Honolulu. The blast bent in 40 feet of hull on the port side, causing shrapnel damage and flooding. Yard workers began patching the hull, while Honolulu’s crew worked within.

With them was Seaman First Class Stephen Young from Methuen, Mass. Young had just transferred from the Oklahoma. He had endured 25 hours trapped in the battleship. Having survived that, he was impressed by his new job, helping to remove damaged powder cases from the cruiser’s magazine. Shrapnel had punctured many of them, spilling explosive powder on the decks. “Why they never went off, I don’t know,” Young recalled.

USS Honolulu and Helena Next Up

Honolulu moved to Dry Dock Number One on December 13. On January 2, she went to the yard for further work. Ten days later, she returned to service.

USS Helena took a torpedo on her starboard side, flooding an engine room and a boiler room. On December 10, she entered Dry Dock Number Two, which was still under construction. Pacific Bridge personnel borrowed wooden blocks from the yard for the ship to rest upon. After 11 days, she moved to the yard. On January 5, Helena left for the Mare Island Navy Yard in San Francisco.

Maryland was moored inboard of Oklahoma and had escaped torpedoes, but one bomb hit her forecastle. Another struck her port side at water level. No dry dock was available, so repairs were performed at the quays. ­The yard’s workshops built a wood and metal patch for the rupture in the hull. A barge-mounted crane lowered the patch into the water, and divers fitted it in place. The water was pumped away, and repairs continued inside the ship. On December 20, she left for Puget Sound. Her final repairs were completed there on February 26, 1942.

Stricken Arizona Inflicts Damage On Sisters

USS Tennessee was inboard of West Virginia Multiple torpedo hits had sunk the outer ship, trapping Tennessee against the concrete mooring quays. A direct hit to the battleship USS Arizona’s magazines had sunk that vessel and thrown burning debris on the Tennessee’s decks. Arizona’s burning oil spread across the water, engulfing Tennessee’s stern. Crewmen fought with hoses to keep the fires away. Her forward magazines were flooded to keep them from exploding. The ship’s propellers were turned at speeds up to 10 knots in an effort to keep flaming oil away. The crew was forced to abandon her.

Men from the yard and the repair ship USS Medusa welded Tennessee’s heat-warped stern plates. A total of 650,000 gallons of oil was pumped from the ship. Divers placed explosive charges on the quays. These were detonated on December 16, finally freeing Tennessee from her trap. She spent two months at Puget Sound and eventually returned to duty on February 29, 1942.

Outboard of Arizona was Vestal. Two bombs found her, falling from a thousand feet or higher, smashing straight through her, and exploding underwater. The flooding made her list to port and settle heavily at the stern. To escape the burning Arizona, the Vestal’s captain backed his ship away. Vestalwas 33 years old, and her watertight integrity was not enough to keep her afloat. Two tugboats guided her east to shallow water, beaching her at Aiea Shoal.

Vestal Gets Second Lease On Life

Being a repair ship, USS Vestal had the resources for crew to begin mending her, but she had to wait her turn for dry-docking. It came two months later. Vestal returned to duty on February 18.

A torpedo flooded Raleigh’s engine room. A bomb ripped through three decks and out her side. It exploded uncomfortably close to a compartment storing aviation fuel. When the cruiser’s captain ordered counterflooding to balance the ship, several doors failed. The tugboat Sunnadin and a barge were tied to her port side to save her from sinking.

Men from repair vessels helped the crew rebuild the decks and transfer fuel and water from the Raleigh. She went into Dry Dock Number One on January 3. Running on one engine, she sailed for Mare Island on February 14. After receiving a new engine and electrical parts, she returned to duty on July 23.

Pacific Fleet Slowly Resurrected

Curtiss had no armor and suffered for it. One bomb hit. Three missed, but not by enough. A damaged Japanese plane struck her starboard crane and exploded. Smoke from burning cork insulation made it more difficult for the crew to fight the fires.

Dry-docked from December 19 to 27, USS Curtiss had to vacate early, making way for higher priority jobs. She could not return until April 26, and was substantially repaired by May 28.

Helm had escaped the harbor, but while searching for submarines she was bracketed by two bombs. The shock caused flooding forward and tripped circuit breakers. With the dry docks full, Helm went to the yard’s marine railway on January 15. There she was hauled out of the water for welding and patching. At the end of the month, she left for San Diego.

Each accomplishment brought another part of the Pacific Fleet to life. But these successes were modest compared to what lay ahead. Six battleships, one cruiser, three destroyers, and a mine-laying ship had received severe attention from the Japanese.

Much Work Still Left To Be Done

Destroyers were desperately needed to protect Allied merchant shipping from enemy submarines. Commander John Alden, himself a submariner, wrote, “In addition to the mere urgency of obtaining ASW [antisubmarine warfare] vessels, other factors added weight to the balance. One was the fact that of all the material needed to build new destroyers, most critical and hard to obtain were main propulsion plants. In the effort to break the bottleneck, DE’s [destroyer escorts] and frigates were designed around every conceivable type of power plant … but there was no substitute for the steam turbine in destroyers.”

In addition to the catastrophic loss of the Arizona, one of the most spectacular of the December 7 victims was the destroyer Shaw. She had been on blocks in Floating Dry Dock Number Two. Three bombs struck the ship, rupturing fuel tanks. Fire swept through the ship to her magazines. A tremendous blast wrecked her entire forward section. Twenty-five men died, and 15 more were injured. Five bombs hit the dry dock. To protect it, workers submerged the dock, and the tugboat Sotoyomo sank with it.

Shaw a Total Loss?

To casual observers, Shaw seemed a total loss. Her bridge was destroyed, and her bow was literally gone. But her engineering machinery was intact. She was towed to the marine railway on December 19. Hull repair experts took measurements and set to building a temporary bow.

Navy divers sealed over 150 holes in the hull of the dock. It was raised on January 9, and ready for service on January 25. Six months later, so was Sotoyomo. Shaw was the first ship back into the dry dock. The next day, her new bow was attached along with a new mast and a temporary bridge. This made her look more like an overgrown PT boat than a destroyer, but it worked. On February 4, Shawleft the harbor for power trials. Five days later, with cheers shouted from all over Pearl, she left for Mare Island. A permanent bow awaited her there. Of the badly wounded ships, Shaw was the first to return to sea.

The destroyers Helm and Henley escorted Shaw eastward. Seaman First Class Arthur Schreier from Watertown, Conn., was on Henley’s No. 4 gun mount. He spent many hours watching Shaw plow through the waves. “I felt so sorry for those guys,” Schreier recalled, “because without a bow, you know—they had this little stubby thing welded on. Boom. Boom. Boom. Every wave, for six days.”

A Makeshift Bow for the USS Shaw

Fireman First Class Alfred Bulpitt from Centerdale, RI, was aboard the Shaw. Manning the port engine throttle, he knew she was traveling at only a third of her top speed. “It took us quite a while. We only had one fire room and one screw working. And we had a reduced crew. But I don’t remember anyone saying we wouldn’t make it.”

They did make it, arriving at Mare Island on February 15. Waiting for Shaw was another dry dock and her new bow. She was ready by July, returning to duty as an escort for convoys to Pearl. By the fall, she headed west to join the fight for Guadalcanal.

Destroyers Downes and Cassin had similar troubles. “They had gone through every kind of ordeal which ships could be subjected to,” Wallin wrote. “From bomb hits to severe fires, to explosions, to fragmentation damage, etc. These vessels were the only ones of the Pearl Harbor group that suffered all the kinds of damage enumerated.”

Every Type Of Damage That Could Be Done

A bomb had ripped through the USS Cassin to explode on the floor of Dry Dock Number One. Two more hit the dock, one on each side of the ships. A fourth blasted Cassin again. A fifth destroyed Downes’ bridge. Fragments punctured fuel tanks on both ships. Fire spread through the dock, detonating fuel and ammunition on Downes. Part of a torpedo landed 75 feet away.

