Diplomacy & Crisis News

The Trump administration will find it hard to disengage from a region still being reshaped by the effects of Oct. 7.

Just as in 1980, Democrats are seeing how much party-building matters.

Lors de la fondation de la République populaire de Chine, en 1949, moins de 10 % de la population vivait en ville. Plus de soixante-dix ans plus tard, le taux dépasse 60 % ; il devrait atteindre 80 % d'ici 2035. Colossal, un tel bouleversement modifie la société ainsi que ses croyances les plus (...) / Chine, Démographie, Spiritualité - 2025/01

Loudly making threats doesn’t amount to a foreign policy.

Readers followed the U.S. presidential election as well as coverage of the war in Ukraine, China’s military, and India’s role on the world stage.

What does Trump’s victory show about how Americans view their place in the world?

Russia’s invasion has spurred long-term social transformations.

The bomb is the best way to contain the threat from the North.

Over the past few months, the Levant sub-region in the Middle East has experienced geopolitical changes of historic proportions. The shockwaves from these changes, which are still very much in play as various powers and factions holding pieces of territory in Syria try to tilt the gameboard and pull the area’s future in their direction, will be felt throughout the entire Middle East and, through it, the world. 

The situation is fraught with both danger—and opportunity. President-elect Donald Trump clearly indicated in his recent interview with Time Magazine that when it comes to the Middle East, “…I support whatever, whatever is necessary to get not just peace, a lasting peace. It can’t go on where every five years you end up in tragedy. There are other alternatives.” In seeking to make these aspirations a reality, the incoming president has his work cut out for him. Unfortunately, one place where he is unlikely to get any practical help is France. 

One could argue that the recent upheaval in Lebanon, which, along with Syria, used to be a French protectorate, began when Hezbollah began firing into northern Israel a day after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. By September 2024, Israel began hitting back hard—first blowing up the pagers, cell phones, and laptops used by Hezbollah field commanders and then eliminating its leadership, including its central leader, Hassan Nasrallah. During most of this period, Lebanon’s and Syria’s former colonial ruler, France, was largely missing in action, except for occasional, often contradictory, and occasionally grandiose comments from French President Emmanuel Macron. 

Although Macron recently held discussions with Trump about the seismic developments in the Middle East, the French leader’s beleaguered domestic position will likely complicate matters for the incoming American administration. Macron’s unstable and debt-ridden National Assembly already has gone through a record-breaking three prime ministers only this year. 

On December 13, Macron appointed centrist political ally Francois Bayrou as prime minister, a week after Bayrou’s predecessor, Michel Barnier, was forced to resign after losing to a vote of no confidence in parliament, where Macron faces major opposition from far-right and left-wing forces. Hours later, credit ratings agency Moody’s downgraded France’s rating because “the country’s public finances will be substantially weakened over the coming years” as “political fragmentation is more likely to impede meaningful fiscal consolidation.” With France’s debt already set to rise over 6 percent of GDP, this only increases pressure on the new premier to gain support from legislators for his plans to manage the country’s strained financial situation—as was evident from the ousted prime minister’s failure to get approval for the 2025 budget. 

Facing a dreary domestic situation, France Macron is in search of a diplomatic triumph. Hence, his efforts to insert himself in the international efforts to achieve a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. Paris used the November 21 International Criminal Court (ICC) warrants against Netanyahu and then-defense minister Yoav Gallant, who the ICC claims were engaged in war crimes in Gaza, to its advantage.

Initially, France was vociferous in insisting that it would arrest Netanyahu if he set foot on French soil. Within a week, however, the rhetoric from Paris shifted once Israel agreed during a Netanyahu-Macron phone conversation to have France play a mediator role in the ceasefire talks. 

The French position dramatically changed from one of unwavering commitment to international law to equivocation, saying that while France respects the ICC, Netanyahu may enjoy immunity as a serving cabinet minister in a country that is not party to the ICC agreement. That Paris had to go to such lengths to try and regain a say in the future security of Lebanon underscores the extent to which the French have lost ground in their former colony. Indeed, until the unprecedented weakening of Hezbollah in the conflict with Israel over the past few months, Iran had more influence in the country and the broader Levant than France. 

