Diplomacy & Crisis News

Ethen Kim Lieser

Social Security,

The 5.9 percent cost of living adjustment is the biggest in decades, but retirees shouldn't count on maintaining their current lifestyle.

There is no question that Social Security benefits have become an integral financial aspect of most seniors’ retirement plans.

That’s why many retirees rejoiced when the Social Security Administration (SSA) recently confirmed that there will be a 5.9 percent cost of living adjustment (COLA) for next year. That figure may look great on the surface, but will it really make a noticeable difference?

“This would be the highest COLA that most beneficiaries living today have ever seen,” Mary Johnson, the Social Security and Medicare policy analyst for the Senior Citizens League, said in a press release earlier this month.  

But the group also pointed out that millions of retirees have been faced with COLAs that are too low for decades, which has led to a massive loss of purchasing power.

“Over the past twelve years, COLAs have averaged a meager 1.4 percent,” the press release said. “The COLA in 2021 was just 1.3 percent, and raised average benefits by about $20. The 2022 COLA will increase an average monthly retirement benefit of $1,565 to roughly $1,657, an increase of $92.”

Making matters worse is the high inflation rates which have caused prices for goods and services to skyrocket in recent months.

“Over the past 21 years, COLAs have raised Social Security benefits by 55 percent but housing costs rose nearly 118 percent and healthcare costs rose 145 percent over the same period,” Johnson said. 

“COLAs are intended to protect the buying power of Social Security benefits but, according to consumer price data through July of 2021, Social Security benefits have lost nearly one-third of their buying power, 32 percent, since 2000, about the length of a typical retirement. Even worse, it appears that inflation is not done with us yet, and the buying power of Social Security benefits may continue to erode into 2022,” she warns.

The Senior Citizens League also reported that food prices for home consumption are expected to increase between 1.5 percent and 2.5 percent in the next year. Meanwhile, food prices for food purchased away from home will surge between 3 percent and 4 percent. Moreover, the cost to heat a home is slated to climb between 21 percent and 25 percent. Premiums for prescription drug plans will head north by about 5 percent.

“Retirees should take the Senior Citizens League’s warning to heart and not assume their high COLA will actually allow them to maintain the same spending habits without any lifestyle changes,” writes Christy Bieber of the financial site Motley Fool.

“Living on a budget to carefully manage spending during these times of high inflation will be crucial to protecting financial security in their later years,” Bieber says.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Washington state-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

Alireza Ahmadi

Sanctions, United States

Its attention, or lack thereof, to humanitarian issues associated with sanctions disappointed many advocates and non-profits, but its outlook on the problems with America’s sanctions approach also left much to be desired.

The Treasury Department formally released its year-in-the-making and long-awaited review of U.S. sanctions policy on October 18. As asserted in the document, and in a roll-out event at the Center for a New American Security that was attended by Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo, the review included a long series of consultations with a variety of stakeholders and experts to conduct a top-down comprehensive review of sanctions. But what emerged was somewhat shallow. Its attention, or lack thereof, to humanitarian issues associated with sanctions disappointed many advocates and non-profits, but its outlook on the problems with America’s sanctions approach also left much to be desired.

There are some positive aspects to this report. The document does acknowledge various issues with regard to U.S. sanctions strategies. It argues that sanctions implementation should be part of a coherent overall strategy and that it should include “clear criteria” for the use of sanctions. It emphasizes the need for clarity in the development of sanctions and the coordination with U.S. allies. Unfortunately, aside from the lack of details, which would be expected from a document only seven pages long, it also undercuts some of its most important recommendations.

Not Rocking the Boat

Historically, sanctions scholars have viewed sanctions as a means of causing policy modification in the target state, either through restoring some status quo ante or some kind of compromised agreement. But some of the recent literature and opinion have identified the weight of seeking retribution in Washington’s sanctions-related decision making over policy modification. This is at least one major reason for the reckless proliferation of sanctions often without consideration for consequences and divorced from strategic logic. It is also what raised some alarm outside the beltway and prompted a Congressional request for this analysis.

If anything, the review seems supportive of the mentioned trend by describing the purpose of sanctions as to “deter or disrupt behavior that undermines U.S. national security and signal a clear policy stance.” This sets a very low bar that any sanction or sanctions campaign, unless entirely incompetent, can theoretically clear in some way even if it fails to advance U.S. interests. Under this rubric, Washington’s various maximum pressure campaigns, now being pushed forward under a new administration, can be deemed “effective” as they have certainly disrupted and signaled, albeit also being severely counterproductive to U.S. interests in the calculation of most observers.

When outlining when sanctions should be used, the review sees little reason for limitations. It says sanctions should be used in cases such as “countering forces that fuel regional conflict, ending support to a specific violent organization or other malign and/or illicit activities, stopping the persecution of a minority group, curtailing nuclear proliferation activities, enhancing multilateral pressure, or ceasing specific instances of atrocities.” Without very much overinterpretation, there is hardly any U.S. national security challenge or power projection adventure that cannot be fitted into one of these categories.

When pondering whether the use of sanctions should require more international cooperation, the review strongly encourages cooperation, as U.S. officials always have, in the abstract but seems reticent to meaningfully consider the preferences of even America’s own allies. What many other countries around the world, including and especially America’s allies in Europe, have requested of Washington is that it partner with them rather than imposing secondary sanctions and then pressuring them to follow along or complain softly.

The review says the United States should work through the United Nations when “possible and appropriate.” This is not the multilateral approach U.S. allies have demanded of their senior partner. Rather, it’s a reflection of the “assertive multilateralism” approach that has been the core of U.S. policy since at least the end of the Cold War. Under this framework, the United States acts as it wishes, and others join it and entertain limited concessions to allies on occasion, such as providing them with temporary licenses.

Addressing the Politics

One could argue that the Treasury Department placing many of the concerns about sanctions in a formal document is itself valuable—though it is not the first time it has done so. The Atlantic Council’s Daniel Fried and Brian O’Toole argue that provided this effort is expanded and scaled out with verifiable policy goals, it can address many issues. But I believe that this ignores the more structural political problems.

For example, it’s hard to imagine any meaningful effort by the Treasury to make the language of sanctions clearer. The vagueness of the sanctions is a significant part of what makes them effective at creating harm. Banks and firms, confronted by ambiguous mandates, have no choice but to over comply in order to ensure compliance and avoid falling into the Office of Foreign Asset Control’s (OFAC) sights. As sanctions expert Richard Nephew stated, “When actively sanctioning, this level of ambiguity can be helpful to impose sanctions, creating an incentive for over-compliance.” Clearer or broader humanitarian exceptions are likely to be just as ineffective as the most potent financial sanctions often render them effectively unusable. Many in Washington clearly see the harm of exacerbating the Covid-19 outbreak in countries like Iran as an asset rather than a problem to be addressed.

As mentioned, the review does include some positive prescriptions. But to be clear, these recommendations have been made by academics and policy professionals for decades. Daniel Drezner is right in that these recommendations may constitute an appropriate framework for improvement. But that would require converting decades-old guidance into something approximating actionable advice. Treasury had an opportunity to, in some way, argue that the United States needs to put some guardrails around its use of financial statecraft.

Treasury could have proposed that coordination with allies begin in the decision-making and design phase. It could have made lawmakers aware that sanctions are effective in some cases and for some purposes and not others. It could have outlined the gravity of some of the more destructive comprehensive campaigns. Instead, it stopped short of doing any of that and, in fact, seems to more often affirm the post-Cold War status quo.

When Bill Clinton sought to consolidate American power globally after the fall of the Soviet Union, he emphasized the use of sanctions. When George W. Bush sought to make American hegemony more coercive, he invaded nations but also emphasized the use of sanctions. When Barack Obama was wary of the military boondoggles of the Bush administration, he emphasized sanctions. When Donald Trump wanted to dismiss international constraints while not taking political risks, he emphasized sanctions.

The attractiveness of the sanctions weapons lies in its ability to strike at America’s adversaries, whether in pursuit of policy modification or just simple revanchism, in ways that are emotionally cathartic and an asset on the campaign trail. It has had an undeserved reputation for effectiveness since the end of the Cold War that has only soared over time. The review prominently echoes the triumphalist and problematic “sanctions brought Iran to the table” rhetoric with no nuance or introspection considering the failure of the maximum pressure campaign. The review even repeats former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s highly questionable claim that sanctions have cratered Hezbollah’s finances. As the efficacy of military options is called into question, the United States is set to become further reliant on sanctions often, it seems, to avoid having to acknowledge failure. The maximum pressure campaign against Syria is an obvious example of that.

