Diplomacy & Crisis News

Sam Abodo

Afghanistan, Middle East

Whatever the future of its Afghanistan policy is, Washington must go beyond the “loose fighters” perception by examining the Taliban’s bottom-to-top conflicts, studying its deliberative processes, and predicting its ethnic structural fractures.

For over a decade, Washington has spoken of the Taliban as a loose band of fighters. This assumption was, and continues to be, false. The Obama administration, for instance, devised a divide-and-conquer strategy to reach the “reconcilables” in the insurgency. To be sure, from building an economy to deterring ISIS attacks, a Taliban government faces steep obstacles. But cohesiveness is not one of them. A brief overview of the Taliban’s internal structure reveals a meticulous but flexible approach that Washington must reckon with to avoid being once again blindsided by the group’s advances.

Take the Doha Agreement, for example. During the negotiations, Haibatullah Akhunzada, the amir of the Taliban, strengthened the insurgency’s traditional consultative process by consistently deferring to committees. These consultations demonstrated that Taliban leadership can discuss disagreement within a framework without fear of retaliation. Though the amir is the supreme ruler, critical decisions like peace deals don’t occur without a dialogue.

Even the choice of who would lead the agreement wasn’t without thought. Mullah Ghani Baradar’s appointment to the Doha political office garnered the respect of rank-and-file members, signaled to the United States the group’s seriousness for a deal, and showed Pakistan’s interests in improved relations. What about in the lower ranks? One United States Institute of Peace paper by Ashley Jackson and Rahmatullah Amiri analyzes that structure too. At the local level, provincial (akin to state) governors appoint district governors. District governors oversee military tactics, resident complaints, and civilian commissions. While civilian commissions (akin to departments) had always existed, the Taliban have placed them at the forefront of community negotiations in hopes of greater impacts in sectors like education, health, and nongovernmental organizations. Oversight by top leadership is hands-off unless necessary: the provincial governor can argue against policy implemented by higher authorities, and the Rahbari Shura, the Taliban leadership council, is not directly involved in the appointment of district governors.

Jackson and Amiri further discuss how civilians in these positions work with the military side, but the implementation of these policies can remain independent. Regarding education policy, for example, local leaders are authorized to challenge military actors worried about anti-Taliban ideals in classrooms.

Of course, the structure is far more complex on the ground than on paper, and it differs from sector to sector. But keeping a general blueprint avoids conflict, decentralizes power, and keeps the military and civilian sides on equal footing. When asked about such reforms in 2018, one Taliban official asserted that “we needed to show we could be accountable and could form an accountable government that everyone could accept.”

The Doha Agreement process and subnational reforms show the Taliban has adapted to geopolitical changes. To ignore this fact means re-committing mistakes like attempting to produce dissidents among its ranks. Fortunately, there are three ways to keep the Taliban structure in mind if Washington decides to engage its government, diplomatically or not.

First, U.S. policymakers should understand that local leaders are in some ways more powerful than the Taliban central government. The Rahbari Shura cannot oversee the 70 percent of Afghans who live in the countryside, so it relies on appointed officials like the district governors. And these governors are more accountable to the provincial officials than the amir. What would cause a district governor to argue against central policy? Money? Lack of resources? By answering these questions, the United States will gain insight into the causes of bottom-to-top conflicts.

Second, as Bill Roggio, managing editor of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Long War Journal, argued, “We never understood the Taliban's singular goal of reestablishing the Islamic emirate.” Had the U.S. government better understood the Taliban’s structure, it would’ve known that the policy process, from consultation to evaluation, reflects an Islamic model. The jirga, the traditional form of assembly leaders common to Pashtun, predates modern law but more importantly, mirrors the consultative methods of the Rahbari Shura. To determine the policies of a Taliban government, Washington must study these deliberative processes.

Finally, the United States needs to acknowledge that the Taliban is no longer the Pashtun ethno-nationalist movement from the 1990s. Indeed, according to Foreign Policy, the Taliban’s expansive recruitment of Uzbek, Turkmen, and Tajik Afghans “have given the militant group the ability to seize territory in areas outside of its traditional power base.” This strategy, too, was no accident. The Taliban tailored recruitment messages to play on minorities’ financial and political grievances towards the Afghan government. One of these Uzbek recruits was appointed as a military chief in several districts after only two years, allowing him to recruit members exponentially—like a pyramid scheme. How long the Taliban will keep these groups under this manufactured Islamic banner, no one can say. But if U.S. policy accounts for these ethnic differences within the Taliban structure, it can predict fractures here and there.

Whatever the future of its Afghanistan policy is, Washington must go beyond the “loose fighters” perception by examining the Taliban’s bottom-to-top conflicts, studying its deliberative processes, and predicting its ethnic structural fractures. Then, it should apply those analyses towards better anticipating Taliban government policies. To do otherwise means re-committing past mistakes.

Sam Abodo is an undergraduate student at Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute for Politics and Strategy and an editorial intern with The National Interest.

Image: Reuters.

State employees protest the continued employment of an “antisemitic” blogger in their ranks.

Sami Jabarkhail

Afghanistan, Eurasia

China’s strategic intention to march West, Russian’s vision to create a Eurasian Union, and Iran’s ambition to prevail as the dominant force in the Middle East place Afghanistan at the intersection of all three countries’ geostrategic priorities.

On August 15, 2021, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken responded to the question of whether the Biden administration would recognize the Taliban’s new government by stating, “A future Afghan government that upholds the basic rights of its people and doesn’t harbor terrorists is a government we can work with and recognize.”

Echoing Blinken’s remarks, Ned Price, the U.S. State Department spokesman, declared on August 20 that the United States has several tools at its disposal to hold the Taliban accountable for its treatment of women and minorities. Among the tools are designating the Taliban as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) or including its members in Specially Designated Terrorist Group (SDTG). In fact, one of them already is.

Washington has already frozen nearly 10 billion dollars of Afghanistan’s assets, denying the Taliban access to the international financial system. Due to the U.S freeze of Afghanistan’s assets, Afghanistan’s currency has depreciated while prices have spiked, and banks remain closed. Several Taliban members have also been sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Treasury.

The Taliban cannot be held to the American standards of liberal democracy, free market, and civil liberties. Nevertheless, the Taliban have repeatedly acknowledged the need for an inclusive government, women’s rights to study and work, independent media, viable relations with the international community, and reforms in various sectors, though it is not clear whether they will follow through on these promises.

While President Joe Biden has the power to restore full diplomatic relations with the Taliban, such an action would occur as part of broader efforts to engage with them. These efforts must account for America’s three major rivals in the region: China, Russia, and Iran. All three have vowed to recognize the Taliban government.

This triangle of belligerent countries, while apart in their regional tendencies, remain united against the United States, seeking to undermine Washington’s interests and ultimately drive the United States out of the region.

For China, Afghanistan is important not only for security reasons but also economic ones. Afghanistan’s geostrategic position as the crossroad of major trade routes, connecting Central Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East on the one hand and the country’s abundant industrial materials on the other make Kabul an attractive economic and political partner for China.

The Taliban are in a position to enable China to implement its Belt and Road Initiative in the region by facilitating the importation of much-needed industrial materials from Central Asia and the exportation of goods from China’s coastal inlands to markets in the Middle East and Europe—all by rail. Central Asia also possesses large energy deposits. Given China’s future energy demands, Central Asia is likely to see an increasing Chinese presence.

Additionally, the Taliban can offer Beijing security guarantees on its northeastern border. Chinese officials have long worried about the rise of extremism in Xinjiang province which is home to the Uyghur Muslims. In return for Chinese political and economic support, the Taliban could deny safe heaven to Uyghur separatists in Afghanistan.  

For Russia, Afghanistan is also a major security concern. As a landlocked country, Russia has legitimate political and security sensitivities all around its borders, especially on its southern border.

Halford Mackinder’s twentieth-century geopolitical dictum that “all lands are politically connected” bears truth in the present time. The 2010-11 uprising in Tunisia was a testament to that fact. A protest by a fruit vendor in Tunis to change the country’s political landscape spilled to the rest of North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.

Under the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, Russia’s influence on the Central Asian countries will depend on Moscow’s sway in Kabul. Thus, Moscow seems to have a vested interest in working with the Taliban.

Finally, Iran has benefited from U.S. involvement and subsequent withdrawal in Afghanistan and Iraq. In both wars, Tehran has supported specific militias to target and kill Americans. The U.S. drawdown from Afghanistan will give Iran yet another opportunity to advance its revolutionary vision well beyond its border and threaten Washington’s interests far and wide.

In all, China’s strategic intention to march West, Russian’s vision to create a Eurasian Union, and Iran’s ambition to prevail as the dominant force in the Middle East place Afghanistan at the intersection of all three countries’ geostrategic priorities. Thus, the fundamental question confronting U.S. policymakers is not whether Washington can keep China, Russia, and Iran in check in Afghanistan but whether Washington has the will to do so.

Sami Jabarkhail is a Ph.D. Candidate in Human Resource Development at Texas A&M University. Sami was a delegate to the 2014 NATO Future Leaders Summit in Wales, UK. Follow him on Twitter @SamiJabarkhail.

Image: Reuters.

Trevor Filseth

Afghanistan,

Even if the resistance group is able to retain control of the valley against a Taliban attack, it seems very unlikely that it could liberate more of the country from the Taliban.

Representative Mike Waltz (R-FL) and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have thrown their support behind the “Panjshir resistance” to Taliban rule in Afghanistan. The two congressmen issued a statement on Friday morning, in which they called for political and military aid to the group and called on President Joe Biden to recognize the group as the legitimate successor to the Afghan government.

“After speaking with Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh and representatives of Ahmad Massoud,” the statement reads, “we are calling on the Biden Administration to recognize these leaders as the legitimate government representatives of Afghanistan. We ask the Biden Administration to recognize that the Afghan Constitution is still intact, and the Afghan Taliban takeover is illegal.”

The statement praised the leadership of the Panjshir resistance for remaining in the country and creating a “safe haven” for Afghans and foreign citizens seeking freedom from Taliban rule. It also pushed Biden to officially designate the Taliban as a terrorist organization. While Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or the “Pakistani Taliban,” is included on the U.S. State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), the Taliban in Afghanistan is not–largely because successive U.S. administrations have sought to negotiate with the Afghan Taliban but are generally forbidden from negotiating with terror groups.

Though the Panjshir Valley itself remains unoccupied by the Taliban, the group has tightened its control around the surrounding area, blocking roads in and out and severing phone and internet access to the valley. Negotiations between the Taliban and Panjshir’s leadership remain ongoing. Even if the resistance group is able to retain control of the valley against a Taliban attack, it seems very unlikely that it could liberate more of the country from the Taliban.

Waltz and Graham’s statement will probably not influence the Biden administration’s policy, as it appears to be attempting to build a relationship with the Taliban—a relationship that would be harder to build if it emerged that the administration was supporting a rebel group. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has indicated that the U.S. government would be willing to “work with” a Taliban-led government if it vowed to respect human rights, allow Afghans to emigrate, and refused to tolerate international terrorist activity.

Still, Waltz has indicated that his efforts to support the Panjshir resistance will continue, describing the mission to Foreign Affairs as “a play out of Charlie Wilson’s playbook”—in reference to Rep. Charlie Wilson, a Texas congressman who played an outsized role in funding and arming the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for the National Interest.

Image: Reuters

L'Empire ottoman n'avait jamais occupé la totalité de la péninsule arabique. Son démantèlement, au cours de la première guerre mondiale, laissa le champ libre au Royaume-Uni. Soucieux de contrôler les lignes de communications de l'Empire britannique, Londres fit main basse sur les côtes est et sud du (...) / Golfe, Iran, Monde arabe, État, Histoire, Frontières - Golfe

Dan Negrea

Foreign Policy,

There seem to be two Biden doctrines, neither is compelling, and they are at cross-purposes at times.  Neither is the political clarion call America needs for the great power confrontation with China.

Analysts parse the foreign policy statements of presidents and administrations in search of a dominant theme.  When they find it, they call it a presidential doctrine.  The Monroe, Truman, Nixon, and Reagan doctrines, for example, are enduring summaries of those presidents’ foreign policy.

There seem to be two Biden doctrines, neither is compelling, and they are at cross-purposes at times.  Neither is the political clarion call America needs for the great power confrontation with China.

The Foreign Policy for the Middle-Class Doctrine

“Every action we take in our conduct abroad, we must take with American working families in mind,” said President Joe Biden in a speech at the Department of State in February.

In his first speech as Secretary of State in March, Anthony Blinken also addressed this topic: “… Our trade policies will need to answer very clearly how they will grow the American middle class...”

At a press briefing in February, Jake Sullivan, National Security Adviser, announced that:  “We will also be able to more effectively pursue a foreign policy for the middle class. …  Everything we do in our foreign policy and national security will be measured by a basic metric: Is it going to make life better, safer, and easier for working families?”

The intellectual origin of the doctrine is a 2020 study by the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace entitled “ Making Foreign Policy Work Better for the Middle Class,”  co-edited by Jake Sullivan.