With the dramatic toppling of the Assad regime at the hands of Turkish-backed rebels in the wake of the weakened Iranian position in both Lebanon and Syria, it is important to note that France heavily shaped the modern Levant following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of its defeat in World War I. While France’s involvement in Lebanon’s sectarian conflicts actually dates back to the nineteenth century, both Syria and Lebanon fell under French control as per the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement with the British. 

This arrangement was solemnified under the mandate system of the League of Nations after the end of the First World War. In the early period of French rule, the area was divided into a half dozen smaller entities largely along confessional lines, such as Damascus, Aleppo, a Maronite-dominated Greater Lebanon, and Alawite and Druze states. By the 1930s, the French had consolidated these various states into the modern republics of Syria and Lebanon. Lebanon was granted independence during World War II in 1943, while Syria became a sovereign nation-state in 1946. 

Devastated by World War II, France’s ability to influence events in the Levant declined greatly. The rise of left-leaning Arab nationalism, especially in Syria in the form of the Baath Party, led to the Soviet Union becoming an influential external power. France continued to retain its influence in Lebanon. However, in 1975, the Lebanese Civil War broke out, and Syria (under the regime of Hafez al-Assad, who came to power in 1971) intervened militarily. The Syrians, along with their new ally in Tehran, the Islamic Republic, together developed Hezbollah in the aftermath of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, altering the balance of power in the country. By this time, the French had aligned with Saudi Arabia, which had gained considerable influence in Lebanon (especially among its Sunni population) after emerging as the world’s leading oil producer. 

The civil war came to an end in 1990, but it left Hezbollah as the most powerful faction in the country. By this time, Iran and Syria had begun to weaken French and Saudi influence in the country. The French and the Saudis hoped to stage a comeback in 2005 when Syria was forced to withdraw its 14,000 troops strong task force from Lebanon following the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri. But Hezbollah had become too powerful for Paris and Riyadh to counteract. The Arab Spring uprising only further strengthened Iran and Hezbollah by rendering the Syrian regime dependent on the patron and proxy along with Russia for its survival. 

The French likely see the events of the past several months as an opportunity to revive their influence, at least in Lebanon. However, the geopolitical chessboard is too complicated for France. Lebanon is at risk of internal strife because of the weakening of Hezbollah and, more importantly, the collapse of the Assad regime and the empowerment of Sunni Arab forces under the leadership of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an offshoot of Al Qaeda. Turkey, through its backing of HTS and other Sunni Arab rebel forces, is in a position to replace Iran as the dominant power in Syria. Meanwhile, the latest news out of Paris indicates that Macron may face the loss of his most recently appointed prime minister in the very near term. 

Despite its long legacy as a liege of the Levant, France lacks the wherewithal to help the Trump administration manage the Middle East effectively.

Kamran Bokhari, PhD is Senior Director of the Eurasian Security & Prosperity at the Newlines Institute for Strategy & Policy in Washington. He is also a national security and foreign policy specialist at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute. Bokhari has served as the coordinator for Central Asia studies at the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute.

Image: Antonin Albert / Shutterstock.com. 

There’s a reason the 39th president is still revered by former Soviet dissidents.

The 39th U.S. president is often remembered for a failed rescue mission in the Iranian desert, but his legacy is much larger than that.

The foreign policy legacy of an underappreciated president.

The world is falling behind on its climate targets—but that’s not reason to give up hope.

The year’s best episodes of FP’s economics podcast.

Weeks before President Trump retakes the White House, an American ambassador is tanking a strategic gas pipeline that would increase U.S. natural gas exports to Europe. In the process, he has damaged a country’s national sovereignty and worsened Balkan instability, all in the name of the State Department’s identity politics.

The Southern Gas Interconnection pipeline would feed U.S. natural gas to Bosnia-Herzegovina and end that country’s reliance on Russian energy imports. In 2019, neighboring Croatia’s government bucked its climate lobby by building a floating liquified natural gas terminal to wean Eastern Europe off Russian energy dependency. Its strategic value has helped make the U.S. the largest LNG supplier to Europe. Croatia wants to expand the pipeline further.