Put simply, much of the concerns acknowledged by the review, including the notion that over-sanctioning can provoke balancing behavior against the U.S. dollar and financial system by actors around the world—friend and foe alike—cannot be addressed without a discussion of over-sanctioning. Whether the Treasury Department and OFAC have the capacities required to engage with these issues is up for debate. However, if Treasury is, as it has long insisted on being, the combatant command for sanctions, it must be willing to in some way. Unless these political issues are addressed, this document is more likely to be remembered as an affirmation of the status quo than a framework for change. 

Ali Ahmadi is a graduate student at the University of Tehran and an analyst focused on economic statecraft and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. His work has been published by The Diplomat, The National Interest, Palladium Magazine, and others.

Image: Reuters

Michael Rubin

Turkey, Middle East

Turkey’s president is seeking American support for its policies in Syria and Libya. The Biden administration should proceed with caution given Erdoğan’s track record.

Turkey’s leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has long been the president-whisperer. His democratic backsliding began during the George W. Bush administration, yet Bush still sang his democratic praises.

“I appreciate so very much the example your country has set on how to be a Muslim country and at the same time, a country which embraces democracy and rule of law and freedom,” Bush said while visiting Erdoğan’s Ankara residence.

President Barack Obama famously called Erdoğan one of his top foreign friends. He even quipped that he sought Erdoğan’s advice about how to raise daughters. Never mind that the murder rate of women and girls had already increased 1,400 percent during Erdoğan’s tenure. 

President Donald Trump took a tough stand on Turkey to compel the release of Pastor Andrew Brunson, but turned a blind eye toward Turkish-sponsored jihadism. Trump also betrayed America’s Kurdish allies when he greenlighted Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria, and then praised Erdoğan effusively even as Congress focused its ire on Erdoğan for purchasing the S-400 missile system from Russia.

When Joe Biden entered office, he recognized Erdoğan’s reality and appeared determined to deny Erdoğan the benefit of the doubt. It took ninety-three days, for example, for the first phone call between Biden and his Turkish counterpart, a slight not lost on the Turkish audience. Unfortunately, while Biden and his team refrained from his predecessors’ praise, they nevertheless fell into his trap by taking offers of Turkish diplomatic cooperation at face value.

Contrary to the talking points put forward by Turkey’s official and unofficial lobbyists in the United States, Turkey’s offers of cooperation are neither altruistic nor beneficial to U.S. strategic goals.

After it became clear that Biden would uphold his campaign rhetoric to leave Afghanistan, Erdoğan suggested Turkey could take over operations at the Kabul airport. This move was in Turkey’s interests. For more than a decade before his premiership, Erdoğan had cultivated close ties to Afghanistan’s most militant Islamists. Even as the Taliban insurgency raged, Erdoğan made clear he bore no ideological animus to the group. Whether or not U.S. troops and fellow NATO members departed, Turkey signaled that its investment and its nationals’ presence would continue, even if many of its troops returned home. Simply put, Turkey had a financial interest in keeping the airport open. Erdoğan also saw an opportunity to ensnare Biden in a diplomatic bargain.

“We want America to meet some conditions,” Erdoğan explained. “Firstly, America will stand by us in diplomatic relations. Secondly, they will mobilize their logistical means for us... and the other one is that there will be serious problems on financial and administrative issues, and they will give necessary support to Turkey.”

Effectively, Erdoğan wanted Biden’s support in his continued land grabs and in ethnic cleansing campaigns against Kurds and Yezidis. He also pushed for the Biden team to intercede with the judiciary to derail sanctions-busting and assault cases against Turkey and its agents. Erdoğan wanted to collect American concessions for a policy that Turkey would pursue regardless. Qatar ultimately stepped in to help with the airport, but Biden’s willingness to consider Turkey’s offer—and the State Department’s reluctance to hold Turkey to account while negotiations—affirmed Erdoğan’s strategy.

Murat Mercan, a longtime Erdoğan loyalist whom Erdoğan appointed as Turkey’s ambassador to the United States, recently published an op-ed largely acknowledging the strategy.

“Turkey is at the epicenter of a complex web of fault lines throughout Greater Eurasia,” he explained. “Turkey stands as a reliable ally that can deliver at the moment of crisis—a friend in need…Turkey and the United States must work together.”

Specifically, he said that Turkey can “mobilize grassroots support for stabilization efforts and its security-related efforts, such as those in Libya and Syria.” In exchange, all Turkey would need is U.S. appreciation and understanding.

Consider what this would mean, however. In Syria, Turkey provided logistical support, weaponry, and safe haven not only for Al Qaeda-linked groups but also for the Islamic State. While Turkish officials justify their actions in countering alleged Kurdish terrorism, the evidence suggests terrorism goes the other way: Turkish-backed proxies regularly attack Kurds and kidnap and rape women, while Turkish drones seldom differentiate between alleged militants and schoolchildren. It was Turkey’s enabling of the Islamic State that forced the United States into its relationship with Syria’s Kurds in the first place, ultimately leading to a Kurdish victory at the siege of Kobane. For the United States to compromise with Turkey in Syria would enable militancy and undercut stability and security across the region. Put another way, to trust Turkey on Syria is akin to trusting China on Taiwan. Besides, Washington’s choice in Syria is not merely between Erdoğan and Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad; the Kurds offer a third path.

While Mercan is correct that Libya is a mess, the greatest problem at present is the presence of foreign fighters—Russian paramilitaries and the Wagner Group on one hand, and Turkish mercenaries and Turkey-backed proxies on the other. There is broad consensus in the international community that the best path forward is a withdrawal of all foreign forces from Libya. While Europe is willing to make this demand without exception, the State Department has repeatedly sought to dilute criticism of Turkey’s interference. The Erdoğan regime now tries to convince officials in Berlin and Washington that a revival of a NATO role could give cover for Turkey to remain while compelling Russia’s withdrawal. This would be shortsighted, however, given Turkey’s efforts to overturn more than a century of maritime law precedent and its willingness to support not the UN-recognized government but rather militants only loosely aligned but functionally independent.

Erdoğan has become the Typhoid Mary of diplomacy. Turkey’s track record belies Erdoğan’s sincerity. Rather than treating Erdoğan’s initiatives as sincere, it is time for the Biden administration to recognize Turkey’s diplomacy for what it is: A self-serving attempt to avoid accountability for policies that Erdoğan remains ideologically committed to continuing. 

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, where he specializes in Iran, Turkey, and the broader Middle East. He also regularly teaches classes at sea about Middle East conflicts, culture, terrorism, and the Horn of Africa to deployed U.S. Navy and Marine units. You can follow him on Twitter: @mrubin1971.

Image: Reuters.

Blaise Misztal, Jonathan Ruhe

Iran, Middle East

Tehran claims to have nearly enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon, but this is just a ploy to extract concessions in negotiations.

Iran is running an elaborate nuclear shell game. While vaguely promising to resume negotiations over its nuclear program, it repeatedly stokes fears about its progress enriching uranium. Recently, for example, Tehran announced it now has 120 kilograms of 20 percent enriched uranium, dangerously close to the quantity needed, with further enrichment, for a nuclear weapon.

But such declarations are mere bluster meant to extract U.S. concessions and obscure serious setbacks in Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran has claimed major enrichment breakthroughs three times this year. In April, it took the unprecedented step of producing 60 percent enriched uranium, just below the level needed for a nuclear warhead. Tehran then audaciously overstated its 20 percent stockpile in June, followed by last week’s alarmist claim.

Yet, the latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) data indicates Iran’s output of 60 percent uranium is too small, for now, to significantly reduce the time required to produce fissile material for a nuclear weapon. It had far less 20 percent uranium in June than it asserted. Its latest claim of 120 kilograms of 20 percent enriched uranium is misleading since it continually diverts this stockpile for uranium metal, thereby rendering it unsuitable for further enrichment. At current rates, it won’t have a bomb’s worth of either 60 or 20 percent uranium until mid-2022 at the earliest.

Iran is being deceptive because its enriched uranium stockpiles are the easiest metric of progress toward a bomb. By exaggerating them, Tehran hopes to scare the Biden administration into paying any price to keep it from crossing that dangerous threshold. Just days before its latest misrepresentation, Tehran suggested Washington should release $10 billion in frozen Iranian funds before it would resume negotiations.

