Diplomacy & Crisis News

Charlie Gao

Security, Europe

Russia wants to make money while showing off its weapon systems.

Here's What You Need to Know: Moscow likes to export its weapons.

While Russia’s next-generation Armata has not yet officially entered service, buzz has already been created on what countries other than Russia might field it.

Russians are no stranger to cooperative weapons development (as seen in the Brahmos missile) and even offering to export products before they are finished (as seen with the Su-57).

What countries might field the Armata in the future? Here is a few ideas:

1. India:

India is looking to be the primary export partner for the T-14 Armata, with the Armata fulfilling the requirements for India’s FRCV open contract.

Other tanks that could compete against the Armata within the FRCV contract requirements are the Korean K2 Black Panther and Ukrainian BM Oplot. Most current Western tanks like the Leopard 2A7 and M1A2 Abrams are too heavy for Indian terrain.

The Armata also faces domestic opposition in the Arjun Mk. 2, but it’s unsure if the latest version of the Arjun can overcome the poor reputation and controversies of its predecessor.

2. China:

Despite its own burgeoning arms industry, China continues to acquire advanced Russian military equipment such as the Su-35S and the S-400.

In doing so, it’s continuing a relationship that began in the 1990s in which China buys expensive and close to cutting edge equipment from Russia then incorporates its features into its own products, as it has done with the J-11B and HQ-9.

As such, China will likely try to buy Armatas, if only in limited numbers to evaluate them, adopt what technology they think is good, and perhaps produce their competing version of the Armata for export.

3. Algeria:

Algeria has a long standing defense relationship with Russia and fields some of the most advanced Russian weapons in its military. They operate T-90s, S-50, and Su-30MKAs, which are an advanced variant of the Su-30.

They even have bought more recent Russian developments such as versions of the BMPT infantry support tank and Yak-130 fighter trainer.

Russia appears to trust them as a partner in advanced weapons development programs, and has asked them to be partners in the PAK FA (Su-57) project and appears to be willing to export the advanced fighter to them.

Algeria acquiring Armatas would ensure their supremacy as one of the most powerful militaries in their region and the Maghreb, and even Africa. However, given the large number of already advanced (for the region) T-90s they field, it’s unlikely Algeria will acquire more than a handful of Armatas due to the expensive cost.

4. Egypt:

Similar to Algeria, Egypt has gravitated towards purchasing Russian equipment recently, including T-90s and MiG-35s. Interestingly, both Egypt and Iraq have shifted from using U.S.-made export versions of the Abrams back to Russian-manufactured armor in their recent T-90 purchases.

For Egypt, this ends an almost thirty year relationship with the United States, in which they first bought M60 Pattons and then M1A1 export Abrams. Despite the recent pivot towards Russian products, Russia appears to trust Egypt and has offered the Su-57 to export to them as well.

As such, Egypt is a likely Armata export customer. That being said, they’re unlikely to procure them in the near future. The Egyptian Army placed an order for T-90s to augment their Abrams fleet in 2017, so they are unlikely to make another order for modern tanks for quite some time.

5. United Arab Emirates:

Similar to Algeria and Egypt, the United Arab Emirates has been cited as a potential export customer for the advanced Su-57 fighter, indicating a Russian willingness to cooperate on military and technical affairs.

Russia has been attempting to align the UAE’s armament procurement towards it more recently, offering it access to the Russian GLONASS GPS-equivalent satellite network.

With regards to armor, the UAE fields both Russian BMP-3 tracked infantry fighting vehicles and Ukrainian BTR-3 wheeled armored personnel carriers. Its entire tank fleet is comprised of French LeClerc Main Battle Tanks, which are of a fairly advanced type and which have been receiving considerable upgrades since being adopted.

According to this French blog, the type has performed satisfactorily in Yemen, suffering minimal losses.

Despite the strategic successes of the LeClerc, it was noted that the tank was penetrated on the frontal arc by an old Konkurs anti-tank guided missile. The projectile killed the driver and wounded the tank commander.

As a result, the UAE looked into upgrade kits for the LeClerc, including soft and hard-kill systems. However if France is unable to deliver or if the Armata’s solution to these problems is evaluated to be superior, the UAE might find itself procuring the Armata in the near future.

Charlie Gao studied political and computer science at Grinnell College and is a frequent commentator on defense and national security issues. This first appeared in November 2018.

Image: Reuters

Sebastien Roblin

Security,

For the first time, the Wehrmacht had encountered a tank that completely that outmatched its own.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The lumbering Char B1 didn’t really suit the Heer’s style of high-speed armored warfare. However, a victorious Germany decided to employ more than 161 captured Char B1s, overhauled and designated Panzerkampfwagen B2 740(f), in more static roles. Some were used in the invasion of Russia. Others fought huge partisan armies in the Balkans. Panzer Battalion 213 was even deployed to the Channels Islands that Germany captured from England.

At five o’clock in the morning on May 16, 1940 a company of the 8th Panzer Regiment lay in an ambush position along a rubble-strewn street of the French town of Stonne. The day before, the unfortunate village had changed hands several times as French troops attempted to stem the tide of German armor headed toward the English channel, threatening to trap Allied forces in Belgium.

Three squadrons of Stuka dive bombers ravaged Stonne, as well as both French and German artillery. That morning, the Panzer IIIEs and IVDs—then the best tanks in German service—deployed to stave off a French counterattack.

Suddenly, a squat green tank lumbered around a street block directly before of the German unit. This was Eure, a 31.5-ton Char B1 bis tank commanded by Capt. Pierre Billotte. His driver, Sergeant Durupt, triggered the 75-millimeter howitzer fixed in the front hull roared, smashing the Panzer III to the rear of the column. At the same time, Billotte swiveled the smaller 47-millimeter high velocity cannon in the turret and picked off the lead tank—a mere 30 meters away.

The wrecks trapped the Panzer company in a head-to-head confrontation with the Gaelic behemoth. 37-millimeter rounds cracked from the long barrels of Panzer III tanks and ricocheted off Eure’s turret. Low-velocity 75-millimeter shells made basso thuds as they spat out the stubby guns of Panzer IV tanks, only to shatter in clouds of shrapnel against the French tank’s glacis.

More than 140 shells cratered Eure’s armor—but none penetrated. Billotte coolly blasted one Panzer after another.

Once he had destroyed the entire company—11 Panzer IIIs and two Panzer IVs in all—Billotte continued his advance and added two 37-millimeter anti-tank guns to the tally. By 7:00 A.M., Stonne was back under French control and would remain so for the rest of the day. The same day, the tank Riquewhir would charge into a column of enemy infantry, its blood-stained tracks causing the German 64th Schutzen Regiment to panic and flee an entire sector of Stonne.

For the first time, the Wehrmacht had encountered a tank that completely that outmatched its own.

France will of course go down in history for being defeated by tanks in World War II, but it was not due to lacking tanks—the French army fielded nearly 4,000 tanks of more than a dozen different types, most of them well-armored. Rather, poor organization, confused doctrine and disastrous operational conduct defeated the French military.

The Char B1 was conceived only a few years after World War I as an infantry support tank with a heavy assault role. The “battle tank” would tackle enemy fortifications, artillery and tanks head-on, prevailing through superior firepower and armor. The slow heavies would punch holes allowing faster “cavalry tanks” to penetrate behind enemy lines.

The resulting design revealed its World War I-era pedigree with huge tracks as tall as the hull intended to ford trenches with ease—as well as its multiple cannon armament. A heavy 75-millimeter howitzer was fixed with only vertical traverse in the hull for blasting pillboxes. It was operated by the driver via a sophisticated Naeder hydraulic system for precise aiming, and serviced by a loader. Additionally, a small turret on top mounted a 47-millimeter gun for hunting tanks. There were also machine guns in the turret and hull for close defense against infantry.

It took nearly a decade and a half before the first B1 was ready to enter production in 1937. A short initial run of 35 Char B1s was quickly superseded by the B1 bis model, with higher-velocity SA35 47-millimeter gun for busting enemy tanks and a 300-horsepower engine. Most notably, the B1 bis boasted 55 to 60 millimeters of armor on all sides, leaving it virtually without major weak points. For comparison, the Panzer III and IV had only 20 to 35 millimeters of armor.

Despite completely overmatching its peers in firepower and armor, the B1 had major flaws. It could only achieve a maximum speed of 17 miles per hour while contemporaries typically averaged 25 miles per hour. The B1’s range of 110 miles wasn’t actually worse than that of German medium tanks, but it required tons more fuel. The French army even experimented with having the B1s tow extra fuel supplies in a trailer, then decided to rely on fuel trucks, which were vulnerable and in short supply.

The B1 also suffered from the one-man turret endemic to French tanks. A B1’s commander had to give verbal commands to his crew and possibly the other tanks in his unit, aim and fire the 47-millimeter gun in the turret and reload the gun. It was simply too much do efficiently. Even though the turret gun could theoretically fire up to 15 rounds a minute, a rate of fire of four rounds per minutes was more typical.

A final weakness of the Char B1 was its rudimentary ER53 radio, through which the operator could only transmit simple commands via Morse code! Even though an audio receiving model later became available, it was considered inferior because it was drowned out by the roar of the engine. By contrast, German Panzers all had excellent radio communications, affording commanders much finer tactical and operational control.

At least 369 B1 Bis were manufactured by Renault and four additional French companies. Each was individually named after a French city, colony or even wine. They were not cheap — 1.5 million francs each, four or five times the cost of a light tank. Three B1 ter prototypes were also constructed with five-man crews, 70-millimeters armor plates and 350-horsepower engines, but the Third Republic fell before they could enter production.

France entered World War II with only four battle tank battalions, or BCCs, each with 33 B1 tanks. By the time major ground operations began in May 1940, two BCCs each served in three reserve armored divisions, or  DCRs, that were intended to support the infantry. A fourth DCR was hastily formed under command of Gen. De Gaulle, as well as five independent companies for supporting infantry formations.

Unfortunately, the DCRs were gravely lacking in logistical and repair services, a weakness compounded fatally by the Char B1’s high fuel consumption and frequent breakdowns. As air strikes and armored columns caused the French logistical system to collapse, more Char B1s were abandoned for lack of fuel or necessary repairs than were destroyed in combat. The DCRs’ infantry regiments also lacked motorized transport to keep up with the tanks. Invariably, the B1s roamed ahead into battle without infantry support.

Nonetheless, the B1s were very tough—flat-out invulnerable to the 20-milimeter gun on the Wehrmacht’s most numerous tank, the Panzer II. Panzer III, 38t and IV tanks only had a slim chance of penetrating at ranges under 100 meters. All were easily destroyed by both of the B1’s cannons.

Only 88-millimeter flak guns could reliably take out a B1. For example, Jeanne d’Arc continued running despite being struck by 90 shells and losing both of her main guns, before finally being dispatched by a flak gun.

The French tanks occasionally were disabled by smaller guns. In the first day of the battle for Stonne, a Panzer IV knocked out the B1s Gaillac and Hautvillier, while an anti-tank gun destroyed Chinon with a hit aimed at the side armor. Billotte’s unit, the 3rd DCR, was eventually deployed elsewhere, and Stonne fell to German forces on May 19 after changing hands 17 times.

However, a concurrent French counterattack in Flavion, Belgium better illustrates how the near-impenetrable armor, superior firepower and bravery and determination of the French tankers could not makeup for failures in logistics and combined-arms coordination.

On May 15, the 62 Char B1s and 80 H39 light tanks of the 1st DCR rolled forward to block the advance of more than 546 tanks of the 5th and 7th Panzer Divisions, the latter commanded by Erwin Rommel. The lopsided numbers were typical of the German superiority at concentrating their armored forces to decisive effect.

The B1s deployed to battle at 8:00 A.M. short on fuel, many of their supply trucks already lost due to air attacks. Just 26 tanks of the 28th BCC rolled forward to block the 7th’s path. Four had already broken down. From atop a hill, they began picking off swarming Panzer IV and 38t tanks. The German armor charged, closing within 100 meters, only to be scourged by 47- and 75-millimeter shells. Sousse took out seven tanks, Phillipeville six and other tanks averaging three each. In return, only a single B1 was knocked out and another damaged. The Panzers retreated.

Rommel then committed a Panzer regiment to a flanking attack which was countered by a company of B1s—some of which ran out of fuel in the process, forcing them to manually rotate their turrets. Three immobilized B1s were swarmed by a dozen German tanks each, their armor scoured by small-caliber shells until the crews were forced to bail. But the German probe turned back.

Rommel then called in artillery and dive-bomber strikes on the hill. His Panzer IVs had exhausted their 75-millimeter shells to little effect on the B1s’ heavy armor.

Around noon, the 37th BCC dispatched its 2nd company to roll to the assistance of the 28th, but fuel shortages and mechanical breakdowns reduced the unit to only five running tanks when they were ambushed by anti-tank guns and 30 Panzer IIIs and IVs hiding in the Biere l’Abbé woods. The vastly outnumbered heavy tanks took out 15 Panzers, but three B1s succumbed to the sheer weight of incoming fire. The remaining Guynemere, Ourcq and Isere retreated, heavily damaged.

The other two companies of the 28th began to withdraw. While the 1st company got out cleanly, the 3rd bumped into a battalion of powerful 88-millimeter Flak guns and 105-millimeter howitzers near Denée. After losing all but seven of his B1s, Lehoux ordered his company to charge, even though he lacked infantry and artillery support. The heavy guns wiped out the French tanks—but not before the French crushed several 37-millimeter guns under their treads, and destroyed eight of the German flak and field pieces with direct fire.

Back at Flavion, the 37th BCC single-handedly continued to hold up an entire Panzer division. Growing desperate, Rommel deployed 88-millimeter flak guns a kilometer away. These begin picking off the fuel-starved French tanks, which could barely move to fire back with their hull-mounted howitzers. A final charge by the Panzers caused the signal to retreat to be sounded at 6:00 P.M. Between the lack of fuel, mechanical breakdowns and enemy fire, only three of the battalion’s B1s escaped.