Yet, the State Department has hamstrung the plan with an aggressive nation-building project that seeks to force the country’s Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs to dispense with their national identity and adopt an overarching Bosnian identity embraced only by the country’s Muslim leadership. In fact, many Bosniak Muslims have taken Croatian citizenship, betraying little actual belief in a Bosnian construct.

Bosnia-Herzegovina has not moved on from the 1995 Dayton Accords, which ended the war in the Balkans. Instead, it has been saddled with an unworkable constitutional framework in which international diplomats have pushed an “anti-nationalist” ideological agenda while enjoying ultimate legal authority over the country. Serbs govern half the country, and Croats and a larger number of Bosniak Muslims rule the other half jointly. Neither entity enjoys sovereignty. Indeed, it is a failed state.

A new law to authorize the pipeline extension presented outgoing U.S. Ambassador Michael Murphy a last-ditch chance to impose the State Department’s identity politics on the country by forcing Croat parliamentarians to hand control of the pipeline to Sarajevo’s corrupt and indebted state gas operator in a country whose level of corruption is rated worse than that of Ukraine. BH Gas’s management team is entirely Bosniak, reflecting the systemic employment discrimination that has led to the halving of the Croat population. Croatian leaders seek a new entity to manage the project. Nevertheless, the law passed with no Croat votes, which has exacerbated inter-communal tensions. 

Parliamentary deputy speaker Mladen Boskovic, a Croat, blasted the outcome: “This law was written in such a way that Croats were deleted as participants in the process of designing and routing the gas pipeline. All decisions will be left to one company under the complete control of the Bosniak parties.”

Murphy earned a sharp rebuke from Croatian president Zoran Milanovic, a backer of the pipeline, accusing “foreign governors of humiliating and systematically disintegrating Bosnia and Herzegovina as a state.”

Murphy’s overt intervention to get the gas law passed was unprecedented. He publicly accused Croat officials of Russian collusion for opposing it and their elected leader of seeking “personal political and economic benefit.” Yet, the previous director of BH Gas had previously resigned to avoid becoming “an accomplice to [the company’s] criminal actions.” 

About a dozen U.S. Embassy staff hounded Croat parliamentarians in their offices during the vote proceedings, prompting some to walk out in protest. According to local media, Murphy threatened them with sanctions. Bosniak parliamentarians, uneasy about breaking the tradition of consensus decision-making on key legislation, were threatened with dismissal by our officials.

This region is familiar to millions of American Catholics. The pipeline route passes by Medjugorje, a village visited by 40 million Christian pilgrims who believed it hosted apparitions of the Virgin Mary. The combination of Christian fervor and the economic boon it has generated there is anathema to the Biden administration’s global crusade for abortion and an LGBTQ agenda that Secretary Blinken declared “profoundly in our national interest.” 

In nearby Hungary, the U.S. ambassador has led a culture war against its conservative government. Nathalie Rayes, U.S. ambassador to Croatia, one of the most pro-life countries in Europe, was vice-chair of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.

Who are the winners that emerged from this fiasco? First, Russia, as Croatia is unlikely to proceed with its section of the pipeline while its ethnic kin in Bosnia-Herzegovina are locked out of the project. Communist China gains from growing tensions within Europe. Turkey wins, given its familial relations with Sarajevo’s Muslim leadership and its global ambition to promote political Islam. The losers? The Catholic Croats see little stake in a state that treats them as second-class citizens. For America, Murphy’s law undercuts the prospect of securing American energy dominance in Europe.

The gas law now goes to the upper chamber, the House of Peoples, where it needs to muster a majority of Muslim, Serb, and Croat deputies, each wielding veto power. Croats are expected to lose that constitutional protection as well, as the country’s High Representative, a European diplomat empowered by Dayton with the final say over all of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s laws, is expected to side with the Bosniaks. 

Max Primorac is a Senior Research Fellow at the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, The Heritage Foundation. He was the Acting Chief Operating Officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Image: BalkansCat / Shutterstock.com. 