The Carnegie study refers to a Pew Research Center report that defines the middle-income bracket for a household of three as $48,505-145,516.  The Carnegie study does not refer to “working families” but we can assume that the terms are used interchangeably.

Questions about The Foreign Policy for the Middle-Class Doctrine

Why design the foreign policy for the entire nation around just one class?  Pew estimates that about fifty percent of Americans are in the middle class, twenty percent in the upper class, and thirty percent in the lower class.  Doesn’t the lower class, the most vulnerable among us, also deserve consideration in our foreign policy?  And how about the upper class who pay seventy percent of total taxes and, by extension, of the salaries of our public servants. 

Furthermore, if the goal is to target the well-being of the middle-class, foreign policy tools are singularly ill-designed for the purpose (to paraphrase Churchill’s remark about golf clubs).  The tools of foreign policy are diplomacy, information, military, and economics.  The first three cannot be used to benefit just some Americans.  How exactly would our Russia diplomacy, for example, be different if we keep the middle-class in mind?  Or our military posture in Asia?

Economic tools, and especially trade policy, are usually offered as an option but they don’t quite work either.  The Interim National Security Guidance published in March said that “trade policy must grow the American middle class, create new and better jobs, raise wages, and strengthen communities.”  In a Washington Post article, Professor Daniel Drezner commented that: “… No trade policy in the world can do that, because no trade policy has effects of that magnitude.”

The Democracy Promotion Doctrine

In his introductory letter to the Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, President Biden declared that “Our world is at an inflection point. …. I believe we are in the midst of an historic and fundamental debate about the future direction of our world. There are those who argue that, given all the challenges we face, autocracy is the best way forward. And there are those who understand that democracy is essential to meeting all the challenges of our changing world.” 

The Guidance describes a global security landscape in which “democracies are under siege” and  “authoritarianism is on the global march,” which requires “like-minded allies and partners to revitalize democracy the world over.”  China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are listed as “hostile adversaries.”

The Guidance lists eight national security priorities: Strengthening alliances and partnerships; leading in international institutions and on climate change; smart defense choices and leading with diplomacy; international economic relations that serve the middle class; building back better at home; revitalizing democracy at home and abroad; prevailing in “the strategic competition with China or any other nation;” and “investing in our national security workforce.”

The Guidance describes China as  “… the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system.” 

It also notes that “..in many areas, China’s leaders seek unfair advantages, behave aggressively and coercively.” The guidance promises that the U.S. “… will confront unfair and illegal trade practices, cyber theft, and coercive economic practices that hurt American workers...”  And it states that “We will position ourselves, diplomatically and militarily, to defend our allies” and support our partners in the region.

Secretary Blinken gave his inaugural speech at the Department of State on the same day the Guidance was issued.  He also listed eight foreign policy priorities: The coronavirus health challenge; the coronavirus economic challenge; renewing democracy; humane and effective immigration; revitalizing alliances and partnerships; tackling climate change; securing the U.S. technology leadership; and managing the China relationship.

Referring to the United States, he argued that “there is no question that our democracy is fragile” and in need of strengthening.  Promoting democracy is important “… because strong democracies are more stable, more open, better partners to us, more committed to human rights, less prone to conflict, and more dependable markets for our goods and services.”

Regarding the implementation of democracy promotion, he promises that “We will use the power of our example.  We will encourage others to make key reforms, overturn bad laws, fight corruption, and stop unjust practices.”

Implementation has already started: Politico made public a cable from Secretary Blinken to all U.S. embassies in which he instructs our diplomats to promote human rights and democracy, even in countries with non-democratic governments that are friendly to the U.S.  To increase acceptance of this message, U.S. diplomats are encouraged to talk about shortcomings in the U.S. 

Questions regarding the Democracy Promotion Doctrine

The first question about this doctrine is its priority ranking.  The Guidance ranks democracy promotion sixth and the China relationship seventh (penultimate).  Among Secretary Blinken’s priorities, democracy promotion ranks third and the China relationship eighth (and last).  If China represents “the biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century,” shouldn’t the China threat rank first or at least higher than democracy promotion?

The second question regards the promotion of democracy in all countries, even those friendly to the U.S. when this may antagonize countries we need to counter China and other adversaries.  Will we complain to India, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Singapore about their democracy shortcomings and risk pushing them closer to China?  Or to NATO members Turkey, Poland, and Hungary who are key to checking Russia?  Or to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and many other countries in the Middle East that we need to counter Islamic Terrorism?

The third question regards the effectiveness of democracy promotion.  The U.S. has few tools to influence the behavior of foreign governments.  Withholding or reducing arms sales, a frequent sanction for this purpose, doesn’t work very well.  China and Russia are happy to sell weapons to dictators if the U.S. does not.  And so is our democratic ally France, a traditional arms supplier to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and many other dictatorships.

President Biden talks about a Summit of Democracies.  What will be the democracy test that countries will have to pass to be invited? 

Contradictions Between the Two Doctrines

A central tenet of the Democracy Promotion Doctrine is that democracies should band together to oppose autocracies.  But Biden’s “Buy American” (just like Trump’s America First trade policy) appears protectionist to our allies and partners and will push them away. 

Selling weapons to dictators creates jobs for the middle-class but does not promote democracy.

Democracy promotion abroad was not popular with the middle class as practiced by Presidents Carter and George W. Bush.  It is still unpopular.  A February 2021 Pew Research Center poll gave Americans twenty foreign policy goals and asked them to pick their top priority.  The top three choices, with percentages in the seventies, were protecting American jobs, fighting pandemics, and fighting terrorism.  Dead last, with just twenty percent was “Promoting democracy in other nations.”

The Biden Administration believes that American diplomats advocating for democracy abroad should talk about shortcomings in America’s democracy.  But this sounds like President Obama’s “apology tours” and will not sit well with the middle-class who are very patriotic.  A poll by the University of Chicago showed that ninety percent of America’s poorest would rather be citizens of the United States than of any other country and eighty percent of all respondents believed that America is “better” than other countries.

The Doctrine We Need for the Great Power Confrontation with China

1.     Our world is indeed at an inflection point: The United States is in a great power confrontation with China and this must be Priority #1 for our national security strategy.  The United States must counter Communist China’s expansionist, revisionist, and illegal actions that have been harming vital American security, freedom, and prosperity interests.  Communist China wants to dominate the world but living in China’s totalitarian world is unacceptable for Americans. 

2.     Like the eagle in the Great Seal of the United States, the United States offers China the choice of the olive branch of cooperation or the thunderbolt of confrontation.  For decades, the United States has cooperated with China and aided in its growth assuming that it will become a responsible stakeholder of the rules-based system.  The assumption was wrong: China is today an adversary and will remain one under the leadership of Xi Jinping.  Selective cooperation with China is still possible and necessary.   But it is confrontation that sets the tone of the relationship.

3.     The goals of the United States in this confrontation are to limit China’s capacity to harm the interests of the United States and the Free World; to impose such costs on China that it will restrain or abandon its malign policies; and to position the U.S. and the Free World to prevail against China in the current confrontation and in a possible future conflict.

4.     Among the means of the China confrontation policy are: Increased defense spending; selective economic decoupling;  imposing meaningful costs for malign actions; forming defensive military groupings among countries threatened by Chinese expansionism; calling out China’s human rights violations and illegal economic practices; and opposing its attempts to censure criticism in the Free World.

5.     The United States is also challenged by countries in the League of Dictators that include major regional powers Russia and Iran, as well as North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba.  These countries frequently make common cause with China.  Importantly, after the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, ISIS and Al Qaeda must also be added to this list.

6.     To face China and the League of Dictators, the United States needs to lead a Free World coalition of allies and partners.  Our closest allies will always be nations strongly committed to democracy.  But membership in the Free World network must be open to any country opposed to China’s designs.

7.     In this confrontation, the Free World led by the United States needs to build a broad-based, diverse, and flexible network of alliances and partnerships.  Some already exist, like NATO and the Quad.  Others need to be created, like Democracy-10 and Technology-12.  Also necessary is a Free World economic alliance with an Article V so China cannot use economic blackmail against another country the way it did against Australia without incurring retaliation.

8.     The Free World network will collaborate to defend and revitalize the Rules-Based System.  Since World War II, this system has helped prevent another world war.  It has also contributed to an unprecedented increase in prosperity and in the number of democratic countries.  But its institutions need updating and its members need to do better in burden-sharing.

9.     The United States should have an Open Invitation policy toward Russia.  It is in the United States’s interest to work out mutually acceptable arrangements with Russia if it abandons its aggressive, expansionist, and revisionist policies, distances itself from China, and supports the United States and the Free World.  This is not possible today but is more likely in the future with Russia than with China.  Long-term strategic trends are unfavorable to Russia.  It has a declining population, a low GDP per capita, and a technologically unsophisticated economy dependent on hydrocarbon exports in a world moving away from them.  Someday, the Russian people will force their leaders to follow the path of the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe which joined the Free World and adopted political and economic reforms that lead to prosperity. Also, an expansionist China with 1.4 billion people will eventually become an acute strategic threat to Russia with 140 million people and its sparsely populated, yet resource-rich Siberia neighboring China.  There is a precedent for such a switch:  Communist Russia was initially allied with Hitler but later came to the side of the allies.

10.  In this environment of increased tension, the United States must significantly increase dialogue with China and the League of Dictators to prevent accidental military conflict. 

China’s actions are a grave threat to America’s security, freedom, and prosperity.  But it is not the first time that America faces a totalitarian foe that seems formidable and has dreams of world domination.  America won against such adversaries in hot and cold wars, in World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and the War on Terror.  And she will win again.

Mr. Negrea is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council.  He held leadership positions in the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff and Economic Bureau during the Trump Administration.

Image: Reuters

Sebastien Roblin

Chinese Submarines,

The Chinese government is not disposed to transparency regarding its military accidents.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Only high standards of maintenance, manufacturing, and crew training can avert lethal peacetime disasters—standards which are difficult for many nations to afford, but which the PLA Navy likely aspires to it as it continues to expand and professionalize its forces at an extraordinary rate.

On April 25, 2003, the crew of a Chinese fishing boat noticed a strange sight—a periscope drifting listlessly above the surface of the water. The fishermen notified the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) which promptly dispatched two vessels to investigate.

At first, the PLAN believed the contact to be an intruding submarine from South Korea or Japan. But when Chinese personnel finally recovered the apparent derelict they realized it was one of their own diesel-electric submarines, the Ming-class 361.

When they boarded on April 26, they found all seventy personnel slumped dead at their stations.

Military commissioner and former president Jiang Zemin acknowledged the tragic incident on May 2, 2003, in a statement honoring the sacrifice of Chinese sailors' lives and vaguely characterizing the cause as “mechanical failure.”

A month later, an inquiry by his commission resulted in the dismissal of both the commander and commissar of the North Sea Fleet, and the demotion or dismissal of six or eight more officers for “improper command and control.” Jiang and President Hu Jintao later reportedly visited the recovered submarine and met with the families of the deceased.

The Chinese government is not disposed to transparency regarding its military accidents. For example, it does not release the results of its investigations into jet fighter crashes and it never publicly acknowledged earlier submarine accidents. At the time, some commentators expressed surprise that Beijing acknowledged the incident at all, and speculated it was obliquely related to contemporaneous criticism of Beijing’s attempts to downplay the SARS epidemic.

The Type 035 Ming-class submarine was an outdated second-generation design evolved from the lineage of the Soviet Romeo-class, in turn a Soviet development of the German Type XXI “Electric U-Boat” from World War II. The first two Type 035s were built in 1975 but remained easy to detect compared to contemporary American or Russian designs. Though China operated numerous diesel submarines, due to concerns over seaworthiness, they rarely ventured far beyond coastal waters in that era.

Nonetheless, Chinese shipyards continued to build updated Ming-class boats well into the 1990s. Submarine 361 was one of the later Type 035G Ming III models, which introduced the capability to engage opposing submerged submarines with guided torpedoes. Entering service in 1995, she and three sister ships numbered 359 through 362 formed the North Sea Fleet’s 12th Submarine Brigade based in Liaoning province. You can see them together in this photo.

361 had been deployed on a naval exercise in the Bohai Sea, the Yellow Sea gulf east of Beijing and Tianjing. Unusually, a senior naval officer, Commodore Cheng Fuming was aboard. In its last ship’s log on April 16, the submarine was practicing silent running while off the Changshang island, heading back to a base in Weihai, Shandong Province.

Because it was maintaining radio silence, the PLAN didn’t realize anything was amiss until ten days later. The method by which 361 was recovered after its presence was reported remains unclear. Several accounts imply the ship was submerged, but the fact that it was promptly towed back to port implies that it had surfaced.

The lack of a clear official explanation has led to various theories over the years. The typical complement of a Type 035 submarine is fifty-five to fifty-seven personnel, but 361 had seventy on board. Officially these were trainers, but conditions would have been quite cramped. The presence of the additional personnel and the high-ranking Commodore Cheng leads to the general conclusion that 361 was not on a routine mission.