Though a battalion and a half of French tanks had knocked out roughly 100 Panzers, a failure to support their actions with artillery, infantry and air support meant the tankers’ sacrifice had been in vain.

Char B1s continued to see action into June 1940, frustrating German efforts at the local level. In five days, three B1s defending the bridges at Rethel knocked out 20 German tanks, nine armored cars and 38 motor vehicles. Legendary general Heinz Guderian even notes the hassle a lone Char B1 caused in his memoir Panzer Leader: “All the shells I fired at it simply bounced harmlessly off its thick armor. … As a result, we inevitably suffered sadly heavy casualties.”

But such actions could not shift the overwhelming tide of events.

The lumbering Char B1 didn’t really suit the Heer’s style of high-speed armored warfare. However, a victorious Germany decided to employ more than 161 captured Char B1s, overhauled and designated Panzerkampfwagen B2 740(f), in more static roles. Some were used in the invasion of Russia. Others fought huge partisan armies in the Balkans. Panzer Battalion 213 was even deployed to the Channels Islands that Germany captured from England.

Under personal consultation of Hitler, the German military and tank manufactures tinkered with the French tanks. Sixty B1s had their hull-mounted howitzers replaced with flamethrowers on flexible mounts. These first saw action in the 102nd Flame-tank Battalion as part of Operation Barbarossa, assaulting Soviet border fortifications in Western Ukraine on June 1941.

Two of the tanks were knocked out, however, and the unit suffered so many breakdowns that it was withdrawn from action in July. The Germans busily went about redesigning the flame tanks, and deployed an upgraded design in the 223rd Captured Tank Company to the siege of Sevastopol in the summer of 1942, again with little success.

Another 16 B1s had their turret ripped off, and replaced with 105-millimeter howitzers enclosed with an armored cab to serve as self-propelled artillery. These served in the 93rd Artillery Regiment in the garrisons of occupied France and then Sardinia.

In June 1944, American and British troops encountered B1s in Cherbourg during the battle of Normandy, then again in Arnhem and Oosterbeek in Holland during Operation Market Garden. By this late stage in the war, Sherman tanks and bazookas easily outgunned the early war design. Still, the B1 could still dish out quite a bit of anti-personnel firepower and the Germans still had 40 in service entering 1945.

French resistance fighters managed to get their hands on a handful of the abandoned heavy tanks and used them in the liberation of Paris. While the front-line units of the Free French Army under DeGaulle primarily used U.S. armor such as M10 tank destroyers, they still rounded up 19 Char B1s they found in Renault factories and assigned them to 2nd Squadron of the 13th Dragoon Regiment.

The Dragoons were dispatched to assist in the siege of the last fortified pockets of German forces in Royan and La Rochelle. Facing limited anti-tank defenses, the Free French Chars blasted German pillboxes in Saint-George de Didonne, which surrendered on April 1945, and then besieged the German garrison at La Rochelle. The French heavy tanks were finally retired in 1946.

A final two Char B1s were modified as minesweepers in April 1945. They contributed to cleaning up the terrible mess of a war, that for all their formerly impermeable armor, they could not win by themselves.

This first appeared in WarIsBoring here.

Image: Wikipedia.

This article first appeared several years ago.

James Holmes

Security, Asia

A new, old, plan for the South China Sea.

Here's What You Need To Remember: Adding American boats would impart mass to the fleet—further easing the challenge of keeping enough boats plying the deep. The more subs in the rotation, the shorter voyages can be. Bottom line, having the fleet make its home near likely Asian hotspots would solve many ills, as would expanding and diversifying logistics arrangements.

What madman would propose adding diesel submarines to the U.S. Navy’s all-nuclear silent service?

There are a few. The topic came up at an early March hearing before the U.S. House Seapower and Force Projection Subcommittee. Representatives from three teams that have compiled competing “Future Fleet Architecture” studies convened to debate their visions with the committee. Published by the Navy Staff itself, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, and the MITRE Corporation, the studies explore everything from overall ship numbers to the types of hulls comprising the future fleet to the mix between manned and unmanned platforms.

Navy potentates will now evaluate and compare the studies. The end product will be an official navy statement about force-structure questions, useful to Congress as lawmakers determine how many—and which—ships, planes, and armaments to fund. One consensus, however, already unites the protagonists to this debate: the U.S. Navy needs more of just about everything. The navy estimates it needs 355 vessels to fulfill its missions in increasingly contested settings, principally around the margins of Eurasia. That portends about a 30 percent boost to the force.

A naval expansion of such proportions will put a premium on low-cost yet effective platforms that can be acquired in bulk. Diesel-electric submarines constitute one such platform. The last boat in the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s (JMSDF) Soryu class—a class widely acclaimed the world’s finest of its kind—ran Japanese taxpayers $540 million. Let’s use that as a benchmark for discussion. Meanwhile, each Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack boat sets back American taxpayers a cool $2.688 billion. That’s five for the price of one—a low, low price by any standard!

Reports Megan Eckstein of USNI News, however, Charles Werchado, the deputy director of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations’ assessments division, “firmly denounced” the MITRE analysts’ vision of a hybrid nuclear/conventional submarine force. Quoth Werchado:

“If I was a country like China, I would buy a lot of diesels because I know you’re going to come and fight me here at home. We have to deploy, and the only way to deploy is to bring your own fuel with you. When we buy a Virginia, it comes with a lifetime of fuel. So I have nothing against diesel submarines, but you have to say, am I’m going to be fighting within 200 miles of where I’m based at? Or else now I have to buy extra oilers. I’m going to make them vulnerable when I refuel them; they’re going to have to snorkel and they’ll become vulnerable. It’s just not an option for us as long as we have to be a global navy."

He thus objected to diesels based on geography, logistics, and military capability. Let’s take those objections in turn. First, geography. Werchado’s critique seemingly presupposes that a U.S. diesel contingent would be based on U.S. territory—in other words, no closer to East Asia than Guam. QED: diesels are a non-starter. They would be positioned too far from the Yellow and East China seas, a likely combat theater, to do much good. And indeed, the cruising-range limitations on diesel boats are real and immutable. But let’s not overstate their impact. Distance can be managed through savvy force dispositions on the map.

In fact, if it does things wisely, the U.S. Navy can turn technical shortcomings to strategic and political advantage. Here’s how: it could procure a squadron of diesel boats in large numbers, station it permanently in the Far East, close to potential scenes of action, and place it under a combined U.S.-Japanese submarine command. Doing so would confer a host of benefits. Forward basing would obviate the range problem. For instance, Soryu-class boats boast a cruising range of 6,100 nautical miles—more than adequate for prowling the depths in Northeast Asia. A U.S.-Japanese force founded on a common hull—whether the Soryu or some other design—could presumably match or exceed this performance.

Nor would this represent some leap in the dark. Diesel subs have proven themselves in Northeast Asia across many decades—witness the U.S. submarine campaign against Japan during World War II. And after six-plus decades of practice dating to the JMSDF’s founding, Japanese subs excel at regulating east-west movement through the first island chain, as well as north-south movement along the East Asian periphery. Indeed, undersea warfare represented one of Japan’s chief contributions to allied strategy during the Cold War. Japanese boats lurked along the island chains to detect and trail Soviet subs trying to exit the Seas of Japan and Okhotsk for the broad Pacific Ocean. Soviet skippers commonly sheltered within Asia’s near seas rather than make the attempt.

This constitutes an ideal approach for an age when island-chain defense is regaining its prominence in allied maritime strategy. Want to deter China from seizing the Senkaku Islands or venturing other forms of aggression? Threaten something Beijing prizes dearly, namely ready access to the Western Pacific. Proliferate subs in Northeast Asia, and demonstrate the capability to use them to bar the straits piercing the first island chain. That should give Beijing pause when the leadership contemplates adventurism. If it’s good for China to procure diesels for anti-access/area-denial purposes in the near seas, then it’s good for Americans and Japanese if they want to deny the denier access it covets.

So the strategic logic cuts both ways. Now think about such a deployment from an alliance-relations standpoint. China is a breaker of alliances. It hopes to divide the allies into manageable bits while dislodging the United States from its strategic position in the Western Pacific. Accordingly, Tokyo fears abandonment by its superpower patron. How better to make a statement about American steadfastness than by permanently forward-deploying a fleet of submarines to Japan while embedding U.S. boats and crews within a multinational command? That would show America is in Asia to stay.

And heck, if Tokyo and Washington were willing to take the diplomatic heat from Beijing, they could even equip the Taiwan Navy with a flotilla of diesel boats built on the common design. The George W. Bush administration offered Taipei eight diesel submarines sixteen years ago. But no American shipbuilder has constructed conventional subs in decades, while no foreign government was prepared to help construct the craft—and thereby incur Beijing’s wrath. The deal languished.

Now might be the time to consummate it. Supplying the boats would help Taiwan defend itself, replacing its flotilla of two Dutch-built subs of 1980s vintage and—astonishingly—two World War II-era relics. And furnishing Taipei with boats interoperable with the U.S.-Japanese diesel fleet would allow for coordinated operations should the allies summon the political moxie to work with Taiwan. A diesel program, then, could open new strategic and diplomatic vistas.

Second, logistics. The U.S. Navy combat-logistics fleet doubtless needs expanding, but not because of prospective conventional subs. Forward-deployed U.S. boats would presumably adopt Japanese logistical patterns, meaning they would go on patrol and refuel in port after returning from sea. Now, the allies could stand to bolster their shore logistical arrangements. China’s military would not exempt Japanese seaports such as Yokosuka and Sasebo from attack in wartime. If it did so it would grant its foes a safe haven for naval warmaking. Missile strikes would be sure to come, and might impair or disable shore infrastructure—starving the fleet of precious fuel and stores.

To cope with this prospect, the allies should rediscover their Pacific War past. During its westward advance across the Pacific, the U.S. Navy fashioned techniques and hardware to refuel, resupply, and repair ships from dispersed, often improvised island bases. The allies should ransack history for insight—thinking ahead about how to use Japan’s many islands and inlets as impromptu logistics hubs. But again, the allies need to make themselves resilient as a matter of course. After all, the conventionally powered surface fleets based in Japan need fuel too. And nuclear-powered warships need every other form of replenishment except fuel for their main engines. (Try running aircraft-carrier flight operations without jet fuel.) Logistical demands, in short, are hardly unique to diesel subs.

And third, diesel subs’ supposed vulnerability. Diesel subs have to surface periodically to snorkel, taking in air to help power their engines. They’re exposed to radar detection while snorkeling. Soryu-class boats, however, sport “air-independent propulsion” that lets them stay submerged for up to two weeks. JMSDF commanders and their political masters evidently find the design wholly adequate, while Japanese submariners have mastered tactics and deployment patterns that let them reach Northeast Asian patrol grounds, loiter on station for a satisfactory amount of time, and return to port.

Adding American boats would impart mass to the fleet—further easing the challenge of keeping enough boats plying the deep. The more subs in the rotation, the shorter voyages can be. Bottom line, having the fleet make its home near likely Asian hotspots would solve many ills, as would expanding and diversifying logistics arrangements. Such measures, furthermore, would cow prospective antagonists while comforting allies and friends. This constitutes a promising venture in manifold respects.

The MITRE proposal, then, deserves a fair hearing—not denunciation. Every ship in a global navy need not be a globe-spanning ship. Diesel submarines are an option for the future U.S. Navy. Whether to exercise that option is the question before Congress and the navy.

James Holmes is Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific (second edition forthcoming 2018). The views voiced here are his alone. This article first appeared several years ago.

Image: Reuters.

Fahmida Zaman

Bangladesh, Indo-Pacific

The rise of digital authoritarianism has become a troubling trend. For countries like Bangladesh, where civil and political rights of citizens have never been consolidated, authoritarian behavior online by governments is even more troubling.

On October 13, the home ministry of Bangladesh government issued a statement “forbidding people at home and abroad from spreading ‘false, fabricated, confusing, and inciting statements’ on social media about government, military, police officials and members of different other law enforcement agencies.”

The statement went on, “The government has observed the activities of such people with patience and has come to the conclusion that it is necessary to take legal action against such people to maintain the stability, domestic security and public well-being.” The statement also threatened legal actions “according to the law of the land” against the public. Presumably, the cited law of the land is the 2018 Digital Security Act. On October 7, the Department of Secondary and Higher Education directed students and teachers to refrain from “writing, sharing, "liking", or posting anything that ‘ruins the image of the government or the state’, or ‘disrespects any important person, institution or profession’” on social media.

The government’s effort to restrict freedom of expression online has not been limited to circulating statements. In June of this year, Bangladesh police arrested a fifteen-year-old boy near Dhaka for allegedly “defaming” the country’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in a Facebook post. After a local supporter of the ruling Awami League filed a case accusing that the teenager had “badmouthed...our mother-like leader,” the boy was quickly arrested and sent to jail. Earlier in June, two university teachers were arrested and sent to jail for allegedly mocking the former health minister on Facebook who died of coronavirus. All three of these cases were filed under the Digital Security Act, and these cases are not exceptions. Critics have dubbed the law as draconian, and with good reason.

The Digital Security Act 2018 was supposed to replace the infamous Information and Communication Technology Act (ICT) 2006, in particular section 57 of the act. Section 57 has been used extensively to crackdown on dissenting voices of journalists, academics, human rights activities, and members of the public especially since the controversial 2014 national election. Yet, the Digital Security Act (DSA) reinforced even more punitive measures to curb freedom of expression and freedom of the press. The act authorizes law enforcement agencies to search or arrest anyone without any warrant and imposes harsh prison sentences for vaguely worded offenses—including online defamation, hurting a person’s religious feelings, and spreading propaganda and campaigns against the liberation war of Bangladesh others, among other things.

Since its implementation in October 2018, more than 1,000 cases have been filed under the act against ordinary citizens, activists, academics, and journalists for “criticizing” the government policies or its political leadership. The number of cases and arrests under DSA has significantly increased since the beginning of 2020. A UK based media-watchdog reported that from January to June of 2020, 113 cases have been filed accusing a total of 208 people, of whom 53 are journalists. Of the accused, 114 were arrested immediately. In May, at least 11 people were charged with “spreading rumors and misinformation on Facebook” for posting about the government’s ill-fitted response to the pandemic. At this rate, there have been three cases on average per day leading to an anticipated 60 percent increase in the number of cases and arrests in 2020 under DSA.