Without power or water, no one could fight the fires, which now threatened the neighboring Pennsylvania. Her captain ordered the dock flooded, but as the water rose, so did the flames. Cassincame afloat at her stern and finally collapsed onto Downes.

Both destroyers remained in the dock for two months. Other ships came in for repairs. Each flooding and draining made the destroyers sway and roll, hurting them more. On February 5, Cassin was carefully reset on her blocks. The next day, Downes was towed to the Navy Yard. Cassin followed 20 days later.

The destroyers’ hulls were ruined, but their propulsion machinery was sound. Nimitz, the Bureau of Ships, and the Chief of Naval Operations debated the question: repair them or scrap them? On May 7, the Bureau of Ships found the solution. “Recommend new hulls be built at Mare Island. The Bureau considers that sufficient of the original Cassin and Downes material can be worked into the [new] hulls to thoroughly justify the retention of the original names for the new ships.”

Like a Bride Being Led Down the Aisle a Second Time

Through the spring and summer, nearly 1,000 tons of useful equipment was removed, carefully catalogued, and shipped to Mare Island. By August, what remained of Downes was scrapped. The Cassin followed suit by October, but the hearts of both vessels, including the 37-ton stern sections bearing their names, were saved. On May 20, 1943, Downes was “relaunched.” So was Cassin on June 21. There was no precedent for this in Navy history. Never had a ship been launched twice. “In both cases there was a minimum of fanfare,” Alden wrote. “Like a quiet ceremony with discreet minimized publicity for a bride being led to the altar for the second time.”

Of the battleships, only Nevada had been able to run for the sea. However, she took hits from a torpedo and at least seven bombs. One smashed her forecastle, blowing a 25-foot triangular hole on the port side. Another crashed through the ship—including a gasoline tank without igniting it—and detonated beneath her. Flooding was too heavy to be stopped.

Nevada Beached At Harbor Entrance During Attack

Watching from Oglala, Admiral Furlong ordered two tugboats to move the USS Nevada to the shallows at Waipio Point above the harbor entrance, where she was beached. Her bow settled until the deck was nearly awash.

Admiral Nimitz’s inspection of Nevada was a grim one. The ship had been wrecked by blasts and fire and fouled with oil and polluted water, but her men were determined to win. Nimitz consented.

Using measurements from Nevada’s sister ship, Oklahoma, yard shipwrights built a patch to cover the holes. It was a huge piece of craftsmanship, 55 feet long, 32 feet deep, and curved to fit the ship’s bilge.

The divers had a frustrating time securing the patch. The explosions had warped the hull, and it was impossible to seal the patch completely. It had to be discarded. The alternative was to gamble on the strength of Nevada’s bulkheads. Divers tightened every door and hatch in the ruptured compartments and bolted patches over smaller holes in the hull.

The Battle To Drain Nevada

Removing water from the ship was a headache, too, given the number and types of pumps available. The strongest could pump 4,000 gallons a minute, but there were not enough of them. Some could draw water up about 15 feet, but no higher. To compensate, engineers arranged them so that the smaller ones brought water to areas where the stronger pumps could move the water up and out of the ship. This was done with care. If one section drained much faster than others, Nevada could list or capsize. Although the pumps gradually moved water out faster than it came in, the ship remained in danger until dry-docked.

The drying compartments sobered the most hardened men. The filth was appalling. A mixture of oil, mud, paper, clothes, and rotting food filled every part of the ship. And there were the bodies of men who had died in the attack. They were taken to the naval hospital for identification and burial. Then work parties brought in hoses and sprayed every object and surface with sea water, followed with Tectyl, a cleaning chemical that absorbed water from anything it touched.

To increase buoyancy, Nevada’s crew transferred the remaining stored oil from the ship. Wreckage was cleaned away. Guns, ammunition, electric motors, and auxiliary equipment were brought out. Much of it was salvable, despite being submerged for nearly three months.

Deadly Gas Slows Salvage Effort

The optimism of the salvage crew was tempered by the discovery of hydrogen sulfide, an odorless toxic gas created when oil and polluted sea water are mixed under pressure. On February 7, one man opened a gas-filled compartment and collapsed from a fatal dose. While trying to rescue him, five more sailors were also overcome. Only four recovered. Increased ventilation became top priority. No man was permitted on the ship without a gas mask and a litmus paper badge to indicate if the gas was present.

One week later, Nevada was afloat. A last inspection was made of every bulkhead and hatch. Any serious leak would send the battered battleship to the bottom. On February 14, two tugs brought the Nevada to Dry Dock Number Two. Nimitz and Furlong were with the cheering crowd that welcomed her. On April 22, 1942, she left Pearl Harbor for Puget Sound Navy Yard for final repairs and modernization.

California posed greater problems. She had been hit by two torpedoes and one bomb and jarred by several near misses. Arizona’s burning oil had forced California’s crew to abandon her. She took three days to sink to the bottom, settling with a list to port. Her main deck was 17 feet beneath the surface.

Complex Plan Devised To Raise the USS California

The Yard Design Section feared that patching and pumping out the ship would fail. As she regained buoyancy, the weight of the water above her decks might collapse them. One option was to build a cofferdam around the ship. A barrier of pilings driven into the harbor bottom would permit men to drain the water within and effect repairs. It was a good plan, but expensive and complicated.

An alternative was found: build two cofferdams attached to the ship to enclose her forecastle and quarterdeck. Barge cranes lowered huge wooden planks along the ship’s sides. Pacific Bridge divers bolted them to the hull and sealed them with lengths of hose filled with sawdust and oakum (hemp mixed with tar). The planks were 30 feet high and varied in width and thickness. They were weighted down with sandbags and reinforced to endure external water pressure as the interior was pumped out.

The divers plugged more holes. One needed a 15-by-15-foot patch. As with Nevada, the pumps eventually caught up to the leaks, then passed them. Oil was skimmed from the surface and transferred from the bunkers to a barge alongside. Eventually, over 200,000 gallons were recovered.

Heroic Effort By Welders Save California After Gas Explosion

By the end of March, California had risen to a nearly even keel, but on April 5 an explosion blew out the hull patch. She began settling at the bow. Gasoline vapors had leaked from a fuel tank and ignited. The patch was ruined, and there was no time to build another. Another battleship was coming in for repairs, and California had to meet the tight schedule for dry dock time. Raymer’s team contained the flooding on the ship’s third deck. The men took turns welding a warped hatch shut. After 12 hours, it was secured and the flooding stopped. Four days later, California entered Dry Dock Number Two. She was on time.

California’s electric drive engines had suffered heavily from the saltwater. The job of rewrapping miles of wire called for specialists not available at Pearl. A team of engineers flew in from the General Electric Company in Schenectady, NY. Through the summer they concentrated their efforts on one alternator and two motors—just enough to get the ship to Puget Sound. They finished in the autumn. California headed for Puget Sound on October 10, 1942.

Raising West Virginia Tests Salvage Team To Limit

West Virginia’s problems were even worse. Two bombs and at least seven torpedoes sank her, killing over a hundred men. She, too, had electric drive. Her steering system was ruined, and her rudder was blown off. Over 200 feet of her port hull was wrecked. Raymer wrote, “Raising West Virginia would be far more difficult than either the Nevada or the California had been. It would test the ingenuity and salvage expertise of every faction involved in the operation.”

Yard craftsmen came through again, building 14 hull patches in sections 13 feet long and over 50 feet wide. Curved at the bottom to fit the ship’s bilge, they straightened to climb the sides to high above the surface. Like the walls of a fortress, each was made of metal beams and 12-by-14-inch timbers, with four-inch planking beneath. Several had access doors so divers could enter the hull. To counteract its buoyancy, each was weighted with lead. After each section was fitted in place, the lead was removed. Divers filled the seams with 650 tons of underwater concrete. Since this added more weight than the hull could endure after dry-docking, the divers finished by welding steel reinforcing rods to the hull.