Indeed, some commentators speculated that the additional crew was observing tests of an experimental Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) system which would have offered greater stealth and underwater endurance. As it happens, another Type 035G submarine, 308, was used to test an AIP drive, and Stirling AIP drives would soon equip the prolific Type 041 Yuan-class submarines which prowl the seas today.

Another theory is that leaks allowed seawater to mix with battery acid, forming deadly chlorine gas that poisoned the crew. The Hong Kong Sing Tao Daily claimed the submarine had embarked on a “dangerous” antisubmarine training, and that “human error” led it to nose-down uncontrollably, causing it to get stuck on the seafloor.

However, the most widely accepted explanation today was first published by the Hong Kong Wen Wei Po, a pro-Beijing newspaper: the crew was suffocated by the sub’s diesel engine.

A conventional diesel-electric submarine uses an air-breathing diesel engine to charge up its batteries for underwater propulsion. This is usually done while surfaced—but a submarine attempting to remain undetected can also cruise submerged just below the surface and use a snorkel to sip air. The snorkel is designed to automatically seal up if the water level gets too high.

According to Wen Wei Po, 361 was running its diesel while snorkeling when high water caused the air intake valve to close—or the valve failed to open properly due to a malfunction. However, its diesel engine did not shut down as it should have in response. You can find what appears to be a translated version of the article here.

Apparently, the motor consumed most of the submarine’s air supply in just two minutes. The crew might have felt light-headed and short of breath during the first minute and would have begun losing consciousness in the second. The negative air pressure also made it impossible to open the hatches. A 2013 article by Reuters repeats this theory as well as mentioning the possibility that was exhaust was improperly vented back into the hull to fatal effect.

Any of these explanations would reflect serious failings in both crew training and mechanical performance.

The recent tragic loss of the Argentine submarine San Juan, the fire raging amongst moored Russian Kilo-class submarines at Vladivostok (a drill, Moscow claims), and the fortunately nonfatal but highly expensive flooding of the Indian nuclear-powered submarine Arihant highlight that despite being arguably the most fearsome weapon system on the planet, submarines remain dangerous to operate even when not engaged in a war. Even brief breakdowns in crew discipline or mechanical reliability can rapidly turn the stealthy underwater marauders into watery coffins.

Only high standards of maintenance, manufacturing, and crew training can avert lethal peacetime disasters—standards which are difficult for many nations to afford, but which the PLA Navy likely aspires to it as it continues to expand and professionalize its forces at an extraordinary rate.

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 earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Trevor Filseth

Afghanistan,

The Red Cross also served in Afghanistan under the Taliban in the 1990s, and its staff has asserted that the group has a “very good working relationship” with the Taliban.

As the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan at the Kabul airport continues, U.S. forces are madly attempting to meet an August 31 “red line” date imposed by the Taliban. Meanwhile, humanitarian efforts conducted by international aid organizations and Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) have dropped precipitously. A major concern for these organizations going forward is the potential for poor treatment by the Taliban, which developed a reputation for mistreating foreign workers during its first period of rule during the 1990s.

However, even as other NGOs depart, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), more commonly known as the Red Cross, has committed to remaining in the country and continuing its health mission there.

Red Cross staff confirmed the decision over the weekend, pointing out that the aid group had worked in Taliban-controlled areas during the active phase of the conflict and were welcomed then.

The situation in Afghanistan remains dangerous, despite the end of hostilities following the collapse of the internationally recognized Afghan government. On Thursday, a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport killed a dozen U.S. soldiers and nearly 200 Afghan civilians, injuring hundreds more. The attacks have been blamed on ISIS-K, a local offshoot of the Islamic State terror group based in Iraq and Syria.

Another factor complicating the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan is the country’s ongoing economic problems. In the past week, UN officials have attempted to solicit an additional $800 million in donations to pay for humanitarian assistance in the country.

Prior to its collapse, eighty percent of the internationally recognized budget was sourced from aid from the United States—aid that Washington will not supply to the Taliban.

In addition to the conflict, Afghanistan is experiencing a historic drought, now accompanied by famine. If current trends persist, one-third of Afghans are likely to face food insecurity in the coming year if further aid is not provided. Moreover, there continue to be negative consequences from Afghanistan’s attempts to contain the coronavirus pandemic. Afghanistan has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the world—with only around two percent having received one dose, and around one-half of one percent fully vaccinated. The worst effects of the virus, however, have largely passed the country by, owing to its relatively youthful population.

The Red Cross also served in Afghanistan under the Taliban in the 1990s, and its staff has asserted that the group has a “very good working relationship” with the Taliban.

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for the National Interest.

Image: Reuters

Sebastien Roblin

Nuclear Submarines, World

The closest competitor to the Ohio-class submarine is Russia’s sole remaining Typhoon-class submarine, a larger vessel with twenty ballistic-missile launch tubes.

Here's What You Need to Know: The Ohio class will serve on until the end of the 2020s, and may even receive some additional acoustic stealth upgrades until they are replaced by a successor, tentatively dubbed the Columbia class. With estimated costs of $4–6 billion each to manufacture, the next-generation boomers may be fewer in number and will use new reactors that do not require expensive overhauls and refueling, allowing them to serve on until 2085.

Nine years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Ishirō Honda’s Godzilla depicted a monster awakened from the depths of the ocean to wreak havoc on Japanese cities. A giant fire-breathing reptile, however, was less horrifying than what was to come. In less than a decade’s time, there would be dozens of real undersea beasts capable of destroying multiple cities at a time. I’m referring, of course, to ballistic-missile submarines, or “boomers” in U.S. Navy parlance.

The most deadly of the real-life kaiju prowling the oceans today are the fourteen Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarines, which carry upwards of half of the United States’ nuclear arsenal onboard.

If you do the math, the Ohio-class boats may be the most destructive weapon system created by humankind. Each of the 170-meter-long vessels can carry twenty-four Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) which can be fired from underwater to strike at targets more than seven thousand miles away depending on the load.

As a Trident II reenters the atmosphere at speeds of up to Mach 24, it splits into up to eight independent reentry vehicles, each with a 100- or 475-kiloton nuclear warhead. In short, a full salvo from an Ohio-class submarine—which can be launched in less than one minute—could unleash up to 192 nuclear warheads to wipe twenty-four cities off the map. This is a nightmarish weapon of the apocalypse.

The closest competitor to the Ohio-class submarine is the Russia’s sole remaining Typhoon-class submarine, a larger vessel with twenty ballistic-missile launch tubes. However, China, Russia, India, England and France all operate multiple ballistic-missile submarines with varying missile armaments—and even a few such submarines would suffice to annihilate the major cities in a developed nation.

What possible excuse is there for such monstrous, nation-destroying weaponry?

The logic of nuclear deterrence: while a first strike might wipe out a country’s land-based missiles and nuclear bombers, it’s very difficult to track a ballistic-missile submarine patrolling quietly in the depths of the ocean—and there’s little hope of taking them all out in a first strike. Thus, ballistic-missile submarines promise the unstoppable hand of nuclear retribution—and should deter any sane adversary from attempting a first strike or resorting to nuclear weapons at all. At least that’s the hope.

As such, the Trident-armed Ohio-class submarines will have succeeded in their mission if they never fire their weapons in anger.

The Ohio-class boats entered service in the 1980s as a replacement for five different classes of fleet ballistic-missile submarines, collectively known as the “41 for Freedom.” Displacing more than eighteen thousand tons submerged, the new boomers remain the largest submarines to serve in the U.S. Navy—and the third-largest ever built. With the exception of the Henry M. Jackson, each is named after a U.S. state, an honor previously reserved for large surface warships.

In the event of a nuclear exchange, a boomer would likely receive its firing orders via Very Low Frequency radio transmission. While a submarine’s missiles are not pretargeted, like those in fixed silos, they can be assigned coordinates quite rapidly. The first eight Ohio-class boats were originally built to launch the Trident I C4 ballistic missile—an advanced version of the earlier Poseidon SLBM. However, by now all of the boomers are armed with the superior Trident II D5 ballistic missile, which has 50 percent greater range and is capable of very accurate strikes, which could enable them to precisely target military installations as a first-strike weapon.

Ohio-class submarines also come armed with four twenty-one-inch tubes that can launch Mark 48 torpedoes. However, these are intended primarily for self-defense—a ballistic missile submarine’s job isn’t to hunt enemy ships and submarines, but to lie as low and quiet as possible to deny adversaries any means of tracking their movements. The submarine’s nuclear reactor gives it virtually unlimited underwater endurance and the ability to maintain cruising speeds of twenty knots (twenty-three miles per hour) while producing very little noise.

While other branches of the military may be deployed in reaction to the crisis of the day, the nuclear submarines maintain a steady routine of patrols, and communicate infrequently so as to remain as stealthy as possible. Each Ohio-class submarine has two crews of 154 officers and enlisted personnel, designated Gold and Blue, who take turns departing on patrols that last an average of seventy to ninety days underwater—with the longest on record being 140 days by the USS Pennsylvania. An average of a month is spent between patrols, with resupply facilitated by three large-diameter supply hatches.         

Currently, nine boomers are based in Bangor, Washington to patrol the Pacific Ocean, while five are stationed in Kings Bay, Georgia for operations in the Atlantic. The end of the Cold War, and especially the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, resulted in the downsizing of U.S. nuclear forces. However, rather than retiring some of the oldest boats as originally planned, the Navy decided to refit four of the eighteen Ohio-class subs to serve as cruise missile carriers to launch conventional attacks against ground and sea targets—starting with the USS Ohio.

Meanwhile, the New START treaty which came into effect in 2011 imposes additional limits on the number of deployed nuclear weapons. The current plan is to keep twelve Ohio-class subs active at time with twenty Trident IIs each, while two more boomers remain in overhaul, keeping a total of 240 missiles active at a time with 1,090 warheads between them. Don’t worry, restless hawks: that’s still enough to destroy the world several times over!

The Ohio class will serve on until the end of the 2020s, and may even receive some additional acoustic stealth upgrades until they are replaced by a successor, tentatively dubbed the Columbia class. With estimated costs of $4–6 billion each to manufacture, the next-generation boomers may be fewer in number and will use new reactors that do not require expensive overhauls and refueling, allowing them to serve on until 2085.

Sébastien Roblin writes on the technical, historical and political aspects of international security and conflict for publications including The National Interest, NBC News, Forbes.com and War is Boring. He holds a Master’s degree from Georgetown University and served with the Peace Corps in China. You can follow his articles on Twitter.

This article first appeared in January 2017.

Image: Wikipedia.

Andrew Young, the first African American ambassador to the UN, has earned his place in history, but he credits another African American pioneer, Ralph Bunche, as his inspiration. Bunche, who died 50 years ago, was the first person of African descent to win the Nobel Peace Prize and played a major role in the early days of the UN.

Sebastien Roblin

Nuclear Weapons, Eurasia

While there’s a tactical rationale behind Russia’s development of a fast, surface-skimming cruise missile with an unlimited range as a means of bypassing American missile defenses, it strikes many analysts as an inordinately expensive, extremely technically challenging, and—evidently!—downright unsafe.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Unfortunately, in a climate of escalating paranoia and nuclear arms competition, Moscow is not merely devising exotic new nuclear weapons, but resurrecting the demons of our shared Cold War past.

After days of speculation by Western analysts that a deadly accident on August 8, 2019 that briefly spiked radiation levels in northwestern Russia was tied to tests of an exotic nuclear-powered “Skyfall” nuclear-powered cruise missile, Russian sources confirmed to the New York Times the explosion of a “small nuclear reactor.”

While there’s a tactical rationale behind Russia’s development of a fast, surface-skimming cruise missile with an unlimited range as a means of bypassing American missile defenses, it strikes many analysts as an inordinately expensive, extremely technically challenging, and—evidently!—downright unsafe.

That’s because the United States has tried it before sixty years earlier—and even with the fast-and-loose safety culture of the Cold War 1960s, the poison-spewing radioactive mega missile it began developing was considered too dangerous to even properly flight test.

This project was most famously described in a 1990 article by Gregg Herken for Air & Space Magazine, which remains well worth the read.

In the late 1950s, the United States had yet to deploy the intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles that remain two of three pillars of Washington’s nuclear deterrence today. That meant the drawing board was open for alternative methods to threaten Washington’s adversaries with atomic devastation.

One concept was to use a nuclear ramjet propulsion system to create a rocket that could fly for months thanks to a small nuclear reactor on board. The ramjet functioned by sucking in onrushing air while traveling several times the speed of sound, and warming it with its small reactor. The heated air would expand and get squeezed out exhaust nozzles to result in high-speed propulsion.

The resulting Supersonic Low-Altitude Missile (SLAM) was powered by a small reactor codenamed “Pluto,” to be developed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Berkeley, California.