The Digital Security Act came into effect in October 2018, months before a national election that secured a consecutive third term in government for the ruling Awami League party. When Awami League won a landslide victory in 2008 after two years of an unelected military-backed government, it presented hopeful possibilities for a return to democracy. Yet, in 2011, the government took advantage of its majority in the parliament to remove the Caretaker government provision that, until its removal, mitigated deep mistrust between the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the country’s main opposition party. The provision also ensured relatively fair elections and peaceful changes of power. This caretaker provision, in essence, called for a temporary government to be appointed as polls approached in order to oversee a smooth and fair election process. The next national poll, in 2014, was boycotted by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, witnessed unparalleled election violence, and led to 153 out of the 300 parliamentary seats going uncontested. This resulted in a “legally and constitutionally legitimate” yet morally questionable election victory for Awami League.

The 2014 election also marked a decisive turn towards authoritarian practices. Following the election, section 57 of the Information and Communication Technology Act was used to operationalize a deliberate campaign to silence dissenting voices in the press and among citizens. Political opposition members including the former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, among others, were jailed. In addition, the government instigated an anti-narcotics drive leading to significant increases in extra judicial killings ahead of the 2018 election. Human rights organizations and civil society alleged that the anti-narcotics drive “was a government effort to exert increased political control over the populace.”

In the national election of December 30 of 2018, the ruling Awami League led alliance won 288 of the 300 parliamentary seats, an overwhelming 90 percent of the vote. Such a rate of victory, however, has been questioned and is widely believed to be rigged as witnesses reported ballot-box stuffing, intimidation of voters, and election violence.

Reinforcing the government’s determination to restrain civil and political rights, an effort that began in 2014, the unparalleled number of cases and arrests under the Digital Security Act in Bangladesh demonstrates Dhaka’s authoritarian behavior. It also makes the country an embodiment of a global phenomenon—the rise of digital authoritarianism.

Cyber Tyranny

In recent years, internet and social media platforms have become highly useful tools for authoritarian regimes. Authoritarian and repressive governments are surveilling and repressing dissent not only by creating restrictive laws such as the Digital Security Act in Bangladesh or the new internet law in Turkey, but also by taking active legal steps against citizens for expressing critical opinions on the internet.

Of the 65 countries assessed for the 2019 Freedom on the Net report by Freedom House, law enforcement agencies in 47 of them arrested people for posting political, social, or religious content online. Additionally, 40 of the 65 countries instituted advanced social media surveillance programs. For 15 of these 40 countries using advanced social media surveillance, such programs have either expanded or been newly established. As a result, 89 percent of internet users around the world, close to three billion people, are being monitored on social media, the 2019 Freedom House assessment reported.

Efforts to control the internet and social media reflect governments’ concerns about their ability to maintain domestic political control. Governments that perceive their power or legitimacy to be threatened by a mass display of dissatisfaction online or through protests are more likely to enhance restrictive measures online. Such restrictive measures online are aimed to limit the role of the internet and social media in spreading critical discourse or mobilizing protests. This is evident by how quickly governments in India, Hong Kong, Bangladesh, and Belarus—among others—have suspended, shut down, or slowed down internet connections amidst protests.

In Bangladesh, digital authoritarianism is reflected not only through the Digital Security Act but also through the state’s increased capacity for internet and social media surveillance; increased arrests based on political content; the tendency to block critical websites, including local and international news sources; and the limits placed on internet access—and particularly following critical moments such as anti-government protests and national elections.

The government has also repeatedly blocked or threatened to block social media platforms, and particularly Facebook—which is arguably the country’s most-used social media platform. In addition, the government has established significant control over online content. It has also been accused of state-sponsored monitoring and hacking of Facebook accounts of journalists, political dissidents, and opposition figures.

Bangladeshi Issues

Although the DSA is a relatively recent development in controlling cyberspace in Bangladesh, it highlights a larger problem in the country.

First, it demonstrates the government’s authoritarian behavior both online and offline. Before the implementation of the Digital Security Act, a similarly draconian law—section 57 of the ICT Act—was used for the strategic silencing of any criticism of the government and for curbing press freedom. Overall, an astonishingly high number of enforced disappearances, crackdowns on any critics, jailing of political opponents, and the routine targeting of democracy advocates and citizens under the Digital Security Act show the abysmal state of civil and political rights in the country. The most devastating impact of these actions is perhaps that self-censorship has become a common practice—so much so that Human Rights Watch reports that news editors themselves suppress 50 to 90 percent of the news at hand. Given the government’s repressive behavior both online and offline in recent years, by no measure can the country be called democratic.

Second, like everywhere else where governments are practicing tactics of digital authoritarianism, Bangladesh’s actions are aimed to limit the spread of unfavorable information, particularly during critical moments such as a large-scale road-safety protest in 2018, the 2018 Election, and even coronavirus. The 2018 road-safety protests, led by students, began after two students were killed by an unlicensed bus in Dhaka in early August and spread quickly across the city. One may argue that the protests were fueled by accumulated anti-government sentiments in an ever-shrinking space for freedom of expression. When the prominent photojournalist Shahidul Alam pointed out these underlying causes of the protest in an interview with Al Jazeera, he was arrested within hours of the interview and detained for 102 days. During the protests, the government shut down mobile internet service as the protests utilized social media platforms to mobilize. Additionally, during the national election in December 2018, two journalists were arrested while covering the 2018 national election under the Digital Security Act for “false information” about voter-turnout. Several others were attacked and denied entry to polling centers.

In May 2020, two months after the first cases of coronavirus in Bangladesh, the government issued an order warning officials not to make negative comments on social media about “[the] state or its important persons,” declaring that any violator would face personal repercussions and legal actions. The instructions explicitly commanded public servants “not to upload, share, comment on or react to social media posts, including image, audio or video, with ‘damaging’ messages.” The number of legal cases under the Digital Security Act against journalists and ordinary citizens has significantly increased as people suffer the consequences of an ill-planned and ill-implemented response to coronavirus in Bangladesh, and of the rampant corruption in the health sector.

As such, controlling the flow of information by curbing freedom of expression online and offline while criminalizing even mildly opposing views undoubtedly constitutes a brutally effective political strategy for the ruling party in Bangladesh.

Digital Bangladesh

The rise of digital authoritarianism across the globe, led by China and Russia, has become a troubling trend, from Turkey to Sudan to India to Zimbabwe to Brazil. However, for countries like Bangladesh, where civil and political rights of citizens have never been consolidated, authoritarian behavior online by governments is even more troubling. In the absence of democratic models of digital governance, Chinese and Russian’s leadership in exporting digital authoritarianism may lead us to unfamiliar and damaging territory within the realm of digital governance, and particularly in already authoritarian countries like Bangladesh. Competitive democratic models of digital governance that counter China and Russia as role models of digital authoritarianism need to be championed by the United States and other established democracies. Such a task should also engage in public diplomacy—creating awareness about digital civil and political rights, empowering citizens to challenge digital authoritarian behavior, and promoting digital critical thinking skills. 

The government of Bangladesh headed by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has extensively campaigned for, and promised its citizens, a “Digital Bangladesh” ever since it came to power in 2008. In 2019, Hasina claimed that her government has made the dream of a Digital Bangladesh a reality. And yet, the presence of a powerful Digital Security Act that aims to control what can be said online, and the punishment of citizens for any remotely unfavorable online content, make the prime minister’s proclamations about a “Digital Bangladesh” ring hollow.

Fahmida Zaman is a doctoral student with the University of Delaware’s Department of Political Science & International Relations. She was a research intern at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC this past summer.

Sebastien Roblin

History, Europe

A U.S. F-117 Nighthawk faced trouble over Serbia.

Here's What You Need To Remember: Getting a platform with a high-bandwidth radar or heat-seeking weapons close enough to actually shoot at a stealth plane remains a major challenge. Afterall, the stealth jet could detect and simply avoid or shoot at an approaching threat. 

At 8 p.m. on March 27, 1999, a bizarre-looking black painted airplane cut through the night sky over Serbia. This particular F-117 Nighthawk—a subsonic attack plane that was the world’s first operational stealth aircraft—flew by the call sign of Vega-31 and was named “Something Wicked.” Moments earlier, it had released its two Paveway laser-guided bombs on targets near the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade. Its pilot, Lt. Col. Dale Zelko, was a veteran with experience in the 1991 Gulf War.A dozen Nighthawks had deployed to Aviano, Italy on February 21 to participate in Operation Allied Force—a NATO bombing campaign intended to pressure Belgrade into withdrawing its troops from the province of Kosovo after President Slobodan Milosevic initiated a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign seeking to expel the Kosovar Albanian population.

The Yugoslav National Army (JNA) possessed a mix S-75 and S-125 surface-to-air missile systems dating back to the 1950s and 1960s, as well as more recent 2K12 Kub mobile SAMs and MiG-29 Fulcrum twin-engine fighters. Together these posed a moderate threat to NATO warplanes, forcing them to fly at higher altitudes and be escorted by radar-jamming planes like the EA-6B Prowler.

However, that evening the Prowlers were grounded by bad weather. Something Wicked and her three flight mates were dispatched anyway because their faceted surfaces drastically reduced the range at which they could be detected by radar and shot at.

Suddenly, Zelko spotted two bright dots blasting upwards through the clouds below, closing on him at three-and-a-half times the speed of sound. These were radar-guided V-601M missiles, fired from the quadruple launch rails of an S-125M Neva surface-to-air missile system. Boosted by a two-stage solid-fuel rocket motors, one of the six-meter long missiles zipped so close that it shook Vega 31 planes with its passage. The other detonated its 154-pound proximity-fused warhead, catching Zelko’s jet in the blast that sprayed 4,500 metal fragments in the air.

Something Wicked lost control and plunged towards the ground inverted. The resulting g-force was so powerful Zelko only barely managed to grasp the ejection ring and escape the doomed Nighthawk.

How had a dated Serbian missile system shot down a sophisticated (though no longer state-of-the-art) stealth fighter?

Zelko’s adversary that evening was Serbian Col. Zoltán Dani, commander of the 250th Air Defense Missile Brigade. Dani was by all accounts a highly motivated commander who studied earlier Western air-defense suppression tactics. He redeployed his Neva batteries frequently, in contrast to the static posture adopted by ill-fated Iraqi and Syrian missile defenses in the Middle East. He permitted his crews to activating their active targeting radars for no longer than twenty seconds, after which they were required to redeploy, even if they had not opened fire.

The S-125M wasn’t normally considered a ‘mobile’ SAM system, but Zoltan had his unit drilled to redeploy the weapons in just 90 minutes (the standard time required is 150 minutes), a procedure facilitated by halving the number of launchers in his battery. While his batteries shuttled from one site to another, Dani also setup dummy SAM sites and decoy targeting radars taken from old MiG fighters to divert NATO anti-radiation missiles.

Thanks to the decoys and constant movement, Zoltan’s unit didn’t lose a single SAM battery despite the twenty-three HARM missiles shot at him by NATO war planes.

Dani had noticed that his battery’s P-18 “Spoon Rest-D” long-range surveillance radar was able to provide a rough track of Nighthawks within a 15-mile range when tuned down to the lowest possible bandwidth—so low, in fact, that NATO radar-warning receivers were not calibrated to detect it. (Dani initially claimed he had modified the P-18’s hardware to achieve this, but later admitted this was a hoax.)

However, low-bandwidth radars are imprecise and cannot provide a ‘weapons-grade’ lock. However, that the NATO mission planners had complacently scheduled the stealth bombers on predictable, routine flight patterns. Worse, the Serbs had managed to break into NATO communications and could overhear conversations between U.S. fighters and the airborne radar planes directing them, allowing Dani to piece together a accurate picture of those routines.

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The missile commander decided to set an ambush for the stealth jets, deploying S-125M batteries with a good firing angle on the NATO jets as they flew back to Italy. The thing is, stealth jets can be detected by high-band targeting radars at short distances. However, that still requires sweeping the sky for targets, and in the process illuminating themselves to enemy radars. That not only gave adversaries a chance to direct stealth aircraft away from the threat, but invited a potential strike by a HARM anti-radiation missile.

Therefore, Dani kept the battery’s targeting radar inactive, but cued them towards the approximate position of the stealth aircraft reported by the P-18 radar. Obligingly, the battery’s P-18 radar detected Something Wicked and three other F-117s—but when the high-band targeting radar activated for a twenty second ‘burst,’ it couldn’t acquire a target.

Dani claims that he had been alerted by spies in Italy that the Prowlers were grounded for that day, so he was willing to take greater risks and reactivated the targeting radar a second time rather than immediately relocating—still without result.

Finally, on the third try an S-125M battery locked onto Something Wicked when it was just eight miles away. Dani claims the window of opportunity came when the F-117 opened its bomb-bay doors to release weapons, causing its radar cross-section to briefly bloom.

After bailing out, Zelko concealed himself an irrigation ditch and only narrowly escaped capture by Serbian search parties that combed within a hundred meters of his position. The following evening, he was whisked to safety by an Air Force combat search and rescue team deployed from an MH-60G Pave Hawk special operations helicopter.

Dani’s unit later claimed the only other Yugoslav aircraft kill of the war, shooting down a U.S. F-16 on May 2. Another F-117 was damaged by a missile on April 30 but managed to return to base.

Something Wicked impacted Yugoslav soil upside down near the village of Budanovci. Parts of the wreckage can be seen today at the Serbian Museum of Aviation in Belgrade. Components were also flown to Russia and China and studied to inform their own stealth aircraft programs. Dani kept the plane’s titanium engine outlet as a memento.

The F-117 shootdown was an embarrassing, though fortunately non-fatal, episode for the U.S. Air Force. It has been endlessly cited since as ‘proof’ that supposedly radar-invisible stealth planes could ‘easily’ be shot down by even dated Soviet-era SAM systems.