Even though the Biden administration has refused such payments, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned there is only a “limited runway” that is “getting shorter” to prevent a nuclear Iran. Such statements likely suggest to Tehran that its ruse is working as intended, with Washington growing desperate enough to accept any deal as soon as possible.

Tehran also hopes its enrichment claims obscure serious setbacks in other key areas of its nuclear program stemming from three covert attacks since July 2020. The most serious of these knocked out several thousand rudimentary IR-1 centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz facility in April 2021.

Following that attack, Iran initiated ambitious plans to triple its enrichment output by replacing the destroyed IR-1s with thousands of more advanced centrifuges. According to a new JINSA analysis, by late August it was operating enough of these new machines to negate the setbacks from April’s explosion. This installation of large numbers of advanced centrifuges, not slowly growing uranium stockpiles, has been driving Iran’s real and dangerous nuclear progress.

But now Tehran is reaching a new roadblock: It is struggling to build more centrifuges. A July 2020 attack destroyed a centrifuge production site near Natanz; one recent assessment suggests this facility won’t be online until 2023. Just days after the last Vienna negotiations concluded in June, another attack significantly damaged the Karaj centrifuge plant.

For now, while relying primarily on surplus IR-1s, Iran can only expand its enrichment capacity incrementally, at best.

This offers the United States precious time to build bargaining power while avoiding a rush back into a bad deal. The Biden administration should put negotiations on hold and focus instead on restoring its leverage over Tehran.

This means preparing alternatives to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action rather than reentering talks and letting Iran play for time to reconstitute its centrifuge production capacity. The Biden administration should build on its own declarations that its ability to wait is “not indefinite” and “if diplomacy fails, we’re ready to turn to other options” by making those options clear. A good start would be reiterating President Barack Obama’s 2009 assertion that “all elements of American power” are on the table for preventing a nuclear Iran.

The Biden administration also needs to credibly strengthen the military elements of that power. This includes measures to enhance readiness, like updated contingency plans for operations against Iran’s nuclear sites, deploying strategic airpower to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, and conducting relevant military exercises with regional allies.

The White House also must forge ahead with Israel on a “Plan B.” This will entail backing its ally’s freedom of action, which has done more than negotiations or sanctions to tangibly extend the runway between here and a nuclear Iran. Top priorities are ensuring prompt transfer as Israel procures key capabilities like aerial refueling tankers and fighter aircraft, and ensuring an adequate supply of precision munitions. 

Rather than falling for Iran’s con, the United States should make it clear to Tehran that time is not on its side.

Blaise Misztal is the vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. Twitter: @BlaiseMisztal.

Jonathan Ruhe is the director of foreign policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. Twitter: @JCB_Ruhe.

Image: Reuters.

The Raisi administration’s apparent new approach has been tried before, unsuccessfully.

Peter Suciu

Type 093A, Pacific

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article first appeared in November 2020 and is being reprinted for reader interest.

Image: Reuters

Dan Goure

ScanEagle,

What's not to love about lower costs?

Here's what you need to remember: Equipping surface ships with small unmanned aerial systems expands their surveillance horizons, lethality, and overall effectiveness at a low cost.

The world’s oceans and seas are vast. Maritime challenges to U.S. interests and international legal and humanitarian responsibilities are increasing in both quantity and quality. But the number of Navy and Coast Guard ships available is relatively small, and given current budget realities, not likely to grow sufficiently to meet increasing demand. In addition, the Defense Department is considering restructuring Navy forces, including among other things, reducing the number of large-deck aircraft carriers on which the Fleet relies for much of its at-sea surveillance capabilities. 

If the Navy and Coast Guard are going to continue using aircraft carriers for a broad range of missions, then it will be vital to enhance their airborne intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities. Equipping surface ships with small unmanned aerial systems (UASs), such as Insitu’s ScanEagle and Blackjack, expands their surveillance horizons, lethality, and overall effectiveness at a low cost. Moreover, small UASs are easy to launch and recover. 

For several decades, the Sea Services have sought to use UASs to supplement their fleets of manned platforms. UASs, or drones, are particularly useful for conducting routine missions that require a long time on station, such as maritime ISR. While quite capable, platforms such as the MQ-4C Triton, the new MQ-25 Stingray, and the proposed SeaGuardian variant of the MQ-9 Predator B, are big undertakings requiring a lot of personnel. This limits their deployments to airfields or ships with large decks such as aircraft carriers. In addition, these systems are expensive to operate, albeit less costly than most manned platforms.

One challenge to deploying UASs on surface ships has been the lack of space for them. Even ships designed with a flight deck and hangar, such as the Navy’s Arleigh Burke destroyers and Littoral Combat Ships and the Coast Guard’s National Security Cutters (NSCs), have limited space for which UASs must compete with manned helicopters.

Today, both the Navy and Coast Guard are deploying a set of small ship-based UASs to supplement manned assets, performing many of the same roles that they do to support military and law enforcement missions. Two UASs that provide all the advantages of operating drones from surface ships while reducing their impact on other activities are the ScanEagle and the Blackjack. With their unique launch and recovery systems, these UASs permit expanded at-sea operations with minimal impact on ship efficiency.

Designed to be low-cost, easily repairable, rapidly modified, and with moderate manning requirements, the ScanEagle has proven a remarkable success since the first version was deployed to support the U.S. military almost twenty years ago. With its stabilized turret housing an advanced electro-optical or infrared sensor, ScanEagles conducted hundreds of thousands of hours of airborne surveillance in support of U.S. Marines in Iraq, transmitting high-resolution day/night images. While it operates at low altitude, the ScanEagle is so small and its engines so quiet that it is virtually undetectable to human observers. The ScanEagle family has logged more than 1.3 million operational hours supporting the U.S. military and numerous friends and allies.

The current version of this UAS, the ScanEagle 3, has a new design, better engines, improved power generation, and a greater carrying capacity–nineteen pounds–than its predecessors. As a result, it can launch with multiple payloads simultaneously while staying in the air for up to 18 hours. Depending on the mission and desired range at which the platform will operate, the ScanEagle 3 can carry a sensor package consisting of an electro-optical/infrared camera, a laser pointer, a communication relay, an Automatic Identification System interrogator, and Vidar (visual detection and ranging, a surface search capability).

ScanEagle uses a unique launch and recovery system. It is launched via a pneumatic launcher and is recovered using a hook on the end of the wingtip to catch a rope hanging from a thirty-to-fifty-foot pole. This system is particularly well-suited to operations from unimproved land locations or surface ships with limited open spaces. It also requires a small launch and recovery crew.

The ScanEagle is currently aboard all nine of the Coast Guard’s new Legend-class NSC. ScanEagle more than doubles the range at which an NSC can conduct ISR relying solely on its onboard sensors, from thirty-five miles to as much as seventy-five miles. This represents a total area search volume four times greater than would possible in the absence of ScanEagle.  

Coast Guard Commandant Karl Shultz has effusively praised the ScanEagle: “ScanEagle is truly a game changer for our crews and I’m proud to report that this technology is coming to every National Security Cutter in our fleet. But, and there’s always a but, not quickly enough. I’d like to accelerate the fielding of this technology, doubling the delivery schedule of this key enabler from two to four systems per year. At that rate, by the end of my tenure as commandant, we will field full ScanEagle capability across our entire National Security Cutter fleet.” 

Insitu’s newest entry in the small UAS market is the RQ-21A Blackjack. Derived from the ScanEagle, and originally called the Integrator, the Blackjack won the competition to be the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps’ next-generation Small Tactical UAS. Larger than the ScanEagle, it is capable of flying farther, faster, and at higher altitudes. It has an operating range similar to that of the ScanEagle. The Blackjack has a payload of about fifty pounds, allowing it to carry a multi-intelligence sensor package that currently consists of electro-optical zoom and mid-wave infrared cameras, plus an infrared marker and a laser rangefinder. The Blackjack can remain airborne for up to twenty-four hours. Launch and recovery methods for the Blackjack are the same as that used for the ScanEagle and employ the same equipment. 

New communications technologies could radically expand the search envelope of the Blackjack by no longer requiring the UAS to operate within its pilot’s line of sight. By employing a lightweight satellite communications system, the Blackjack’s operational range could be increased to more than three hundred miles from its launch location while remaining on station for about fourteen hours. This would increase the area a Blackjack-equipped ship could search by nearly an order of magnitude. With an extended-range Blackjack, a handful of Navy destroyers or Coast Guard NSCs could provide blanket ISR coverage of the western Pacific. 