While proto-hippies gathered at the nearby university campus, the scientists at the laboratory, under project director Theodore Merkle, were devising a huge missile designed that would make any caught underneath it “deafened, flattened, and irradiated,” as Herken memorably put it in his article.

The SLAM missile was expected to soar towards its Soviet targets at tree-top level, traveling at three times the speed of sound. The combination of low-altitude (reducing detection range) and Mach 3 speed was thought to make it too fast for interception by fighters or surface-to-air missile. The sonic shock wave produced by the huge missile was believed to be strong enough to kill anyone caught underneath it.

The huge missile, laden with up to twelve thermonuclear bombs, would proceed to race towards one Soviet city after another, visiting Hiroshima-level human tragedies upon each. And once the bombs were exhausted, the nuclear-powered missile would…simply keep on going and going like a murderous Energizer Bunny.

Because installing adequate radioactive shielding on such a small reactor would have proven impossible, the SLAM would have spread in its wake trails of cancer-inducing gamma and neutron radiation and radioactive fission fragments expelled by its exhaust.

Project Pluto scientists even considered weaponizing this property by programming the missile to circle overhead Soviet population centers, though how exposing even more people to slow deaths by radiation poisoning would be useful in an apocalyptic nuclear war that would likely leave both nations in ruin in a few days is hard to fathom.

However, realizing the SLAM concept involved a succession of serious technical challenges. For example, a separate conventional rocket system would be necessary for the missile to reach the supersonic speeds at which its ramjet motor could function. That, in turn, meant the reactor had to be designed to withstand the heat and stress of those powerful booster rockets. In fact, it’s believed precisely that problem may have resulted in the deadly accident in Russia this August.

As a result, the Livermore laboratory devised a 500-megawatt reactor so robust it was nicknamed the “flying crowbar.”

Thus, the missile’s structure would need to withstand the intense heat generated by the reactor, estimated to operate at 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Thus, the lab commissioned the Coors Ceramic company in Colorado—yes, the same as the beer-brewers of today—to build heat-resistant ceramic fuel elements.

To test whether the various components Project Pluto could coexist non-explosively, an expensive, eight-square-mile test facility was established codenamed Site 401 at the Jackass flats of Nevada.

A nuclear ramjet named Tory-IIA was tested successfully for a few seconds on May 14, 1961, at low power. After three more years of development, a lighter Tory-IIC ramjet was then tested in 1964, operating at near to full power for five minutes. Over 300 tons of pressurized air were channeled to simulate high-speed flight conditions necessary for the ramjet to operate.

Having established the workability of the nuclear ramjet, Merkle’s team then ran into a serious practical obstacle: where on Earth, literally, could a long-range weapon prone to trailing plumes of radioactive pollution behind it be tested? And what would happen if the supersonic weapon with theoretically nigh-unlimited range “got away”—ie., fell out of control, and potentially irradiated American communities? Some scientists even suggested tying the missile to the ground to deal with the latter problem.

Deploying the weapon operationally presented even worse dilemmas, as the missile would likely overfly U.S. allies on its approach to Russia. Even deploying an operational weapon to a remote Pacific island seemed to entail an inordinate amount of radiation poisoning for the surrounding environment.

By then, the United States was well into deploying ICBMs and SLBM missiles, which presented none of these problems and were at the time virtually unstoppable once launched. By contrast, advances in radar and missile technology seemed bound to make the SLAM less invulnerable than had been previously supposed. Finally, in July 1964, the military pulled the plug on the $260 million program—equivalent to over $2 billion in 2019 dollars.

Fortunately, the Pentagon was able to assess that the SLAM did nothing to alter the Mutually Assured Destruction dynamic of Moscow and Washington’s Cold War standoff, except perhaps by provoking an equally terrifying response. Furthermore, it presented undesirable budgetary burdens and intolerable safety and political risks.

Despite technical advances since the 1960s, those same fundamental considerations likely remain true for Russia’s Skyfall missile today.

As John Krzyzaniak succinctly put it in a piece for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

“The problems with a nuclear-powered missile are so numerous and obvious that some have questioned whether Putin is being hoodwinked by his scientists, or whether he is bluffing to scare the United States back into arms control agreements. In any case, what was once a terrible new idea is now just a terrible old idea.”

Unfortunately, in a climate of escalating paranoia and nuclear arms competition, Moscow is not merely devising exotic new nuclear weapons, but resurrecting the demons of our shared Cold War past.

Sébastien Roblin writes on the technical, historical and political aspects of international security and conflict for publications including The National Interest, NBC News, Forbes.com and War is Boring. He holds a Master’s degree from Georgetown University and served with the Peace Corps in China. You can follow his articles on Twitter.

This article first appeared in September 2019.

Image: Reuters.

James Holmes

US Navy, Americas

How can the silent service stay in tune with the times?

Here's What You Need To Remember: The navy is already staring a shortfall of attack boats in the face even without undertaking a major redesign of the submarine fleet. Technological transformation, in short, could outpace shipbuilding programs predicated on longstanding assumptions about combat in the depths. Change could be swift, while a reengineering a fleet is a glacial process unless something really, really bad transpires to compel the leadership to act swiftly and decisively.

S’pose Bryan Clark has it right. The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) analyst and retired U.S. Navy commander postulates that a technological revolution is about to overtake undersea warfare, rendering the wine-dark sea transparent to hostile antisubmarine (ASW) forces for the first time. This would be a bad thing from the standpoint of U.S. naval mastery. It would place in jeopardy America’s capacity to execute an ambitious foreign policy in distant waters, preside over the liberal maritime order, or accomplish all manner of worthy goals.

Such matters were much on my mind while careening down I-95 to the submarine base at Groton, Connecticut last week, there to commemorate the anniversary of the Battle of Midway. The event took place on the pier where USS Nautilus—the United States’ and the world’s first atomic submarine—lies berthed as a nautical museum. Earlier this year the silent service marked the sixtieth anniversary since the day when Nautilus’s skipper first radioed home: “Underway on nuclear power.”

That signal heralded a new age in undersea combat—the age our doughty CSBA analyst contends is giving way to another new age. The advent of naval nuclear propulsion let these newfangled craft remain underwater for long stretches of time. It spared them the need for regular refueling. Machinery needed little sustenance apart from routine upkeep and overhauls. Stores such as food and other necessities for the crew became the chief limiting factors on nuclear boats’ voyages. For the first time submarines became true denizens of the deep, as opposed to surface ships able to submerge temporarily.

Nuclear power, moreover, shunted the competition between subs and sub hunters—what Clark calls the “hider-finder” competition—into the acoustic realm. No longer could anti-submarine forces count on finding enemy boats cruising on the surface, lurking just below the surface with a periscope or snorkel peeking above, or using radio or radar with their telltale electromagnetic emissions. They could hide more or less indefinitely.

Sound, then, is the chief limiting factor on stealth. Sub designers and crews go to elaborate lengths to keep machinery and other sources of noise quieter than an opponent’s passive sonar—sophisticated listening devices, and any navy’s ASW tool of choice—can detect. A quiet boat is an elusive boat. It can prowl the depths, prey on fellow subs or surface craft, or project power onto hostile shores. But, writes Clark, Big Data coupled with non-acoustic detection, tracking, and fire-control technology may soon expose American boats to the prying eyes of hostile forces.

For instance, ASW hunters could look for minute disturbances a submarine makes to its tactical surroundings. The most hydrodynamic hull makes a wake as it travels through water. Engineering plants discharge heat. Undersea craft may interfere with sea life as they pass. Finding such traces of an American sub’s presence—and parleying that information into actionable tracking and targeting data—would nullify its core advantage in whole or in part—namely its ability to vanish beneath the waves. A visible boat is a vulnerable boat. The competition between hiders and finders could swing decisively in favor of super-empowered sub finders after six decades of supremacy for the hiders.

That leaves the silent service—where, precisely? Struggling to stay abreast of the times, one suspects. That’s how beneficiaries of a congenial status quo commonly respond when change shakes their world. Paradigm shifts are agony for entrenched cultures. Stakeholders in the ancien regime resist believing that shifting circumstances have rendered old ways partly or wholly moot. Oftentimes they fight against unorthodox methods that are better fitted to the times. Progress is fitful and uncertain. Strategic innovation tends to lag behind events.

How can the silent service stay in tune with the times? First and foremost, by acknowledging the danger posed by foreign navies toting gee-whiz gadgetry. Clark hints at how hard adapting to more transparent seas could prove: “unless U.S. forces adapt to and lead the new competition, the era of unrivaled U.S. undersea dominance could draw to a surprisingly abrupt close.” That’s a grim prognosis in itself. Abrupt change begets major traumas in big institutions like navies. It’s hard to get ahead of the process.

Yet while change may come quick, many of Clark’s recommendations have long lead times. If anti-access is indeed diving underwater, it may behoove sub skippers to remain farther offshore—much like their brethren skimming around on the surface. It also may behoove the silent service to reimagine its boats as underwater aircraft carriers—except that they’ll operate fleets of unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs) rather than airplanes, helicopters, and drones.

Makes sense, doesn’t it? The mothership stands off in relative safety while smaller, more elusive, less expensive craft do the hard and dirty work inshore. But the devil, as always, lurks in the details. Clark urges the sub force to construct larger nuclear-powered attack boats (SSNs) with the capacity to handle UUVs in significant numbers, not to mention new self-defense weaponry like ultralightweight torpedoes. Yet the U.S. Navy has cast its die with the medium-sized Virginia-class SSNs now joining the fleet. No replacement will enter service until 2044 according to current plans. Shipbuilding patterns, then, imply that bigger platforms don’t lie in store for the silent service. Not without a tectonic shift in priorities, at any rate.

Meanwhile, the navy is already staring a shortfall of attack boats in the face even without undertaking a major redesign of the submarine fleet. Technological transformation, in short, could outpace shipbuilding programs predicated on longstanding assumptions about combat in the depths. Change could be swift, while a reengineering a fleet is a glacial process unless something really, really bad transpires to compel the leadership to act swiftly and decisively. It takes time to transform ideas into widgets, and to develop sound tactics for employing them.

Next, with regard to fleet design, it may be instructive to think beyond the aircraft carrier as an analogy for this coming brand of subsurface warfare. Sure, the carrier air wing makes a nifty model for thinking about the functions of UUV flotillas. They would constitute the SSN’s long striking arm, much as fighter/attack jets comprise the flattop’s offensive punch. There’s value in mining this comparison. But the fit isn’t precise, is it? Presumably sub-force leaders have no plans to divest attack boats of their torpedoes and missiles, as naval aviation long ago stripped carriers of any serious offensive weaponry. They will retain battle power.

Subs, then, will be both vulnerable and heavy-hitting. There’s precedent for this quandary. A century ago naval historian Julian S. Corbett professed bafflement at the spectacle of hulking, thickly armored, heavily gunned battlewagons surrounding themselves with escorts to fend off torpedo-armed small craft like … submarines! For Corbett this constituted a “revolution beyond all previous experience.” The “old practice” was no longer a trustworthy guide. History furnished little help with foreseeing how sea combat might evolve.

Let’s not confine our quest for analogies to the deep, though, or even to the sea. In one sense the silent service is an undersea counterpart to the U.S. Air Force. Sound farfetched? Think about it. Subs rely on passive defense measures such as quieting to conceal their whereabouts. The latest air-force planes, such as F-22 and F-35 fighters, rely on built-in stealth to help them evade detection. Naval aviation trusts less to stealth than to active countermeasures such as electronic warfare to help airmen ride out enemy air defenses. Naval airmen defeat or fool defenses rather than elude them. Submariners might study the two paradigms—passive and active defense—to learn whatever lessons from the aerial domain are worth learning.

And as long as we’re bruiting about air power, is the SSN more akin to a fighter aircraft or to a bomber? There’s a division of labor that merits pondering. Fighters scour contested airspace of hostile forces, helping the bomber get through to its target relatively unmolested. Is the submarine a “fighter” in that sense? Or are UUVs the sub’s fighter squadrons, clearing out anti-access defenses so the sub—the “bomber”—can close the range to launch torpedoes or missiles? The question warrants investigating.

And lastly, as we gaze through a glass darkly into the future, Clark’s revolution could complicate—or foreclose altogether—certain strategic options involving submarines. It’s worth thinking ahead about those even as we obsess over hardware and tactics.

To name one, Corbett urged navies to concentrate assets at “focal areas” where shipping had to converge to pass from point A to point B. The sea may be tantamount to a wide, featureless plain, that is, but nautical passageways like the Strait of Malacca funnel shipping into narrow—and easily monitored—lanes. Subs are uniquely suited to loiter unseen off such narrow seas, watching—and potentially interrupting—traffic that passes through.

But what if they’re no longer unseen? If the sub and its human crew must keep their distance to avoid anti-access defenses, will UUVs—robots without human intuition and powers of observation—provide an adequate substitute? If not, strategies like “archipelagic defense” in Asia could underperform. If subs and their robot fleets can’t close narrow seaways to surface and subsurface traffic, the outlook for strategies premised on controlling them could prove dim. Thinking ahead about workarounds is imperative.