The truth is more complicated. Zoltan’s ploy of using low-bandwidth radars to track stealth aircraft from afar indeed remains a cornerstone of counter-stealth tactics today. (Another is using infrared sensors, though these remain limited to around thirty to sixty miles in range.)

However, getting a platform with a high-bandwidth radar or heat-seeking weapons close enough to actually shoot at a stealth plane remains a major challenge. Afterall, the stealth jet could detect and simply avoid or shoot at an approaching threat. Dany benefited from having good intelligence of the F-117’s flight path that allowed him to position a missile battery very close to Vega-31’s avenue of approach.

Furthermore, the Nighthawk was a 1970s-era design with a larger radar cross-section than the F-22 and F-35. These modern stealth jets furthermore come equipped with their own onboard radars and carry a greater diversity of weapons, making them more dealing with surface- and air-based threats.

The takeaway, ultimately, is that stealth aircraft are not truly ‘invisible’ to detection, and that sufficiently cunning adversary may find ways to ambush or corner them. However, while Col. Dani’s leadership did exemplify many best practices of air defense warfare, his ambush of Vega-31 does not offer a ‘cookie-cutter’ solution to combating stealth aircraft, particularly as both low-observable airplanes and the SAM systems and fighters hunting them improve in capability.

Zelko and Dani would later meet under friendlier circumstances in 2011. The Serbian missile commander had resumed his profession as a baker in his hometown of Skorenovac. The former adversaries recorded a documentary about their meeting and subsequent friendship. For all the considerable ingenuity it invests in high-tech warfare, humankind fortunately also has a remarkable capacity for reconciliation under the most unlikely circumstance.

Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This first appeared in November 2017.

Image: Wikipedia.

David Axe

Security,

A recent simulation underscores the importance of sealift to U.S. war plans, as well as the shortage of naval escorts.

Here's What You Need to Know: Adding more than 60 ships to the sealift fleet is a tall order and could cost billions of dollars. But experts’ warning have not gone entirely unheeded.

Aconvoy of five American cargo ships made a simulated run through hostile waters in September 2019 during a sprawling, short-notice test of the U.S. fleet’s ability to ship people and cargo during a major war.

The simulated, World War II-style convoy underscored the importance of sealift to U.S. war plans, as well as the shortage of naval escorts that has incited a minor panic among military planners.

The five ships in the East Coast convoy test included the roll-on/roll-off cargo vessels USNS Benavidez, USNS Gilliland, and USNS Mendonca, USNS Pfc. Eugene A. Obregon and USNS Sgt. Matej Kocak.

All five vessels belong to U.S. Military Sealift Command, the quasi-military transport branch of the U.S. Navy. MSC operates more than 100 vessels. Many of them lie inactive in major ports during peacetime. During a crisis, Navy and civilian mariners quickly would reactive the ships.

The September 2019 transportation “stress test”  activated a total of 33 sealift ships on both U.S. coasts. As part of the exercise, the five East Coast ro/ro ships simulated an unescorted convoy moving through waters where enemy submarines and sea mines posed a threat.

“The convoy sailed through a simulated minefield while limiting visual and sound signatures,” USNI News reported, citing an MSC statement. “Crews stopped using all personal electronic devices to decrease transmissions from the ships and operated in a ‘darken ship’ mode to prevent light from emanating from the ships.”

“We were also training the crews to sail their ships as quietly as possible to counter ships’ electromagnetic signatures because our vessels also could face anti-ship ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, fighter aircraft and enemy bombers,” Capt. Hans Lynch, MSC’s Atlantic commodore, said in the official statement.

The training belies a serious shortage of surface warships that could function as escorts. In October 2018, U.S. Maritime Administration head Mark Buzby said the Navy admitted it wouldn’t be able to escort sealift ships during a major war with Russia or China.

The Navy is struggling to expand the fleet from around 290 front-line ships in 2019 to as many as 355 in the 2030s. But the cost of building and maintaining the extra ships has cast into doubt the sailing branch’s ability to meet its expansion goal.

The Congressional Budget Office consistently has maintained that Navy shipbuilding accounts are billions of dollars too low on an annual basis in order to fund the bigger fleet.

With too few warships to escort the sealift vessels, MSC crews would be on their own. To help them survive, they should “go fast and stay quiet,” Buzby said the Navy told him.

That’s exactly what the crews of the five East Coast MSC ships did in September 2019. Between 80 percent and 85 percent of the ships in the wider shipping stress test successfully met the underway evaluation criteria, a U.S. Transportation Command spokesperson told USNI News.

But the U.S. sealift force has other problems. For one, it’s too small, the Washington, D.C. Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment warned in a May 2019 report.

The civilian merchant marine, which during wartime would become an auxiliary force under the Navy, possesses around 180 U.S.-flagged vessels. Add in MSC’s own ships and the overall U.S. sealift force numbers around 300 ships.

But by 2048 it needs to grow to 360 ships in order to successfully support the Navy and resupply U.S. military forces during a major war, CSBA asserted. The fleet should add 48 tankers ships to its current 21 tankers, add 20 salvage ships to the five it has in 2019 and boost the number of repair tenders from two to 17. Munitions ships should number 25, up from 12 in 2019. There should be seven hospital ships, up from two.

“Failing to remedy this situation, when adversaries have U.S. logistics networks in their crosshairs, could cause the United States to lose a war and fail its allies and partners in their hour of need,” CSBA warned.

Adding more than 60 ships to the sealift fleet is a tall order and could cost billions of dollars. But experts’ warning have not gone entirely unheeded. Kevin Tokarski, a senior official with the U.S. Maritime Administration, in May 2019 told USNI News that he was considering reflagging some ships working for American companies in order quickly to grow the sealift force.

David Axe served as Defense Editor of the National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels  War Fix, War Is Boring and Machete Squad.

This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: Flickr / U.S. Navy

Sebastien Roblin

Security, Americas

In 2017 the Army formed eight cross-functional teams led by brigadier generals to rapidly cost-efficiently develop a new generation of hardware

Here's What You Need To Remember: To avoid the earlier dramatic failure of “super programs” like the Future Combat System, the Army plans to adopt off-the-shelf solution where possible, and operationally test numerous projects before deciding which merit the funding to ramp up to full-scale development and production.

The U.S. Army is at a crossroads as the Pentagon is reorienting itself to fight a capable great power opponent after nearly two decades focused on counter-insurgency conflicts.

Russia poses a traditional land-power challenge for the U.S. Army with its large mechanized formations threatening the Baltics, as well as formidable long-range ballistic missiles, artillery and surface-to-air missiles.

By contrast, a hypothetical conflict with China would focus on control of the sea and airspace over the Pacific Ocean. To remain relevant, the Army would need to deploy long-range anti-ship-capable missiles and helicopters to remote islands, allied nations like Japan and South Korea and even onto the decks of U.S. Navy ships.

Almost all the Army’s major land warfare systems entered service in the 1980s or earlier. Five ambitious programs to replace aging armored vehicles, artillery and helicopters consumed $30 billion only to fail spectacularly.

Thus, in 2017 the Army formed eight cross-functional teams led by brigadier generals to rapidly cost-efficiently develop a new generation of hardware. These far-reaching modernization initiatives are collectively called the “the Big Six.”

1. Long-Range Precision Fire (Artillery)

The U.S. Army was famed for its lavish, rapid and accurate use of artillery support during World War II. However, in recent conflicts, the U.S. military has increasingly relied on air strikes using precision-weapons over artillery barrages.

But on-call air support would be far from given when facing a peer enemy possessing formidable air defenses. In fact, long-range missile and artillery strikes might be needed to destroy air defenses, “kicking in the door” for air power.

Thus the Army’s top priority is “Long Range Precision Fire.” a half dozen projects seeking to enable accurate ground-launched strikes against targets dozens or hundreds of miles away.

To begin with, the Army seeks to further upgrades its tank-like 1960s-era M109 Paladin self-propelled howitzers with long-barreled Extend Range Cannon boosting regular attack range to forty-three miles, and possibly even ram-jet -assisted shells extending range to eighty-one miles.

The artillery branch’s other mainstay, the truck-based M270 and smaller M142 Multiple Rocket Launcher Systems, will receive extended-range rockets doubling reach to ninety-three miles. Moreover, their capability to launch a single large, 180-mile range ATACMS tactical missile will be replaced with two smaller Precision Strike Missiles with a range of 310 miles that can hit moving targets (ships).

Following the killing of the INF treaty, the Army furthermore is developing two even longer-reaching weapons: a hypersonic missile with a range of 1,499 miles, which could prove extremely difficult to defend against and boast deadly anti-ship capabilities, and a gigantic Long Range Strategic Cannon supposedly boasting a range of one thousand miles.

2. Next Generation Combat Vehicle (Armor)

The Army’s second priority is to replace its increasingly vulnerable and underpowered M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. In 2018, the Army decided to proceed with improving the Bradley’s power train but canceling replacement of its turret.

Instead it seeks an Optionally-Manned Fighting Vehicle (OMFV) capable of carrying larger squads, a thirty- to fifty-millimeter automatic cannon (the Bradley has a twenty-five-millimeter gun), and new missiles and active protection systems. Current competitors include the Raytheon/Rheinmetall Lynx, the General Dynamics Griffon III and the BAE CV-90 Mark IV.

The separate Mobile Protected Firepower program seeks a fast and air-transportable light tank. Currently, a dozen 105-millimter gun-equipped M8 Bufords with scalable armor are set to compete versus Griffin II tanks armed with 120-millimeter guns.

The Army has also begun procuring turretless Bradleys to serve as Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle, replacing old M113 APCs in support roles such as combat engineering, utility transport, ambulance duty, command post, and mortar carrying. And some of its wheeled Stryker APCS are receiving “Dragoon” turrets with thirty-millimeter cannons and Javelin anti-tank missiles to give the lighter vehicles a fighting chance versus enemy mechanized forces.

The Army is also installing Trophy and Iron Fist Active Protection Systems on Abrams and Bradley tanks. These detect incoming missiles and jam or shoot them down before impact. As long-range anti-tank missiles have destroyed hundreds of tanks in Middle Eastern wars, including Saudi-operated Abrams, APS could significantly improve survivability.

3. Future Vertical Lift (Aviation)

Helicopters are essential for battlefield and operational mobility—however they are also expensive, relatively slow (150–200 miles per hour), short-ranged and vulnerable to enemy fire.

The Army is looking ahead to a radical new “Future Vertical Lift” system to eventually replace its over two thousand Blackhawk medium transport helicopters and its heavily armed and armored Apache gunships.

Two innovative flying prototypes are competing. The Bell V-280 Valor is a tilt-rotor aircraft: it can rotate its engines from a helicopter to an airplane-like configuration. The likely more complex and expensive Valor would boast greater speed (320 miles per hour) and range.

The Sikorsky SB-1 Defiant is a compound helicopters with two counter-rotating blades atop each other and pusher rotor. The Defiant likely is better at helicopter-style low-speed maneuvers—at the expense of speed and fuel efficiency.

The Army also retired its last OH-58 scout helicopters in 2015, only to discover that Apache gunships were a poor replacement. As a result, the Army is searching for an agile scout helicopter separately from FVL.

4. Network

The Army would like a brand-new unified, field-deployable Command, Control, Communication and Intelligence (C3I) network tying together its land-warfare systems.

The last attempt to field such a network, called WIN-T, was cancelled after $6 billion in spending due to its vulnerability to electronic-and cyberwarfare. In 2014, the Army observed how Russia forces extensively jammed, hacked and geo-located Ukrainian command-and-control nodes—and even targeted them with lethal attacks.

The Army intends to buy as much of the software off-the-shelf as possible to avoid spending years and dollars building a new system from the ground up. The new network needs to be standardized yet modular, transportable, and cybersecure.

A separate “Assured Position Navigation & Timing” team is developing redundant navigational aids so that ground forces smoothly function under GPS-denied circumstances, particularly by using ground or air-deployed “pseudo-satellites.”

5. Air & Missile Defense

In the last half-century, air supremacy courtesy of the U.S. Air Force has reduced the demands on the Army’s ground-based air defenses, which have been heavily downsized. However, new threats posed by swarming drone attacks and proliferating cruise and ballistic missiles have made re-building the air defense branch a huge priority.

The Army is currently focusing on “Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense”—vehicles accompanying frontline troops to shoot down low-altitude threats. The Army plans to field 8 x 8 Strykers armed with Stinger and Hellfire missiles, anti-drone jammers and thirty-millimeter cannons. It’s also interim procuring Israeli Iron Dome missile systems, the munitions from which may eventually be adapted to Multi-Mission Launcher.

The Army is also developing a vehicle-mounted 100-KW laser that could be used to cost-efficiently burn drones out of the sky.

For longer-range air defense, rather than develop new missiles, the Army is spending billions to improve its existing Patriot and THAADS systems by tying together their dispersed radars and fire-control systems into an Integrated Air & Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS) network.

6. Soldier Lethality

Close-combat infantrymen account for only 4 percent of the army’s personnel but have suffered 90 percent of the casualties in conflicts since 2001. The “Soldier Lethality” initiative is divided in two teams.

One focuses on improving “human” factors using more realistic training simulators, and retaining experienced NCOs and officers through better perks and incentives.

The other team plans to procure “Next Generation” assault rifles and light machine guns—likely using the 6.5-millimeter Creedmoor round, which is deemed to have superior penetrating power versus body armor. The Army also is devising an infantry “Head’s Up Display” with integrated (and improved) night-vision, tactical data and targeting crosshairs.

Implementation

The Army is killing or curtailing 186 older programs and procurements, including down-sizing CH-47F heavy transport helicopters and JLTV Humm-Vee replacement orders, to ensure the Big Six’s 31 initiatives receive a targeted $33 billion in funding through 2024.

To avoid the earlier dramatic failure of “super programs” like the Future Combat System, the Army plans to adopt off-the-shelf solution where possible, and operationally test numerous projects before deciding which merit the funding to ramp up to full-scale development and production.