Dan Gouré, Ph.D., is a vice president at the public-policy research think tank Lexington Institute. Goure has a background in the public sector and U.S. federal government, most recently serving as a member of the 2001 Department of Defense Transition Team. You can follow him on Twitter at @dgoure and the Lexington Institute @LexNextDC.

This article first appeared earlier in 2021 and is being reprinted due to reader interest. 

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

David Axe

PLA Air Force, Asia

The exercise was a wake-up call for China. 

Here's What You Need to Remember: On day three, the Thai pilots “shot down” 19 J-11s for a loss of three Gripens. Over the final three days of the war game, the Thais killed 22 Chinese jets and lost three of their own.

A 2015 war game in Thailand underscored the enduring flaws in Chinese aerial-warfare tactics. Despite flying a modern fighter type, Chinese fighter pilots in Thailand were vulnerable to long-range attacks and slow to react to aggressive tactics.

Exercise Falcon Strike 2015, which ran at Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base for two weeks in mid-November 2015, was the first-ever joint exercise between the Chinese and Thai air forces.

The Chinese brought J-11 fighters to the war game. The Thai air force operates F-16s from Korat, but the for the war game the Thai air arm sent Gripen fighters from Surat Thani Air Force Base.

The Thai air force operates 12 JAS-39C/D Gripens.

For seven days straight the J-11s tangled with the Gripens. The J-11, which is a Chinese variant of the Russian Su-27, proved to be the superior dogfighter, a Chinese participant in the exercise explained in a presentation at China’s Northwestern Polytechnical University on Dec. 9, 2019. But in Thai hands the Gripen was a better long-range shooter.

Aviation website Alert 5 was the first to report on the presentation.

During the first day of mock combat, the J-11s and Gripens fought visual-range battles. The result was a lopsided victory for the Chinese air force. The powerful, twin-engine J-11s with their internal cannons and infrared-guided short-range missiles -- possibly PL-8s -- “shot down” 16 Gripens for zero losses.

In Thai service, the single-engine Gripen for close-range combat is armed with AIM-9 infrared-guided missiles and an internal cannon. It’s worth noting that the Gripen has a relatively poor thrust-to-weight ratio compared to many other fighter types. That limits its maneuverability in dogfights.

The Chinese pilots scored nine kills for one loss on day two. But as the war game continued, the Chinese pilots struggled to repeat their early successes.

The exercise shifted to beyond-visual-range engagements, where the Gripen armed with AIM-120 medium-range missiles proved to be the better fighter than the J-11 with its own medium-range missiles, possibly PL-12s.

On day three, the Thai pilots “shot down” 19 J-11s for a loss of three Gripens. Over the final three days of the war game, the Thais killed 22 Chinese jets and lost three of their own. The final tally for the exercise favored the Thai air force. The Gripens shot down 42 J-11s while the J-11s shot down just 34 Gripens.

Overall, 88 percent of the Thais’ kills occurred at a range of at least 19 miles, while the Chinese scored just 14 percent of their kills at the same range. The Gripens scored 10 kills at a distance of more than 31 miles. The J-11s scored no kills at this range.

“The Chinese pilots had poor situational awareness,” Alert 5 reported, citing the presentation. “Too much focus was on front of the aircraft rather than all around.” In phases of the war game where J-11s escorted other planes, there was a “lack of coordination.”

Chinese pilots “were not experienced in avoiding missile shots,” Alert 5 continued. “Their responses were too mechanical and [they] could not judge correctly the evasive techniques for missiles with different ranges.”

Beijing knows its pilots need better training. Around 2005 the Chinese air force began organizing realistic aerial war games in the vein of the U.S. Air Force’s Red Flag exercises. But these training events have yet to produce skilled pilots who are capable of fully exploiting the best Chinese-made warplanes.

"Numerous professional articles and speeches by high-ranking Chinese officers indicate the [Chinese air force] does not believe that its past training practices prepared its pilots and other per­sonnel for actual combat,” the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency explained in its January 2019 report on the Chinese military. “Unrealistic training manifested itself in multiple ways that hin­dered the [Chinese air arm]’s air-combat capabilities."

The Chinese military "recognizes that a gap exists between the skills of its pilots and those in 'the air forces of powerful nations," the DIA continued in its report. "To address training weak­nesses, [a former air force] commander said that when the [air force] trains, it must 'train for battle' instead of 'doing things for show…[or] going through the motions.'"

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 January 2020 and is reprinted here due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters. 

The Gulf Clan grew in areas where implementation of the country’s 2016 peace deal has lagged.

Kyle Mizokami

Aircraft Carriers, Americas

The naval gunfire argument rages on to this day.

Here's What You Need to Know: Even in the age of drones and precision warfare there are still occasional calls to bring the heavily manned, imprecise Iowa class back to service.

In the early 1980s, four Iowa-class fast battleships originally built during World War II—Iowa, Missouri, New Jersey and Wisconsin—were taken out of mothballs and returned to active duty.

Nearly 900 feet long and displacing close to 60,000 tons, the battlewagons could fire a nine-gun broadside sending 18 tons of steel and explosives hurtling towards their targets.

The battleships were modernized to include cruise missiles, ship-killing missiles and Phalanx point-defense guns. Returned to the fleet, the ships saw action off the coasts of Lebanon and Iraq. At the end of the Cold War the battleships were retired again. All were slated to become museums.

Few knew, however, that returning the battleships to service in the ’80s had been only part of the plan. The second, more ambitious phase was a radical redesign of the massive warships that would have combined the attributes of battleships and aircraft carriers.

The resulting ship, a “battlecarrier,” was merely one of many schemes over the span of 30 years to modernize the most powerful American battleships ever built. The various proposals—all of them nixed—had the World War II-era ships carrying hundreds of U.S. Marines or launching Harrier jump jets or even firing atomic projectiles.

A hole in the Navy

Before World War II, planners had assumed that the big-gun ships would win wars by duking it out with enemy vessels of the same kind. Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway dispelled that notion, as the flexibility and long-range striking power of aircraft carriers proved superior to battleships’ broadsides.

The battlewagons were relegated to a secondary role in the fleet, shelling shore defenses ahead of landings by the Army and Marines. And after the war, the Navy shed most of its heavy cruisers and battleships while retaining its aircraft carriers. The rush to embrace missiles further reduced the influence of the big-gun vessels, and the era of the battleship appeared to be over for good.

For the U.S. Marine Corps, this was a worrying trend. The seaborne invasion of Inchon during the Korean War showed that the age of amphibious assaults was not yet over. Military planners liked aircraft for their flexibility, but from the Marines’ perspective a ship that could sit off a coastline and bombard it with heavy guns for hours on end was vital.

There was a solution. The four Iowa-class battleships, in mothballs since World War II, were briefly reactivated during the Korean War to provide gunfire support for U.N. forces—and retired again after the war was over.

For some Navy planners, battleships were back in vogue. There were frequent attempts to return the battlewagons to service.

Nuclear battleship

In 1958, the Navy proposed overhauling the Iowa-class ships by removing all of the 16-inch guns and replacing them with anti-aircraft and anti-submarine missiles.

The new “guided missile battleships” would also carry four Regulus II cruise missiles, each of which could flatten a city a thousand miles distant with a nuclear warhead more than 100 times as powerful as the bomb used on Hiroshima.

The result would have certainly been the most powerful battleship ever, but the concept was riddled with inefficiencies. Under the proposal, 2,000 sailors would have had to sail into hostile waters in an expensive, 900-foot vessel to attack just four targets with nuclear weapons. An Air Force bomber could attack as many targets, at a greater range, with fewer than a dozen crew.

And at $1.5 billion in today’s dollars, the conversion would have been expensive.

At the same time, the Navy had put in orders for submarines to carry Polaris ballistic missiles. The proposed missile submarines could attack targets more than twice as far away as the Regulus II-armed battleship could, while carrying four times as many missiles and spending most of their time underwater avoiding detection.

The nuclear battleship concept was dead in the water.

Amphibious battleship

In 1961 a new proposal would have utilized the Iowa-class battleships to increase the navy’s troop-carrying capability. The rear turret and its three 16-inch guns would have been removed. In its place would be a hangar and a flight deck capable of carrying 30 helicopters.

The ship would also haul 14 landing craft to bring tanks and vehicles ashore. Accommodations for 1,800 Marines would be added.

Each of the amphibious Iowas would have been a one-ship expeditionary force.

Capable of laying down its own fire support with the remaining six 16-inch guns and deploying a battalion-sized Marine amphibious unit by air and sea, the ship would have been a hive of activity.