The situation isn’t entirely bleak for submariners, thankfully. While a leap in underwater detection technology may be in the offing, Clark points out that the U.S. Navy enjoys a first-mover advantage in other technologies that may help offset the loss of stealth or otherwise augment subs’ efficacy. UUVs capable of extending the submarine’s reach and lethality figure prominently among the new hardware. A torpedo boasting ten- or twentyfold the range of today’s ten-mile torpedoes would help redress the imbalance between subs and access deniers. So would a new Tomahawk anti-ship missile.

It’s highly doubtful, moreover, that the tactical setting will go kerchunk—like throwing a breaker—with subs accustomed to lurking underwater with impunity suddenly thrown in full view. More likely, the vicissitudes of naval competition being what they are, the subsurface theater will come to resemble the aerial and surface theaters. The silent service will periodically introduce new passive and active measures to restore its advantage of concealment, while access deniers will experiment with countermeasures of their own. And on and on the cycle of one-upsmanship—of challenge and reply—will go.

In short, submariners will no longer be as exceptional as before. They’ll have to learn new habits. They’ll be more like surface officers, forced to train for active defense and counterattack for survival rather than trusting to invisibility. They’ll have to be more like aviators, operating squadrons of offboard craft to extend their combat reach. And subs will no longer be loners, sent forth to do great things in independent operations. In short, not just a technological but a cultural revolution is afoot.

Embrace it.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and author of “Visualize Chinese Sea Power,” in the current issue of the Naval Institute Proceedings. The views voiced here are his alone.

Image: Reuters

(Note: This article was reposted due to reader interest.)

Sebastien Roblin

China, Americas

Built by Hongdu in Nanchang, China, the L-15 Falcon resembles an adorably abbreviated Super Hornet or F-16.

Here's What You Need to Know: The market for trainer/light attack planes is relatively crowded with competitors such as the Russian Yak-130, Italian MB.346, China’s subsonic K-8, T-50 Golden Eagle or possibly Boeing’s T-X. It is too early to tell whether L-15 and JL-9 will prove a major export success—but sales of cut-price supersonic trainer/fighters could become an interesting signifier of Beijing’s expanding influence in Africa, Asia and Latin America in years to come.

Flying a high-performance jet fighter is a physically and mentally demanding skill that requires a lot of practice—but each hour flying a warplane can cost tens of thousands of dollars in fuel and maintenance expenses. That's why air forces employ lighter, easier-handling Lead-In Fighter Trainers (LIFTs) to give pilots a chance to accumulate real-life experience with supersonic flight, air combat maneuvers, and weapons launch before they take the stick of a possibly finicky high-performance jet fighter.

The thing is advanced jet trainers like South Korea’ T-50 Golden Eagle are quite capable of basic combat duties short of high-intensity conflict while costing half or a third as much as a brand new warplane. For example, Filipino FA-50s and Nigerian Alpha Jet trainers have played a major role in combating brutal insurgencies in 2017, though both were involved in tragic friendly fire incidents.

The U.S. Air Force is looking to purchase 350 new LIFT jets following its T-X competition and is evaluating several designs costing between $30 and $40 million per airframe. However, China has already been phasing into service its own very slick and speedy LIFT, costing the equivalent of only $10 to $15 million, which has attracted interest in Africa and Latin America.

Built by Hongdu in Nanchang, China, the L-15 Falcon resembles an adorably abbreviated Super Hornet or F-16. The Falcon’s two Ukrainian-built AL-222 turbofans afford the trainee and instructor a backup should one engine fail, while multi-function displays in the ‘glass cockpit’ and the hands-on-throttle-and-stick controls give trainees a chance to work with the kinds of instruments typical to fourth-generation fighters.

The Falcon' leading edge extensions on the front of its wings and a high G-load tolerance of 8.5 allow it to perform tight maneuvers and achieve high angles of attack up to 30 degrees above the vector of the plane. Quadruple-redundant fly-by-wire controls on three axes allow for precise maneuvers. These traits are used to prepare pilots for the diverse family of famously supermaneuverable twin-engine Flanker multi-role jets operated by China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force and Navy.

The L-15 prototypes first flew in March 2006 and entered service in limited numbers in 2013 as a subsonic Advanced Jet Trainer designated the JL-10. This basic model boasts six hardpoints to carry bombs, rockets and short-range air-to-air missiles, but lacks a radar to target long-range munitions.

However, Hongdu later exhibited a supersonic L-15B model with afterburning turbofans, allowing the Falcon to attain speeds of up to Mach 1.4. The L-15B also has a lengthened nose to accommodate a Passive Electronically Scanned Array radar with a reported detection range of  -seven or seventy miles (sources differ) which can scan both air and surface targets (photo here). A Radar Warning Receiver added in the tail gives it a fighting chance to dodge missile attacks, while an IFF antenna could help avoid friendly fire incidents.

The L-15B also has its payload capacity beefed up to nearly four tons of weapons loaded on nine hardpoints: six underwing, one belly pylon and two wingtip rails. The instructor's seat can instead be used by a Weapon Systems Officer to manage guided weapons. One photo depicts an L-15 lugging 23-millimeter cannon in a belly pod, PL-5E heat-seeking air-to-air missiles (distantly related to the AA-2 and Sidewinder), LT-2 laser-guided bombs, and LS-6 GPS-guided bombs with fold-out wings that allow it to glide to targets up to thirty-seven miles away. Reportedly, more modern PL-10 and PL-12 beyond-visual-range radar-guided missiles (range sixty-two miles) could also be carried as well as other air-to-ground munitions.

The L-15B can even lug jamming pods to serve as a cut-price electronic warfare jet. However, while the jet can theoretically fly up to 52,000 feet high and over distances of up to 1,900 miles, when fully combat-loaded its effective radius is reduced to just 350 miles.

Of course, the diminutive L-15B doesn’t boast the speed, defenses, sensors and heavy payload of a full-fledged fourth-generation multi-role fighter like the F-16 or Su-35. But for developing countries that don't expect to fight a major military power, jets like the Falcon could perform basic air defense and precision ground-attack missions, all on a platform that will be cheaper, easier to maintain, and used for training pilots.

The Zambian Air Force so far has acquired six L-15Zs for its No. 15 squadron for $100 million, plus simulators and various guided weapons. In 2015, Venezuelan Admiral Carmen Mirandez announced plans to acquire one or two dozen L-15s to help pilots transition to Su-30MK2 and F-16 fighters. However, cash-strapped Caracas has put the deal on hold. The Uruguayan Air Force has also expressed interest in acquiring eight L-15s to replace its A-37B Dragonflies, one of which suffered an accident in 2016. Pakistan, a close ally of China, is another potential operator of the L-15B, but the jet would conflict with plans to acquire two-seat JF-17B jets, which are a Pakistani-Chinese collaboration.

The L-15 also has a rival supersonic domestic jet trainer, the Guizhou JL-9. A heavily modified two-seat derivative of the legendary MiG-21 with cranked delta wings, the turbojet-powered JL-9 is less sophisticated and has only five weapons hardpoints, but is cheaper at $8.5 million each—and the basic model comes with afterburners, an Italian pulse-doppler radar and a built-in 23-millimeter cannon. JL-9s and carrier-landing capable JL-9Hs serve with the People’s Liberation Army and PLA Naval Air Force (PLANAF), and six export models called the FTC-2000 Shanying ("Mountain Eagle") were delivered to Sudan in May 2018. Sudan is infamous for using its warplanes to bombard villages in rebel-held territory, and Russia and China are amongst of the few major arms exporters from which Khartoum can obtain modern weapons.

Meanwhile, China operates between 130 and 150 L-15s in nine squadrons, presumably mostly the subsonic L-15A. In general, Chinese fighter pilots fly a decent number of hours annually but lack adequate training under realistic combat conditions; presumably, weapons-capable and radar-equipped jet trainers could help address that deficiency. Intriguingly, an L-15 was photographed in 2018 with PLANAF markings (it has been dubbed the JL-10H) suggesting a possible JL-10 variant for training carrier-based pilots. However, some in the Chinese media have expressed doubt that the Falcon's rear fuselage is strong enough to mount a tail hook to practice carrier landings.

The market for trainer/light attack planes is relatively crowded with competitors such as the Russian Yak-130, Italian MB.346, China’s subsonic K-8, T-50 Golden Eagle or possibly Boeing’s T-X. It is too early to tell whether L-15 and JL-9 will prove a major export success—but sales of cut-price supersonic trainer/fighters could become an interesting signifier of Beijing’s expanding influence in Africa, Asia and Latin America in years to come.

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

This article first appeared in August 2018.

Image: Wikipedia.

Sebastien Roblin

Stealth Fighters, Asia

While virtually any plane can be equipped to fire long-range missiles, stealth airframes are built using radar-absorbent materials and engineered precisely to minimize reflection of radar waves.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Ultimately, hit-and-run tactics leaning on BVR and stealth technology may be quite effective in securing air superiority. However, they won’t suffice to overcome constraints of fuel and weapons supply in scenarios that involve distant and more numerous opponents attacking high-value targets.

In Len Deighton’s book Fighter, he describes the tactics used by the outnumbered English fighter pilots defending against German Luftwaffe bombers in the Battle of Britain:

The professional fighter pilot gained height as quickly as he was permitted, and treasured possession of that benefit. He hoped always to spot the enemy before they spotted him and hurried to the sun side of them to keep himself invisible. He needed superior speed, so he positioned himself for a diving attack, and he would choose a victim at the very rear of the enemy formation so that he did not have to fly through their gunfire. He would hope to kill on that first dive. If he failed, the dedicated professional would flee rather than face an alerted enemy.

Deighton’s point was that the best British pilots used hit-and-run tactics emphasizing surprise and speed in order to minimize losses, rather than dogfighting at length with enemies after those advantages were spent. These tactics permitted small numbers of British fighters to tackle the aerial armadas of the German Luftwaffe.

Obviously, technology has changed dramatically since 1940. While contemporary fighters can now go more than five times as fast as the Spitfires and Messerschmitt fighters of the Battle of Britain, two new technologies promise to make hit-and-run tactics more effective: stealth technology and long-range air-to-air missiles.

Stealth and Its Limits: 

While virtually any plane can be equipped to fire long-range missiles, stealth airframes are built using radar-absorbent materials and engineered precisely to minimize reflection of radar waves. This constrains their load-carrying abilities, as external weapons or drop tanks could increase their visibility on radar. The United States fields two stealth fighters, the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Lightning II.

Stealth planes are properly described as “Low Observable” aircraft. They are not actually undetectable, but are very hard to spot on radar. Let’s review the limits on stealth technology, and how fighter doctrine may evolve around them.

Stealth aircraft are optimized to be difficult to observe on the precise X-Band radars used on modern fighters: while some radars have better resolutions than others, most will only be able to track a stealth fighter at shorter distances. An F-22 is claimed to have the radar cross section of 0.0001 square meters in certain aspect—the same as that of a marble.

Low-bandwidth radars are more effective at detecting stealth aircraft. These are typically used by ground installations and ships, but also found on specialized aerial platforms such as the E-2D. However, they come with a major limitation: they can reveal only the general location of a stealth fighter and are too imprecise to be used to target missiles—though they can indicate to an X-Band radar where to look.

Infra-Red Search-and Track (IRST) systems offer another means of detecting stealth aircraft, but their range is generally limited. The latest IRST system on the SU-35 has extended the range up to 50 kilometers, whereas its radar has detection range of up to 200 kilometers. Just like low-band radar, IRST doesn’t give a precise track and can’t be used to lock on weapons. Stealth fighters include features designed to minimize heat signature, but they are far from completely effective.

Of course, a stealth fighter can be seen within visual range, and is vulnerable to heat-seeking missiles.

To recap: stealth technology is more effective at a distance. Although there are a number of methods to detect stealth fighters at long range, they generally don’t permit weapons to lock on to them.

In return, nothing prevents the stealth aircraft from firing at its opponents.

Enter the beyond-visual-range (BVR) missile.

Long Range Air-to-Air Missiles

Around the late 1990s, a new generation of long-range radar-guided air-to-air missiles entered service, notably the AIM-120 AMRAAM and the Russian R-77. These could hit targets over 50 kilometers away. (The earlier AIM-54 Phoenix boasted even longer range but was very expensive). In subsequent decades, the range has continued to increase to well over 100 kilometers, and new types such as the European MBDA Meteor and the Chinese PL-15 continue to push the envelope of speed and range.

The current AIM-120D has a theoretical maximum range of 160 kilometers; although in practice firing range will likely be much shorter for reasons soon discussed.

As long-range missiles are radar-guided, stealth fighters are not particularly vulnerable to them. The same cannot be said for non-stealth aircraft. An F-15 or Su-35 may attempt to avoid missiles with evasive maneuvers and counter measures—but doing so will disrupt whatever they are doing, and an opponent is likely to fire more than one missile.