Time will tell whether the Army’s new, seemingly more agile approach will dodge the bullets that have taken down prior modernization efforts.

Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This first appeared in May 2019.

Image: DVIDS

Sebastien Roblin

History, Europe

The Scharnhorst was far from the most heavily armed battleship deployed by the Kriegsmarine—but she arguably was its most successful.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The more numerous and powerful radars on Force 2’s Duke of York finally picked up the Scharnhorst twenty-five miles away after 4 p.m. Her sole forward radar knocked out, and nightfall and blizzard decreasing visibility, Scharnhorst was blind to the powerful British force barreling towards her from the west. Force 2 finally opened fire at six-miles range.

The Scharnhorst was far from the most heavily armed battleship deployed by the Kriegsmarine—but she arguably was its most successful. She and sistership Gneisenau were laid down in 1935 with nine 283-millimeter guns with a range of twenty-five miles—significantly smaller than those on British battleships so as not to spook London over German rearmament.

Nonetheless, Scharnhorst measured 234 meters, which is longer than two football fields, and displaced a massive forty-two thousand tons fully loaded with fuel, ammunition and a wartime-crew of nearly two thousand men. The ship’s three Swiss-built steam turbines allowed her to attain flank speeds of thirty-one knots or higher—fast enough to outrun most warships. Indeed, Scharnhorst was a battlecruiser designed to chase down and overmatch smaller vessels rather than duel enemy battleships.

The Scharnhorst’s guns were mounted in 750-ton triple-gun turrets named Anton and Bruno in the bow, and Caesar on the stern. Twelve quick-firing 150-millimeter guns provided additional firepower. The Scharnhorst’s two Seetakt radars, one forward and one rearward-facing, had a surface-search range of around ten miles and were primarily used for gun-laying. Three Arado 196 seaplanes served as the battlecruiser’s long-range “eyes.”

For air defense, the Scharnhorst additionally mounted seven twin 105-millimeter flak turrets that could spit air-bursting shells up to forty-thousand-feet high, and dozens of smaller thirty-seven-millimeter and twenty-millimeter auto-cannons for close defense. She was well-protected from long-range hits by up to fourteen inches of Krupp cemented steel girding her turrets, bridge and hull. However, her two-inch deck armor was vulnerable.

For all her speed, the Scharnhorst was not highly maneuverable and frequently returned to port damaged by rough seas. In sea trials after commissioning in January 1939, the Scharnhorst’s bow took on so much water she was promptly refitted with a flared “clipper-style” bow.

Despite these flaws, the Scharnhorst proved far more than the Kriegsmarine’s other capital ships. On her maiden war-cruise in November 1939, she sank the auxiliary cruiser HMS Rawalpindi. Then in June 1940, the battlecruiser ambushed the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious, sinking her and two escorting destroyers, though Scharnhorst sustained a torpedo hit in battle.

Like an outlaw continually outwitting justice, the Scharnhorst was a notoriously “lucky” battleship, weathering numerous attacks by British bombers. In 1941, she managed to slip into the Atlantic and sink ten merchant ships, then evaded retribution under cover of sea squall to make port at Brest, France where she was outfitted with six torpedo tubes.

Heavily damaged in a July 1941 air-raid, Scharnhorst joined other German capital ships five months later in the notorious “Channel Dash” that was staged under the nose of Britain’s coastal defense, though she struck two mines in the process.

However, by 1943, German capital ships had fallen out of favor with Hitler after the Battle of the Barents Sea, a botched attack on an Arctic convoy carrying Allied aid for the Soviet Union. The Fuhrer had to be talked back from scrapping all his capital ships.

As the Wehrmacht’s woes in Russia mounted, in December 1943 Adm. Karl Donitz decided to again attempt a surface sortie targeting the Arctic convoys as they skirted past German-occupied Norway—and tapped Scharnhorst for the job.

However, not only were the British listening in to Donitz’s radio messages, but Home Fleet commander Adm. Bruce Fraser was already planning to lure the Scharnhorst into battle. Though the Royal Navy far outnumbered German surface combatants, it had to devote disproportionate resource to guard against possible sorties.

Fraser planned to use JW 55B as bait, reinforcing her ten escorting destroyers with three cruisers in “Force 1” under Vice Adm. Robert Burnett, which had just escorted a preceding convoy. Meanwhile, “Force 2” would sortie from the west, including the battleship Duke of York, the heavy cruiser Jamaica and four S-class destroyers.

The Brits made no effort to prevent German patrol planes from spotting the convoy on December 22. On Christmas Day, Fraser was pleased to learn that Scharnhorst and five destroyers had departed Altafjord at 7 p.m. under command of Adm. Erich Bay.

However, the German force failed to contact the nineteen-ship convoy. This far north, there was less than an hour of daylight, and gale-force winds were gusting heavy snowfall over the water. Bay fanned out his destroyers to extend his search—ultimately depriving his flagship of badly needed support.

At 9 a.m., the light cruiser Belfast of Force 1 picked up the Scharnhorst with her superior radar. The two sides finally spotted each other at a distance of about 7.5 miles and exchanged fire. While Scharnhorst missed, she was struck twice. One 8-inch shell fatefully smashed the battlecruiser’s forward-looking radar, crippling her situational awareness and the accuracy of her guns.

Scharnhorst disengaged, while the British escorts withdrew to screen the convoy as Force 2 raced to support them. But Bey circled Scharnhorst around and at noon bumped into Force 1 a second time. This time the battlecruiser’s guns twice struck the Norfolk, the huge 727-pound armored-piercing rounds passing clean through, knocking out a gun turret and radar.

Bey then decided to head south back to port with Force 1 in pursuit—though only the lighter Belfast could keep up.

However, the more numerous and powerful radars on Force 2’s Duke of York finally picked up the Scharnhorst twenty-five miles away after 4 p.m. Her sole forward radar knocked out, and nightfall and blizzard decreasing visibility, Scharnhorst was blind to the powerful British force barreling towards her from the west. Force 2 finally opened fire at six-miles range.

Norman Scarth, a sailor onboard the destroyer Matchless described the moment in a BBC interview:

All of us met up and all hell broke loose. Although it was pitch black the sky was lit up, bright as day, by star shells, which fired into the sky like fireworks, providing brilliant light illuminating the area as broad as day.

One huge fourteen-inch shell jammed the in Anton turret, silencing its triple-guns. Another strike triggered an ammunition fire in Bruno, forcing the gun crew to flood the turret to avoid an explosion. Now only Caesar could return fire—and fire she did, in turn knocking out a radar on the Duke of York.

However, the superior British fire-control radars gave British warships greater accuracy, while their flash-less charge left them difficult to spot with the naked eye.

Bey tried tacking back north away from Force 2, only to run afoul of the cruisers of Force 1. The battlecruiser finally began pulling away eastward at maximum speed. However, a long-range fourteen-foot abruptly penetrated Scharnhorst’s belt armor and blew apart one of her boiler rooms, reducing her speed to just twelve knots. Bey radioed his superiors “We will fight on until the last shell is fired.”

As the British barrage relentlessly crippled Scharnhorst’s main guns, smaller British destroyers swarmed in to attempt torpedo runs. Some of Scharnhorst’s smaller guns remained active, though, and one blasted a shell straight through the fire control tower of the Saumarez, killing eleven crew. Meanwhile, the Savage and Norwegian destroyer Stord dashed up to within a mile of the beleaguered battlecruiser and slammed three twenty-one-inch torpedoes into her port side approaching 7 p.m.

For nearly an hour more, the British ships relentlessly pounded the crippled Scharnhorst, with shells and torpedoes. The latter were known to occasionally sink capital ships with just a few lucky hits. The Scharnhorst, however, sustained nineteen torpedoes before she finally capsized.

As Scarth recounted:

She looked magnificent and beautiful . . . She was firing with all guns still available to her. Most of the big guns were put out. They were gradually disabled one by one. As we were steaming past at full speed a twenty-millimeter cannon was firing tracer bullets from the Scharnhorst.

A twenty-millimeter cannon was like a pea-shooter compared to the other guns and it could have no part in this battle . . . And that's one of the things that remains in my memory—a futile gesture but it was a gesture of defiance right to the very end.

Afterward, Matchless and Scorpion picked up just thirty-six survivors from the freezing Arctic waters before receiving the order to abandon the rest for fear of a counterattack.

German battleships never engaged their British peers again in battle. Fifty-seven years later, a Norwegian-led expedition located the Scharnhorst’s mangled wreckage 290-meters deep on the seafloor.

Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This first appeared in December 2018.

Image: Wikipedia.

Caleb Larson

Security, World

Russia is apparently the first country to field submarine-based hypersonic missiles.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The Air Force is working with Lockheed Martin do further develop hypersonic vehicles, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is further developing the appropriate engines after stopping research in 2010–2011. A step in the right direction. Still, let’s hope it’s not too little, too late.

As recently detailed, Russia’s new hypersonic Zircon missile will soon be submarine based. This diversifies Russia’s hypersonic capabilities—from air and at sea, to underwater, for greater strategic advantage. America and U.S. allies beware.

Better than Greased Lightning

But first, what is a hypersonic missile? And why is it so dangerous? Although there are different delivery systems, hypersonic missiles are essentially a new class of missile that flies fast—extremely fast—the Zircon soars in excess of Mach 8. Hypersonic missiles targets would have very little time to react, either by evading or trying to shoot the missile down. Hypersonic missiles are so fast, they don’t necessarily need to carry any explosives, as the impact of something traveling hypersonically would create a terrific explosion.

Evasive maneuvers are difficult against hypersonic weapons because the weapons themselves are highly maneuverable. Using kinetic interceptors to shoot down a hypersonic missile would be like shooting a bullet with a bullet. Further complicating the problem is the fact that most missile defense systems are generally optimized to counter specific, existing threats and hypersonics traveling close to two miles a second are just not on their menu.

One of the truly frightening aspects of hypersonic missiles are the potential stealth capabilities inherent to some of their design. Because they move so quickly through the atmosphere, such missiles generate a plasma field around themselves that is radar absorbent, making them harder to detect. Bad news for aircraft carriers, cities, or other potential targets.

Location, Location, Location

So why are submarine-based hypersonic missiles such a big deal? After all, Zircon and other hypersonic missiles are relatively new, but not unknown, and being deployed at sea is no big secret.

One word: survivability. Russia is apparently the first country to field submarine-based hypersonic missiles. This arrangement is particularly dangerous because submarines can hide underwater for days, or even weeks. Submarines are highly protected if they stay below the surface, and very hard to detect, especially if a sub commander is willing to sail slowly, or not at all.

Like conventional submarine-based ballistic missiles, shooting a hypersonic missile at a target on land or at sea could happen very quickly, without even needing to surface. Blisteringly high speed, combined with close proximity to targets that submarines can provide would give an opponent a laughably low reaction time.

Falling Behind

The United States is falling behind. Michael D. Griffin, the current serving Under Secretary for Defense and Engineering has repeatedly spoken on Capitol Hill about the plight of the United States in relation to its adversaries in the realm of hypersonics. “We, today, do not have systems which can hold them [Russia and China] at risk in a corresponding manner, and we don’t have defenses against those systems…Should they choose to employ them, we would be today at a disadvantage,” he said. “We’re playing catch-up ball.” Not a great game to be playing.

His comments are supported by the findings of the Congressional Research Service (CRS). In fall of 2019, the CRS, Congress’s think tank, released a report that detailed the hypersonic state of the art. Their firm conclusion was that Russia is seeking to perfect maneuverable hypersonic weapons to perforate American missile defense and, therefore, to ensure a measure of “strategic stability” in relation to the United States. According to CRS, Zircon will be operational by 2023.

The Air Force is working with Lockheed Martin do further develop hypersonic vehicles, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is further developing the appropriate engines after stopping research in 2010–2011.

A step in the right direction. Still, let’s hope it’s not too little, too late.

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

Image: Flickr.

Michael Peck

Security, Asia

Dennis Killinger, a professor emeritus of physics at the University of South Florida, called the idea “intriguing.”

Here's What You Need to Know: China claims to be developing “magnetized plasma artillery.”

The Chinese military recently published a notice inviting researchers to devise a weapon that sounds like a sort of electromagnetic rail gun—which uses magnetism instead of gunpowder to fire shells—that several nations are developing. But actually deploying railguns has been hampered by the size of the weapon and especially the vast amount of electrical energy needed to propel a shell to speeds of greater than Mach 7. For example, despite years of research and vast sums of money, the U.S. Navy appears less than optimistic about fitting railguns on its warships.

But Chinese scientists believe that magnetized plasma artillery will be so light and energy-efficient that it can be mounted on tanks.

“The notice invites tenders for a theory-testing and a launch system for magnetized plasma artillery,” said China’s state-owned Global Times. “Although the weapon sounds as if it comes from a sci-fi movie, it will probably not shoot high-energy plasma but ultra-high velocity cannon shells.”

But how exactly does magnetized plasma artillery work? Global Times helpfully noted that a Chinese-approved patent is available on Google Patents. Here is the text of the patent:

The invention discloses magnetized plasma artillery. A magnetic field is arranged in an artillery body pipe, the direction of the magnetic field points to an artillery port along the direction of an axis of the artillery body pipe, the magnetic field strength is gradually reduced from an inner wall of the artillery body pipe to the axis of the artillery body pipe, and the gas in the artillery body pipe can be ionized into the plasma for forming a plasma sheath layer on the inner wall of the artillery body pipe under the action of the magnetic field while the artillery is launched. The magnetized plasma sheath layer formed on the inner wall of the artillery body pipe of the magnetized plasma artillery has stress anisotropic characteristic and has thermal insulation function, and then, the radial force for the artillery body pipe is greatly reduced, the driving force for the bullet is greatly improved, the heat resistance of the artillery body pipe is greatly improved and the service life is prolonged.

In other words, the magnetized plasma layer protects the gun barrel from wear and heat, and allow the projectile to achieve a higher launch velocity.