But it would still be expensive to convert and operate, and the Navy had many surplus aircraft carriers that could more cheaply be converted to amphibious platforms. Three such older carriers were modified, and the Iowa-class again stayed in mothballs.

Battlecarrier

The cost of the Vietnam War put a temporary hold on talk of reviving the Iowas in some new form. One of the battleships, New Jersey, was briefly reactivated to serve in Vietnam.

In the early 1980s, the Reagan Administration began an ambitious shipbuilding program. It was decided to yet again bring back the four Iowas. In phase one, the ships were modernized with the addition of Tomahawk land attack missiles, Harpoon anti-ship missiles and Phalanx defense guns. By the mid-1980s, all four had returned to duty.

There was a phase two that was never executed, and it was more interesting.

This phase again involved removing the rear 16-inch gun turret. In its place would be built an overhanging flight deck and two forward-facing ski jumps that would hurl Marine Corps Harrier jump jets into the air. The ship would carry up to 20 Harriers, as well as a hangar and an aircraft elevator.

And that’s not all. Nestled between the two ski jumps would be a large field of missile silos, each holding Standard anti-aircraft or Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles.

The firepower of the battleships—and their destructive range—would have increased substantially. Trading one turret for 20 Harrier jets was a pretty good deal. Add the Tomahawks and their ability to strike with precision at a thousand miles and the improvements looked even better. The resulting warship would have equaled the firepower of a Nimitz-class supercarrier.

But as before, the Iowas’ inherent inefficiencies worked against them. With a crew of nearly 2,000 each, the ships’ high personnel costs made them prohibitively expensive to run in an all-volunteer navy. Harrier jets could already be carried by the Tarawa-class landing ships, and missile silos were proliferating across the fleet.

The Navy came to the conclusion that if the country was going to get its money’s worth from the four battleships, the vessels had to concentrate on their unique abilities: firing massive artillery shells at the enemy.

That meant keeping all three main gun turrets. The cool conversion schemes would have to stay just that, schemes.

Future battlewagon

Today the naval gunfire argument rages on. Even in the age of drones and precision warfare there are still occasional calls to bring the heavily manned, imprecise Iowa class back to service. There’s a certain romance to battleships, and having four Iowas sitting around in good condition has beguiled naval enthusiasts and planners for more than 60 years with schemes to bring them back.

The upcoming Zumwalt-class destroyers will go a long way towards providing battleship-quality naval gunfire support for the Marines. Minimally manned, relatively small, stealthy and precise, the Zumwalts are the antithesis of the Iowas, but functionally their successors.

Although each Zumwalt can only provide the explosive mass of a single one of an Iowa’s 16-inch guns, the newer ship can fire its smaller shells with GPS-aided precision up to 83 miles away, versus 20 miles for an Iowa.

Should the Zumwalt design be successful, the torch of the battleship could finally be transferred to them, and the Iowas can finally slumber in peace as museums, safe from the schemes of those who would revive them.

This article first appeared several years ago.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Kyle Mizokami

U.S. Air Force, Asia

These five platforms would play a big role.

Here's What You Need to Know: The U.S. Air Force is preparing for future war.

In any conflict in the skies over North Korea, the U.S. Air Force will likely follow a familiar pattern. First, it will need to sweep the skies of enemy fighters—not a difficult prospect considering the decrepit state of the North Korean air force. Concurrent with that will be a campaign to shut down the country’s command and control and air defense systems, and finally a close air support and interdiction campaign designed to support friendly forces and locate and destroy enemy ground forces. Here are five weapons systems the air force would need for these missions in the next war in North Korea.

B-2 Spirit Bomber

North Korea’s air defenses are dense but outdated, relying on anti-aircraft guns and, with the exception of a S-300 long range SAM knockoff, fairly obsolete. Despite their obsolescence, most aircraft would need careful planning to avoid being shot down.

The B-2 Spirit bomber, being stealthy would have relatively little to fear from North Korean defenses. The B-2’s combination of stealth, payload, and range would make it one of the first weapons to be used early in a war scenario, chasing down the DPRK leadership. Uncertainty over where the leadership may try to hide could necessitate flying over large swathes of the country, and a stealthy bomber could also prevent neighboring countries from giving Pyongyang advance warning of their approach.

One arrow in the B-2’s quiver that makes it particularly relevant is the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP. The twenty foot long, thirty thousand pound bomb can reportedly penetrate up to sixty feet of concrete or two hundred feet of earth, making it the most effective nonnuclear weapon against North Korean underground facilities. A B-2 bomber can carry two MOP bombs at once.

KC-135 Stratotanker

The distance between North Korea and U.S. bases on Okinawa, Guam, and even Japan dictate that any future air campaign would need extensive tanker support. Air force tankers would not only supply U.S. Air Force aircraft but also U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and even Republic of Korea Air Force warplanes.

The bulk of aerial tanker duties would fall on the KC-135 Stratotanker. First deployed in 1956, each KC-135 can carry up to 200,000 pounds of fuel for thirsty fighters, bombers, transports and special mission aircraft operating over or near North Korea. The tanker has both boom (U.S. and ROK Air Force) and drogue (U.S. Navy and Marine Corps) refueling systems, and some can refuel two aircraft at once. 167 KC-135s are still operational worldwide.

C-130J Hercules

North Korea will be a difficult country to get into, and one of the first things allied forces on the ground would do is begin securing North Korean airports and military airfields to bring in supplies and reinforcements. These facilities could sustain destruction in a war that might prevent most aircraft from using them until air force RED HORSE engineering units arrive to repair the damage.

The C-130J Hercules’ ability to conduct relatively short takeoffs and landings, as well as operate from unimproved surfaces such as hard-packed dirt and gravel make it an excellent candidate for operating from airstrips near the front lines. In production for more than half a century, the latest -J version can carry up to eighteen tons of cargo. Alternately, the C-130J can carry 128 combat troops, ninety-two paratroopers, or up to seventy-four litters in the aeroevacuation medical role.

F-16C Fighting Falcon

A second Korean conflict with require a multirole fighter capable of close air support and interdiction tasks. The nature of the North Korean air defense threat, largely comprised of outdated fighters and air defenses, means a fifth-generation fighter is useful but not essential to prosecuting the war in the air. A fourth-generation fighter capable of quickly switching from air-to-air to air-to-ground roles in the same mission, downing MiG-29s one moment and dropping bombs on hardened artillery sites the next is perfectly up to the task.

The workhorse fighter of a second Korean conflict will be the Fighting Falcon. Nearly one hundred USAF F-16s are based in South Korea and Japan, including two squadrons of “Wild Weasels” tasked with suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD). Air Force F-16s will carry Sniper targeting pods paired with JDAMs and laser-guided bombs to deliver precision ordnance on ground targets, AGM-88 HARM anti-radiation missiles to target North Korean radars, and AIM-9X Sidewinder and AMRAAM missiles for air-to-air engagements.

RQ-4 Global Hawk

A key USAF requirement for Korean War II is a high altitude, long endurance drone capable of keeping watch on North Korean strategic assets, particularly its land-based missiles and missile submarines. A persistent Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) capability will allow the United States to hunt down mobile missile systems stashed in valleys, hillsides, and built-up areas, handing off targeting information to other forces.

The RQ-4 Global Hawk is ideally suited to the role. Capable of flying for more than thirty-four hours, Global Hawk could fly from airfields as far away as Guam, spend half a day over North Korea, and go home again—freeing up tarmac space in closer air facilities. Global Hawk’s ability to conduct surveillance day or night is a major plus and its unblinking gaze will be invaluable in tracking enemy movements. Another less well known feature that will be important over North Korea: Global Hawk’s Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN) will provide a secure communications link between troops on the ground and close air support aircraft.

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

This article first appeared in 2017.

Image: U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Jake Carter

There are no wolves in the country. But somehow, they keep showing up on screen.

David Axe

Taiwan, Asia

The S-400 could cause issues for Taiwan's air force.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Assuming Taiwanese fighters survive the first round of Chinese attacks, either by dispersing to highways or caves or through some heroic defensive effort by Taiwan's own surface-to-air missile batteries, the planes still must contend with Chinese SAMs, now including S-400s, firing missiles across the strait.

The Chinese military's new S-400 surface-to-air missile system can hit targets more than 150 miles away, if the reported result of the type's first-ever test in Chinese service is accurate.

The Taiwan strait is just 140 miles across at its widest point, meaning that, in theory, Chinese S-400s could target Taiwanese warplanes shortly after they take off.