One factor that is difficult to calculate is how likely long-range missiles are to hit. Extrapolating from past usage of radar-guided missiles is problematic, both because missile technology has advanced considerably since its inception (early radar-guided Sparrow missiles had a less than 10 percent kill probability in the Vietnam War), and the conflicts in which radar-guided missiles have been more successful (Arab-Israeli conflicts, the Gulf War) involved poorly trained opponents lacking effective countermeasures.

It’s safe to say that long-range missiles will have lower hit rates than short-range missiles like the AIM-9 Sidewinder and the Russian R-73—modern versions of which have chalked up a roughly seventy percent probability of kill.

Attrition and High Value Targets

Third- or fourth-generation fighters seeking to engage stealth aircraft in combat must close within short range so that their targeting systems are effective, all while dodging volleys of deadly missiles. As the stealth fighters themselves are difficult to track, they can disengage to avoid entering the short-range envelope in relative security.

It’s a difficult advantage to overcome.

But referring back to the Battle of Britain can reveal a limitation of this strategy. The British hit-and-run attacks succeeded in inflicting deadly attrition on German bombers over time until they were forced to call off the air offensive. But they rarely prevented the German formations from hitting their targets. The German simply had too many aircraft.

At first, this was a problem: the Germans relentlessly pounded British airfields, degrading the Royal Air Force’s ability to fight in the air. But then the Germans switched to bombing civilian targets in London. While this inflicted many civilian casualties, the raids did not degrade the RAF’s ability to fight back. The British fighters could sustain their advantageous rate of attrition versus the German Luftwaffe until the latter was forced to tap out.

So what happens if the other side attacks with superior numbers a target that must be defended?

An F-22 has a combat radius of some five hundred miles on internal fuel. The F-35 can fly 875 miles when loaded for air-to-air combat. Now consider the thousands of kilometers lying between U.S. bases in the Pacific and Europe and various potential conflict zones. To operate over those distances, stealth fighters would require aerial refueling from tanker aircraft. If fighting a well-equipped opponent, carrier-based aircraft would also likely be distant from the warzone, as carriers are at risk if they approach too close to ground-based anti-shipping missile batteries and aircraft.

American fighters would also likely be supported by AWACS airborne radar and command and control platforms, notably the E-2 Hawkeye and E-3 Sentry. The tankers and the AWACS aircraft are basically lumbering airliner-sized planes crammed full of fuel and electronic equipment respectively.

Let’s consider what would happen when American fighters encounter a much larger force of fighters based on the coast. The American fighters could fire their long-range AIM-120D missiles from more than one hundred kilometers away—four from each F-35 and six on the F-22. Soaring at Mach 4—twice the maximum speed of the aircraft that launched it—an AIM-120 can traverse eighty kilometers in one minute.

The radar-warning receivers on their targets would light up as they detect the incoming attack. The further away the target, the more time it has to evade the missile. Therefore, BVR missiles may be fired at well below their maximum range to ensure a higher probability of a kill, particularly when engaging maneuverable fighter aircraft.

Most opposing aircraft would not be able to shoot back at the stealth planes, though they might have a general idea of their position if they are supported by low-band radar or good infrared sensors. They could close on the American fighters, hoping to enter the envelope in which their sensors are effective.

What if the U.S. fighters close to short range after expending their long-range armaments, rather than prudently disengaging? If both sides are closing upon each other at maximum speed at high altitude, the distance between them would diminish at a rate of 60-80 kilometers a minute. Even if the AIM-120s were fired at maximum range, the opposing aircraft could close that distance in one or two minutes.

In short-range engagements, surprise, pilot training and flight performance will determine the victor.

The F-22 is a superb dogfighter. The F-35… not so much, though it has its defenders. Both aircraft can carry two Sidewinder missiles and fire shells from their onboard cannons.

However, their opponents would be able to spot the American fighters as they enter visual range thanks to the Mark One human eyeball, as well as infrared and electro-optical sensors—and even radars, which are effective against stealth aircraft at short ranges. The stealth fighters could be targeted with heat-seeking missiles, more of which could be carried by the non-stealth aircraft. If the opponents retain a significant numerical advantage, than within-visual range combat could be quite risky.

But why would stealth fighters risk engaging in short range in the first place?

Stealth Fighters Don’t Swim

The Rand Corporation’s Pacific Vision wargame simulating a conflict with China in 2008 found that even in a favorable scenario for the United States—half of U.S. missiles hit at long range and the none of their opponent’s do—a force of U.S. fighters outnumbered roughly three to one would be overwhelmed after firing off all its missiles. The less-maneuverable F-35s fared poorly in the ensuing dogfight. But in the end, nearly all of the U.S. fighters were lost.

Why? The hostile aircraft didn’t have trouble detecting the tankers supporting the U.S. forces. Unlike the F-22s and F-35s, tankers have neither the speed nor stealth to evade a determined attack.

A final consideration is that opponents may field limited number of their own stealth fighters, such as the J-20 or the Sukhoi T-50. Even a small number of stealth fighters would be effective at sneaking into the range of the tankers and AWACs aircraft and taking them out before the U.S. aircraft could evade or retaliate. Very long-range missiles such as the R-37 and the PL-13 could also assist in the anti-tanker mission.

The Psychological Factor

There are limitations to the “overwhelm with numbers” strategy.

In ground warfare, consider what would likely happen if an attacking infantry unit were to sustain 33 percent casualties attacking an objective. More often than not, the attackers would halt their advance, if not beat an outright retreat. Not only do fear and stress from incoming fire and casualties cause soldiers to abandon an attack, but disorganization and confusion set in as communication becomes frantic and links in the chain of command are eliminated.

The RAND wargame results hinged on ten surviving pilots shooting down the U.S. tankers after sixty-two of their compatriots were shot down. How coolheaded and rational would these pilots remain while their unit suffered 86 percent casualties?

Air warfare does have different psychological and physical dynamics than ground warfare. There are historical incidents in which aerial units pressed home attacks despite sustaining very heavy casualties, even up to 100 percent. However, there are also instances in which aerial attackers aborted in disorder after taking losses.

Implementing a swarm attack would also be no simple matter. Concentrating large numbers of aircraft would be a logistical challenge. They would also need to attack a target that would force American fighters to engage in such adverse circumstances.

Solutions?

How can U.S. doctrine adapt to this challenging scenario?

Already, many theorists believe that carriers would be forced to remain far away from hostile shores. The survivability of airbases in the event of a mass surface-to-surface missile attack is also open to question. One possibility is that no large-scale air battles would materialize.

The two key limitations are logistical: lack of internal fuel to operate without support, and insufficient missiles to tackle superior numbers. For the time being, there is no obvious fix to the fuel problem: the latest U.S. fighters, the F-22 and F-35, are simply going to depend on tankers. Some suggest that the Navy should deploy light-weight low-observable drones from carriers that could potentially operate further afield.

What about increasing missile capacity?

The U.S. military is a big proponent of networked warfare. In theory, if one airplane detects an enemy, it could pass on that data to friendly ships and aircraft—and through Cooperative Engagement Ability, even potentially allow those friendlies to shoot at that target from far away. One potential tactic is to use a vanguard of stealthy fighters to identify incoming enemy aircraft and send targeting data to ships or non-stealth fighters, which can carry heavier weapons loads. The F-35’s excellent sensors and datalinks could make it effective in this role.

There is even an idea being kicked around to mount large numbers of missiles on a B-1 or B-52, which would be fired off hundreds of kilometers away from the battle. Of course, such an “arsenal plane” would be vulnerable if enemy fighters broke through the accompanying line of F-22s and F-35s. The tactic would likely require even longer-range missiles than the U.S. currently employs.

Ultimately, hit-and-run tactics leaning on BVR and stealth technology may be quite effective in securing air superiority. However, they won’t suffice to overcome constraints of fuel and weapons supply in scenarios that involve distant and more numerous opponents attacking high-value targets.

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

This article first appeared in September 2019.

Image: Wikipedia.

Sebastien Roblin

Korean War, Asia Pacific

As the UN solidified control of the seas surrounding the Sea of Japan, the gun-armed capital ships embarked on an extensive shore bombardment campaign.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The most important naval battle of the war occurred on the opening day of the conflict. South Korea’s only large patrol boat intercepted and destroyed a North Korean vessel on the verge of landing troops in Pusan in an engagement described in a companion article.

Just days after North Korea embarked on its steam-roller invasion of its larger but less heavily armed southern neighbor, the United Nations decided it needed to step in and save the besieged Republic of Korea.

However, it would take time for ground forces and their heavy tanks and artillery to arrive in the South Korean port of Pusan (all the other major ports were swiftly overrun). 

The same was not true of aircraft ships based in U.S.-occupied Japan. While American jet fighters secured air superiority over North Korea’s World War II-vintage air force, it fell to the U.S. and British navies to try to stem the seemingly unstoppable North Korean advance.

The UN ships could affect battles on land in two key ways: by bombarding coastal facilities and enemy troops advancing along the coastline with their large guns, and by seizing control of the sea from North Korea’s People's Navy, which was using its small boats and merchant ships to supply troops along the coast and infiltrate commandos behind South Korean lines. 

The most important naval battle of the war occurred on the opening day of the conflict. South Korea’s only large patrol boat intercepted and destroyed a North Korean vessel on the verge of landing troops in Pusan in an engagement described in a companion article.

On July 2, a more formidable task force assembled on Korea’s eastern coastline, composed of the American light cruiser Juneau, the British cruiser Jamaica and the frigate-sized armed sloop Black Swan.

Both British vessels had seen significant action during World War II. 

The smaller escort 2,000-ton HMS Black Swan had survived mines and attacking Luftwaffe bombers and even helped sink German submarine U-124. A year earlier, she had emerged badly battered but still afloat from a deadly gun duel with Chinese coastal guns on the Yangtze River.

Jamaica’s feats were even more legendary. In 1942, she had charged towards German battlecruisers in the Battle of the Barents Sea, helping drive them away, then helped sink notorious battlecruiser Scharnhorst in the epic Battle of the North Cape.

By contrast, the 6,800-ton USS Juneau had only just been commissioned in 1946, the lead ship in her class anti-aircraft cruisers.

At a quarter past six in the morning of July 2, 1950, lookouts on the three ships spotted four North Korean motor torpedo boats (numbered No.21 through No. 24) and two gunboats (Mo-233 and Mo-234) escorting ten trawlers heading back to their bases in North Korea—having just emptied holds full of ammunition at Chuonmin Chan (also transliterated as Chumunjin).

As the cruisers surged forward to intercept, to their surprise, the motorboats peeled off and came barreling towards them!

The newly founded North Korean Navy had received at least five Soviet G-5 motor torpedo boats. The G-5s only 62 feet long, weighed a mere 18 tons and typically required a crew of six or seven. Their two 850 horsepower GAM-34 V12 engines—derived from an aircraft engine used on heavy bombers and ‘flying aircraft carriers’—could propel the boat to a blazingly fast 61 miles per hour. 

That speed was hoped to give the boats the agility to evade enemy fire and maneuver to a good firing position to release their primary weapons: two 533-millimeter torpedo tubes. While torpedoes could be dodged, they were still greatly feared: combat experience had shown that just one or two lucky torpedo hits could sink even large cruisers and carriers.

As secondary weapons, the motorboats also had 12.7-millimeter machine guns, and some may have been fitted with punchier rapid-firing automatic cannons.

The Soviet Union had built over 300 G-5s between 1934 and 1941 and lost in World War II skirmishes with the German, Finnish and Romanian forces in the Baltic and Black Seas. However, they rarely launched torpedo attacks against large warships, instead battling small minesweepers and minelayers, and serving in auxiliary transport roles. 

The two gunboats were 47-ton wooden-hulled OD-200-class submarine hunters armed with rapid-firing 37-millimeter anti-aircraft cannons, sonars, and depth charges.

The big cruisers began lobbing big shells at their diminutive assailants from over six miles away. The Jamaica disposed of both four triple-6” gun turrets, as well as four faster-firing 4” dual purposes guns. Juneau bristled with six turrets each packing two 5” dual-purpose guns.

In Michael Hickey’s history Korean War, Midshipman Michael Muschamp of the Jamaica remembered the battle thusly:

“A very perturbed 18-year old donned clothes, anti-flash gear, and a tin hat in triple quick time. I made my way to my action station on the bridge…I soon saw what all the fuss was about.

There were six small craft, trapped between UN three warships and the shore, firing what appeared to be 20mm and 40mm cannon at Juneau and Jamaica. The two cruisers got the range of the craft and sank four within ten minutes. Another ran ashore in flames and the sixth escaped seaward.”

By the time the little boats had closed within two miles, torpedo boats No.24 had outright sunk by the powerful shells, and No.22 badly damaged. No.23 grounded itself ashore due to damage and was subsequently destroyed.

Both gunboats were destroyed as well, and two North Korean sailors captured.

By most accounts, the North Korean never launched any torpedoes. According to Muschamp, one of the rescued sailors when asked by an interrogator stated: “Oh, the Russians were going to teach us how to fire them [torpedoes] next week.”