Shortly after the surprise mockup of China’s new sixth-generation “White Emperor” warplane appeared at this year’s Zhuhai Air Show in Guangdong, China, Beijing stunned the world by putting on a dazzling display of two different, working variations of their sixth-generation plane. 

In fact, the science-fiction-like planes have sent many Western observers into a tailspin, at once denying that they are real planes and simultaneously calling it a “Sputnik” moment. Now, just as the U.S. Air Force was coming to grips with the fact that their own sixth-generation warplane dreams were dying under the weight of America’s harsh economic reality, the clamoring for the Air Force’s ghastly program has restarted.

Funny how that works.

Panic At The Pentagon

After all, many of the people publicly calling for the creation of what the Air Force has dubbed its “Next-Generation Air Dominance” (NGAD) fighters are the same people who routinely downplay China’s impressive technological capabilities. Now that it serves its own purposes, though, the storyline is shifting. We must have a plane that will take years to produce, cost up to $300 million per plane, and only marginally enhance American air superiority because China is readying to build its own.

Shortly after the Christmas festivities were finishing up in the United States, pictures from China emerged of what appeared to be not one, but two, distinct potential sixth-generation warplanes. One plane was larger than the other. The larger possible sixth-generation plane belonged to China’s Chengdu Aircraft Corporation (CAC), and the smaller one is believed to belong to China’s other major warplane developer, the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation (SAC).

Demonstrators Galore

Both planes are believed to be “demonstrator models.” This means that they may be test aircraft that the Chinese military will not ultimately use. The U.S. military has made countless demonstrator birds over the past several decades.

They are critical for learning about aerodynamics involved with next-generation planes and can be used as testbeds for an assortment of technologies undergirding advanced warplanes. While these are important steps toward developing next-level technologies that would outpace anything the Americans and their allies have, they are not necessarily the birds that China will ultimately mass produce and deploy over the next decade.

Further, it is believed that in 2020, the Americans did test their own demonstrator of a sixth-generation plane. This is to say nothing of the demonstrators of things like the SR-72 “Son of Blackbird” hypersonic unmanned aerial vehicle that Skunkworks has been playing with in the California desert for the last few years. That’s not to say that people should not be concerned about China leapfrogging the Americans in key technologies. Indeed, this author has spent the better part of a decade publicly warning about the probability that China is set to outpace the Americans and their allies in key technologies.

On the matter of a sixth-generation warplane, though, there are still many steps that China must go through to ensure that their demonstrators work properly and that mass-producing these birds as they are currently designed is worth the cost.

To be clear, if China decides to mass-produce these planes, it can and it will. Unlike the United States, China dominates global manufacturing and supply chains. It has the resources, domestic human capital, actual capital, and excess capacity to churn such systems out like sausages.

But will they want to?

A Giant Psyop

After all, the Chinese military is only now getting its fifth-generation warplanes humming along in terms of production quotas and domestically produced capabilities. For years, for example, the Chinese had difficulty making their indigenously produced engines work for the Chengdu J-20 “Mighty Dragon,” which was first unveiled in 2011. After years of trial and error, the J-20s are only now operating with the powerful Chinese-made WS-10 after-burning turbofan engines.

And China is only just now revealing the extent of its investment in its other fifth-generation warplane, the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation’s J-35. The J-20 is much more advanced than the J-35. But the J-35 is already advancing along. Despite these successes, why would China still be investing in their fifth-generation planes the way they are if they were already all-in on their proposed sixth-generation warplane?

The fact is, they’re not as invested as Western pundits assume.

But Beijing has no qualms about making the eggheads at the Pentagon believe that they’re already working on an arsenal of sixth-generation war machines. China’s rulers know the U.S. government has a massive spending problem. And the United States has a national debt to prove that view. Both Beijing and its allies, in places like Russia, dream of collapsing the U.S. economy. America’s onerous, self-inflicted debt load is the surest point of attack by these great powers.

What better way for China to hasten the American economic and financial collapse than by convincing us that they’re readying to field an arsenal of fantastical “air-space” fighter planes?