Chinese military analyst Wei Dongxu told Global Times that the new technology “would extend the range of a conventional 155-millimeter self-propelled howitzer from 30 to 50 kilometers [19 to 31 miles] to 100 kilometers [62 miles]. The plasma layer might also reduce friction between the barrel and rounds, making the weapon more accurate.”

Dennis Killinger, a professor emeritus of physics at the University of South Florida, called the idea “intriguing.” “The idea seems possible,” he told the National Interest. “My main question is what is the lifetime of the plasma and is it sufficient during the launch time inside the barrel.”

It is also a different approach than a railgun. “I don’t think that you can think of it as an offshoot of the classic railgun technique since the railgun is more a linear motor (moving mag field) approach using a fixed stator (i.e., bullet) similar to the linear accelerators used for the newer roller coasters. This new, patented technique uses a plasma which interacts with the magnetic field and serves as a liner for the barrel.”

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

This article appeared last year.

Image: Reuters

Sebastien Roblin

History,

The Navy's experience was gained with blood, but it would help again against the Nazis during the Second Battle of the Atlantic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This first appeared in December 2018.

For farmers in Myanmar, the COVID-19 pandemic is adding to growing unpredictability, in a sector already struggling to cope with the effects of climate change. The UN is working closely with the country’s government to help them to adapt and thrive.

Robert Farley

History, Americas

Washington nearly made different spending choices when it came to battleships vs battlecruisers.

Key point: America got along okay during the start of the war with battleships instead. But imagine if Washington had built a class of battlecruisers during the build up to the conflict.

The United States Navy (USN) entered World War II when Japanese aircraft battered its fleet of old, slow battleships at Pearl Harbor. Fortunately, newer, faster ships would soon enter service, but the USN nevertheless fought the opening battles of the Pacific War without the support of fast battleships.

Had the U.S. Navy made different, better choices at the end of World War I, it might have begun World War II with battlecruisers that could have supported its fast carrier groups. The names of these ships might have been USS Lexington and USS Saratoga.

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

The Battlecruiser Turn

The United States Navy began to think about battlecruiser construction even before HMS Dreadnought and HMS Invincible entered service. Prior to the construction of Dreadnought, the USN had built two different kinds of capital ship. Large, slow, well-armored battleships would engage enemy battleships in set-piece battles, while large, fast, poorly armored cruisers would raid and disrupt enemy commerce. Although the battleships were starting to trend larger, at the turn of the century cruisers and battleships were of roughly the same size.

The Dreadnought Revolution changed the equation. Britain, Germany, and Japan began to build all-big-gun battleships, but supplemented these battleships with battlecruisers. Faster but less heavily armed and armored than their cousins, battlecruisers would serve as the scouting wing of the battlefleet, but could also operate in traditional “cruising” roles, such as commerce raiding or protection.

The Lexingtons

The United States, on the other hand, focused entirely on battleships. Not until the 1910s, when it became apparent that Japan was about to acquire four large, fast battlecruisers, did the USN begin to take the battlecruiser seriously. The first designs resembled modified Wyomings, dropping a turret or two and using the saved weight to increase speed. This superficially resembled British practice of the day, in which battleships and battlecruisers shared core design elements in order to save time and expense.

The Lexingtons were to be a class of six battlecruisers that would close the gap with the British, Germans, and especially the Japanese. The USN discarded the idea of simply modifying an existing battleship design (these designs were in flux, anyway) and started from scratch. The first efforts were . . . sketchy, resulting in huge, fast, poorly protected ships with bizarre configurations (one design had seven funnels). The 1916 design specified a displacement of thirty-five thousand tons, a speed of thirty-five knots, and main armament of ten fourteen-inch guns in four turrets.

Of course, reality intervened and the Lexingtons were delayed by war requirements. Fortunately, the Royal Navy offered its assistance, having won hard experience with battlecruisers at the Battle of Jutland. British intervention resulted in significant design changes that increased the size of the ships but left them more well-balanced. The USN also opted to shift to sixteen-inch guns, which alleviated some design problems.

When wartime demand for escort craft receded, the United States Navy resumed construction of its battlefleet. The U.S. Navy decided to commit to construction of the Big Five, advanced Standard Type battleships that included two ships of the Tennessee class and three ships of the Colorado class. One of the Big Five was laid down in 1916, two in 1917, and two in 1919.

Interwar

The USN finally began construction of the Lexingtons in the early 1920s. But by that time the strategic landscape had changed once again, as the United States entered the Washington Naval Treaty with Japan, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy. That story is well-known; the United States was granted the right to convert two capital ships into aircraft carriers, and it chose Lexington and Saratoga. Both ships served with distinction in the war; Lexington was sunk at the Battle of Coral Sea, and Saratoga in the post-war atomic bomb tests.

Nevertheless, it’s easy to imagine a world in which the USN would have entered the Treaty system with two fewer battleships and two more battlecruisers. The Navy would likely have selected two other ships (for convenience sake Constellation and Constitution) for refit into aircraft carriers, so it’s unlikely that this would have changed the composition of the carrier fleet. The overall impact depends greatly on where in the design process the USN would have changed its mind. The earliest designs for the Lexingtons were a bit of a disaster and would have resulted in ships requiring immense modification during the interwar period. Still, even the early problematic designs would have left the USN in possession of two large, well-armed, fast battlecruisers. The Navy devoted immense resources to rebuilding its battleships in the interwar period anyway, and it’s possible that it could have remedied many of the core problems with the Lexingtons.

World War II

Of course, speed wouldn’t have helped the Lexingtons if they’d been trapped at Pearl Harbor during the Japanese attack. But then the battlecruisers might not even have been in Pearl on December 7. The battlefleet remained home while the aircraft carriers conducted missions around the Pacific because the battleships could not keep up with the carriers. Had battlecruisers been available, they might well have escorted Enterprise and Lexington on their ferry and patrol missions, and thus missed the attack. Alternatively, the USN might have posted the ships to the Atlantic, as it did with the North Carolina class fast battleships when they entered service.

If the Lexington and Saratoga survived Pearl Harbor, they would have immediately offered the USN a capability that it did not have until mid-1942, and in some sense not until late 1943; a fast battleship that could provide high-speed carrier escort in engagements across the Pacific. The Lexingtons might have seen duty at Coral Sea, Midway, and the Doolittle Raid, offering anti-aircraft and anti-surface protection for USN carriers. In late 1942 they could have operated as the core of cruiser divisions in the Guadalcanal campaign.

In short, like their Japanese counterparts the Kongos, they would have been among the busiest ships in the fleet. Of course, the story of the Kongos ended badly, with two of the four sinking during the Guadalcanal campaign. The Lexingtons would also have sailed into harm’s way, and wouldn’t have enjoyed the protection of fast battleships like USS Washington or USS South Dakota. Of the seven battlecruisers to enter World War II, only one (HMS Renown) survived the conflict.

Wrap

The USN prioritized slow, well-armored battleships that could operate together in a line-of-battle. Had the Navy paid more attention to European trends in shipbuilding, it might have gone ahead with the Lexington-class battlecruisers, which would have offered U.S. commanders in the Pacific better tools for fighting the war. The USN might well have lost the ships in the bitter, hard-fought battles of World War II, but this is always the potential fate for useful, in-demand warships. In light of wartime experience, where the utility of the fast battlecruisers of the Royal Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy became clear (notwithstanding the vulnerability of the ships), the USN ought to have prioritized battlecruisers over the advanced “Big Five” battleships that it began to build in 1917.

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 first appeared earlier and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

Ethen Kim Lieser

Health, Americas

Researchers have discovered was that there was a sizable 26-percent decline in coronavirus antibodies just within three months.

For the vast majority of individuals who have been infected with the novel coronavirus, immunity to the disease will last for at least five months, according to a new study conducted by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

The research findings, which were published in the journal Science, added that 90 percent of people who recover from the virus are able to develop a stable overall antibody response.

In making its conclusions, the team examined more than 30,000 coronavirus-positive patients and then closely studied 121 patients who recovered and donated their plasma at various months.

“While some reports have come out saying antibodies to this virus go away quickly, we have found just the opposite—that more than 90 percent of people who were mildly or moderately ill produce an antibody response strong enough to neutralize the virus, and the response is maintained for many months,” the study’s co-author Florian Krammer, a professor of vaccinology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said in a release.

“Uncovering the robustness of the antibody response to SARS-CoV-2, including its longevity and neutralizing effects, is critically important to enabling us to effectively monitor seroprevalence in communities and to determining the duration and levels of antibody that protect us from reinfection. This is essential for effective vaccine development.”

One such report, which came out of Britain earlier this week, stated that immunity against the coronavirus gradually wears off as patients recover from the disease. The research—available in a pre-print report and will eventually be submitted for peer-review—gathered results of more than 365,000 home finger-prick tests that were given out randomly in England.

What the researchers discovered was that there was a sizable 26-percent decline in coronavirus antibodies just within three months.

Although the new study may seem to contradict other research that has delved into the connections between coronavirus infections and immunity, the Mount Sinai researchers noted that there is more than one wave of infection control in the human body.

After an initial infection, the body generates large amounts of immune compounds that often die off quickly. Studies that show declining antibody response in the first months after infection might be only measuring this first wave because the body is still busy at work building up new lines of defense.

“Although this cannot provide conclusive evidence that these antibody responses protect from reinfection, we believe it is very likely that they will decrease the odds ratio of reinfection,” the study’s authors wrote.

Other medical experts admit that there is still so much unknown about the virus. But the fact that there is some semblance of robust immunity after infection is positive news ahead of a possible green-lighting of a viable coronavirus vaccine in the coming months.

“I think, at this point, we are still trying to figure out the immunity question, but the recent study is encouraging. Unfortunately, this might be a question that only gets answered as time passes,” Dr. Jason Keonin, of Northwest Iowa Surgeons PC in Spencer, Iowa, told The National Interest.

“I think most scientists and doctors believe that immunity will last at least long enough to make vaccines effective, at least in the short term, which would still make a huge impact.”

Keonin was impressed by the data from Mount Sinai’s study but added that “it’s still important to emphasize that we need to suppress the virus.”

“From what we know now, there’s no guarantee that someone who has been infected or receives the vaccine will be immune forever, so attempting a herd-immunity approach could fail and be disastrous,” he said. “We must take steps to mitigate and suppress the virus while we wait for more research and vaccines.”

The controversial herd-immunity approach—similar to what was pursued in Sweden—aims to have enough people within a population become immune to a disease, often through vaccination or natural infection, to make its spread unlikely. As a result, the entire community is protected, even those who are not themselves immune, according to Harvard Medical School.

The threshold for herd immunity to the coronavirus is estimated between 60 percent and 80 percent of the population.

The United States, however, is nowhere near that level, even though more than nine million people have tested positive for the virus and nearly 230,000 have died since the pandemic began, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University.

“If we’re waiting until 60 percent to 80 percent of people have it, we’re talking about 200 million-plus Americans getting this—and at a fatality rate of 1 percent, let’s say, that’s two million Americans who will die in this effort to try to get herd immunity,” Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and former health commissioner for the city of Baltimore, said in an interview last month.

“Those are preventable deaths of our loved ones that we can just not let happen under our watch.”

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

Image: Reuters

Michael Peck

Security, Asia

If the Korean War wasn't bloody enough, part II would be even worse. 

Here's What You Need to Remember: Pyongyang won't go down without a fight, and they'd take millions with them.

North Korea’s unpredictable leader Kim Jong-un has many ways of making war upon his neighbors. He can unleash commandos, or cyberweapons, or threaten to utilize weapons of mass destruction unless the world complies with his wishes.

Whether Kim Jong-un will live to see the results is another matter.

He might be assassinated by U.S. and South Korean special forces, or buried in his bunker by a bunker-buster bomb. Other smart bombs might take out his command posts and nuclear facilities. The authoritarian state of North Korea could become a state without authority, its leadership decapitated by precisely targeted strikes.

Or at least that seems to be America’s plan for fighting the next Korean War. And with North Korea conducting a new wave of ballistic missile tests, and U.S and South Korean forces practicing how to destroy North Korean nuclear sites, that plan is becoming more relevant.

Exactly what U.S. Operations Plan 5015 (OPLAN 5015) entails is classified. Fragments have been reported in the Japanese and South Korean press. But what details have emerged indicate that in 2015, a new approach was taken toward the old problem of how to fight a bellicose North Korea and its huge arsenal of conventional and unconventional weapons.

For years, the expectation had been that a second Korean War would resemble with the first, a big-unit conventional war with U.S. and South Korean forces first stopping the enemy and then counterattacking into North Korea. But OPLAN 5015 reportedly takes a more twenty-first century approach of limited war, special forces and precision weapons. Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported in 2015 that the plan resembled guerrilla warfare, with special forces assassinations and targeted attacks on key facilities. The goal was to consolidate several older war plans, minimize casualties in a war and even prepare for the possibility that the North Korean regime might collapse.

Most important, OPLAN 5015 envisaged the possibility of a preemptive strike against North Korea.

“The new plan was said to adapt to changes in the security environment by focusing on making a swifter and more energetic military response than the previous OPLAN 5027, incorporating the concept of a preemptive strike,” according to Globalsecurity.org. With North Korea’s localized provocations becoming more frequent, there was an increasing risk of escalation. OPLAN 5015 articulated ways to respond to these threats with U.S.-ROK combined forces and, in the event of escalation, to respond to the threat of North Korea’s missiles and nuclear weapons.

Echoes of this can be seen in the current U.S.-South Korean exercises, designated Foal Eagle 2017, which will involve more than 300,000 personnel for two months of live and computer-simulated training. Citing Korea’s Yonhap news agency, the Washington Post reported that “the joint forces will also run through their new ‘4D’ operational plan, which details the allies’ preemptive military operations to detect, disrupt, destroy and defend against North Korea’s nuclear and missile arsenal.”

The question is how much stock to put in OPLAN 5015. David Maxwell, a retired U.S. Army Special Forces colonel who now teaches at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies, warns against taking OPLAN 5015 too literally. “My recommendation is not to try to read too much into the plans,” he tells the National Interest.