Only boat No.21 escaped the engagement unscathed. Its captain, Kim Kun Ok, apparently reported sinking the American cruiser Baltimore—a victory which remains celebrated with a display (pictured here) in the Victorious War Museum in Pyongyang. This would have been quite a feat, as the Baltimore had been decommissioned four years earlier in 1946, and was at the time held in reserve in Washington state.

Bravado aside, the KPN subsequently decided to avoid directly engaging U.N. warships for the remainder of the conflict. However, it did continue using small boats for resupply and troop infiltration mission—most of which were subsequently sunk that July and August, including the ten KPN trawlers the motorboats had been escorting. 

Later on August 15, South Korean minesweeper YMS 503 intercepted a large North Korean convoy and sank 15 small boats, and captured 30.

As the UN solidified control of the seas surrounding the Sea of Japan, the gun-armed capital ships embarked on an extensive shore bombardment campaign. One tactic employed was to preemptively shell the cliffs overlooking coastal roads to create obstructing debris. The cruisers would then wait quietly at night with their running lights off for a North Korean convoy to arrive and dismount to clear the debris, before opening fire with a surprise salvo.

However, coastal bombardment missions came with their own risks. On July 8, Jamaica was bombarding a shore target when a remarkably well-aimed 3-inch shell fired by a coastal battery smacked into her superstructure, killing five artillerymen that had been manning the guns as well as one sailor. These were the first UK casualties of the Korean War.

The battle of Chumonchin Chan is today considered one of the six surface warfare engagements fought by the U.S. Navy since World War II, but the small size of the North Korean vessels has likely contributed to the engagement’s obscurity. 

Nonetheless, North Korea’s coastal fleet played an important role in the early days of the Korean War in projecting force against its southern neighbor. The vigorous counterattack mounted by ROK and UN naval forces likewise was vital in curtailing that threat—and laid the groundwork for the landing at Inchon that ejected Pyongyang’s troops from South Korea, and ultimately threatened the North in turn with invasion.

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

Image: Flickr.

Sebastien Roblin

Soviet Navy, World

For all its serious shortcomings, the Alfa was undeniably a striking and ambitious design that pushed the limits of submarine performance in ways few modern designs even attempt.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The Alfa represented a design paradigm for “small but fast” attack submarines that would ultimately fall out of favor compared to “big but stealthy” designs like the Russian Akula-class and U.S. Sea Wolf-class SSNs—though isolated media reports have revealed some interest in future Alfa-like boats.

The Project 705 Lira—better known abroad as the Alfa-class submarine by NATO—was basically a submarine race car, and looked the part with svelte tear-drop shaped hull, rakishly trimmed-down sail designed to minimize aquadynamic drag, and even its convertible-style pop-up windshield.    

Military vehicles are generally designed out of a relentless quest for efficiency, but the Alfa’s iconic shape exemplifies how kinematically optimal designs often possess a striking aesthetic of their own. 

Soviet nuclear-powered attack submarines tended to be faster and deeper-diving than their Western counterparts—though they were also noisier and more prone to horrifying accidents. 

The Project 705, however, originated as a 1958-design concept to push the speed advantage to the maximum, allowing the submarine not only keep pace with but overtake NATO carrier task forces typically cruising at 33 knots—while keeping one-step ahead of enemy torpedoes and out-maneuvering enemy submarines.

This extraordinary performance would be achieved by ruthlessly maximizing speed and subtracting from weight. Thus the Alfa featured a relatively small hull made of titanium alloy. Titanium is a rare metal which can create surfaces as strong as steel for roughly half the weight. It is also paramagnetic, making the submarine’s hull more difficult to detect for maritime patrol planes using Magnetic Anomaly Detectors.

However, titanium can only be welded in an inert argon or helium atmosphere. This led U.S. engineers to assume it was simply impractical to weld large pieces of titanium on the scale necessary for a submarine hull. They underestimated Soviet determination: workers in pressurized suits would work in huge warehouses flooded with argon gas to assemble sheets of the shiny, rare metal.

The resulting Project 705 submarine measured 81-meters long but weighed only 3,200-tons submerged. For comparison, the 84-meter-long American Permit class submarine displaced 4,800 tons submerged. 

The Alfa featured a typical Soviet double-hull configuration, but only one of its six internal compartments was intended for habitation by the crew. Extraordinary degrees of automation allowed a complement of 15 officers cooped together in the heavily protected third compartment of the vessel, instead of the roughly 100 personnel typical on contemporary SSNs. 

In fact, only eight crew could operate virtually every system on the submarine from the command center thanks to its highly automated systems, allowing for very fast reaction times in combat. In the event of misfortune, the crew could make use of a spherical escape capsule built into the sail—the first to be found on a Soviet submarine.

The Alfa’s complement would later be doubled to 32 crew—but no enlisted ratings were invited onboard. 

However, as the U.S. Navy discovered decades later while developing the Littoral Combat Ship, this degree of automation meant the small crew was incapable of performing maintenance and repairs while at sea.

The Alfa relied upon reactor consuming 90% enriched uranium-235 fuel, and liquified lead-bismuth-eutectic for cooling to produce 155 MW of power. As the liquified metal would solidify at temperatures below 257 degrees Fahrenheit, the reactors typically had remain warm lest the liquefied metal freeze, rendering the reactor non-functional. 

Each Project 705 carried eighteen to twenty 533-millimeter torpedoes which could be automatically loaded into six tubes which could pneumatically ‘pop’ the weapons upwards to engage ships overhead. Optionally, RPK-2 “Starfish” nuclear anti-submarine missiles and ultra-fasted Shkval super-cavitating torpedoes could also be carried. Alfa variants armed with ballistic missiles (705A) or gigantic 650-millimeter torpedo tubes (the 705D) were conceived but never built.

After spending nine years in development, four Alfas were laid down in Severodvinsk and Lenningrad between 1967 and 1969. However, only one—K-64 Leningrad, had been launched and commissioned by the beginning of 1972. That same year, K-64 experienced both cracking in its titanium hull and a leaking liquified metal ‘froze’ on the exterior of the reactor causing irreparable damage. The super-submarine was decommissioned and scrapped just a few years after going on duty.

After several years of tweaking, six more Alfas were finally commissioned between 1977-1981, with later 705K boats using a moderately more reliable BM-40A reactors.

Undeniably, the Project 705 exhibited impressive performance. In a minute and a half, an Alfa could accelerate up to 41 knots (47 miles per hour) while submerged—though some sources claim eve higher speeds were achieved. Their high degree of reserve buoyancy also made them capable of executing fast turns and changes in attitude, and they could dive—and attack from!—depths that NATO torpedoes struggled to atain.

When racing at maximum speed using its steam-turbined turned five-bladed propeller, the Alfa-class was unsurprisingly noisy. But an Alfa commander in need of discretion had another trick he could pull from his sleeve: a secondary propulsion system in the form of two tiny electrically turned propellers that allowed the Alfa to slink around very quietly at low speeds.

The CIA initially mis-identified the Alfas as being diesel-electric submarines due to their small size. But two determined CIA case officers, Herb Lord and Gerhardt Thamm, began closely analyzing photo intelligence and reports on titanium components flowing to mysterious facilities in shipyards in Leningrad and Severodvinsk, as described by Thamm in this article. This led to a more accurate estimate the capabilities of the ‘titanium submarines’ by 1979, prompting the development of more agile Mark 48 ADCAP and Spearfish torpedoes by the U.S. and U.K. respectively. 

However, the Pentagon appears to have been fooled by misinformation suggesting much larger-scale production of the Alfa than was the case. In fact, the Alfa had big problems to match its extraordinary speed.

As the special facilities required to keep the liquid metal reactors were often missing or broken-down, Alfa crews resorted to keeping the reactors running full time even while in port, making the reactors very difficult to maintain and unreliable. And the Alfas’ hot-burning reactors had to be replaced entirely after fifteen years in service. 

The Alfa’s low reliability and maintainability at sea meant the submarine was conceived of as a sort of “interceptor,” kept ready at port to dash after key surface warships targets. In this role the Alfa amounted to a formidable foe to NATO submariners.

But all but one of the Alfas had been decommissioned by 1990, four of them having had their reactor coolant freeze while deployed at sea. The last ship, K-123, was refit with a pressurized water reactor and was finally decommissioned from duties as a training ship in 1996.

Safe disposal of the Alfa reactor cores encrusted with solidified lead-bismuth also proved quite challenging. Furthermore, over 650 tons of weapons-grade U-235 fuel used by Alfas was found unsecured in warehouses in Kazakhstan in 1994, where they had attracted interest from illegal arms dealers. The uranium was ultimately extracted to the United States using huge C-5 Galaxy cargo planes in a covert operation known as Project Sapphire.

The Alfa represented a design paradigm for “small but fast” attack submarines that would ultimately fall out of favor compared to “big but stealthy” designs like the Russian Akula-class and U.S. Sea Wolf-class SSNs—though isolated media reports have revealed some interest in future Alfa-like boats. Yet stealth, not speed, reigns as king in modern submarine warfare tactics.

That said, for all its serious shortcomings, the Alfa was undeniably a striking and ambitious design that pushed the limits of submarine performance in ways few modern designs even attempt.

Kyle Mizokami is a writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and The Daily Beast. In 2009 he co-founded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch. This first appeared in 2019 and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Ethen Kim Lieser

Social Security,

If both members of a married couple qualify for Social Security benefits, it is best to think about when each should file.

When many older Americans get closer to retirement, they often cram in as much information regarding Social Security benefits as possible.

Along the way, there invariably will be missing pieces of information that will prevent one from taking full advantage of the monthly checks and claiming all of the money that they’re entitled to.

For many experts, the most prudent financial decision is generally very simple: wait on filing for the benefits as long as possible—preferably till age seventy.

“Workers planning for their retirement should be aware that retirement benefits depend on age at retirement. If a worker begins receiving benefits before his/her normal (or full) retirement age, the worker will receive a reduced benefit,” the Social Security Administration (SSA) says.

“A worker can choose to retire as early as age sixty-two, but doing so may result in a reduction of as much as thirty percent,” it continues.

But what about married folks out there? Do they need to do anything special? Yes, there are indeed some proper steps an individual needs to take to max out those monthly benefits—and that final total might even be larger than what one anticipated.

Spousal Benefits

According to a finance expert on the Motley Fool, “spousal benefits are generally available to those who are married to someone receiving Social Security checks. They’re particularly helpful for those who either aren’t eligible for their own benefits or are receiving very little from Social Security.”

The maximum amount that an individual can receive via spousal benefits is half of the higher-earning spouse's benefit amount at their full retirement age (FRA). But if the widow or widower qualifies for Social Security on their own record and the monthly payments are higher, they have the option to switch to their own benefit at any time between ages sixty-two and seventy. There is also a “one-time lump-sum death payment of $255 (that) can be paid to the surviving spouse if he or she was living with the deceased; or, if living apart, was receiving certain Social Security benefits on the deceased’s record,” the SSA says.

Claiming Strategy

If both members of a married couple qualify for Social Security benefits, it is best to think about when each should file.

“You can begin collecting benefits at sixty-two years old or any age thereafter, but the age you file will directly affect the size of your monthly payments,” the expert writes. “The only way to receive the entire benefit amount you’re entitled to is to claim at your FRA—which is either age sixty-six, sixty-seven, or somewhere in between depending on the year you were born.”

When One Passes

It is also important to weigh options in the event a spouse passes away, as that decision could dictate how much one receives in benefits in the years ahead. 

The expert notes that “by being strategic about when you both claim benefits, you can make the most of survivors benefits.”

“For example, if the higher-earning spouse is significantly older, it may make sense for that person to delay benefits. If he or she does pass away first, then, the surviving spouse will earn larger checks than if the deceased spouse claimed earlier,” she adds.

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

Ethen Kim Lieser

Coronavirus,

Can a third shot give full protection from the Delta variant?

The timeline for Americans to get their coronavirus booster shots might be sped up by three months.

Last week, Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, noted that data out of Israel were showing a reduction in the effectiveness of Pfizer’s vaccine against severe illness among those sixty-five and older who were fully vaccinated in January or February.

The data further revealed that booster doses provide four times as much protection against infection from the highly transmissible Delta variant, which was first detected by scientists in India last fall, Reuters reported.

In response, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki contended that President Joe Biden would fully rely on officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) if there is any need to adjust the previously planned rollout of booster shots at eight months after receiving two coronavirus vaccine doses.

“So, I want to be very clear on that. If they were to change their guidance based on data for any particular group, he would, of course, abide by that,” Psaki said during a press briefing.

“But for people watching at home, for you all who are reporting out this nothing has changed about the eight-month timeline as it relates to the boosters,” she added.

Limited Data

On Monday, a new CDC presentation has asserted that the data needed to properly evaluate booster shots for the general population has been found to be limited, which might suggest that the agency’s panel could limit its initial endorsement of booster shots to highly vulnerable groups and healthcare employees.