But the short distance separating China and Taiwan works both ways. At the same time that China is fielding S-400s and other long-range surface-to-air missiles, Taiwan is deploying air-and surface-launched munitions that can target the Chinese missile launchers.

The People’s Liberation Army’s rocket force conducted its first live-fire drill with its first regiment of Russian made S-400s in November 2018, The Diplomat reported, citing Russian sources.

A Russian-style missile regiment usually includes two battalions together possessing 16 launchers. An S-400 launcher packs four missiles at a time.

According to The Diplomat, a Chinese S-400 intercepted a "simulated ballistic target" around 250 kilometers, or 155 miles, away. The Taiwan Strait separating Taiwan from the Chinese mainland varies between 81 and 140 miles wide.

Annexing Taiwan is the primary military ambition of the Chinese Communist Party. Chinese war plans apparently anticipate a massive air and missile bombardment of Taiwanese defenses followed by an amphibious assault across the strait under heavy fighter cover.

To defend against attack, the Taiwanese air force operates around 330 F-CK, F-16 and Mirage 2000 fighters, a not insignificant force. Taipei is upgrading its F-16s and F-CKs  with new sensors and weapons. But at first glance, China possesses the aerial advantage in a cross-strait battle.

"Taiwan faces one of the most difficult air-defense problems in the world," the California think-tank RAND reported in 2016. "What makes Taiwan’s air-defense problem so difficult is the combination of its proximity to China, coupled with the massive investments that the People’s Republic of China has made in a range of systems that threaten Taiwan’s aircraft—not just while they are in the air but also while they are on the ground."

Assuming Taiwanese fighters survive the first round of Chinese attacks, either by dispersing to highways or caves or through some heroic defensive effort by Taiwan's own surface-to-air missile batteries, the planes still must contend with Chinese SAMs, now including S-400s, firing missiles across the strait.

"On the slight chance that an aircraft could get off the ground, it is likely to face attack before it can reach altitude or combat speeds," RAND concluded.

To counter this daunting threat, Taiwan has invested heavily in missiles that are capable of suppressing Chinese SAM sites. The Taiwanese arsenal includes hundreds of ground-launched ballistic missiles with sufficient range to strike Chinese S-400s.

Taiwan's fighters are getting ground-attack cruise missiles. In 2014, the Taiwanese air force finished modifying 71 F-CK fighters to carry new Wan Chien stand-off air-to-surface missiles. The air force planned to modify the other 56 F-CKs to a similar standard by 2017.

The Wan Chien missile system bolsters the fighter fleet by "increase[ing] combat effectiveness and [providing] the capability to strike airports, harbors and missile and radar positions," according to Jane's.

But RAND advised Taiwan's leaders to try winning the fighter battle ... by not fighting it, and investing in surface-to-air missiles instead of warplanes. China's S-400s would have nothing to shoot at, while Taiwan's own SAM batteries plucked Chinese fighters from the sky.

"Although it might be painful for leaders in Taiwan to think of a major divestment of its fighter force, the expectations about the efficacy of that force need to be curtailed," the think tank recommended. "There is a substantial opportunity cost for keeping the current, large fighter force, which will limit needed SAM investment that could offer greater air-defense protection in the most intense scenarios."

"To continue to provide a credible deterrent and be seen as having the potential to contest its own airspace, Taiwan needs to invest in and invigorate its SAM force. These should get priority over fighters."

David Axe edits War Is Boring. He is the author of the new graphic novels MACHETE SQUAD and THE STAN. This article is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters. 

A Trump administration tax law was supposed to spur investment in disadvantaged communities. It didn’t work that way.

The Sudanese military seized power expecting not to face resistance at home or abroad. That’s wishful thinking.

Kyle Mizokami

Submarines, Europe

The accident killed ten naval personnel.

Here's What You Need to Know: The K-431 incident was one of several involving Soviet submarine reactors.

In 1985, a Soviet submarine undergoing a delicate refueling procedure experienced a freak accident that killed ten naval personnel. The fuel involved was not diesel, but nuclear, and the resulting environmental disaster contaminated the area with dangerous, lasting radiation. The incident, which remained secret until after the demise of the USSR itself, was one of many nuclear accidents the Soviet Navy experienced during the Cold War.

The Soviet Union’s nuclear war planners had a difficult time targeting the United States. While the United States virtually encircled the enormous socialist country with nuclear missiles in countries such as Turkey and Japan, the Western Hemisphere offered no refuge for Soviet deployments in-kind.

One solution was the early development of nuclear cruise missile submarines. These submarines, known as the Echo I and Echo II classes, were equipped with six and eight P-5 “Pyatyorka” nuclear land attack cruise missiles, respectively. Nicknamed “Shaddock” by NATO, the P-5 was a subsonic missile with a range of 310 miles and 200- or 350-kiloton nuclear warhead. The P-5 had a circular error probable of 1.86 miles, meaning half of the missiles aimed at a target would land within that distance, while the other half would land farther away.

The missiles were stored in large horizontal silos along the deck of the submarine. In order to launch a P-5 missile, the submarine would surface, deploy and activate a tracking radar, then feed guidance information to the missile while it flew at high altitude. The system was imperfect—the command link was vulnerable to jamming, and the submarine needed to remain on the surface, helpless against patrol aircraft and ships, until the missile reached the target. Eventually the P-5 missiles were withdrawn and the P-5 missile was replaced with the P-6, a similar weapon but one with its own radar seeker for attacking U.S. aircraft carriers.

The introduction of the P-6 gave the Echo II a new lease on life. By 1985, the submarine K-431 was already twenty years old but still technically useful. Like all Echo IIs, K-431 was powered by two pressurized water reactors that drove steam turbines to a total of sixty thousand shipboard horsepower. As old as it was, K-431’s nuclear fuel supply needed replenishing, and by early August the process had started at the Soviet Navy’s facilities at Chazhma Bay.

On August 10, the submarine was in the process of being refueled. Reportedly, the reactor lid—complete with new nuclear fuel rods—was lifted as part of the process. A beam was placed over the lid to prevent it from being lifted any higher, but incompetent handling apparently resulted in the rods being lifted too high into the air. (One account has a wave generated by a passing motor torpedo boat rocking the submarine in its berth, also raising the rods too high.) This resulted in the starboard reactor achieving critical mass, followed by a chain reaction and explosion.

The explosion blew out the reactor’s twelve-ton lid—and fuel rods—and ruptured the pressure hull. The reactor core was destroyed, and eight officers and two enlisted men standing nearby were killed instantly. A the blast threw debris was thrown into the air, and a plume of fallout 650 meters wide by 3.5 kilometers long traveled downwind on the Dunay Peninsula. More debris and the isotope Cobalt-60 was thrown overboard and onto the nearby docks.

According to Nuclear Risks, the accident scene was heavily contaminated with radioactivity. Gamma ray radiation was not particularly bad; at an exposure rate of five millisieverts per hour, it was the equivalent of getting a chest CT scan every hour. However, the explosion also released 259 petabecquerels of radioactive particles, including twenty-nine gigabecquerels of iodine-131, a known cause of cancer. This bode very badly for the emergency cleanup crews, especially firefighters who needed to get close to the explosion site, and the nearby village of Shkotovo-22. Forty-nine members of the cleanup crew displayed symptoms of radiation sickness, ten of them displaying acute symptoms.

One bright spot in the incident was that it had involved the new fuel rods and not the old ones, and thus large amounts of particularly dangerous isotopes generated during nuclear plant operation, such as strontium-90 and cesium-137, were not present. While the Chazhma Bay region appears contaminated to this day with radiation, it is unknown how much of it is the result of the K-431 incident and how much the result of the many nuclear-powered submarines that were junked and forgotten in the area.

The K-431 incident was one of several involving Soviet submarine reactors. Ten Soviet submarines experienced nuclear accidents, and one other, K-11, also suffered a refueling criticality. The U.S. Navy’s nuclear submarine fleet, by contrast, suffered zero nuclear accidents—not only during the Cold War but all the way up to the present day. The accident rate is even more disturbing when one considers the loss of a submarine or crew to a nuclear accident could have inadvertently led to a military crisis between Washington and Moscow. As tensions between the two capitals begin to reach Cold War levels, accidents such as the K-431 incident are important reminders that events can and will happen that threaten to spiral dangerously out of control, and that cooler heads must always prevail.

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

This article first appeared several years ago.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Kyle Mizokami

Tanks, Europe

Two tank philosophies, totally at odds with each other. What were they?

Here's What You Need to Know: The side with the Sherman won the war.