It is likely that China has no real intention (yet) of scaling its sixth-generation warplane demonstrators. Instead, it wants the Americans to overreact and bankrupt themselves trying to counter the mythical Chinese “air-space” fighter. Washington cannot fall for this obvious ruse. 

Brandon J. Weichert, a Senior National Security Editor at The National Interest as well as a Senior Fellow at the Center for the National Interest and a contributor at Popular Mechanics, consults regularly with various government institutions and private organizations on geopolitical issues. Weichert’s writings have appeared in multiple publications, including the Washington Times, The American Spectator, MSN, and countless others. His books include Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His newest book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine, is available for purchase wherever books are sold. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

Image: Hamara / Shutterstock.com. 

There is no holiday season in Ukraine, where the fighting continues with no respite. While people celebrated Christmas and the holidays around the world, the Russian military was capturing an important settlement in the Donbas.  

Russian Progress in Kurakhove

“Russian forces have likely seized Kurakhove following two months of intensified offensive operations aimed at seizing the settlement and eliminating the Ukrainian salient north and south of the settlement,” the Institute for the Study of War assessed in its latest estimate of the war.

Nestled in the Donetsk Oblast, in southeastern Ukraine, Kurakhove was an important part of the Ukrainian defensive line. The Russian military had been trying to capture it for several months now, dedicating large numbers of troops and resources to the operation.

To take the settlement and clear the Ukrainian positions to the north and south of Kurakhove, the Russian military concentrated up to 36,000 troops in the area. Although exact numbers are available, the Russian forces very likely suffered heavy casualties in their efforts to capture Kurakhove. This is mainly due to the fact that the Russian military’s preferred method of offensive is mass infantry attacks.

However, taking Kurakhove doesn’t mean that the Russian military is close to an operational breakthrough. On the contrary, the Russian forces are making slow, and costly, gains, but they struggle to achieve more than tactical progress. On the other end, the Ukrainian military usually defends a position for as long as it can before falling back to a better-defended position to continue the fight.

“Russian forces may struggle to advance rapidly further west of Kurakhove along the H-15 Kurakhove-Pokrovske highway should Ukrainian forces choose to defend in the Kurakhivska TPP and Russian forces fail to outflank Ukrainian positions in the TPP near Dachne or Ulakly,” the Institute for the Study of War assessed.

The Russian forces lost a lot of men in their attempt to capture Kurakhove, and that can stem immediate further advances in the region.

Russian Casualties

Meanwhile, the Russian forces continue to take heavy casualties on the ground. Over the past twenty-four hours, the Russian military, paramilitary units, and pro-Russian separatist forces lost approximately 1,650 troops killed or wounded. In addition, the Russian invaders lost around eighty-two tactical vehicles and fuel trucks, twenty-eight unmanned aerial systems, twenty-two artillery guns and multiple launch rocket systems, eighteen infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers, fourteen main battle tanks, one air defense weapon system, and one piece of special equipment.

Overall, the Russian forces have lost approximately 785,000 troops in the fighting, with over 200,000 killed and more than 580,000 wounded.

Despite these heavy casualties, Russian president Vladimir Putin and his military leadership have chosen a strategy of attrition. They are content with losing thousands of troops a day and tens of thousands of troops every month as long as that translates into tactical gains on the battlefield. Since the Russian military is incapable of achieving an operational breakthrough via maneuver warfare, attritional tactics, such as human wave attacks, are the Kremlin’s only reasonable option.

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned defense journalist specializing in special operations and a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ). He holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University and an MA from Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His work has been featured in Business Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP.

Image: Dmytro Larin / Shutterstock.com

Earlier in December, an A-10 Thunderbolt II close air support aircraft made a rare appearance in southeast Asia in what could be a picture from the future.

The American aircraft worked with the Philippine Air Force, sending a clear message to China.

A-10s in the Indo-Pacific

Between December 9 and 13, U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II close support aircraft from the 25th Fighter Squadron completed a Dynamic Force Employment (DFE) as part of a bilateral exercise with the Philippine Air Force. The American aircraft operated alongside Philippine’s A-29B Super Tucanos, another close air support aircraft, and other conventional and special operations aircraft.