According to the presentation, vaccine efficacy for the Delta variant has ranged between thirty-nine percent and eighty-four percent. It is “important to monitor trends of effectiveness by severity of disease over time,” the presentation noted, adding that inoculating the unvaccinated must continue to be a “top priority.”

The latest estimates indicate that just over fifty percent of Americans are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. While inoculations have been increasing in recent weeks, millions are still firmly opposed to getting vaccinated.

Three and Done?

Last week, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in an interview on CBS’ This Morning that there is a possibility that Americans may not need annual booster shots after a third jab.

“This virus has been humbling, so I don’t want to say never, but we are not necessarily anticipating that you will need this annually,” she said. “It does look like after this third dose, you get a really robust response, and so we will continue to follow the science both on the vaccine side but also on the virus side.”

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

James Holmes

Future Warfare, Asia

Sci-fi suggests, in a roundabout way, that personnel policy may constitute a U.S. Navy center of gravity.

Here's What You Need To Remember: Fling a variety of challenges at personnel, along as many axes as you can, as simultaneously as you can. Give each crewman more to do than he can, on the Cylon-esque reasoning that imposing numerous, repeated contingencies compounds the demands on people and hardware. Such tactics constitute the precursor to a crushing blow—or to an American withdrawal under duress.

How would you punk the U.S. Navy if the lords of naval warfare handed you the keys to, say, China’s navy? Well, you might do the obvious thing: read or watch some science fiction!

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

In the latest Star Trek flick, for instance, a new foe harnesses swarm tactics to eviscerate the starship Enterprise. A coordinated stream of small craft overpowers the starship’s defenses through the simple expedient of presenting more targets than the Enterprise crew can shoot down. Its overseer then concentrates fire at vital nodes to dismember the ship’s structure.

Such tactics are an otherworldly counterpart to saturation missile barrages meant to overwhelm U.S. surface combatants’ Aegis combat systems. Rather than try to evade Aegis defenses, attackers simply aim more rounds at this combination radar, fire-control and surface-to-air missile system than it can handle. Some get through—and sow havoc. Life imitates sci-fi.

And then there’s Battlestar Galactica, a TV show with a similar ripped-from-the-headlines feel. The conceit behind the show: rather than risk a slugfest against the human colonies’ fleet of capital ships and their Viper fighter squadrons, the archenemy Cylons insinuate a computer virus into the fleet. The virus spreads through the ubiquitous computer networks whereby commanders coordinate their endeavors. It disables heavy ships and fighter spacecraft alike, leaving the fleet easy prey.

Sound strategy, that. Why duel a stronger antagonist and risk losing when cyberwarfare can nullify combat power before shots are fired? Galactica, an aged man-of-war, rides out the onslaught because her old-school commander, William Adama, refuses to permit the computers on board to be networked. When modern Vipers—the F-35s of this faraway universe—shut down, the battlestar’s deck crew salvages obsolescent fighters. Old tech proves too low-tech for viruses to infect—yet still lethal enough for skilled aviators to repulse attack.

“Network-centric warfare” remains U.S. forces’ warfighting method of choice, even though the phrase has fallen out of fashion. It comes with grave perils. Live by the computer network, die by the computer network.

But Battlestar Galactica also hints at subtler ways to outfight a stronger opponent. The weak need not vanquish the strong outright. They can harry the strong—enfeebling them until their margin of supremacy vanishes.

Wise combatants, then, study their foes, discern their strengths and frailties, and design operations to tame the former while exploiting the latter. A prospective enemy like China would try to divine the American “center of gravity” or, as Carl von Clausewitz describes it somewhat mystically, the “hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends.” Should a fight erupt, Chinese forces would then aim “blow after blow” at that center of gravity—pounding away until U.S. forces capitulated or, more likely, lost heart and went away.

There’s a curious thing about centers of gravity, though. They can be innocuous. Petroleum refineries turned out to be a center of gravity for Hitler’s war machine, humble freighters and tankers for Tojo’s. By pummeling industry and merchantmen from sky and sea, the Allies starved Axis forces of irreplaceable war materiel.

A related idea from Prussia’s master of strategy: Clausewitz advises strategists that, in the folksy terms I like to employ in Newport, the enemy is not a potted plant. In strategy, in other words, one antagonist doesn’t work its will on a lifeless mass that’s unable to strike a counterblow. Rather, warfare involves an intensely interactive “collision of two living forces”—both imbued with ingenuity and with zeal for their causes. It’s the Golden Rule of combat: the foe does unto you even as you do unto him.

But here’s the thing. It may be possible, through dexterous strategy and operations, to transform a foe into a potted plant—dulling his reactions and material capacity until he’s little more than an inert mass with little prospect of protecting himself or thwarting your will. Better yet, such operations could yield an opponent prone to self-defeating mistakes. Inert pugilists make easy pickings.

By the Golden Rule, moreover, he may do things to reduce you to a potted plant, hampering your ability to adapt to change to the tactical surroundings—change he himself may have wrought. If he renders you inert, you can no longer compete effectively or efficiently. He imposes his will on you—and wins.

Which brings us back to the sci-fi universe. In the very second episode of Battlestar Galactica, titled “33,” the Cylons hit upon an ingenious stratagem: weary Galactica’s and the colonial fleet’s defenders through small-scale but frequent assaults, then strike a fatal blow against a foe too tired, addle-brained and mistake-prone to fight back effectively.

Clausewitz would instantly recognize the approach. He notes that the components of combat strength are force—material capability—and resolve. Quite so. The Cylon onslaught targets both the hardware and human dimensions, enervating the colonial fleet over time. The Cylons smuggle a homing device onto a transport to track its movements, then repeatedly “jump” in faster-than-light strike forces to menace the fleet. Cylon fighters appear every thirty-three minutes. It becomes plain to Galactica’s leadership that the attacks’ purpose is less to inflict damage than to compel the fleet to keep jumping. Relentless assault prevents repairs and upkeep to fighting ships while keeping crews awake.

The campaign takes its toll on hardware and bodies, debilitating the fleet’s fighting power. Think about scrambling an air wing for action every half-hour: you assemble pilots for a preflight briefing, launch, do battle, and recover through “combat landings” that require pilots to slam fuselages on the ship’s flight deck to get the squadron aboard fast. Little maintenance gets done under such circumstances. Machinery needs downtime, and it dislikes transients. Repeatedly starting and stopping it is stressful—even leaving aside the rigors of deep-space combat.

Nor do the equipment’s operators fare much better. “We’re getting slower,” observes Commander Adama grimly after fatigue cascades into computer problems that in turn delay a faster-than-light jump out of harm’s way. The mistake almost subjects not just the battlestar but its consorts—mostly unarmed transports—to Cylon missile fire. Laments the weapons scientist and turncoat Gaius Baltar, “there are limits” beyond which human physiology can’t be pushed. It’s just a matter of time, observes Baltar, before the fleet’s defenders commit a fatal blunder.

And that’s the impact of wearisome tactics on a ship of war that appears amply stocked with manpower. Throughout most of its history, the U.S. Navy manned its ships under a similar philosophy, reasoning that it takes a surplus of manpower to fight a ship in combat. Combat means losses. Now imagine Cylon pinprick attacks’ impact on Galactica and her coterie were it “minimally manned”—that is, if every crewman were assigned multiple jobs, and if the vessels lacked any manpower reserve when (not if) battle damage and casualties occur.

In all likelihood, colonial commanders would have committed a final mistake sooner rather than later, as demands on crews mounted to unbearable proportions. Humanity’s end would have come with it.

This foray into sci-fi represents a roundabout way of proposing that personnel policy may constitute a U.S. Navy center of gravity. Late-model surface vessels—ranging from diminutive littoral combat ships to hulking Zumwalt-class destroyers and Ford-class aircraft carriers—are indeed minimally manned. The logic behind this approach is simple: U.S. defense budgets are stagnant, sailors are expensive. Ergo, substitute technology for people to save taxpayer dollars. The navy doesn’t have to pay, say, an automated firefighting or ammunition-loading system a salary or pension, or fund its health care. The leaner the crew, the greater the savings.

Now, minimal manning may make sense for routine peacetime steaming. Transiting from point A to point B on the nautical chart represents a steady-state environment, entailing predictable demands and few extra stresses to wear down crews. It’s worth noting, though, that every crewman shoulders lots of different duties for different situations—even during everyday operations. That’s true even of ships manned under the traditional, more generous personnel policy. The same sailor might help launch or recover aircraft, take on fuel or supplies from a logistics vessel, fight fires or flooding, and on and on, depending on what the ship’s doing at the time.

Capping the number of crewmen caps the supply of labor. That means automation must reduce the demand for labor enough to keep supply in sync with demand. Can it? Color me skeptical. It’s an open question whether enough shipboard tasks can be automated, wholly or partially, to sustain that balance. I served in a warship operated by half the manpower that operated it in its first life, during World War II. You can indeed reduce manpower by replacing sailors with gee-whiz technology—to a point. It worked for us, but there were times when the makers of Galactica could have cast our crew as characters in “33.” We were the walking dead.

But if minimal manning may suffice for peacetime operations, when no enemy is trying to turn American shortcomings to advantage, what about combat—an environment without a manageable, predictable rhythm? War unfolds not by peacetime cost-benefit logic but by its own paradoxical logic, the logic of unforeseen reversals of fortune. It’s a helter-skelter realm that comes complete with antagonists bent on enfeebling and defeating warriors and materiel.

“Redundancy” is the traditional antidote for battle damage and other emergencies. It imparts resiliency to a combat unit. In hardware terms, redundancy means furnishing a spare of everything you can—shipwrights installing duplicate machinery so that a vessel has an extra generator, pump, piping system, whatever. Lose one widget, and you put a duplicate in service. Excess capacity thus lets crews reroute around damage. It lets a unit sustain its fighting strength despite absorbing a pounding. Spare manpower serves the same purpose. It provides skippers replacements for those who fall in action. Individuals may be incapacitated; the ship as a whole fights on.

If you’re China and confront an antagonist that opts to do without redundancy, you can deploy a troublemaking strategy. You whittle away at the center of gravity manifest in minimal manning. The object of such a strategy? Tire and bewilder crews that may already be overworked. Fling a variety of challenges at them, along as many axes as you can, as simultaneously as you can. Give each crewman more to do than he can, on the Cylon-esque reasoning that imposing numerous, repeated contingencies compounds the demands on people and hardware. Such tactics constitute the precursor to a crushing blow—or to an American withdrawal under duress.

China’s navy, in short, could ape the Cylons’ strategy. In purely martial terms, posing missile, gun, and torpedo threats from many points of the compass from as many domains as possible—from the surface, the depths, and aloft—would compel a ship’s beleaguered defenders to cope with more challenges, perhaps, than they could manage. Flooding an embattled zone with China Coast Guard vessels, fishing craft, and purportedly civilian sea and air traffic—interspersing combat units among nonmilitary ships and planes—would further complicate U.S. commanders’ picture of the surroundings. It would be hard to act for fear of hitting the wrong target—and having pictures of an errant shot splashed across TV and computer screens around the world.

That’s a fate few captains relish. And Chinese commanders would doubtless deploy deceptive measures to make the campaign even more wearisome. To glimpse the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) mindset toward deception, dust off that old copy of Sun Tzu’s Art of War. Among other things, Book I of the Chinese masterwork instructs generals to “feign disorder,” “feign incapacity,” sow confusion among the enemy leadership, divide an enemy host and fall on the weaker fractions, and generally deploy “normal” and “extraordinary” forces in mercurial combinations to confound and weaken opponents. Such ideas find their way into contemporary works on PLA strategy.

Do all that, and a weaker but resolute China stands some chance of overcoming its brawnier foe. It could land a heavy hit or, failing that, simply outlast the foe. How to respond? First and foremost, the U.S. Navy should acknowledge—should grok, as sci-fi master Robert Heinlein might say—that a manpower deficit represents a grave weakness in a hot war. Taking the problem seriously constitutes the first step toward a solution.

Second, it should conscript some imaginative tacticians to play the “red team,” projecting how PLA forces might harness troublemaking strategies. Realistic wargames illuminate the contours of problems while hinting at workarounds.

Third, there may be no substitute for stationing sailors aboard American surface combatants in greater numbers. The service leadership already expanded the crew of littoral combat ships by 25 percent. That’s a welcome boost in percentage terms, but a 25 percent boost equates to just ten more seafarers. Exercises will show how many more mariners are needed, and what skills they should boast to bolster these vessels’ resiliency.

And lastly, the nation is poised to undergo a change of presidential administrations that will usher in a president inclined to bulk up the U.S. Navy, along with a secretary of the navy reportedly inclined to agree. The next few months, then, represent the ideal time for the navy leadership to put the case for new policies—including less minimal manning—before a political leadership favorably disposed toward such policies.

Let’s hand them a sci-fi tract while we’re at it. Therein lies wisdom.

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

This article is being republished due to readers' interests.

Image: Reuters

Washington’s longest war officially comes to an end, 24 hours ahead of schedule.