Military planners are by nature worst case planners but they also plan to provide multiple options to national decision makers for responding to crisis based on the mostly likely enemy course of action to the most dangerous enemy course of action. While there is likely Option A, B and C for every contingency, often what gets executed is Option D that is developed from A, B and C and the actual assessment of enemy actions.

As Globalsecurity.org noted,

Although the new plan reportedly focused not on a full-blown war but on limited warfare, a preemptive strike can escalate from a small skirmish into a large-scale war. It is hard to understand how the Korean troops would play a leading role while should a war start, Korea would not have military operational control. If that meant Korean soldiers would mostly engage in ground warfare while the US military provided naval and aerial support as some experts alleged, some South Koreans said the plan needed to be reconsidered.

Then there are the political questions, especially for those nations who will actually the bear the brunt of a North Korean attack. South Korean lawmakers were furious in 2015 when their government balked at telling them details of OPLAN 5015.

“Although the new scheme reportedly focuses not on a full-blown war but on limited warfare, a preemptive strike can escalate—unnecessarily and disastrously—in what could go from being a small skirmish into a large-scale war,” complained an editorial in The Korea Times.

It is also hard to understand how the Korean troops would be able to play a leading role while everyone knows here that should a war start, Korea will not have military operational control. If that possibly means Korean soldiers will mostly engage in ground warfare while the U.S. military provides naval and aerial support as some experts allege, the plan needs to be reconsidered.

Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook. This first appeared in March 2017.

Image: Reuters

Sebastien Roblin

Security,

For decades, the South Korean military has had to prepare for a conflict in which its cities, especially the capital of Seoul, would be on the receiving end of a North Korean artillery, chemical weapons and ballistic missiles.

Here's What You Need To Remember: Eventually, South Korea intends to procure forty F-35 Lightning stealth fighters for the third phase of the F-X program while retiring its venerable F-4 Phantoms. Seoul is also planning to produce 200 home-designed cruise missile to be mounted on its indigenous KF-X jet fighter, when and if that materializes. Until those are ready, the powerful Slam Eagle will remain South Korea’s top jet fighter—and one that plays an especially critical role in that country’s defense.

On September 13, 2017 the Republic of Korea Air Force (ROKAF) test-fired a Taurus cruise missile in response to a North Korean ballistic missile test. In this video, you can see as an F-15K launch the boxy weapon, which plunges straight through the roof of a practice target, penetrating into the ground below before its main warhead detonates.

For decades, the South Korean military has had to prepare for a conflict in which its cities, especially the capital of Seoul, would be on the receiving end of a North Korean artillery, chemical weapons and ballistic missiles. Now, such an onslaught might potentially include nuclear warheads. Though such a scenario must be avoided at all costs, should it occur, it would be vital for South Korean and U.S. forces to destroy these heavily fortified missile and artillery sites as swiftly as possible.

That’s the mission assigned to the sixty F-15K Slam Eagles in the Republic of Korea Air Force. Based on the F-15E Strike Eagle fighter bomber in U.S. Air Force, the Slam Eagles have souped-up sensors and electronic warfare systems, and now are loaded with bunker-busting cruise missiles to blast open North Korean missile silos.

Those weapons could also be employed in an attempt to decapitate North Korean leadership in a fortified bunker, a point the South Korean military surely hoped to illustrate when it released the video.

South Korea’s Slam Eagles

The Strike Eagle is a fighter-bomber variant of the F-15 Eagle, loaded with extra weapons pylons, fuel tanks and sensors at the cost of modestly decreased thrust-to-weight ratio and maneuverability. The two-seat jets can still sprint at two-and-a-half times the speed of sound, and can lug an extraordinary 23,000 pounds of weapons, nearly three times the bomb load of a strategic bomber in World War II. On the downside, the large, twin-engine F-15 is much more expensive to operate than, say, a single-engine F-16, though the additional turbofan does contribute to a lower accident rate.

South Korea chose to procure forty F-15Ks in 2002 for $4.2 billion as the first part of a three-phase F-X program to modernize its jet fighter force, beating out the Eurofighter Typhoon, the French Rafale and an earlier variant of the Su-35. Nearly 40 percent of the components were built by Korean firms, including fuselage, wings, and much of the avionics, then were assembled by Boeing in St. Louis, Missouri.

Because the new Slam Eagles came more than a decade after the F-15E entered service, they could be outfitted at the outset with then-new technologies including flat-screen displays in the cockpit that are compatible with night-vision goggles, and a Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System permitting a pilot to acquire aerial targets for short-range AIM-9X missiles merely by pointing his or her head at them.

The Slam Eagle was also one of the first variants of the F-15 to trade out the original F100 engines for F110 turbofans which could generate roughly 10 percent more thrust. You can see the difference in the engine nozzles here.

In 2008 Seoul ordered a second batch of twenty-one F-15Ks for Phase II of the F-X program to replace the F-5B Freedom Fighters it was retiring. (The order included one extra aircraft to fill in for an F-15K which fatally crashed in 2006 when its crew passed out performing a high-G maneuver.) These planes featured Sniper-XR targeting pods, and reverted to F100 PW-229 engines to benefit from parts commonality with the engines on Korea’s KF-16 fighters.

Unlike its American counterpart, the F-15K also boasts an AAS-42 Infrared search-and-track system, allowing the Slam Eagle to stalk aircraft at shorter ranges without turning on its radar. The F-15K also initially benefited from a superior APG-63 (V)1 radar, which boasted a sea-search and target-identification mode to facilitate the F-15K’s use in a naval strike role. However, the U.S. Air Force later began upgrading its F-15E fleet with new APG-82 Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radars with a decisive edge in resolution and stealth. Though the APG-63’s antenna could be upgraded to an AESA type, it is not clear if and when the ROKAF would pursue the upgrade. This may be because Pyongyang’s air force remains quite obsolete, with only thirty-five MiG-29s purchased in the 1990s standing out as somewhat modern fighters.

On the other hand, North Korea has quite a few surface-to-air missiles, though again only a fraction of them are modern types. To counter that threat, the F-15K boasts a lighter but more powerful Tactical Electronic Warfare Suite than found on the F-15E, including an ALQ-135M countermeasure system with faster processors that can track and jam multiple incoming SAMs and an ALE-47 chaff and flare dispensers that times and aims the release of the decoys for maximum missile confusion.

Taurus Missile, Meet Missile Silo

The F-15K fleet is all assigned to the 11th Fighter Wing based in Daegu, 170 miles south of the demilitarized zone. This rearward deployment reflects that the longer-range jets are not serving as frontline tactical fighters for rapid response, but instead are intended for offensive and strategic missions. This is because the F-15K is the only Korean fighter capable of hauling the deadly 3,000-pound Taurus missile.

South Korea initially ordered 170 of the weapons from their German and Swedish manufacturers, with delivery of that batch completing in 2017. The five-meter long jet-powered missile, known as the KEPD-350K, soars just below the speed of sound and can hit targets more than 300 miles away—far enough to strike any location in North Korea when launched from within South Korean airspace.

To evade detection, the Taurus skims at around 130 feet above the ground, and furthermore boasts a stealthy radar profile and jam-resistant countermeasures. The missile uses four different navigational systems (GPS, inertial, infrared and terrain-referencing) for guidance, so that it can remain on course even if one of them fails. It can even be programmed to scan for a three-dimensional image of the target once it’s close to its destination, and can abort the attack without causing collateral damage if it can’t be found.

As it closes in on the target, a Taurus rears up higher into the air and then plunges down at a steep angle for optimal penetration of its two-stage Mephisto warhead. A precursor charge blasts open the hardened exterior of the target or blows away obstructing soil, then a delayed fuse munition detonates once the bomb has penetrated inside. This missile can pierce concrete walls up to six meters thick, precisely the kind of capability necessary to knock out hardened missile and artillery sites poised to rain death on South Korea.

In fact, in December 2016 the Republic of Korea ordered ninety additional KEPD-350s, due to the ever-increasing tempo of Pyongyang’s missile tests. Furthermore, Seoul is interested in fielding a lighter version of the Taurus missile with a range of 250 miles that it could fit on its growing fleet of FA-50 Golden Eagle light attack jets. Of course, in a conflict with its northern neighbor, South Korea would receive massive additional fire support from U.S. Air Force and Navy fighters and bombers, as well as Tomahawk missiles fired by warships and enormous Ohio-class cruise missile submarines.

However, this impressive firepower could only mitigate rather than prevent North Korea from inflicting thousands of civilian casualties in the opening days of a conflict. While some artillery and missile systems are fixed in heavily fortified positions, others are mobile and can be rapidly repositioned to avoid retaliatory fire and render intelligence obsolete. The last time the United States attempted to hunt mobile ballistic missile launchers—Iraq’s Scud missiles in 1991—the results were dismal, with postwar intelligence unable to confirm a single Scud launcher destroyed from the air. Tactics and technology have evolved since then, of course, but that’s no reason to disregard the proven difficulty of such an endeavor.

The Slam Eagle, and its U.S. counterparts could therefore only hope to mitigate a ruinous North Korean bombardment over time, not eliminate the threat from the onset. No one should delude themselves into thinking a preemptive strike, or a rapid counter-strike, would contain the loss of life to an acceptable level. That doesn’t make the F-15K’s role any less vital. Indeed, should the worst come to pass, thousands of lives in South Korea and perhaps even on U.S. soil would be affected by how quickly the North Korean batteries could be silenced.

Eventually, South Korea intends to procure forty F-35 Lightning stealth fighters for the third phase of the F-X program while retiring its venerable F-4 Phantoms. Seoul is also planning to produce 200 home-designed cruise missile to be mounted on its indigenous KF-X jet fighter, when and if that materializes. Until those are ready, the powerful Slam Eagle will remain South Korea’s top jet fighter—and one that plays an especially critical role in that country’s defense.

Sébastien Roblin holds a Master’s Degree in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. This first appeared several years ago. 

Image: Wikipedia.

David Axe

Technology, Asia

Taiwan is counting on drones to counter China’s expanding advantage in ships, planes and troops. China can muster potentially thousands of aircraft, hundreds of ships and hundreds of thousands of troops for a possible invasion of Taiwan.

Here's What You Need To Remember: A suicide drone essentially is a small, inexpensive cruise missile, usually possessing some loitering capability. They might include a simple seeker head. Alternately, their operators remotely could steer them toward their targets.

A new suicide drone appeared at the August 2019 edition of the biennial Taipei Aerospace & Defense Technology Exhibition in the island country’s capital.

The unmanned aerial vehicle bears a strong resemblance to the small, hand-launched drones that are popular with U.S. forces. The other clearly draws inspiration from Israel’s Harpy anti-radar drone.

A suicide drone essentially is a small, inexpensive cruise missile, usually possessing some loitering capability. They might include a simple seeker head. Alternately, their operators remotely could steer them toward their targets.

Often based on commercial UAVs, suicide drones typically pack a small, grenade-size explosive warhead.

The Fire Cardinal drone, which first appeared at the Taipei trade show, is “an air-to-ground strike assault UAV,” according to the aviation-news website Alert 5, citing information from the show.

The twin-propeller Fire Cardinal is around four feet long, has a six-foot wingspan and weighs around 15 pounds. It includes an electro-optical and infrared sensor and selects its target using what Alert 5 described as an “intelligent object-detection system.”

Alert 5 did not speculate as to Fire Cardinal’s range, but it’s roughly the same size as the U.S. Army’s hand-launched Puma surveillance drone. The propeller-driven Puma can range as far as 10 miles at an altitude of 500 feet and a maximum speed of around 50 miles per hour.

A human operator controls a Puma via radio. It’s safe to assume the Fire Cardinal, with its own modest range and performance, features a similar control system. Ground troops in close proximity to enemy forces could lob many Fire Cardinals into the air in the hope of overwhelming the enemy’s short-range air defenses.

That’s the tactic that militant forces in the Middle East have employed with their own, custom-made suicide drones. In January 2018 a swarm of 10 explosives-laden small drones, apparently controlled by Syrian rebels, attacked two Russian bases in western Syria.

Meanwhile, three drones attacked Russian facilities at the nearby port of Tartus. The Kremlin claimed that a Pantsir-S air-defense system shot down seven of the drones while Russian electronic-warfare specialists hacked six of the UAVs and ordered them to land.

Taiwan’s other suicide drone targets the air-defenses themselves. The Chien Hsiang first appeared in 2017 at the Taipei trade show. It bears a striking resemblance to the eight-foot-long Israeli Harpy UAV. The Harpy packs a relatively powerful, 70-pound warhead and cruises as fast as 115 miles per hour out to a distance of nearly 300 miles.

Taiwan Air Force’s Air Defense and Missile Command said it would spend $2.5 billion developing the truck-launched Chien Hsiang through the early 2020s.

“The domestically produced anti-radiation UAV can detect and attack radar emitters on enemy vessels or electromagnetic wave sources in their weapon systems,” UAS Vision noted, citing Taiwanese media. “Their flight range is said to be able to cover radar stations along China’s southeastern coast.”

Taiwan is counting on drones to counter China’s expanding advantage in ships, planes and troops. China can muster potentially thousands of aircraft, hundreds of ships and hundreds of thousands of troops for a possible invasion of Taiwan.

Taiwan’s own military fields fewer than 300 fighters, just a few dozen major warships and 100,000 ground troops. The island country has rushed to develop a wide array of missiles and drones to boost its invasion-defenses.

Taiwanese media on Aug. 4, 2019, reported that the country’s National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology had cleared the Yun Feng cruise missile for mass production.

The supersonic land-attack missile has been under development since the 1990s. It can fly as far as 1,200 miles, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

That range could allow Taiwan to threaten many of the airbases, ports and other facilities from which China likely would stage any attempt to invade Taiwan.

Taipei reportedly is building an initial 20 Yun Feng missiles as well as 10 truck-based launchers. Taiwan’s Up Media described the missiles as “the top priority of the various studios of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.”

Taiwan also is developing a new air-launched cruise missile -- and reportedly has attempted to reverse-engineer old, U.S.-made J85 engines apparently to power the munition.

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

Image: Reuters.