Plugging Every Last Hole

After the patches were secured, the pumps lowered the water within by a few feet, but no more. “No further headway was made in dewatering,” Raymer recalled. “Most of the leakage was found to occur in the areas contiguous to the patches from leaking seams, shrapnel holes, and loose rivets.” Every hole mattered. Raymer’s men sealed all they could find with smaller patches or wooden plugs.

Salvage crews moved deeper into the ship, mindful of the hydrogen sulfide threat. A medical officer worked with them, maintaining a bulletin board showing which compartments were safe. They brought out more oil, ammunition, and machinery along with the bodies of 66 men who had died in December.

The bodies of three sailors were found in a dry storeroom. With them was a calendar. The days from December 7 to December 23 were crossed off. The men had food and drinking water, but their oxygen had run out. “The discovery of these three men in an unflooded compartment caused a profound sense of anguish among our divers,” Raymer said. “Especially shaken were Moon and Tony, who had sounded the West Virginia’s hull on December 12 and reported no response from within the ship.” The men had been in the starboard side, hard against Tennessee’s port side. It had been impossible for divers to reach that area.

Chipping Away Years Of Paint

Recalling his part in the salvage, Electrician’s Mate Second Class Claude Miller wrote, “This consisted mainly of endless days of chipping the years of paint coats from the bulkheads. This paint was in many places a full one inch thick or more, and shattered like cement when chiseled by air-driven chipping hammers.” A native of Trenton, Mo., Miller had traveled far with the Navy, with no shortage of work. He had been with the aircraft carrier Yorktown at the Battles of Coral Sea and Midway. After his carrier was sunk, he and many of his friends were reassigned to Pearl to assist with the recovery work there.

“We worked in very hot and sometimes toxic spaces in half-hour shifts,” he added. “Then we would go up to topside for about half an hour, for fresh air and pineapple juice. Later on I was assigned to clean, rewind, and restore small electric motors, and also manage the engineers’ tool room.”

On May 17, West Virginia rose from the bottom. Work continued over the next three weeks to reduce her draft. Finally, it was down to the required minimum, 33 feet. She just fit into Dry Dock Number One on June 9. She went to the yard a few days later and stayed for 11 months. In April 1943, as Miller put it, “The old warrior finally was made ready to move on her own, and we sailed to Bremerton Navy Yard for the balance of the restoration.”

”When Helena Got Hit, Oglala Died Of Fright.”

The USS Oglala came last. On December 7, a torpedo had passed beneath her to strike the inboard Helena. Since the ships were tied together, the explosion ruptured Oglala’s bilge. Two hours later she capsized to port. Only her starboard side amidships remained above water. This led to the cynical joke that when she saw Helena get hit, Oglala died of fright.

Originally a coastal steamer, Oglala had joined the Navy in World War I. She was 34 years old, and her compartments were not designed to endure battle damage. The merits of raising her seemed thin. She was blocking valuable pier space, and scrapping seemed the best option. However, since demolition experts and equipment were unavailable, men from the yard and the repair ship Ortolan set out to rescue her, employing three elements.

The first was a set of 10 submarine salvage pontoons. Each was a giant metal cylinder that could be flooded and sunk, then attached to massive chains placed under the hull by divers. When pumped out, each pontoon would exert nearly 100 tons of lifting power. Second was a barge with winches to haul cables attached to Oglala. The third was compressed air, pumped into the hull to displace some of the water within. This required extreme care, given the hull’s weakened condition.

Oglala Stubbornly Resists All Efforts To Salvage Her

On April 11, bridles linking the chains to the pontoons broke. The pontoons floated free. They were resunk and new bridles were attached. Another attempt was made on April 23. Oglala rolled up to rest on her bottom with a 20-degree port list. Further work reduced this to 7 degrees, but her bow remained 6 feet below the surface and the stern was 19 feet deeper.

Cofferdamming came next, using wood and steel from the California salvage. Divers secured the sections and patched the port bilge, where the worst shock damage was. They cut free the wooden deck house, and a barge crane hoisted it away.

The cofferdam was completed in June, and pumping began. After the water had dropped seven feet, a section of the dam failed. Captain Wallin dryly noted, “This was not a design failure, but resulted from the action of some ‘practical men.’” The men in question had substituted 12-inch-square timbers for the steel H-beams specified in the designs. The wood was replaced with steel. Pumping above and from within the ship resumed. On June 23, Oglala floated.

The “Jonah Ship”

On the night of June 25, several pumps became fouled with debris, and Oglala’s bow sank. Her stern followed. The pumps were cleared, and the vessel was refloated once more on June 27. She sank a third time on June 29 when the cofferdam failed again. By then Oglala had earned the nickname “the Jonah ship.” She was returned to the surface again by July 1.

Fire broke out aboard Oglala that night when a technician spilled gasoline on a pump’s exhaust manifold. He then dropped the burning gas can into the water, igniting the oil on the water’s surface. It took 20 minutes for men from Ortolan and the Navy Yard Fire Department to extinguish the blaze. To their weary relief, the salvage men found that damage to the cofferdam was superficial.

On July 3, Oglala entered Dry Dock Number Two. To Wallin, the ship looked like Noah’s Ark without a roof. Despite her troubles, her hull was in better shape than expected. She eventually returned to service as a repair ship, aiding many other vessels throughout the war.

The Vessels Beyond Saving

The remaining victims of December 7 were beyond saving. Arizona had suffered several bomb hits. She had sunk with the loss of more than 1,100 men. One bomb hit had detonated her forward magazines and broken her back. Her armament and fuel were taken ashore, and Arizona was left where she sank. More than 20 years passed before the famed memorial was built above her.

Many torpedoes had struck Oklahoma. “I can vouch for five,” Young recalled. The blasts disintegrated much of her port hull. Fifteen minutes after the attack began, she capsized. She stayed that way for nearly six months. When men and resources were finally available, the most spectacular chapter of the Fleet salvage began.

Months Spent Devising Plan To Raise Oklahoma

The man responsible for leading the staggering effort to raise the Oklahoma was Commander F.H. Whitaker. Born and raised in Tyler, Tex., Whitaker was a naval construction expert who, like Wallin, had graduated from Annapolis and M.I.T. Whitaker and his staff spent months running tests to determine the most effective method to raise the ship. Experiments with a 1/96 scale model of the battleship in Pacific Bridge’s laboratory in San Francisco demonstrated that the Oklahoma could be gradually rolled into an upright position.

Divers placed pontoons at key points where the superstructure was buried in the mud. They also tested the strength of the mud. It had to be hard enough, or the ship might drag along the bottom as the winches turned. Fortunately, it was. The divers placed an additional 4,500 cubic yards of coral soil along the inshore side of the ship’s bow. Twenty-one concrete foundations were poured near the water’s edge on Ford Island. Seated in them were electric winches. With a system of hauling blocks and pulleys, the winches’ combined strength could exert a titanic 345,000 tons of pulling force. Forty-two miles of one-inch wire ran from the winches, through the blocks, out over a row of 40-foot A-frame towers built on Oklahoma’s hull, and finally to pads welded to the ship.

”Like Something From Gulliver’s Travels.”

It looked like something from Gulliver’s Travels, but the objective was to free a giant, not restrain it. The righting began on March 8, 1943. “With a lurch and a groan the Oklahoma started her slow but steady rotation,” Raymer wrote. “Everyone was jubilant. They cheered lustily as they observed the ship’s movements, drowning out for the moment the sounds of metal being crushed and torn.” Inexorably, almost invisibly, the ship began her roll to starboard. Turning at a snail’s pace, the winches reeled in cable for more than three months. Finally, on June 16, the battleship reached an upright position, listing only 3 degrees to port.