“DFE’s are important because it allows us to project airpower at the time and place of our choosing with as small footprint as possible at the location we conduct these DFE’s at,” Maj. Gregory St. Clair, Pacific Air Forces chief of future operations, said in a press release. “In addition to that it allows us to train closely with our allies and partners which is our greatest strength.”

The Philippines is a key U.S. ally in the Indo-Pacific. Too close to China for comfort, the Philippines looks to the United States to ensure its sovereignty in the region. In exchange, the United States has a willing ally and a great expeditionary base for its aircraft, warships, and other assets.

“Flying with the Philippine Air Force has been incredible; I was blown away by how willing they were to work and engage with us to continue to strengthen this alliance we have in the Indo-Pacific. We continue to promote stability and freedom to all our partners in the region,” Capt. Ben Burmester, 25th Fighter Squadron project officer, stated.

The 25th Fighter Squadron participated in the training event with eight A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft.

“The main goal of this DFE was to show we are super close with our allies and partners so that we can train and be effective together,” added Major St. Clair. “DFE’s are not a new concept and we will continue to do them in the future and we’re only going to get stronger by continuing to do them.”

The A-10 Thunderbolt II is beloved by ground forces. It is, after all, a dedicated close air support aircraft that can bring impressive firepower and save the day for a beleaguered ground unit. A-10 Thunderbolt IIs saved many an infantry and special operations unit in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, the A-10 Thunderbolt II was almost retired by the Air Force and was only saved after Congress prohibited the service from pushing out the venerable aircraft.

The aircraft’s biggest shortcoming is probably its inability to effectively operate in a permissive or semi-permissive operational environment. Designed to take out enemy tanks and infantry, the A-10 Thunderbolt II is slow and cumbersome. As such, its survival rate in a near-peer environment with potent enemy air defenses is low. But in an environment of air superiority, the A-10 Thunderbolt II can really shine.

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned defense journalist specializing in special operations and a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ). He holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University and an MA from Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His work has been featured in Business Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP.

Image: StockPhotosLV / Shutterstock.com

The Kremlin claimed on Thursday that it shot down an American-made F-16 Fighting Falcon. The multirole combat aircraft was allegedly struck by a Russian air defense system over southeastern Ukraine. Kyiv has not confirmed the loss of the F-16, which if true would be the first Western-made and Western-supplied fixed-wing aircraft to be lost in the conflict, which has been raging since February 2022.

"An F-16 aircraft was shot down in the Zaporizhzhia region at its launch site," Russian state news agency RIA Novosti announced via the Telegram social messaging app on Thursday.

Tass also reported, "Chairman of Russia's Civic Chamber Commission on Sovereignty, Patriotic Projects and Support of Veterans Vladimir Rogov [said] that the F-16 aircraft was downed in the Zaporozhye Region when preparing for a missile strike on the region."

Russia had previously claimed in September that it had shot down a Fighting Falcon, but that was later proven to be false. However, Kyiv did confirm in August that an F-16 was lost while attempting to shoot down a Russian cruise missile, and there have been reports since then that it may have been a friendly fire incident involving one of Ukraine's U.S.-supplied MIM-104 Patriot air defense systems.

Bounty Paid!

According to Bulgarian Military (not to be confused with the Bulgarian Armed Forces), Sergey Shmotyev, CEO of the Russian energy firm Fores, had said he would pay a 15 million ruble ($145,000) reward for the first Fighting Falcon that was downed. It is unclear if it would apply to the aircraft that was reported to have been shot down on Thursday or a future F-16.

This isn't the first such bounty that Russian oligarchs have offered to the country's military—while the Kremlin has also put bounties on Western-made hardware including the German Leopard 2 and American M1 Abrams main battle tanks (MBTs). The firm had put a bounty on the fighter in July.

The F-16 in Ukraine

In August 2023, U.S. president Joe Biden approved the transfer of the F-16 from multiple NATO members. One year later, in early August 2024, Ukraine received the first ten Fighting Falcons.