Ethen Kim Lieser

Technology, Space

The fix involved Deep Space Station 43 in Australia.

NASA has finally broken through to Voyager 2 after seven long months of not being able to command the record-setting craft. 

The breakdown in communication began in mid-March when NASA announced that Deep Space Station 43 (DSS-43) in Canberra, Australia—the only antenna on the planet that can send commands to Voyager 2—needed critical upgrades. One of its two radio transmitters had not been upgraded in nearly fifty years. 

DSS-43 was slated to be shut down for nearly a year, but enough of the upgrades were completed for communication with the craft to start again. The work on the antenna is still underway and will likely be finished in February. 

Suzanne Dodd, the director of Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Interplanetary Network Directorate and project manager for the Voyager Interstellar Mission, told The National Interest that she was satisfied with the work on the antenna and knew that sending commands to Voyager 2—currently about twelve billion miles away from Earth—would begin again relatively quickly. 

“The work on the antenna upgrades went smoothly, especially considering travel to Australia was very restricted,” she said. “We were not able to send the engineers from JPL that we normally would have to participate in the work. But the team in Australia did a great job in keeping the work on schedule and consulting with JPL engineers remotely.” 

Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 launched a few weeks apart in 1977 and were given the monumental task of performing an unprecedented “grand tour” of the solar system’s giant planets. Voyager 1 managed to fly by Jupiter and Saturn, and Voyager 2 followed suit and then zipped past Uranus and Neptune as well. 

In August 2012, Voyager 1 made its historic entry into interstellar space, a first for a man-made object. Then Voyager 2 did the same on November 5, 2018—amazing to think that these two probes, launched four decades ago, are still technically within our solar system. 

And they won’t be leaving anytime soon, as the boundary of the solar system is considered to be beyond the outer edge of the Oort Cloud, an assortment of objects that are still under the influence of the sun’s gravity. It will likely take about 300 years for Voyager 2 to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud and possibly 30,000 years to fly past it. 

Voyager 2’s achievement in reaching interstellar space was confirmed by comparing data from different instruments—namely, the cosmic ray subsystem, the low-energy charged particle instrument, and the magnetometer—aboard the spacecraft. Mission scientists have determined that the probe crossed the outer edge of the heliosphere, the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by our sun. This particular boundary, which is called the heliopause, is where the hot solar wind meets the cold and dense interstellar void. 

For Chris Laws, teaching professor of astronomy at University of Washington, he believes that “since the region of interstellar space around the sun is not especially well understood, any direct data we can get is immensely valuable.” 

“I also think it’s important from a somewhat more emotional, existential point of view,” he told TNI. “Voyagers 1 and 2 really introduced us to the outer solar system, and they represent the parts of us that have traveled farthest from home—it’s good to hear from your students, and to know that they’re doing well.” 

The Voyager probes are powered by using heat from the decay of radioactive material, which is contained in a device called a radioisotope thermal generator. The power output falls by about four watts per year, which means that they will run out of power supply likely within this decade. 

“The Voyager spacecraft were designed very robustly, with the goal of getting all the way to Neptune for Voyager 2. Obviously, it has lasted another thirty-one years since then, traveling through the heliopause and now since November 2018 through interstellar space. Its longevity is a testament to the excellent spacecraft design and the hard work of dedicated engineers who have stayed with the mission for the last three decades,” Dodd told TNI. 

“It’s anticipated the Voyager spacecraft will continue operations for another five-plus years, assuming that no anomalies occur. We are turning off science instrument heaters and science instruments yearly in order to reduce the power consumption as the power output gets less each year.” 

When that dreaded day eventually arrives, Dodd said that it will be “very difficult to say goodbye to Voyager.” 

“It’s had such a long and exciting mission,” she added. “It will be missed by the team members, but also by all the folks in the general public who follow the mission.” 

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

Image: Reuters

Mark Episkopos

Security, Asia

In fact, China published a white paper on its defense.

Key point: Beijing is singalling to the world that it knows it has new muscles to flex. What might China be planning next?

First published in 1995, China’s biannual White Paper has long been regarded as one of the foremost sources of Chinese strategic messaging. What does its 2019 edition, “China’s National Defence in the New Era,” tell us about the PRC’s security orientation?

Popular news coverage has focused on the report’s repeated insistence that Chinese “national sovereignty” is irreconcilable with Taiwanese independence, and rightly so; the White Paper reaffirmed that China “makes no promise to renounce the use of force”, and reserves “the option of taking all necessary measures” to reunify with the wayward island off its east coast. So as to preempt any ambiguity, the report confirms that these “necessary measures” include a military solution: “the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) will resolutely defeat anyone attempting to separate Taiwan from China and safeguard national unity at all costs.

A great swathe of the report is devoted to similar kinds of political signalling vis-à-vis the US and China’s Asia-Pacific competitors, but interspersed throughout the White Paper is a trove of valuable information concerning China’s defense priorities.

Despite colossal advancements in military hardware modernization over the past several decades, the report concludes that there is much more work to be done and more investments to be made if the PLA is to meet all of its ambitious modernization targets by 2035: “... the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has yet to complete the task of mechanization, and is in urgent need of improving its informationization. China’s military security is confronted by risks from technology surprise and growing technological generation gap. Greater efforts have to be invested in military modernization to meet national security demands. The PLA still lags far behind the world’s leading militaries.” China’s upcoming type 15 tank, type 052D destroyer, J-20 fighter, and DF-26 ballistic missile were cited as some of the hardware pillars of the standardized, interoperable force that the PLA seeks to evolve towards.

Briefings on the PLA’s hardware modernization progress have long been a mainstay of China’s White Papers; however, the PLA’s newfound emphasis on rethinking not just equipment, but “military policies and institutions,” marks a departure from recent iterations. Chapter four, “Reform in China’s National Defense and Armed Forces,” outlines a series of changes in military training regimen, the restructuring of the PLA’s army groups from 18 to 13, and consolidated military education program. In a clear confirmation of the PLA’s aggressive reorientation toward Air-Sea conflict preparedness, the PLA ground forces were hit by a personnel reduction of 300,000, accompanied by slight personnel increases for the PLA Navy and Rocket Force.

Other changes include an increasingly meritocratic officer promotion system, as well as new military policing and justice measures aimed at “uprooting peacetime ills” and weeding out corruption within the upper echelons of the PLA. The latter is being supplemented by what the White Paper advertises as a drastically reformed command structure, notably condensing the seven former military regions into five Theater Commands.

Finally, the Chinese military has taken a major step in streamlining and consolidating its cyber, space, and electronic warfare operations with the establishment of a People's Liberation Army Strategic Support Force (PLASSF) that reports directly to the Central Military Commission (CMC).

As China continues to “narrow the gap between its military and the world’s leading militaries,” the 2019 White Paper is the clearest statement yet of Beijing’s struggle to establish sound military institutions to keep pace with the PLA’s rapid technical modernization.

Mark Episkopos is a frequent contributor to The National Interest and serves as research assistant at the Center for the National Interest. Mark is also a PhD student in History at American University. This first appeared in July 2019.

Image: Reuters. 

James Holmes

Security, Americas

Steam isn’t dead, but it is a technology of the past—just like 16-inch guns.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The function of a capital ship is a vessel that can both give out punishment and receive it. This was the role battleships filled during the Second World War, and it's a need that hasn't entirely gone away. But bringing the old behemoths themselves back would present a dizzying array of logistical problems.

There’s a mystique to battleships.

Whenever inside-the-Beltway dwellers debate how to bulk up the U.S. Navy fleet, odds are sentimentalists will clamor to return the Iowa-class dreadnoughts to service. Nor is the idea of bringing back grizzled World War II veterans as zany as it sounds. We aren’t talking equipping the 1914-vintage USS Texas with superweapons to blast the Soviet Navy, or resurrecting the sunken Imperial Japanese Navy superbattleship Yamato for duty in outer space, or keeping USS Missouri battleworthy in case aliens menace the Hawaiian Islands. Such proposals are not mere whimsy.

Built to duel Japan in World War II, in fact, battleships were recommissioned for the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War. The last returned to action in 1988. The Iowa class sat in mothballs for about three decades after Korea (except for USS New Jersey, which returned to duty briefly during the Vietnam War). That’s about how long the battlewagons have been in retirement since the Cold War. History thus seems to indicate they could stage yet another comeback. At this remove from their past lives, though, it’s doubtful in the extreme that the operational return on investment would repay the cost, effort, and human capital necessary to bring them back to life.

Numbers deceive. It cost the U.S. Navy $1.7 billion in 1988 dollars to put four battlewagons back in service during the Reagan naval buildup. That comes to about $878 million per hull in 2017 dollars. This figure implies the navy could refurbish two ships bristling with firepower for the price of one Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. One copy of the latest-model Burke will set the taxpayers back $1.9 billion according to Congressional Budget Office figures. Two for the price of one: a low, low price! Or, better yet, the navy could get two battlewagons for the price of three littoral combat ships—the modern equivalent of gunboats. Sounds like a good deal all around.

But colossal practical difficulties would work against reactivating the dreadnoughts at low cost, despite these superficially plausible figures. First of all, the vessels no longer belong to the U.S. Navy. They’re museums. New Jersey and Missouri were struck from the navy list during the 1990s. Engineers preserved Iowa and Wisconsin in “reactivation” status for quite some time, meaning they hypothetically could return to duty. But they too were struck from the rolls, in 2006. Sure, the U.S. government could probably get them back during a national emergency, but resolving legal complications would consume time and money in peacetime.

Second, chronological age matters. A standard talking point among battleship enthusiasts holds that the Iowas resemble a little old lady’s car, an aged auto with little mileage on the odometer. A used-car salesman would laud its longevity, assuring would-be buyers they could put lots more miles on it. This too makes intuitive sense. My old ship, USS Wisconsin, amassed just fourteen years of steaming time despite deploying for World War II, Korea, and Desert Storm. At a time when the U.S. Navy hopes to wring fifty years of life out of aircraft carriers and forty out of cruisers and destroyers, refitted battleships could seemingly serve for decades to come.

And it is true: stout battleship hulls could doubtless withstand the rigors of sea service. But what about their internals? Mechanical age tells only part of the story. Had the Iowa class remained in continuous service, with regular upkeep and overhauls, they probably could have steamed around for decades. After all, the World War II flattop USS Lexington served until 1991, the same year the Iowas retired. But they didn’t get that treatment during the decades they spent slumbering. As a consequence, battleships were already hard ships to maintain a quarter-century ago. Sailors had to scavenge spares from still older battleships. Machinists, welders, and shipfitters were constantly on the go fabricating replacements for worn-out parts dating from the 1930s or 1940s.

This problem would be still worse another quarter-century on, and a decade-plus after the navy stopped preserving the vessels and their innards. Managing that problem would be far more expensive. An old joke among yachtsmen holds that a boat is a hole in the water into which the owner dumps money. A battleship would represent a far bigger hole in the water, devouring taxpayer dollars in bulk. Even if the U.S. Navy could reactivate the Iowas for a pittance, the cost of operating and maintaining them could prove prohibitive. That’s why they were shut down in the 1990s, and time has done nothing to ease that remorseless logic.

Third, what about the big guns the Iowa class sports—naval rifles able to fling projectiles weighing the same as a VW Bug over twenty miles? These are the battleships’ signature weapon, and there is no counterpart to them in today’s fleet. Massive firepower might seem to justify the expense of recommissioning and maintaining the ships. But gun barrels wear out after being fired enough times. No one has manufactured replacement barrels for 16-inch, 50-caliber guns in decades, and the inventory of spares has evidently been scrapped or donated to museums. That shortage would cap the battleships’ combat usefulness.

Nor, evidently, is there any safe ammunition for battleship big guns to fire. We used 1950s-vintage 16-inch rounds and powder during the 1980s and 1990s. Any such rounds still in existence are now over sixty years old, while the U.S. Navy is apparently looking to demilitarize and dispose of them. Gearing up to produce barrels and ammunition in small batches would represent a nonstarter for defense firms. The navy recently canceled the destroyer USS Zumwalt’s advanced gun rounds because costs spiraled above $800,000 apiece. That was a function of ordering few munitions for what is just a three-ship class. Ammunition was simply unaffordable. Modernized Iowas would find themselves in the same predicament, if not more so.

And lastly, it’s unclear where the U.S. Navy would find the human expertise to operate 16-inch gun turrets or the M-type Babcock & Wilcox boilers that propel and power battleships. No one has trained on these systems since 1991, meaning experts in using and maintaining them have, ahem, aged and grown rusty at their profession. Heck, steam engineers are in short supply, full stop, as the navy turns to electric drive, gas turbines, and diesel engines to propel its ships. Older amphibious helicopter docks (LHDs) are steam-powered, but even this contingent is getting a gradual divorce from steam as newer LHDs driven by gas turbines join the fleet while their steam-propelled forebears approach decommissioning.

Steam isn’t dead, then, but it is a technology of the past—just like 16-inch guns. Technicians are few and dwindling in numbers while battleship crews would demand them in large numbers. I rank among the youngest mariners to have operated battleship guns and propulsion-plant machinery in yesteryear, and trust me, folks: you don’t want the U.S. Navy conscripting me to regain my proficiency in engineering and weapons after twenty-six years away from it, let alone training youngsters to operate elderly hardware themselves. In short, it’s as tough to regenerate human capital as it is to rejuvenate the material dimension after a long lapse. The human factor—all by itself—could constitute a showstopper for battleship reactivation.

Battleships still have much to contribute to fleet design, just not as active surface combatants. Alfred Thayer Mahan describes a capital ship—the core of any battle fleet—as a vessel able to dish out and absorb punishment against a peer navy. While surface combatants pack plenty of offensive punch nowadays, the innate capacity to take a punch is something that has been lost in today’s lightly armored warships. Naval architects could do worse than study the battleships’ history and design philosophy, rediscovering what it means to construct a true capital ship. The U.S. Navy would be better off for their inquiry.

Let’s learn what we can from the past—but leave battleship reactivation to science fiction.

James Holmes is Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific. This article was first published in 2019.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.