Pacific Bridge divers placed cofferdam patches over 200 feet of the Oklahoma’s hull. They sealed them with 2,000 tons of underwater concrete and added four more pontoons to offset the weight. Tragically, this led to the deaths of two men. Rusting inside one pontoon had removed the oxygen from the air. While working alone inside it, a Navy chief collapsed and died. A Pacific Bridge diver drowned when the wake from a passing boat drove another pontoon against Oklahoma, severing his air hose.

Dewatering revealed the remains of the sailors who had died a year and a half earlier. Identifying them was impossible. Bringing out what remained of over 400 men was unquestionably the salvage team’s hardest job.

Salvage Of Oklahoma Symbolized America’s Recovery From Attack

Oklahoma was refloated on November 3, 1943. On December 28, she entered Dry Dock Number Two. After moving to the yard, she was stripped of every useful piece of equipment.

Whitaker later wrote a detailed study of the project for The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers. Outlining in detail the full extent of this fantastic achievement, he concluded with what it meant for America. “All of us felt, I believe, that aside from the practical aspects, the salvage of the Oklahoma was symbolic of the Navy’s and the country’s recovery from the treacherous Japanese attack.”

On September 1, 1944, the Oklahoma was decommissioned. The hull was sold for scrap a year later. On May 10, 1947, two tugboats brought her out of Pearl, heading for the West Coast. She sank in a storm the following week. The men who had served in her were pleased. It was a better end than being cut to pieces for scrap.

Utah Left In Place

The USS Utah fared no better. She had capsized at her berth on the west side of Ford Island, and 58 men had perished. Over 30 years old, she had been converted to a training vessel for gunnery and aircraft exercises. The Navy deemed her a nonessential ship occupying nonessential space. The effort to right her was delayed until November 1943. The result was a shadow of the work done for the Oklahoma. By March 1944, the Utah had been partly righted, listing 47 degrees to port and almost completely submerged. Further work being too costly, the Navy left her as she was. Utah remains there today, a training site for divers.

During their time in the West Coast yards, each ship received not only final repairs but modernization. They emerged with sleek superstructures, better armor and armament, especially antiaircraft guns. Some underwent more than one refit and upgrade of their armament and other systems. They had the latest radar and radio equipment. Their power plants were greatly improved. They went on to exact a measure of revenge against the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Revitalized Ships Went On To Serve With Distinction

The revitalized ships distinguished themselves in countless ways. Cassin, for instance, earned six battle stars for carrier escort and invasion support duty in the Philippines and at Iwo Jima. Shaw won 11 stars, fighting from the Santa Cruz Islands to the Philippines. On January 7, 1945, Shaw and the destroyers Ausburne, Russell, and Braine sank a Japanese destroyer off Luzon. “It was the last surface action of the war,” Bulpitt noted. “We were there at the beginning, and we were there at the end.”

Vestal repaired ships in the Solomons. This was incalculably important. By contributing to the repair of other vessels when the future of the Pacific War was still in doubt, she paid many times over for the effort to save her at Pearl.

Nevada, Tennessee, and Raleigh joined the Aleutian Islands operation of 1943, reclaiming Attu and Kiska from the Japanese. Nevada went east to join the Atlantic Fleet, supporting the invasions of Normandy in June 1944, and then southern France in August.

Salvage Sisters Turn Tide Of War During Battle For Philippines

Tennessee joined West Virginia, California, Maryland, and Pennsylvania to participate in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944. The Japanese had summoned the majority of their dwindling naval forces to attempt to disrupt the American landings at Leyte in the Philippines. It was the largest naval campaign in history and marked the end of the Japanese Navy as an effective fighting force.

In a series of torpedo attacks, American destroyers ambushed a Japanese battleship force on the evening of October 25 at Surigao Strait. Using their new fire-control radar, Tennessee, West Virginia, and California followed up, firing more than 220 rounds from their main batteries. Maryland’s older radar system could track where the rounds fell, and with that she added 48 shots of her own.

By dawn, two Japanese battleships, Fuso and Yamashiro, had been sunk, along with three destroyers. The badly damaged cruiser Mogami was finished off by American torpedo planes. Surigao Strait was the last surface action fought between opposing battleships. Having waited almost three years for it, the veterans of Pearl Harbor savored the victory to the fullest. “It was a matter of great satisfaction to many Americans,” Wallin wrote. “And it must have been a bitter pill for the Japanese.”

Helena Fights Gallantly

Helena fought in the battles of Cape Esperance and Guadalcanal. During a night action, she fought off Japanese warships that were shelling Henderson Field on Guadalcanal. On September 15, 1942, she rescued survivors when the aircraft carrier Wasp was sunk, but her luck did not last. Helena was torpedoed during the Battle of Kula Gulf on July 6, 1943. She broke apart and sank. Approximately 170 men died with her.

The other ships served to the end of the war. Following the Japanese surrender, California, West Virginia, and Tennessee remained on station in Japan. But by the autumn of 1945, the U.S. Navy was the largest in the world, and the most expensive. Peace meant shrinking military budgets. All but one of the ships that rose from ruin at Pearl Harbor were decommissioned and consigned for scrapping by 1947. Only Curtiss endured. She served in the Korean War. As a science vessel, she took part in nuclear weapons tests in the Central Pacific and research work off Antarctica. She was decommissioned in 1957 and finally broken up in 1972.

Cruel But Necessary Retirement For Old Warriors

It all seemed heartless, and still does, to the men who lived and fought on these ships. Still, financial considerations aside, the ships were old. Despite their upgrading, it was becoming difficult for them to keep pace with newer ships coming into service, let alone those on the drawing boards. They had done their work.

Over 30 years after the Pearl Harbor attack, Ed Raymer retired from the Navy. Looking back, he readily acknowledged that he was part of a tremendous accomplishment. In 1996, Commander Raymer wrote, “Navy divers and Pacific Bridge civilian divers formed one leg of a salvage triad; salvage engineers and the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard comprised the other two. One leg needed the assistance and support of the other two to be effective.”

“We Keep Them Fit To Fight”

Vice Admiral Homer Wallin retired in 1955, finishing a career spanning 40 years. He had left Hawaii in July 1942 for a new assignment. During an awards ceremony on the deck of the aircraft carrier Enterprise, Admiral Nimitz presented Wallin with the Distinguished Service Medal. As Wallin wrote, “Admiral Nimitz read the citation for the work performed by the Salvage Organization and ended by adding, ‘for being an undying optimist.’ The Medal was accepted by me in the name of the organization which I had the honor to head.”

Wallin meant it. He knew the value of every man who helped him. “Enough cannot be said in praise of the salvage crew,” he asserted. “They worked hard and earnestly. They soon saw that the results of their efforts exceeded the fondest hopes of their supporters and they were urged on by their successful achievements.”

Without question, the Pearl Harbor salvage operation was the largest in naval history. The men behind it lived up to their creed: “We keep them fit to fight.”

This first appeared in Warfare History Network here. This article appeared last year.

Image: Wikipedia.

Robert Farley

World War III, Asia

Scholars have devoted far less attention to the planning of World War III in East Asia than to the European theater.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The 1984 wargame played out much differently. Instead of sitting on its hands, the Soviets opened the war with a massive air and missile assault against Japan. This assault destroyed most Japanese air assets on the ground, along with those of the US. special operators delivered by submarine and by clandestine civilian ship-launched unconventional attacks against U.S. bases across the Pacific, including Guam and Pearl Harbor.

Nearly every analyst during the Cold War agreed that, if Moscow and Washington could keep the nukes from flying, the Central Front in Europe would prove decisive in war between the United States and the Soviet Union. The NATO alliance protected the Western European allies of the United States from Soviet aggression, while the Warsaw Pact provided the USSR with its own buffer against Germany.

But when the Cold War really went hot, the fighting took place in Asia. In Korea and Vietnam, the Soviet Union waged proxy struggles against the United States, and both sides used every tool available to control the destiny of China. However, while few believed that the Pacific theater would determine the victor of World War III, both the United States and Soviet Union needed to prepare for the eventuality of war there.