NATO members Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway pledged to provide around ninety of the fourth-generation aircraft.

However, Ukrainian aviators have largely received a "crash course" of sorts, with the training on the F-16s reduced to several months instead of the years that Western pilots have received. That fact may have led to the loss of one of the F-16s just weeks after it arrived in the country. Efforts have been made to increase the training the Ukrainian aviators are receiving on the F-16.

The American-made multirole fighter has been employed to successfully down Russian missiles and drones fired at Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure. In addition, in October, a Ukrainian Air Force F-16 was also credited with shooting down a Russian Sukhoi Su-34 (NATO reporting name Fullback).

Airliner and Santa Sleigh Down!

The news of the downing of the F-16 came just a day after an Azerbaijan Airlines' Embraer jet crashed in Kazakhstan on Christmas Day, killing at least thirty-eight of the sixty-seven people on board. It has been alleged that the airliner was shot down by a Russian air defense system.

And on Friday, a Russian blogger released a propaganda video that showed Santa Claus being shot down over Moscow with assistance from De Moroz—a Slavic version of Saint Nicholas or Father Christmas. The video ends with Ded Morz telling a Russian serviceman, "We don't need anything foreign in our skies. Happy New Year!"

Author Experience and Expertise: Peter Suciu

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.

Image Credit: Shutterstock.

From the Vault

Could China Sink a U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier in a War?

USS Parche: The Navy Submarine That Could Self-Destruct

The Apple+ miniseries The Masters of the Air, which debuted in January 2024, tells the story of World War II aviators who served in the U.S. Army Air Force’s 100th Bomb Group of the 8th Air Force. The follow-up to Band of Brothers and The Pacific by producers Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks has already been noted for its gritty realism. It features the vast armadas of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress during its missions over occupied Europe.

Those bombers were able to strike deep into German-held territory, hitting individual factories and other precision targets. Still, they whittled away at the fighter strength of the Luftwaffe in some of the largest and bloodiest air battles in history. The B-17 flew more than 290,000 sorties in the European theater of operations and dropped in excess of half a million tons of bombs.

Daytime Attacks

While the UK’s Royal Air Force (RAF) conducted night-time bombing raids over Germany, the U.S. 8th Air Force bombed during the day, and the B-17 proved especially well-suited for the task—yet it came at a steep price. As noted in the Apple+ series, the Flying Fortress was easy to fly and absorbed a lot of returning fire. The aircraft could be shot up and remain in the sky, and its Norden bombsight gave American forces bombing accuracy unmatched by any other nation during the war.

Newspapers hype crowed that the bomber could “drop a bomb into a pickle barrel” from thousands of meters in the air. That was a bit of hyperbole, and the truth was that only one of every ten bombs landed within close range of their target. On the second bombing raid against the ball-bearing factories at Schweinfurt in October 1943, the 8th Air Force sent more than 250 B-17 bombers at the target, yet the attackers failed to destroy the factory completely.

As further depicted in The Masters of the Air, the tactics to bomb German targets around the clock were costly. Tragically, more than 47,000 U.S. 8th Air Force crewmen were killed in those daylight raids over Germany.

Truly, A Flying Fortress

Development of what was to become the B-17 began in the mid-1930s, and it first took to the skies in July 1935. While it was already a well-armed warbird for the era, Boeing soon began to plan the development of the next-generation bomber. That led to the development of the B-29, but Boeing also continued to refine and improve the B-17. The aircraft increased in size and weight while it also received increased armor, self-sealing fuel tanks, and notably greater armament.

It also earned its now infamous nickname from a supportive journalist’s report.

The often-repeated story is that after Richard Williams, a reporter from The Seattle Times, observed the Model 299 prototype on the ground, he described it as a “15-ton flying fortress” in a photo caption. Boeing quickly responded by trademarking the name, and the rest is history.

The aircraft went on to be even more heavily armed to deal with the threats from enemy fighter aircraft after it entered service.