American tanks in World War II were generally inferior to their German counterparts. German tanks boasted better armor protection and more firepower.

But armor and lethality don’t tell the whole story. The same American tanks were superior to their rivals in other important ways. The M-4 Sherman, in particular, helped the U.S. Army win the war—even though, in battle, German tanks destroyed them en masse.

The Sherman’s inadequacies were products of its origins. Before the war, American tank design and development was bipolar—a result of the competing demands of the Army’s infantry and cavalry branches.

The infantry wanted a tank that—no surprise—could support the infantry on the battlefield. Infantry generals favored a vehicle with a big gun that could sit still and take out enemy bunkers.

The infantry walked into combat. They weren’t all that concerned about a tank’s speed.

By contrast, the cavalry—the Army’s scouts—preferred a fast-moving tank that could speed through gaps in enemy lines. The freewheeling cav didn’t fret armor protection.

Two tank philosophies, totally at odds with each other. And the Great Depression exacerbated the problem—the R&D money ran out.

The American tank force idled until the war jumpstarted it.

From Export to Expediency

Shortly after the outbreak of World War II, the United States began supplying the United Kingdom with tanks. Losing France was a staggering blow to the Allies’ industrial production—the U.K. couldn’t produce everything it needed on its own.

The British Army, partly out of desperation, bought American tanks.

The first American export, the M-3 Grant, had a 75-millimeter low-velocity gun mounted in the hull for engaging infantry, and a high-velocity 37-millimeter anti-tank gun in the turret.

That may sound impressive, but the Grant packed two guns because the Americans lacked a single gun capable of engaging both infantry and tanks. The Grant’s layout also gave it a high profile on the battlefield, making it easy to spot … and thus destroy.

The Grant’s baptism of fire was the battle of Gazala in North Africa in the spring of 1942. The British Army deployed 167 Grants against Panzer III and IV tanks from the German 15th Panzer Division.

Although the German Afrika Korps ultimately forced back the Brits, the appearance of the 75-millimeter gun—a first for the British—was a shock to the Germans.

As adequate as the Grant was, the war was forcing the creation of faster, more lethal tanks almost by the month. A new, more lethal version of the Panzer IV, the so-called “Mark IV Special,” had appeared three months before the battle.

Enter The Sherman

Back in America, tank designers were already working on a successor to the Grant. The new Sherman packed a single 75-millimeter gun. Crew was just five, compared to the Grant’s seven. The M-4 featured a host of improvements based on British experience with the Grant in North Africa.

With steady upgrades, the Sherman would be the main American tank for the remainder of the war.

Even at the time of introduction, the Sherman was really nothing to get excited about. Protection was unremarkable and required constant improvement—such as an extra inch of steel plate welded to the hull to protect main gun ammunition, plus a “wet stowage” system which bathed the ammunition in water to prevent it from detonating in the event of a direct hit.

The Sherman’s 75-millimeter gun was also nothing special. It was powerless against the latest German tanks—particularly the Tiger and Panther. The gun was more suitable for taking out less well-armed targets—half-tracks, artillery, infantry.

U.S. intelligence had assessed the Sherman as equal to the Panzer IV, the mainstay of the German tank force. America concluded the Sherman was good enough. Unfortunately, the U.S. had failed to accurately forecast production of newer, more powerful German designs such as the Panther and Tiger.

The U.S. military believed that although the Sherman was inferior to those tanks, the new German models would rarely appear on the battlefield.

That proved wrong.

Numbers, Numbers, Numbers

The Sherman wasn’t the best tank, but thanks to efficient American production methods it would be the most prolific. The United States built a staggering 49,234 Sherman tanks between 1942 and 1945.

The majority went to the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, which underwent a massive wartime expansion. Washington provided 21,959 tanks to Allied forces. The United Kingdom, Free French Forces, Poland, Brazil, New Zealand, China and the Soviet Union all deployed M-4s.

A lot of armies depended on American factories to keep them in Shermans. Assembly lines had to keep moving, no matter what. In order to maintain a high level of production, managers kept design changes to an absolute minimum.

Introducing a new tank design, or even making significant changes to the existing one, would mean fewer tanks.

The Army Ground Forces, which oversaw the ground combat branch’s equipment, kept an eye on the long game. Mindful of the Army’s poor experiences fielding equipment in World War I, the AGF wanted mature, reliable vehicles. Tanks built in Detroit only to break down in France were worse than worthless.

The Army was well aware that German and Soviet tanks were getting bigger and more powerful, but the United States would have problems keeping up. German and Russian tanks on the Eastern Front could move by train, but American tanks had to be loaded onto and off of cargo ships—a much more expensive mode of transportation that imposed lots of its own constraints on vehicle design and production.

Heavier tanks would have caused problems up and down the line for the Americans.

An Ecosystem of Weapons

Finally, the Army viewed the tank force holistically within a veritable ecosystem of weapons. Infantry, tanks, artillery, engineers and planes were all part of the same team.

By this way of thinking, tanks shouldn’t take on other tanks. Instead, the armored vehicles should exploit gaps in enemy lines, rush in, start blowing up stuff. Infantry, airplanes, artillery and tank destroyers—vehicles similar to tanks, but lightly armored—would engage the enemy’s tanks while American tanks were running rampant.

There was a problem with this reasoning. Just because the Army wanted its Shermans to avoid the more powerful German Panthers and Tigers didn’t mean those encounters didn’t happen.

Making matters worse for American tankers, the Army’s inability to properly forecast German tank production—which was much higher than anyone predicted—meant there were a lot more of these tanks on the battlefield than the Army had originally counted on.

The U.S. did eventually field a new, heavier tank in early 1945. Sporting a 90-millimeter gun and thicker armor, the M-26 Pershing rectified many of the Sherman’s worst failures. In the fighting around Cologne, the M-26 bested German Panthers — even if the new American vehicle was underpowered and less reliable than the Sherman.

Postwar American tank development ensured that U.S. tankers were never again outmatched on the battlefield. The M-60 series of tanks, followed by the M-1 Abrams, were at least the equals of Soviet models.

This was largely due to the fact that American forces were by now permanently stationed in Europe and didn’t have to rush overseas in the event of war. American tank designers were limited only by their imaginations—and cost.

For its part, the M-4 was good in 1942, adequate in 1943, and totally outclassed by 1944. Unfortunately for American tankers, the war lasted until 1945.

Still—as maligned as the Sherman often is, it’s important to view it in context. The side with the Sherman won the war.

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

This article first appeared in 2014.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

The group of the world’s 20 largest economies faces pressure to find solutions to the overlapping crises of climate change and the coronavirus pandemic.

David Axe

Norway, Europe

Oslo has increased its defense spending and developed a new military strategy to deter Russia.

Here's What You Need to Remember: To better prepare for war, the government plans to add nearly $2 billion to the existing, eight-year spending plan. 

Norway’s got a new military strategy. To deter and, in the event of war, defeat Russian forces, Oslo is bolstering its northern garrison and investing in submarines, stealth fighters and surface-to-air missiles.

But the Norwegian government doesn’t plan to replace a navy frigate that ran aground and sank in 2018. That decision alone represents a de facto 20-percent cut to the fleet’s open-ocean surface fleet.

Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg revealed the new strategy in mid-April 2020. The 123-page defense plan cites Russia, and to a lesser extent China, as a major threat. “These are countries where the authorities do not see the value of neither democracy, rule of law, nor the fact that people have undisputed rights,” Solberg said.

To better prepare for war, the government plans to add nearly $2 billion to the existing, eight-year spending plan. Oslo in recent years has spent around $7 billion annually on its 23,000-person military.

As part of the new strategy, the army’s northern brigade will get an additional battalion with several hundred troops. The army also will receive around a hundred new G5 armored personnel carriers from Germany to replace aging, American-made M-113s.

The Norwegian Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System, which fires a version of the U.S. AIM-120 missile, will get a new sensor. Oslo will buy new long-range and short-range air-defense systems to complement the army and air force’s combined force of around 72 medium-range NASAMS launchers.

The navy is getting four new Type 212 submarines from Germany to replace six older boats. Upgrades will prolong the service lives of the fleet’s four Fridtjof Nansen-class frigates and six Skjold-class corvettes.

But the fleet will not replace a fifth frigate, Helge Ingstad, which ran aground and sank in 2018. Salvagers raised the vessel, but the government determined it was not economical to repair her. Losing Helge Ingstad without a replacement amounts to a one-fifth cut to the fleet’s major surface combatants.