Scholars have devoted far less attention to the planning of World War III in East Asia than to the European theater. The two classic novels of the Third World War (Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising and John Hackett’s The Third World War) rarely touched on developments in Asia. However, in the 1970s and 1980s, the Naval War College traced the potential course of war in East Asia as part of a series of global war games. These games lend a great deal of insight into the key actors in the conflict, and how the decisive battles of a Second Pacific War might have played out.

The Players:

China

How would China have reacted to the onset of a war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact? Beijing certainly regarded the survival of NATO as critical to its security from the 1970s on. The existence of NATO prevented the USSR from concentrating the bulk of the Red Army and of Soviet strategic aviation against China; a Soviet victory in the West would have put China in great peril. By the 1980s, China stood at a massive technological disadvantage against the USSR. Moreover, Beijing worried (perhaps rightly) that even if the USSR held its nuclear fire against NATO, it would view a strategic exchange with China as less risky. Thus, there was no guarantee that China would open a second front against the USSR.

Japan

Japan combined extraordinary economic strength with significant military power and a crucial geographic position. A Japan committed to the United States could effectively prevent the sortie of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, while enabling attacks against the Soviet Far East. A neutral Japan limited these options, but still provided the NATO alliance with a strong economic foundation in case of a protracted war. Washington had the advantage; it only depended on how and how much.

Korea

Would North Korea have joined a general Soviet war against NATO by invading South Korea? Such a move would have put extraordinary pressure on U.S. forces, although by the 1980s South Korea could probably survive with only measured U.S. assistance. However, Pyongyang answered to two masters; it required the support of both Beijing and Moscow. Given the unlikelihood that China would support a Soviet war against NATO, the prospect of Beijing’s acquiescence in a second Korean War would have been extremely sketchy.

Southeast Asia

The Soviets had an ally in Hanoi, but no means to support that ally against either China or the United States. Moreover, the Vietnamese had little to gain from joining a conflict; they were substantially controlled by Laos and Cambodia, and could do little more than harass shipping lanes in the South China Sea. However, given the bloody nose that Vietnam had inflicted on both countries in 1975 and 1980, neither Washington nor Beijing would have had much interest in reopening the conflict, especially with far more pressing issues at hand. That said, Vietnam could still make some mischief with U.S. allies in the region, and the PRC still had scores to settle.

The Chess Pieces:

Soviet Pacific Fleet

The Soviets took the Pacific seriously. By the 1980s, the fleet included two Kiev class aircraft carriers, and one Kirov class battlecruiser. In peacetime, the ships of the fleet sailed widely, regularly visiting Southeast Asia and even the Indian Ocean. Wartime, however, would have tightly constrained their operations. The Sea of Okhotsk served as a bastion for the SSBNs of the fleet, and naturally as a target for U.S. attack. Soviet objectives would have included the neutralization or defeat of Japan, the defense of the Russian Far East and potentially the penetration of the Pacific in order to attack maritime supply networks and distract U.S. attention from Europe.

U.S. Pacific Fleet

The United States Pacific Fleet commanded the balance of power in the region. With several carrier battlegroups supported by a variety of amphibious assault ships, battleships, nuclear attack submarines and a large array of land-based aircraft, the U.S. Navy could have undertaken both offensive and defensive operations to control the pace and course of the war. Moreover, the Japanese Maritime Self Defense force and the Royal Australian Navy could have both offered extensive support to the Americans. The central objectives for Allied naval forces would first have been to detect and defeat any Soviet efforts to penetrate attack submarines into the Pacific or Southeast Asian shipping lanes. Second, the U.S. Navy had taken upon itself a mission of attacking the periphery of the USSR directly, in order to distract the Red Army from the Central Front in Europe. At a minimum, this would have involved missile and airstrikes against Soviet installations throughout the Far East. At a maximum, it could have involved amphibious assaults against lightly defended Soviet targets.

The War Games

The Naval War College examined the potential for World War III in Asia as part of its global war game exercises in the 1970s and 1980s. Played annually between 1979 and 1988, each of the games explored alternative strategic and technological aspects of a confrontation between the superpowers. Although generally focused on Europe, the games always included an East Asian component. While the early wargames saw some variance (informed to some degree by the Sino-Vietnamese War), they held to a basic pattern; the Soviets hunkered down, while U.S. and allied naval forces chipped away at the bastions and tried to distract the Russians from Europe.

The 1984 wargame played out much differently. Instead of sitting on its hands, the Soviets opened the war with a massive air and missile assault against Japan. This assault destroyed most Japanese air assets on the ground, along with those of the US. special operators delivered by submarine and by clandestine civilian ship-launched unconventional attacks against U.S. bases across the Pacific, including Guam and Pearl Harbor.

The Soviets unleashed Pyongyang early in the conflict, redirecting U.S. attention towards the Korean Peninsula. Washington had effective answers; it quickly undertook offensive anti-submarine operations in the Sea of Japan, decimating Soviet SSN and SSBN forces. Soviet surface ships also came under attack. Nevertheless, in a daring move the Soviets launched a successful amphibious assault against Hokkaido. Although the operation suffered heavy losses, it succeeded in establishing a beachhead in Japan (though this was later withdrawn under fire).

The United States took a more aggressive stance in the 1988 wargame. Instead of waiting for a Soviet attack, Washington immediately began air and unconventional offensives against installations in the Soviet Far East, designed to decimate Soviet air defenses and threaten the survival of military-industrial installations. For their part, the Soviets hoped that a reticent military stance and a diplomatic offensive could keep Japan out of the war. This gambit succeeded to a point, as the Japanese suspended active military cooperation with the United States. American pressure eventually forced Tokyo to yield, and the Soviet opened offensive operations against the archipelago. By this time, however, the U.S. Navy had devastated Soviet naval forces, confining the Pacific fleet to its bastion in the Sea of Okhotsk.

Late in the war, the Soviets gave Pyongyang the green light to invade South Korea. However, this operation backfired, as the North Koreans failed to make substantial progress against combined U.S. and South Korean forces. Moreover, the Soviet move confirmed the U.S.-Japanese alliance, and helped drive Beijing into a much more hostile disposition towards the Soviets.

Both the Soviets and the Americans had options in Asia. The strategic environment was far more fluid than in Europe, allowing a variety of different choices to disrupt and destabilize the opponent. This made the course of war far less predictable. At its (nonnuclear) worst, war could have raged across Asia on multiple fronts, from Korea to Japan to the Sino-Soviet border. At its best, the combatants might have observed an uneasy quiet, at least until it became necessary to outflank a stalemate in the West. But as was the case in Europe, everyone concerned is fortunate that tensions never led to open combat.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to the National Interest, is author of The Battleship Book. He serves as a senior lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His work includes military doctrine, national security and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money, Information Dissemination and the Diplomat.

This first appeared in April 2016 and is being reposted due to reader interest. 

Image: Reuters.

Warfare History Network

History, Americas

The SeaMaster had a pressurized cabin and a crew of four: pilot, copilot, navigator, and flight engineer. Its sole defensive armament was a pair of 20mm cannons mounted in a remote-controlled tail turret.

Here’s What You Need To Remember: In retrospect, while the SSF concept had its ardent and articulate advocates, it was probably never going to perform a primary role in the Navy’s nuclear strike mission. Jet aircraft and carrier advancements obviated the four aircraft conceived to implement the program, but it was also overtaken by extraneous worldwide events.

The first few years after World War II were challenging ones for the U.S. Navy. Massive demobilization of personnel and rapid scrapping or retirement of ships created internal disruptions. Formation of a new Defense Department, combined with sharp reductions in defense spending, led to bitter rivalries among the American military services, each seeking its proper share of increasingly limited resources. Birth of an independent Air Force eager to gain control over all airpower accelerated an internecine struggle with the Navy, leading to the sudden 1949 cancellation of a proposed new aircraft carrier, USS United States.