A Lucky Thirteen

The B-17G variation that saw service in the tail end of World War II was armed like no other aircraft before it, with up to a “lucky thirteen” M2 .50 caliber (12.7 mm) machine guns placed in nine positions located throughout the airframe, each able to fire upwards of 700 rounds per minute. This aircraft variant of the famous “Ma Deuce” was dubbed the AN/M2 (officially the “Browning Machine Gun, Aircraft, Cal. .50, AN/M2”)—and it was fitted with a substantially lighter thirty-six-inch length barrel.

Ten crew members —the pilot, co-pilot, bombardier, navigator, radio operator, and five gunners—were crammed into the small cabin for six to eight hours per mission. The main cabin was barely tall enough for the crew to stand up straight, and flying at altitudes above 27,000 feet meant the aircraft got very cold, often below freezing.

Crews had to be careful when touching the guns, which could be dangerously cold until fired. When enemy fighters approached, everyone but the pilot and co-pilot was expected to operate a machine gun.

Each B-17 initially carried around 5,000 rounds of ammunition—with the tail gunners and turret gunners having around 1,000 rounds available. According to some sources, the ammunition supply was doubled by the end of the war.

The B-17G’s thirteen machine guns were positioned throughout the aircraft to allow it to take on enemy fighters from nearly any direction, while the bombers also flew in tight formations.

There were two machine guns in the main cabin operated by the waist gunner(s) to defend from side attacks. Two more machine guns were positioned in the nose for the bombardier and navigator to operate when they weren’t conducting other duties. At the same time, twin .50 caliber machine guns were also positioned in the “chin turret” to the front of the aircraft and operated remotely.

It should be noted, too, that the bombardier was located at the extreme front end, protected only by a Plexiglas window. Just behind him, the navigator sat on a mounted table with access to maps and charts to best plot the bomber’s course during each mission. However, the B-17 was most vulnerable to a head-on attack—with many bombardiers and navigators killed in the early stages of the daytime bombing missions. The added .50 caliber machine guns provided them a chance to fire back at approaching German fighters.

Directly behind the flight deck, where the pilot and co-pilot were seated, were twin .50 caliber machine guns in a top or dorsal turret. It was the turret gunner’s job to scan the horizon for any incoming enemy fighters. A radio operator, located behind the turret, also operated one machine gun that fired upwards.

The underside of the B-17 was equipped with a Sperry ball turret, a spherical space about four feet in diameter and capable of rotating 360 degrees. After takeoff, the ball turret gunner—who was typically one of the smallest crew members—would crouch into a fetal position while entering the turret to operate a pair of machine guns. It may have provided a stunning view of the ground, but the ball turret gunner was still only protected by his flak jacket and the Plexiglas.

At the extreme end of the fuselage were two more twin .50-caliber machine guns, which the tail gunner operated. His job was to protect the rear of the aircraft from attack.

Initially, the bomber crews wore only heavy flight jackets and sheepskin flight trousers, which were about protecting the wearer from the cold at extreme altitudes. However, the effects of Triple-A (anti-aircraft artillery)—also known as flak—resulted in the development of flak jackets and even specialty helmets.

Though the B-17 was not literally a fortress in the sky, it should be remembered that sometimes fortresses need some outside support. This turned out to be the case with the B-17. The huge losses seen in raids like the one over Schweinfurt convinced the Allied leadership that the B-17 could not go to war over German-held territory unescorted. In the latter stages of the war, the P-51 Mustang fighter plane proved to be the bomber’s little friend all the way to Berlin and back.

The B-17 Flying Fortress went on to make its mark on history and became among the most famous aircraft of the Second World War. Yet, it wasn’t actually the bomber that was produced in the largest number. A total of 12,731 B-17s were produced, while 18,482 Consolidated B-24 Liberator bombers were also built by the end of World War II. However, both heavy bombers had a well-earned reputation for being the workhorses of the USAAF.

Today, there are reported to be only forty-five surviving B-17s, of which thirty-eight are in the United States. Just ten are airworthy. Among the most famous of the surviving aircraft is the “Memphis Belle,” which is currently on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force.

Author Experience and Expertise: Peter Suciu

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites, with over 3,200 published pieces and over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.

Image: VanderWolf Images / Shutterstock.com.