It’s not clear how Oslo plans to compensate for this loss. But it should try, the U.S. think-tank RAND advised. “As a major coastal and maritime nation, Norway is dependent on control of sea lines of communication for allied reinforcements as well as economic function,” RAND noted.

NATO officials recommended Oslo at least consider buying unmanned surface vessels, according to RAND. “Given finite resources and the unexpected loss of a frigate in 2018, allied officials highlighted the need to consider how best for Norway to deliver a mix of naval missions – either through different force mixes or other novel (e.g. unmanned) solutions.”

Norway’s new strategy does not alter the air force’s existing plan to acquire 52 F-35A stealth fighters to replace older F-16s plus five P-8 patrol planes to replace P-3Cs. Norway also is buying into NATO’s new fleet of up to nine A330 aerial tankers.

But RAND urged the Norwegian defense ministry to use the F-35s in new ways. “The F-35A represents a significant development not only for Norwegian air power, but also for how situational awareness, low observability and sensor and data fusion can enable future operations across all domains.”

“Allied officials emphasised the need for Norway to continue to experiment with novel [concepts], including by linking the aircraft with land- and sea-based capabilities, to maximise the [F-35’s] full potential.”

David Axe was 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 earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

Kyle Mizokami

Special Forces, Americas

The best of the best. Period.

Here's What You Need to Know: The ranks of U.S. operatives have more than doubled in size since 2001.

Special operations forces have been at the forefront of U.S. combat operation in the last two decades. They are nearly at the forefront of risky combat missions—and suffer higher casualties as they are often deployed to remote locations and exposed to greater risks. 

A companion article details the special operations units of the U.S. Army and the distinction between various tiers of special operations units.

In this second part we’ll dive into the special operations units of the U.S. Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy, and look at recent challenges facing the special operations community.

The Marine Raider Regiment

 The Marine Corps historically resisted the creation of elite special operations units, instead designating some reconnaissance units as ‘Special Operations Capable’ with training for airborne and seaborne insertion. 

Today, these include four Force Reconnaissance Companies, primarily assigned to support to Marine expeditionary forces, and three Divisional Reconnaissance Battalions which incorporate Deep Reconnaissance Platoon including specialized combat divers to perform beach and landing zone reconnaissance, and direct air and artillery strikes.

During World War II, however, the Marines briefly operated two unconventional Raider battalions involved in some spectacular island assaults, including an epic submarine-launched raid on a Japanese seaplane base. But the Marine brass disliked the concept and disbanded the units in 1944.

The Marines were finally compelled to form dedicated special forces battalions 2003 by Special Forces-loving Rumsfeld defense department. In 2015, Marine special forces battalions were then integrated into a new Raider Regiment based at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. 

The Raider Regiment counts three Raider battalions consisting of four companies. Each company has four fourteen-man teams called MSOTs. There’s also a Raider Support Group with three more battalions including specialist multi-purpose canine handlers, surveillance and forward observers.

Raiders trainees undergo a three-stage screening, followed by a nine-month training program in skills ranging from demolitions, diving, foreign languages, close-quarters combat and wilderness survival. Raiders have been involved in actions ranging from brutal urban warfare against ISIS in Mosul, Iraq and Marawi in the Philippines, to counter-terror actions in Mali.

Navy SEALs

The U.S. Navy’s Sea, Air and Land (SEAL) teams have their origin in underwater demolitions teams assigned to scout out beaches and clear defensive obstacles ahead of amphibious landings in World War II ranging from Omaha Beach to the fortified island of Tarawa. 

The SEALS were officially formed in 1962 and were soon engaged in spy missions and riverine combat tasks in Vietnam, and participated in Operation Phoenix, a program to assassinate village leaders sympathetic to the Viet Cong.

Later SEAL ops include securing the governor-general of Grenada in his palace, infiltrating Iraqi-occupied Kuwait City, and taking back oil tankers seized by pirates. 

Just to begin training, SEAL candidates must demonstrate extraordinary physical endurance. The over year-long training program spans topics ranging from airborne and diving operations as well as marksmanship and demolitions.

But of those that pass initial screening, only one out of three make it through the initial physical conditioning unit, the third week of which is known as ‘Hell Week,” in which trainees perform 20 hours of intense physical activity per day.

The basic SEAL unit is sixteen-man SEAL platoon, which sub-divide into two squads. The Navy has roughly 3,000 Navy SEALS in eight SEAL teams, each consisting of six platoons and three eight-person special task support units.

Additionally, there are two sixteen-man SEAL Delivery Vehicle Teams equipped with specialized Mk.VIII Mod. 1 submersibles which can carry up to six SEALs for underwater insertion, and three teams operating small boats for littoral operations.

DEVGRU

The Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) is more popularly known by its former designation SEAL Team 6. Its operators are all experienced Navy SEALs who have undertaken an even more grueling training process with a 50 percent washout rate and occasional fatalities. 

Like the Army’s Delta Force, DEVGRU is a Tier 1 unit involved in counter-terrorism and preemptive assassination operations, famously including the killing of Osama Bin Laden in 2011. Unit members also specialize in hostage rescue and protect high-ranking individuals. 

DEVGRU is organized into four assault squadrons (Red, Gold, Blue and Silver); an over 100-strong sniper/advanced reconnaissance squadron (Black); a special boat squadron (Gray); and a training squadron (Green).

Air Force Special Operations

The Air Force has its own 15,000-person strong Special Operations Command, first formerly established in 1983. These involves a mix of aviation and commando-style units.

Special Ops air wings fly a wide range of unique aircraft which often work closely with special forces units of other branches.

Many of these fly variants of the venerable C-130 transport plane. For inserting and recovering commandos behind enemy lines there are MC-130 transport planes modified for low-altitude insertion and recovery and refueling helicopters, as well as CV-22 tilt-rotor aircraft.

To provide long-endurance precision air support, there are ponderous but deadly “Spooky” gunship transports bristling with howitzers, Gatling guns and missiles. And to impede enemy communications and remotely detonated mines, there are EC-130H aircraft with powerful jammers.

To map out just where hostiles are in the first place, AFSOCOM has a fleet of small U-28, C-145 and C-146 surveillance planes stuffed to the gills with hi-tech sensors used in low-profile spy flights across Africa and Southwest Asia alongside MQ-9 Reaper drone squadrons.

Special Tactics Squadrons

But there’s also a ground-pounding side to Air Force Special Ops in the form of Special Tactics Squadrons. These include specialists that are detached to support other special operations units.

Air Force Combat Controllers help assess landing zones and airfields in remote, and perform traffic control in these austere conditions. Two-man Tactical Air Control Parties focus on directing air strikes in support of other ground forces. Pararescuemen, or PJs, assist in search-and-rescue missions behind enemy lines or difficult to access areas, as well as provide emergency medical care. 

There are even Special Operations Weathermen designed to assess weather conditions in the field that could impact the success of a mission.

Most STSs are grouped under the the 24th Special Operations Wing, including the 24th STS, a Tier 1 unit that habitually embeds personnel with Delta Force and DEVGRU.

Challenges for U.S. Special Forces

Despite official secrecy, units like DEVGRU have been celebrated in press coverage and films like American Sniper, The Green Berets and Lone Survivor.

But as special forces undertake a large share of military efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Mali and Syria, they are subject to being word down with near continuous combat deployments abroad

Furthermore, despite the axiom that one “cannot mass produce special forces,” the ranks of U.S. operatives have more than doubled in size since 2001 in an effort to keep pace with demand.

These stresses may be contributing to an institutional crisis. In the last few years, there have been several exposés of breakdowns in discipline and systemic misconduct in special forces units, ranging from the murder of a Green Beret in Mali by Navy SEALs and Marine Raiders in North Africa to reports that SEAL teams were exhibiting high rates of drug and alcohol abuse, and mishandling or even mutilating with hatchets the remains of enemy combatants.

These scandals are leading for calls within the community to acknowledge the problem and reestablish standards and norms of conduct.

Another challenge lies in the shifting priorities of the Defense Department. While SOCOM will likely remain at the forefront of future counter-terrorism/insurgency operations in Africa and West Asia, the Pentagon is reorienting itself away from such missions towards preparing for possible ‘great power’ conflict with Russia and China.

Special Operations forces may thus develop new tactics on how their unique capabilities could counter Russia’s own unconventional warfare tactics in Eastern Europe, or employed to surveil and raid militarized islets in the Pacific Ocean.

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

This article first appeared in October 2019.

Image: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Russell Rhodes Jr.