In this milieu, the Navy faced a concurrent operational challenge: the adaptation of larger, heavier, and faster jet-powered aircraft to existing carriers that had supplanted battleships as primary projectors of naval power during the war. Senior naval aviators were concerned that the new supersonic jet aircraft, with their greater weight and higher takeoff and landing speeds, might not be able to operate safely from available carriers—or even new ones of any reasonable size. One theoretical solution was the Seaplane Striking Force (SSF), in which newly developed seaplanes and vertically launched and recovered aircraft would be unshackled from the need for land-based runways or large aircraft carriers.

As envisioned by Navy planners circa 1950, the SSF included as its primary strike weapons high-performance, four-engine, jet-powered seaplanes. These would be supported by a system of technologically advanced, water-based, or short takeoff and landing aircraft in defensive roles, large long-range flying boats for resupply, and relatively inexpensive surface ships and diesel-powered submarines as supporting tenders and refueling and maintenance stations. The centerpiece of the 1950s concept was the P6M SeaMaster flying boat, designed by the Glenn L. Martin Company of Baltimore. In support of the SeaMasters’ conventional or nuclear long-range attack mission were three aircraft proposed by Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation of San Diego (Convair). These included the vertical takeoff and landing XFY-1 Pogo tail-sitter defensive fighter aircraft; the F2Y-1 Sea Dart, an innovative delta-winged jet fighter that could take off and land from water; and the R3Y Tradewind, a sleek, large, four-engine turboprop flying boat.

The Convair XFY-1 Pogo

The Convair XFY-1 Pogo was perhaps the least significant among the aircraft elements of the proposed SSF. Designed as a vertical takeoff and landing fighter that could operate from a relatively small platform ashore or on a ship, the Pogo would be a fighter liberated from the need for a land runway or aircraft carrier flight decks. It would ostensibly be used to  flight decks. It would ostensibly be used to defend SSF forward operating bases and strike aircraft or convoys at sea. As originally designed by Convair, Pogo was an innovative tail-sitter with stubby delta wings and fins above and below the fuselage. Four small landing wheels were affixed to hydraulic pegs at the ends of the wing and vertical stabilizers.

The Pogo had three major flaws. First, the XFY-1 was powered by a huge turboprop engine in an era when American manufacturers were experiencing seemingly insoluble problems developing such engines with satisfactory power and reliability. The Pogo mounted the Allison YT40-A-16, which consisted of two coupled Allison T38 engines producing 5,500 estimated shaft horsepower driving two three-bladed, contra-rotating propellers. The propellers were intended to operate as helicopter rotors while the aircraft was in or near vertical mode during landings and takeoffs. Second, the vertical takeoffs and landings were foreign to pilots who were used to landing on runways or ships while flying forward with full view of the landing area and its periphery. Landings in particular were challenging and hazardous for fledgling pilots because a Pogo aviator had to land by looking over his shoulder or into rearview mirrors while descending to the pad. Third, even if the engine problems were resolved, maximum flight speeds for Pogo would barely exceed 550 miles per hour, far less than the speed of the new jet fighters deployed by the most probable enemy, Soviet MiGs. In addition, the relatively slow but lightweight Pogo lacked spoilers and air brakes and could not slow down efficiently after flying at high speeds.

Initial flight tests for the radical Pogo, perhaps unsurprisingly, were conducted indoors and tethered at Naval Air Station Moffett Field, California, in early 1954. Convair engineering test pilot and Marine reserve Lt. Col. James F. “Skeets” Coleman made the first untethered test flight at Lindbergh Field, San Diego, in August, reaching an altitude of 40 feet. Coleman continued takeoff and landing practice at Naval Auxiliary Air Station Brown Field, California, logging nearly 60 flight hours in 70 such drills, one of which attained an altitude of about 150 feet. In November, he became the first American pilot to finish a complete flight in the aircraft. He executed a vertical takeoff in Pogo, transitioned to horizontal flight over San Diego for about 20 minutes, then landed vertically within a square measuring 50 feet on each side. Attesting to the difficulty of flying the aircraft, Coleman was awarded the 1954 Harmon trophy, given annually to the world’s outstanding aviator.

During its brief career, the sole experimental Pogo logged only about 80 flights. By late 1954, it had become obvious that the aircraft would never overcome its three major problems. The XFY-1 program was terminated by the Navy in August 1955. Convair continued briefly with limited testing of the aircraft, which was grounded for good in November 1956. The single prototype of the unsuccessful Pogo was later transferred to the National Air and Space Museum at Suitland, Maryland, where it currently remains.

The XF2Y-1 Sea Dart

In early 1948, the Navy initiated a design contest for a high-performance, supersonic seaplane fighter that could operate from forward areas without the need of either carriers or land air bases. Convair entered the contest in October 1948 via its proposal for a delta-winged design with streamlined hull that rested on the water and rose up on a pair of retractable hydro-skis for takeoffs and landings. After two years of extensive testing and empirical revisions of seaplane designs, Convair was awarded a contract  in January 1951 for two prototypes, which were assigned the designation XF2Y-1, Sea Dart, and became an essential element of the SSF concept. The Sea Dart was to be powered by two afterburning Westinghouse J46 jet engines, providing 6,000 pounds of thrust each, fed by a pair of air intakes mounted high on the sides of the fuselage above the wing and behind the cockpit. This configuration was chosen to prevent water spray from entering the intakes during takeoffs and landings. The plane was fitted with a set of dive brakes on the lower rear fuselage, which also doubled as water brakes and rudder while taxiing on the surface.

Sea Darts took off and landed on a pair of retractable hydro-skis that extended outward on hydraulic legs from recesses cut into the lower hull, one ski on each side of the hull. The Navy had such confidence in the design that it ordered 12 production F2Y-1 aircraft in August 1952. Pending the availability of the J46 jets, the first prototype XF2Y-1 was fitted with two non-afterburning Westinghouse J34 engines providing only 3,400 pounds of thrust each. Initial flight tests in April 1953 revealed that the aircraft was severely underpowered for its weight. In addition, the hydro-skis vibrated so much during takeoffs and landings that the aircraft was extremely difficult to control. To cure the vibration problem, the skis were redesigned and their hydraulic legs improved. But inadequate thrust and seemingly insoluble vibration problems with the hydro-skis continued to plague the Sea Dart. In October 1953, the Navy canceled the remaining XF2Y-ls.

The first of four contracted YF2Y-1 service test aircraft joined the program in early 1954. It was powered by a pair of afterburning Westinghouse J46 turbojets. In overall appearance, the YF2Y-1 was similar to the XF2Y-1 except for the revised nacelles housing more powerful J46 engines. Convair test pilot Charles E. Richbourg made the initial flight tests of this Sea Dart. In August 1954, at an altitude of 34,000 feet, he took the first YF2Y-1 through the sound barrier while in a shallow dive, making the Sea Dart the first and to date the only seaplane to go supersonic. Since the Sea Dart had been designed before the application of the fuselage area rule, the aircraft experienced high transonic drag and remained unable to exceed the speed of sound in level flight.

The Fatal End of the Sea Dart Program

By the fall of 1954, both the Navy and the manufacturer were confident that all three aircraft being developed by Convair were ready for a public demonstration of their capabilities. In November 1954 the Navy scheduled a daring but, in retrospect, premature flight demonstration in San Diego for all three aircraft. Invited for the performance were high-ranking Navy officers and Defense Department officials, Convair management and engineering personnel, and a large press contingent. The first act was performed by the XFY-1 at Naval Auxiliary Air Station Brown Field, where the experimental Pogo made a successful vertical takeoff, conversion to level flight, and safe vertical descent on its quadruple landing wheels. Following this performance, guests were transported to Convair’s seaplane ramp on San Diego Bay, where they were treated to an impressive flyby from the R3Y Tradewind.

The last scheduled activity on the public demonstration was a takeoff, flyby, and landing by the Convair YF2Y-l Sea Dart by veteran test pilot Richbourg. The Sea Dart made a spectacular takeoff run from the bay, and Richbourg retracted its skis immediately after liftoff. He then flew east of San Diego and turned back to perform a westerly flyby over the bay. The Sea Dart had reached about 500 knots over San Diego city hall when Richbourg fired the after- burners. The aircraft suddenly disintegrated, enveloped by a huge fireball, and plunged inverted into the bay near Convair rescue boats. Richbourg was killed by the impact and his body immediately recovered by frogmen. As a result of the disaster, all Sea Dart operations were temporarily suspended until a Navy accident board completed its investigation. In December 1954, the board concluded that the accident had been caused by pilot-induced longitudinal pitch oscillations and not any unique design deficiencies in the Sea Dart itself.

Even before the public fiasco at the YF2Y-1 flight demonstration, the Navy had been gradually losing interest in the Sea Dart project. Even with more powerful engines, the aircraft could not achieve supersonic speeds. Continuing problems with saltwater intrusion plagued the jet engines, and excessively vibrating water skis could not be corrected. As a consequence, the Navy canceled 10 of the 16 production aircraft in December 1953. All remaining six production F2Y-1s were canceled in March 1954. The fatal crash by Richbourg later that year, with the attendant bad publicity, put the quietus on further development, and the Sea Dart program was relegated to test status only. Operational testing of all Sea Darts ended in 1957.

Flying Boats: The Tradewinds and the SeaMaster

The SSF featured the innovative Martin P6M SeaMaster flying boat as its principal strike weapon, one designed to operate from forward, mobile bases at sea, free of costly airfields or aircraft carriers. Two additional aircraft types were required to support the SeaMaster in the new weapons system. They included protective defensive fighters, as epitomized by the Convair XFY-1 Pogo and F2Y-1 Sea Dart. In addition, large, fast seaplanes acting as transport, supply, and refueling aircraft would be vital to support the SeaMaster strike element and mobile base components. The Convair R3Y Tradewind was developed to meet this demanding requirement.

R3Y Tradewinds were a derivative of the postwar XP5Y patrol flying boat, two of which were built by Convair in San Diego for the Navy. The XP5Ys featured a high-aspect-ratio wing and four complex turboprop engines driving six-bladed contra-rotating propellers. Delivered in 1950, these predecessor aircraft included a laminar flow wing mounted high on a sleek fuselage with a single-step hull. One of the two experimental test models crashed at sea in July 1953 from presumed engine failure. Shortly after this incident, the Navy terminated XP5Y tasking for maritime patrol and switched its mission to cargo and troop transport for the SSF.

The first of five sleek R3Y-1 Tradewinds, successors to the XP5Y flying boat, made its initial flight in February 1954. All armament and tail-plane dihedrals were deleted from the predecessor design. The new cargo and transport version had a cargo hatch 10 feet wide on the port side of the hull aft of the wing, and its engine nacelles were reconfigured for new Allison T-40-A-10 turboprop motors. These complex engines, driving two contra-rotating propellers through a gearbox, proved to be an Achilles heel for the R3Ys. The Tradewinds had a conventional two-step flying boat hull, without bulkheads above the cargo deck, thus opening up a vast interior storage space that could be configured in various ways. The R3Y-1 could seat 80 combat-equipped troops in rear-facing seats, carry 72 litter patients plus 12 attendants, or haul 24 tons of cargo—all in air-conditioned, pressurized comfort. In February 1955, one of the five R3Y-1s set a seaplane record that still stands; it flew from the West to the East Coast at an average speed of 403 miles per hour.

“Flying LSTs”

Over the next two years, six improved R3Y-2 aircraft were delivered to the Navy; they featured a clamshell cargo door on the front of the fuselage. This earned them the appellation of “Flying LSTs” because they included the same high-speed roll-on, roll-off cargo-handling capability employed by the Navy’s Landing Ship Tank. A serious operational problem arose with the clamshell front door version of the R3Y-2 aircraft. Pilots reported that it was almost impossible to hold the aircraft steady with only engine power while it was loaded and unloaded. This was a crucial shortcoming, as failure to hold steady might cause the aircraft to broach catastrophically in the surf. Three of the R3Y-1s and one R3Y-2 were later modified to become aerial tankers, essential for the fighter aircraft incorporated in the SSF. The converted R3Y-2 achieved fame in August 1956 by refueling four F9F Cougar fighter jets simultaneously, the first time such a feat had been accomplished.

In March 1956, all the R3Y-ls and R3Y-2s were placed under operational control of Navy transport squadron VR-2 at Naval Air Station Alameda, California. Apparently insoluble problems with the Allison turboprop engines continued. In-flight separations of the gearbox and propeller afflicted two different R3Y aircraft during test flights in May 1957 and January 1958. Financial constraints and repeated failures of the Allison turboprop engines resulted in the aircraft’s termination after only 11 had been delivered to the Navy. Transport squadron VR-2 was disbanded in April 1958. All remaining P5Y and R3Y aircraft were grounded later that year.

By the late 1950s, only the centerpiece of the SSF, the Martin P6M SeaMaster, remained under development. It too was experiencing severe problems with test-flight accidents, cost overruns, and seemingly interminable delays. The key to the SSF would be its own nuclearbomb-carrying strike aircraft, a jet-powered, fast, technologically advanced seaplane. Accordingly, it issued specifications for such an aircraft in April 1951. Design requirements for the new flying boat were stringent. To achieve them, a seaplane would require a performance equal to that of a land-based jet. The aircraft would need a bomb capacity of 14 tons, be able to attack targets 1,500 miles from its mobile base, and achieve speeds of 650 miles per hour during low-level attacks. The Navy selected Martin to build two prototype aircraft to these rigid specifications in October 1952, to be identified as XP6M-1s.

The two XP6M-1 prototypes were fitted with four Allison J71-A-4 turbojet engines mounted in pairs within four nacelles above the wing near its roots. Known as SeaMasters, the two aircraft had anhedral drooped wings, featuring 40 degrees of sweepback that ended in wingtip fuel tanks that also served as floats. The wingtip floats contained equipment that helped dock the aircraft. The SeaMaster had a pressurized cabin and a crew of four: pilot, copilot, navigator, and flight engineer. Its sole defensive armament was a pair of 20mm cannons mounted in a remote-controlled tail turret.

Testing the SeaMaster

During flight testing in 1955, the initial prototype SeaMaster quickly revealed one obvious weakness. Its jet engines had been oriented parallel to the hull so that exhaust gases exited over the rear fuselage, thus scorching it in that area and limiting use of afterburners. Corrective action was taken on later P6M-1 and P6M-2 models, which mounted their four turbine nacelles in a toed-in manner so that jet exhausts were directed outboard of the rear fuselage. Other problems encountered by the first experimental XP6M-1 were unexplained vibrations throughout the hull, plus rear turret and rotary bomb rack malfunctions.

By late 1955, most problems with the XP6M-1 were determined to be curable, and the Navy assigned an evaluation team from its nearby Naval Air Test Center in Maryland to work with Martin during further development. In December 1955, a mixed crew of Martin and Navy personnel took one XP6M-1 up for a routine test flight. While descending at full power from 8,700 feet, the test aircraft suddenly exploded and disintegrated in the air, killing all four occupants.

The Navy immediately instituted an exhaustive accident investigation into the loss of the XP6M-1, concluding that the plane had experienced longitudinal divergence that tore the engines loose and caused the wings to fold entirely under the airplane before they broke away. The investigation could not ascertain the cause of the divergence but suggested that it might have been the result of a failure in the activator for the horizontal stabilizer. The Navy’s continued confidence in the SeaMaster program drove further development of the aircraft, and there was no cancellation of the contracted six YP6M-1 service evaluation planes. With surprisingly little delay, the remaining XP6M-1 resumed testing in May 1956. It was modified to include new flight instrumentation, plus ejection seats for all four crew members. During a flight test in November 1956, the aircraft again broke up in the air, although this time all crew members ejected safely. An investigation traced the cause to an error in the design calculation for the tail control system.

Throughout 1958, the YP6M-1s tested their mine-laying, bombing, navigation, and reconnaissance systems. The Navy proceeded with 24 production versions of the P6M-2s, the first of which was delivered by Martin early in 1959. These aircraft were powered by more powerful non-afterburning Pratt & Whitney J75-P-2 turbojet engines that permitted a substantial increase in gross weight for the aircraft. Since this meant the SeaMasters sat lower in the water, their wing anhedral was eliminated. The P6M-2s were also fitted with improved navigation and bombing systems, plus midair refueling probes. In this production version, the SeaMaster was an impressive weapon. It achieved the specified 650 miles per hour for on-the-deck attacks. But the aircraft also evidenced some unpleasant flight characteristics, such as rapid changes in directional trim, severe buffeting, and wing drop requiring high control inputs to counter. These defects were traced to larger engine nacelles required by the J75 engines. Other problems also became evident as testing continued, such as tip floats digging into the water during choppy seas and engine surges.

In August 1959, the Navy canceled further operational development of the SeaMaster program. By then, the modern equivalent of $2.5 billion had been spent on the SeaMasters, which had ballooned in cost and suffered numerous, still unsolved technological problems. The Martin P6M SeaMaster development joined the Convair Pogo, Sea Dart, and Tradewind programs as failed elements of the SSF.

The Carrier Wins Over the Seaplane Striking Force

In retrospect, while the SSF concept had its ardent and articulate advocates, it was probably never going to perform a primary role in the Navy’s nuclear strike mission. Jet aircraft and carrier advancements obviated the four aircraft conceived to implement the program, but it was also overtaken by extraneous worldwide events. Seaplane advocates in the Navy were far outweighed by senior carrier aviators, whose influence became dominant during the 1950s. Perhaps most important, the rapid development of ballistic missiles dramatically reduced the need for manned aircraft as delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons. The Seaplane Striking Force was a costly concept whose time never arrived.

Originally Published November 25, 2018.

This article originally appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikipedia

Stratfor Worldview

Russian Military, Europe

The decline in Russia's defense output raises concerns about the competitive strength of Russia's defense industry in general.

Here's What You Need to Remember: As a great power, Russia has lofty ambitions for the modernization of its military. Budget constraints, more competition from elsewhere and other issues, however, mean many of the army's most ostentatious projects never make it past the showroom.

Russia's defense industry is face to face with a major foe, but it's not a foreign military power. The Kremlin has been striving to modernize all branches of the Russian military, but the country's defense industry is struggling thanks to decreasing volumes of orders, difficulties in attracting high-skilled talent and limits to its technological capabilities. According to recent figures, the performance of Russia's aerospace sector is declining precipitously. In 2018, for instance, Russian aircraft and spacecraft makers produced 13.5 percent less than in 2017. And there's been no letup in 2019 either: In the first two months of the year, aerospace output plummeted 48 percent year on year.

The decline in Russia's defense output raises concerns about the competitive strength of Russia's defense industry in general, whose health is critical if the country is to project itself as a military power in the longer term. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov attributed the reduction in output to a slowdown of orders for military systems, but projections suggest the slowdown is not just a short-term fluctuation; in fact, it's expected to become even worse in the future. The downturn in oil prices has taken a bite out of Russia's bottom line, squeezing spending for the military — all at a time when the country's arms manufacturers have lost their competitive edge in the global arms market. Together, these factors ensure that Russia's defense industry will struggle to get out of its funk.

Suffering From a Dearth of Funds

This dire picture stands in stark contrast to Russia's frequent presentation of sensational new platforms. In reality, however, just a few of the big-ticket weapon systems — such as the T-14 main battle tank or the Su-57 fighter aircraft — find buyers, as the rest remain mere prototypes. Russia has prioritized some hardware, such as the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, due to their strategic relevance to the country's overall military posture, but Moscow has failed to fully develop other programs or only introduced them on a limited scale.

Under pressure from a limited government budget, the Kremlin even started reducing its military spending in 2017 — a strong indicator that, despite the modernization push, Russia's financial challenges are taking a toll on the country ambitions. Economically, the plunge in oil prices at the end of 2014 hurt Russia's bottom line, depriving the country of essential revenue and forcing it to dip into its reserves to bridge the gap. Today, more than four years on, Russian oil revenues are rising, yet the country is continuing to deal with the consequences of the lean years. Beyond that, low revenues from taxes, which have forced Russia to raise taxes and the retirement age, and Western sanctions over Moscow's activities in Ukraine and elsewhere, have shrunk the financial pool available to military planners.

But the Kremlin's problems don't end there. In the past, Russia has benefited from its position as a major global arms exporter to fuel further military development. During the 1990s, for example, such sales were critical to the country as it faced severe economic hardship. While Russia remains the world's second-largest arms exporter (only the United States sells more), the actual value of those exports has been decreasing significantly. Between 2014 and 2018, their total value dropped by as much as 17 percent. Again, budgetary limits are somewhat to blame: In the past, Russia frequently used arms exports as a political tool, offering weapons at a heavy discount, if not entirely free. But with Russia no longer able to offer customers a good deal on its fighter jets and other defense products, the country is losing business.

And Russia's arms industry faces an even greater problem in the years to come: reduced competitiveness. Russia has long dominated some of the market by offering affordable military equipment without attaching any conditions regarding human rights, but the rise of China's military industry, as well as several smaller producers around the world, has made it much more difficult to compete for contracts.

Ultimately, the loss of export opportunities not only complicates Russia's efforts to finance its defense industry, it also reduces the scale at which the defense industry produces, which, in turn, decreases scale-dependent savings that accompany higher levels of production. In effect, this means that the more Russia fails to find foreign customers for specific weapon systems, the more it will become burdened with a higher relative cost per unit as it seeks to meet its own needs. The conundrum, in turn, will further limit Russia's ability to competitively price weapons systems for export, thereby perpetuating the effect.

This is why, for example, India's withdrawal from the joint development and production of the Su-57 fighter aircraft last year has cast doubt on Russia's ability to sustain the program in a meaningful way or at an acceptable cost. As a result, Russia has sought — albeit unsuccessfully so far — to export the Su-57 more widely in an effort to find a partnership that would make the aircraft viable.

The Search for Solutions

Russia, accordingly, has been considering other solutions to safeguard its defense sector and improve its overall industrial performance. One possible remedy centers on what amounts to burden sharing across sectors. In this, the country is looking to harness the defense industry's strengths for civilian production, similar to the way Western enterprises such as Boeing or Airbus operate. By producing non-military products for domestic and foreign civilian markets, Russian defense manufacturers could sustain themselves even if their military goods are earning less revenue.

Unfortunately for Russia, the chances that such a gambit will succeed are low — even for domestic consumption. Although Moscow has been pushing an import substitution program amid the West's sanctions, Russian firms continue to privilege foreign, instead of domestic, components. In 2018, 38 percent of Russian industrial enterprises purchased equipment from abroad; two years before, the figure was just 6 percent. Ultimately, if Russian arms producers are failing to find sales for defense customers at home, they're unlikely to find any more of a domestic civilian market for their wares.

As a great power, Russia has lofty ambitions for the modernization of its military. Budget constraints, more competition from elsewhere and other issues, however, mean many of the army's most ostentatious projects never make it past the showroom. And moving forward, the Russian defense industry's plight is unlikely to improve as it faces a vicious circle that is leaving it worse for wear.

Russia's Defense Industry Finds Itself in a Tailspin is republished with the permission of Stratfor Worldview, a geopolitical intelligence and advisory firm. This article first appeared several years ago and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters