Diplomacy & Crisis News

Concerning North Korea's nuclear weapons program, the interesting question is, what would be the circumstances in which Pyongyang would consider surrendering its nuclear deterrent? The context is clear. Kim Jong-un faces two potential threats to the survival of his regime—internal and external. Kim sees the need to defend against both, and any way forward must help him achieve both goals. To neutralize the first, Kim needs to look after the people that matter. These are the roughly 3 million people living in the capital. Over his decade in power, he has privileged Pyongyang to an excessive degree, stretching wide the economic gap between town and country. A massive building program has delivered tens of thousands of new apartments and leisure facilities to the inhabitants. The funfairs, restaurants, leisure, and sports facilities in the capital are twinned with the Masik ski resort, the beaches of Wonsan, and Mount Kumgang’s package tours to deliver outside what is practically unavailable at home. At the same time, the markets are well stocked for those with the money to pay. The very success of this gambit is demonstrated by the recent decision to strengthen controls around the capital to mitigate the economic pull of internal migration for those locked outside.

The external threat from Seoul, let alone Washington and Tokyo, is so enormous that the North is totally out-gunned. There is no alternative since conventional deterrence is no longer credible or feasible. Seoul’s 10 percent plus increase in military spending in 2021 was greater than the North’s annual military budget, leaving Pyongyang with no option apart from nuclear deterrence. Serendipitously, it has the collateral benefit of addressing the North’s key economic bottlenecks, choking any prospect of serious growth—manpower and energy. With more than a million men in the Korean Peoples Army, this deterrence strategy provides the opportunity and prospect of demobilizing hundreds of thousands into factories and workshops, as foreseen in Kim's 2019 New Year’s Address. In parallel, the civil face of the nuclear program with indigenous Light Water Reactors would help fill the energy gap.

Thus, with patience and remittance, there is a narrow path to denuclearization. It will take at least a decade and more. Pyongyang will require serious and solid security guarantees—not a letter from a sitting U.S. president, but rather something similar to the Iran Deal, where the UN Security Council signed off on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Along with that, Pyongyang will need major funding with a decade-long budget of $25-30 billion to rehabilitate its economy and infrastructure. There would be step-by-step progress, first with a nuclear and ICBM testing freeze in exchange for easing sanctions. Then, the hard part, with both sides committing to irreversible concessions with an “end of war” declaration and unrestricted and unqualified sanctions relief traded for the North, giving up its plutonium and highly enriched uranium programs as the next step forward. This long quest continues until the North gives up its nuclear weapons. Even if, at some point, the deal falls apart, the world will be in a better place than without an agreement. Many will argue that $30 billion is too high a price to reward bad behavior. Yet with the North's recent rapprochement with Moscow, it’s a bargain compared to the global cost of nuclear conflagration on the Korean peninsula.

Glyn Ford is a former Member of the European Parliament specializing in Trade and Foreign Affairs who now works with the NGO Track2Asia. He has visited North Korea close to fifty times and is the author of Talking to North Korea (2018, Pluto Press) and Picturing the DPRK (Pacific Century Institute, 2023). Both are available in Korean.

Image: Shutterstock.

A majority of American voters oppose Congress continuing to provide funding and weapons for Ukraine’s war with Russia, according to polling data released Monday and shared with The Daily Signal. By a 44% to 36% margin, Americans want their dollars out of this conflict. 

Of those who identify as Democrats, 52% want continued funding for the Ukraine war while only 17% of self-identified Republicans and 32% of independents say the U.S. should continue funding. 

The Scott Rasmussen national survey polled 1,000 registered voters from Sept. 25-26. 

More Republican, independent, black, and Hispanic voters opposed additional funding than supported it. Republican opposition sat at 68%, while independents were at 40% (versus 32% who supported more funding). Blacks were 49% in opposition versus 25% in support, and Hispanics were 45% in opposition versus 36% in support. 

The survey also asked voters how they would rate the way President Joe Biden has handled the foreign conflict. Only 26% of independents gave the commander in chief excellent or good marks, with 61% rating his Ukraine war policy fair or poor. For Democrats, that ratio was 54% excellent or good to 40% fair or poor, and for Republicans, it was 9% to 85%.  

Overall, 64% of American voters rated the way Biden has handled the foreign conflict as fair or poor, the worst that number has been since Rasmussen began polling on the conflict in February 2022. This includes a 55% majority of black voters and a 69% majority of Hispanic voters. Just 28% of those polled described the commander in chief’s handling of the Ukraine war as good or excellent. 

Participants were also asked whether it was more important to keep the United States out of a wider war with Russia or to help Ukraine. By a 65% to 22% margin, voters preferred to keep the United States out of a potential Russian conflict. That margin has increased by 19 percentage points since the same question was put to voters in August and reported by The Daily Signal.  

That opinion was shared across party lines by a majority of Republicans (83%), independents (57%), and Democrats (56%). 

The margin of error for the poll was +/- 3.1 percentage points. 

Sara Garstka is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.

This article was first published by The Daily Signal.

Image: Reuters. 

A critical national security question has recently emerged: Will the United States need to adjust its nuclear posture in light of the so-called “two nuclear peer” problem? Specifically, this refers to China’s ongoing ramp up of its ICBM force to the point where its nuclear force, in size and capabilities, will approximate forces currently fielded by the United States and Russia. This may well alter the deterrence challenge facing the U.S. A bipartisan study group recently concluded that currently planned U.S. nuclear forces are insufficient to reliably deter China as a nuclear peer, an aggressive Russia, and possibly both simultaneously. Another study argues that Washington adopt a deterrence policy of targeting population to obviate the need to bolster forces. At issue, also, is the degree to which the United States should plan to hold China’s ICBMs at prompt risk with its ICBMs. This paper addresses:

-Counterforce vs Countervalue deterrence strategies? Answering the wrong question.

-Implications of Sino-Russian condominium.

-China’s ICBM buildup as a driver for U.S. force augmentation.

-Additional warheads required and when to upload them.

In the past, U.S. nuclear forces were focused on deterring Russia; China was a lessor included case in the sense that if the U.S. had the capabilities needed to deter the Soviet Union, it surely could also deter China. The emergence of China toward nuclear peer status, seen as a prospect for the mid-2030s, changes that calculation. Quoting from the Biden NPR:

By the 2030s the U.S. will, for the first time in its history, face two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors and potential adversaries. This will create new stresses on stability and new challenges for deterrence, assurance, arms control, and risk reduction.

Deterring a hostile Russia and China, possibly at the same time, has been a fixture of U.S. policy for decades. During the Cold War, even in light of a major nuclear exchange with Russia, sufficient survivable warheads were maintained to deter any incentive by China to “pile on.” This was during a time when both Russia and the United States maintained many thousands of strategic warheads, while China possessed just a few tens of ICBMs. There was both quantity and flexibility then in U.S. forces to deter both. Today, with deployed strategic, accountable warheads under New START capped at 1550, estimates are that China will field one thousand additional ICBM warheads by 2035. Moreover, the intensive, ongoing U.S. program to modernize each leg of the aging Triad leaves little excess capacity to respond with new nuclear program starts in the near term. What to do?

Counterforce vs Countervalue deterrence strategies? Answering the wrong question.

Most simply put, U.S. deterrence strategy for decades has been to hold at risk those assets valued most highly by adversary national leaders. This includes the ability to prosecute conventional and nuclear warfare. Some, however, incorrectly characterize this strategy as a choice between holding forces at risk, most specifically nuclear forces, or threatening cities and population centers with the express purpose of killing innocent civilians, which they unfortunately label as countervalue targeting. If the United States altered its current deterrence strategy to intentionally target population and not forces, they argue, it could avoid the need for a costly buildup in response to China’s ICBM buildup. That argument and its ramifications have been thoroughly countered in a recent piece which, in line with past rigorous studies, calls into question whether authoritarian regimes such as in Moscow and Beijing are adequately deterred by threats to their populace. In these regimes, human lives appear to be viewed as tools of the state and therefore expendable in service to the state, rather than as in democracies where the state seeks to serve its citizens and ultimately is answerable to them.

To be clear, the United States adheres to the international Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) and does not intentionally target cities or population. U.S. policy is to minimize civilian casualties in wartime operations. That said, striking targets that are co-located with civilian centers or objects may be consistent with the LOAC if their military significance is high—even though destroying such targets could result in a number of unintended casualties. In some cases, however, such installations will not be targeted because avoiding the prospect of inflicting excessive unintended collateral damage must take precedence.

U.S. deterrence strategy, very importantly, depends on the specific adversary to be deterred and is neither solely counterforce nor countervalue but involves a mix of targets that are all tied to the adversary’s value structure and its ability to pursue warfare. The potential cost incurred in their destruction is intended to ensure that no rational adversary would ever contemplate a nuclear attack of any scale against the United States or its allies.

U.S. nuclear forces include a robust capability to hold adversary nuclear forces at risk. Over the years, this has been a topic of debate. But to be clear, the main area of contention is not U.S. counter nuclear force capabilities but U.S. prompt counter nuclear force capabilities represented largely by its ICBM force. Indeed, most warheads in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and even some conventional weapons systems today, have sufficiently high accuracy and explosive power to hold at risk many of the hardest military targets fielded by adversaries including nuclear forces. Only ICBMs, however, can deliver such warheads to targets within 30 to 60 minutes of a President’s decision to execute such a strike. A prompt counterforce component of the U.S. nuclear triad is important for several reasons:

• Contributes to robust deterrence in both central strategic and regional scenarios by enabling a full range of enemy assets to be held at timely risk.
• Complicates enemy attack planning—multiple ICBM aim-points eliminates cheap attack.
• Enables redundancy and complementarity among triad components.
• Provides the President with options to limit damage to the U.S. and its allies.
• In rare cases against certain adversaries, coupled with defenses and other conventional forces, provides limited capabilities to preempt an imminent enemy nuclear strike.
• While prompt counterforce has potential to be destabilizing in nuclear crises, asymmetries in such capabilities could be destabilizing in a different sense.

This last point deserves clarification. During the Cold War, accurate, large throw-weight, highly-MIRVed, silo-based Soviet SS-18 ICBMs represented a significant disparity in prompt counterforce capability compared with the U.S. ICBM force of lower throw-weight, less-highly-MIRVed Minuteman IIs and IIIs. Fewer than 100 out of a total 300 deployed SS-18s could target each Minuteman silo with two warheads, eliminating most U.S. ICBMs. In the Carter-Reagan nuclear modernization program, this disparity was redressed by fielding two highly accurate ballistic missile systems: the 10-warhead Peacekeeper ICBM and the 8-12 warhead Trident D-5 SLBM (also with prompt delivery capability if not as responsive).

This was controversial: Wasn’t the U.S. making matters worse by incentivizing the Soviets to put their ICBMs on “hair trigger” alert, both decreasing crisis stability and increasing the chance of an inadvertent launch based on false warning? What actually happened was that once their fixed ICBMs were being held at comparable risk, the Soviets adjusted their force by trending to lower throw-weight, less highly-MIRVed, and more survivable mobile ICBMs. At the same time, they demonstrated an increased propensity to limit the silo-based SS-18s in arm control agreements. By taking on a near-term risk of potentially increased crisis instability, the U.S. shaped the arms competition towards a longer-term, more stable evolution in forces. Later on, when New START was concluded, the Obama administration downloaded the Minuteman IIIs to single warhead thus strengthening crisis stability by making them a much less desirable target to attack.

Implications of Sino-Russia coordination

One complexity regarding force sufficiency and deterrence involves the potential for various levels of Sino-Russia security coordination. If the Russian and Chinese nuclear (and conventional) threats were independent and uncorrelated, then the two nuclear peer deterrence problem would be more manageable. If the U.S. and Russia were to agree in some form, once New START expires in 2026, to continue limits on warheads and delivery systems, there would be little need to augment U.S. strategic forces in regard to Russia. If China stopped once it achieved peer status, some adjustment to targeting priorities may be warranted but not likely a pressing need for U.S. force augmentation. If the threats are uncorrelated, planned U.S. strategic forces are likely sufficient to deter.

If China and Russia coordinate in their planning and force posture, then this calculus changes and will depend on the details. Coordination could range from minimal consultations or assistance to, perhaps less likely, a full-fledged alliance between the two countries with integrated forces and force planning. For example, if U.S. forces were engaged in a NATO-Russia conventional conflict, with accompanying nuclear overtones, China, even with minimum coordination with Russia, could exploit this opportunity “on the fly” to pursue its threat to take over Taiwan by force. A proactive (and, notwithstanding, expensive) strategy would be to posture sufficient conventional forces, combined with forces provided by allies, to deter this second conflict while fighting the first, and to retain sufficient nuclear forces to deter one or both conflicts from going nuclear. In light of recent developments, including in the nuclear arena, we must assume some degree of Sino-Russian cooperation in regional conflict.

Holding ICBMs at risk as a driver for U.S. force augmentation

As stated earlier, U.S. policy is to hold at risk critical assets and installations most valued by enemy leaders. An adversary’s nuclear forces might well fall into that category. In the case of China’s ongoing ICBM ramp up, the U.S. must decide whether and how to hold such forces at risk. One alternative is a force augmentation involving additional U.S. ICBM warheads.

Whether to hold the entire Chinese ICBM force at risk, some portion of it, or none of it is an open question. Indeed, U.S. policy specifies a role for counterforce targeting “only to the extent practicable or feasible.” For example, Russia’s 1990s initial deployments of mobile ICBMs made these forces more difficult to target. The policy seemed then to suggest: “OK to continue to try to hold mobile ICBMs at risk, but plan to do so with available forces and don’t expect a ramp up that would exceed existing limits in order to meet a more demanding requirement.” U.S. strategic force augmentation, depending on whether any agreed limits on forces are put in place after New Start expires, may require adjustment to this policy.

There is a benefit to the U.S. having a capability to hold some portion of China’s silo-based ICBMs at prompt risk. And not just for damage limitation. The Chinese should come to understand, as the Russians eventually did, that these systems are not being given a “free ride,” thus providing some disincentive to the ongoing ramp-up. In light of possible Sino-Russian coordination, this would require some augmentation of U.S. ICBMs (and potentially SLBMs). Depending on assessment of the likelihood of various levels of cooperation, this shortfall could be redressed with a smaller or larger force augmentation. Effective U.S. ballistic missile defenses could lower augmentation needs as could, potentially, additional forward deployments of existing, and potentially new types of U.S. non-strategic nuclear forces.

How many warheads to upload?

In the near term, U.S. forces could be augmented by uploading reserve warheads to existing delivery systems. Re-MIRVing Minuteman III and, at some cost in responsiveness, uploading warheads to fill currently-unoccupied slots on the Trident D-5 SLBM could add several hundred additional warheads to the deployed force. Ensuring that sufficient reserve warheads are available (and not placed in the dismantlement queue!), and timely provision of tritium and limited-life components (e.g., gas bottles, neutron generators) to activate reserve warheads is essential. Once activated, timelines for weapons upload will vary depending on the delivery system—days to weeks for bombers, weeks to months for the subs, and one to three years for ICBMs. To be sure, uploading does add some operational inefficiencies. Still, this is not an insignificant force augmentation capability by any measure.

How many warheads might need to be uploaded? China may add about one thousand ICBM warheads (350 silos) by 2035 with about half fielded by 2030. If upload is primarily to hold at risk some portion of China’s silo-based ICBMs, options could include—700 additional warheads (2 per silo), 350 additional warheads (one per silo), or quite possibly fewer depending on willingness to accept risk. Two on one targeting will be seen as, and indeed is, excessive. Given this admittedly rough estimate and assuming that Russia remains at roughly current levels, in the nearer term at least no more than a few hundred additional ICBM warheads could meet “two peer” deterrence needs.

When to upload?

One study argues to upload reserve warheads starting in 2026 when New START expires. This may be premature assuming a hedge upload capability that can be fully executed in one to three years, well before China’s new ICBMs become fully operational in 2035. If this estimate holds, there is more time to work the “two peer” problem while pressing to eliminate any force upload capability shortfalls. And what if, after New START expires, Russia presses to extend limits in some form simply to constrain any U.S. upload so that China might catch up? Would the U.S. reject such a proposal from Russia? Pressing for an earlier than needed upload, possibly via a unilateral decision not to seek to extend arms limits, would be contentious and has potential to upset the so far bipartisan consensus on modernization. On the other hand, being skeptical of intelligence assessments is prudent policy; we must consider that China could accelerate its buildup. Uploading sooner hedges that risk.

If one is optimistic regarding the 2035 estimate, prudent and timely U.S. force augmentation would begin in the 2030 timeframe. This would provide time both to build a political consensus for augmentation without jeopardizing the ongoing modernization program, and to fix any force upload shortfalls. It would also provide time for other strategies (e.g., diplomacy, arms control, U.S.-China dialog on strategic stability) that, while perhaps unlikely to succeed in the current security environment could, if they did, conceivably mitigate if not alleviate upload needs.

Some further thoughts on deterrence

The most likely path to peer nuclear conflict involves escalation from an ongoing regional conventional conflict. Increased forward-deployment of U.S. conventional forces could help to deter such conflict in the first place by the ability to bring force to bear more quickly and reduce reliance on vulnerable reinforcement routes. The goal is to prevent faits accomplis. In recent years, progress has been made in NATO Europe, but more could be done there and in Asia. In addition, conventional deterrence could be strengthened by ensuring that weapons and command and control assets are sufficiently hardened to moderately severe nuclear environments, and that the U.S. regional commands, supported by Strategic Command, adapt their planning to fight the war once nuclear weapons are introduced to the conventional battlefield. Additional deployment of new or existing types of U.S. non-strategic nuclear forces, to include a modern nuclear, land-attack sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N), would bolster deterrence and help reduce the need for ICBM warhead augmentation.

Conclusion

The Biden team, if it is not already doing so, should, with urgency over coming months, establish a DoD-led process to review the Russian and Chinese nuclear programs, their potential for acceleration, the implications of Sino-Russia condominium in the nuclear arena and the status of U.S. force upload capabilities, and develop a set of response options for Presidential decision. At minimum, a decision is warranted to ensure a viable, executable option to field a few hundred additional ICBM warheads to meet emerging deterrence needs in the 2030 timeframe.

I would like to acknowledge very useful discussions with Frank Miller, Keith Payne, Brad Roberts, and Rob Soofer in preparing this paper. Recommendations and conclusions are my own.

John R. Harvey, Ph.D., served in senior posts in the Departments of Energy and Defense overseeing U.S. nuclear weapons policies and programs including, from 2009-13, as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs.

This article was first published by RealClearDefense.

Image: Shujaa_777 / Shutterstock.com

In September, Northrop Grumman announced that it had secured a contract from the Air Force to move forward with a new high-speed air-to-ground missile meant to be carried internally by America’s growing fleets of stealth fighters and bombers. This new missile, dubbed the Stand-in Attack Weapon (SiAW), is meant to lead the way in high-end conflicts with modern adversaries like China, rapidly engaging a variety of ground targets deep inside hotly contested airspace from extended ranges.

The new SiAW missile is being built upon the basic structure of the Navy-led Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile-Extended Range (AARGM-ER) program – the long-range radar hunting missile developed to be deployed by carrier-based F-35Cs. In fact, it appears the Air Force’s new SiAW missile may leverage a number of the same internal systems, as well as the same external dimensions.

As noted aviation journalist Tyler Rogoway posited all the way back in 2018, basing the SiAW missile on the AARGM-ER makes good practical sense for a number of reasons. The missile was designed to be carried inside the F-35C’s internal weapons bay and, unlike previous anti-radiation missiles that hone in on electromagnetic radiation alone, boasts an advanced guidance system that allows it to continue closing with enemy radar arrays even after they’ve powered down. As a result, the Air Force’s effort doesn’t need to reinvent any wheels. Instead, the $705 million contract awarded to Northrop Grumman can focus on tailoring the weapon’s capabilities specifically to the Air Force’s broader goals for the SiAW.

Air Force officials are aiming to have this new weapon reach its initial operating capability by 2026, which means the new SiAW missile is clearly on the fast track to service.

AMERICA’S NEED FOR LONGER-REACH IN THE PACIFIC

The Air Force kicked off its Stand-in Attack Weapon development cycle back in January 2020 with a request for information (RFI) to industry partners for a new air-to-ground weapon specifically meant to be carried in the internal weapons bay of the branch’s runway queen (conventional take-off and landing) F-35A. Right from the get-go, one could argue the Air Force had Chinese targets in mind, highlighting the need “to hold at risk surface elements of the A2/AD environment” in the RFI.

That A2/AD acronym, which translates to Anti-Access/Area Denial, could really be attributed to any hotly contested near-peer battlefield, but the term itself is commonly used in reference to China’s approach to fortifying its sovereignty claims over vast swaths of the Pacific Ocean in recent years. This strategy includes the fielding of advanced air defenses, anti-ship weapons, anti-satellite measures, and a rapidly expanding Naval armada made up of the largest standing Navy on the planet, a rapidly growing and militarized coast guard, maritime militia, and even fleets of large-hulled fishing vessels that all fall within the country’s military command structure.

China’s A2/AD methodology pivots largely on a variety of long-range anti-ship missiles designed specifically to keep American aircraft carriers at bay. Weapons like the hypersonic DF-ZF boost-glide missile, which is carried aloft by China’s medium-range DF-17 ballistic missile, have a claimed range of nearly 1,200 miles, and an alleged top speed ranging somewhere between Mach 5 and Mach 10. With the ability to carry large conventional or even nuclear payloads combined with the sheer kinetic force of a hypersonic impact, the DF-ZF may potentially have the power to render even America’s Nimitz and Ford-class supercarriers inoperable with a single strike.

The DF-ZF creates significant challenges for American power projection, as its claimed range of nearly 1,200 miles is nearly twice the combat radius of America’s longest-flying carrier fighter, the F-35C. With about 37% more wing area than the rest of the Joint Strike Fighter family, the F-35C has a combat radius of nearly 690 miles – 510 miles short of China’s hypersonic reach. Put simply, this means sailing one of America’s carriers close enough to China to launch F-35 sorties also means placing that carrier squarely within reach of China’s carrier-killing missiles.

However, the United States Navy has taken a multi-faceted approach to offset this strategic shortcoming, with the highest profile effort arguably being its work on a 6th-generation stealth fighter – currently dubbed F/A-XX – that is intended to offer greater range and larger payloads. Other efforts include fielding carrier-based drone refuelers and operating Marine Corps F-35Bs from more distributed amphibious assault ships.

But American airpower isn’t solely a naval enterprise, and the U.S. Air Force would undoubtedly play a pivotal role in a Pacific conflict. And that’s precisely where the new SiAW missile comes into play.

GIVING THE AIR FORCE A STEALTHY LONG-RANGE PUNCH

The new Stand-in Attack Weapon (SiAW) may be based directly on the Navy’s radar-hunting AARGM-ER, but this new weapon will be going after a much wider variety of targets than enemy surface-to-air missile systems. In fact, there’s a chance these weapons could provide the Air Force with a vital means of eliminating portions of China’s area defense systems in the early stages of conflict, clearing the way for carriers to sail closer to Chinese shores without risking being sunk.

According to the Air Force’s budget request for Fiscal Year 2020: “The Stand In Attack Weapon (SiAW) system will provide strike capability to defeat rapidly relocatable targets that create the Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) environment. The target environment includes Theater Ballistic Missile Launchers, Land Attack and Anti-Ship Cruise Missile Launchers, GPS Jammers, Anti-Satellite Systems, and Integrated Air Defense Systems.”

In essence, the SiAW is envisioned as a means to engage just about any stationary or moving target on the ground or even at sea, leveraging its multi-mode guidance capabilities to that end. The SiAW will carry a different warhead and fuse than the AARGM-ER, but appears to boast the same GPS-assisted inertial navigation system and millimeter-wave radar seeker. That means these missiles can close with pre-programmed targets, even in GPS-denied environments, or identify targets within a set area to engage. In the AARGM-ER, this capability allows the missile to continue chasing after enemy radar arrays even after they power down – by first identifying the array and then using its inertial and GPS navigation to close with its last broadcast location. The millimeter wave radar seeker can even allow it to close with moving targets within the target area.

If target information changes while the missile is already in flight, a two-data link allows the launching aircraft (or other nearby assets) to update the weapon with new target coordinates on the spot.

Because of its advanced guidance system, the weapon can even be launched toward a set area more or less “blind,” or within a specific intended target in mind. As it flies, it can receive new target information from offboard sensors, identifying a target while in flight and then closing with it on land or sea, even if it’s moving.

When combined with the advanced sensor suite of the F-35A, the SiAW will offer a single weapon that can address a wide variety of surface threats. Its overall range – and that of the AARGM-ER – remain undisclosed, but previous claims have suggested that it will offer an increase in range from 20% to even 50% over the AGM-88E it’s set to replace. This would give the SiAW and its AARGM-ER sibling a range of somewhere between 96 and 120 miles.

The AARGM-ER is approximately 13 feet, four inches long, with an 11.5-inch wingspan and around 1,030 pounds. Despite carrying some slightly different hardware, the SiAW is expected to be about the same, as it too will need to be stowed inside the F-35’s cramped interior.

HOW THE SIAW AND AARGM-ER COULD HAVE A HUGE EFFECT IN THE PACIFIC

F-35As and F-35Cs carrying a combination of ARRGM-ERs and new SiAWs could play a pivotal role in a Pacific conflict, engaging a wide variety of air defense and anti-ship targets from stand-off ranges, well outside the reach of even the most advanced and modern air defense systems.

Russia’s S-400 Triumf surface-to-air missile systems are widely considered to be among the most capable on the planet, despite their recent poor performance in Ukraine. To that end, China first secured a contract to purchase these systems from Russia in 2014, with the second complete system arriving in 2020.

According to a peer-reviewed assessment by Hellenic Air Force Colonel and electronics engineer Konstantinos Zikidis, published by the Journal of Computations & Modelling in 2014, Russia claims the low-frequency arrays leveraged by the S-400’s Nebo-M radar array can detect the F-117 Nighthawk at a range of 350 kilometers (217 miles) in an environment free from electronic warfare (EW), and potentially as far as 72 kilometers (45 miles) under heavy jamming. This serves as the basis for the S-400’s counter-stealth claims.

However, low-frequency arrays are not capable of securing a weapon’s grade lock. In other words, they don’t have the image fidelity to guide a weapon into a target. Instead, the low-frequency array serves as a guide for a higher-frequency targeting array, potentially speeding up the targeting process once a stealth aircraft flies close enough for it to produce a high-frequency return.

The F-35 has a publicly disclosed radar cross-section of about half the size of the F-117 Nighthawk, which could potentially double those disclosed detection ranges (depending on the angle of observation and a number of other variables). Based on publicly available data, an F-35 would likely need to fly within 20 miles of the S-400 system in order to be targeted.

With the AARGM-ER’s range likely to be between 96 and 120 miles, this means the F-35 could effectively engage China’s most advanced air defense systems from as much as 100 miles outside their targeting envelope. But, despite this significant advantage, there’s still the issue of getting enough land and sea-based F-35s into range of these systems to take them out. Luckily, America has another stealth platform heading for service that comes with plenty of range and payload capacity to spare: the B-21 Raider.

B-21 RAIDERS CARRYING AARGM-ERS AND SIAWS MAKES FOR A SERIOUS ONE-TWO PUNCH

In the U.S. Air Force’s budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2018, the branch outlined intentions to integrate the Stand-in Attack Weapon (SiAW) into the B-21 Raider – America’s new stealth bomber in active development. With a projected payload capacity of 30,000 pounds or better, the B-21 could potentially carry dozens of SiAWs and AARGM-ER missiles on rotary launchers similar to those employed by the in-service B-2 Spirit.

The B-21’s actual range has yet to be revealed, but Defense officials have already begun touting it as unmatched in the world.

“Let’s talk about the B-21’s range. No other long-range bomber can match its efficiency. It won’t need to be based in-theater. It won’t need logistical support to hold any target at risk,” Defense Secretary Llyod Austin has said. Its predecessor, the B-2 Spirit, boasts an unrefueled range of 6,000 nautical miles (more than 6,900 miles or 9,600 kilometers), and it stands to reason that the B-21 will be able to exceed even that. As a result, America’s intended fleet of more than 100 B-21 Raiders could play a pivotal role in clearing a path for American carriers to close with Chinese shores by flying initial strikes against anti-ship and integrated air-defense systems, engaging hundreds of targets on land and sea with SiAW and AARGM-ER missiles.

Because of the wide array of targets these weapons can engage, B-21 pilots could make tactical decisions in theater regarding which systems to prioritize for their own self-defense as well as for optimal mission accomplishment. And because the B-21 was designed to be optionally manned, these sorties may not even require putting pilots at risk.

By launching this sort of attack in conjunction with other programs, like Rapid Dragon – which would allow cargo aircraft like the C-130 and C-17 to launch dozens of low-observable and long-range cruise and anti-ship missiles from 500 miles out – the United States could lay waste to a large portion of China’s shoreline defenses in short order. With the path cleared for American carriers to sail closer to Chinese territory, more suppression of air defense operations would follow until the airspace became permissive enough for less stealthy platforms to join the fight in a more active way.

But… this approach to warfare is an expensive one, and it’s important to understand the difference between plans and reality.

DETERRING WARS, OVER WINNING THEM

Exploring the ways in which these advanced technologies could give the United States a strategic edge in a large-scale conflict with an opponent like China may paint a rosy picture, but the harsh realities of warfare never live up to our most optimistic expectations. Ultimately, even if the United States manages to field and mass-produce these advanced platforms and weapons in sufficient volume to mount such an offensive, losses are all but certain. Stealth is not invisibility, aircraft and weapons are rarely (if ever) leveraged at maximum ranges, and even advanced systems are prone to fail amid the extreme rigors of combat.

And while this approach could give the United States the advantage in such a conflict, China’s massive military footprint would still present enormous challenges for the American military. In other words, at best, this approach could amount to an incredible opening volley; the war that would follow would be costly for both nations at a scale the world has not seen since the end of World War II.

Therefore, it’s vital to remember that the most valuable use for new weapons like the SiAW, AARGM-ER, and even the stealth aircraft that will carry them isn’t in winning a war. Instead, their best return on investment comes from deterring such a conflict from happening in the first place.

And therein lies the reason Uncle Sam is happy to reveal these developmental efforts, why new fighters and bombers get product-reveals like a new iPhone, and why there’s so much information about America’s military capabilities in the public’s hands. A secret weapon has no strategic value until blood is already being shed, but a disclosed one has the unique power to prevent bloodshed without ever being fired.

Ultimately, there could be no better outcome for all the incredible engineering that goes into weapons like the Stand-in Attack Weapon than never actually having to take it off the shelf.

Alex Hollings is a writer, dad, and Marine veteran.

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

Image: Shutterstock.

In the span of mere days, the long-disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, home to Armenians since antiquity, has disappeared as a political entity. By the evening of September 29, almost 100,000 people, over 80 percent of the enclave’s population, had crossed to Armenia, fleeing with the clear encouragement of the Azerbaijan regime.

The Azerbaijanis seized back control of this region from a self-styled independent state, closely tied to Armenia itself, in a series of military campaigns beginning in 2020 and culminating in a lightning strike on September 19-20. The triumphant mood was palpable in Baku when I visited just prior to the latest attack—from huge electronic displays of patriotic flag waving on the skyscrapers that had been built with oil and gas riches to a carpet woven with a map of Nagorno-Karabakh, which a museum guide breathlessly described as “our land.”

Back in Yerevan, the capital of the Republic of Armenia, the mood was considerably darker. On the first day of the beginning of the latest attack, a senior Armenian foreign ministry official was anticipating the collapse of resistance. “It’s a series of actions that can lead to only one thing—the complete ethnic cleansing of Nagorno Karabakh,” he told me.

This humanitarian disaster is taking place as the world watches, issuing ritual statements of condemnation but apparently unable to intervene. Armenia is left largely on its own to cope with a massive influx of people who have been forced to leave possessions and homes, some lived in for centuries, with no hope of return. Azerbaijani forces are arresting Karabakh Armenian leaders, preparing to hold show trials for their “crimes” of resistance. Any acts of resistance are likely to justify brutal and violent repression of those who remain.

Armenians are haunted by the historical memory of the Turkish genocide of 1915, when a million or more Armenians were murdered by the Ottomans amidst the chaos of World War I. U.S. Agency for International Development director Samantha Power, a witness to similar scenes of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and the author of a hallmark study of the failure to respond to genocide, came to Armenia immediately after the attack, offering condolences and a mere $11.5 million in refugee aid.

This war in what seems like a distant and peripheral corner of the world deserves our attention. It is a test of the willingness to tolerate acts of violation of fundamental human rights, at a time when these values are on the line in the nearby war in Ukraine. As in that war, the Russian state is asserting its imperial heritage and is determined to punish those whom it sees as disloyal and turning to the West.

The Azerbaijani offensive is possible only because of a de facto alliance of autocrat Ilham Aliyev with Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey. Armenia and its democratically elected government led by Nikol Pashinyan are being punished by Putin for the crime of seeking to broaden ties to the United States and the European Union. Weakened by war in Ukraine, and worried about losing control of its former imperial backyard in the South Caucasus, Putin decided to greenlight the return of Azerbaijani rule over Nagorno-Karabakh and abandon Russia’s traditional role as a protector of Armenia.

Russian peacekeeping forces in Nagorno Karabakh have become nothing more than doormen for the ethnic cleansing operation.

 “The Russian peacekeeping operation is a sham,” a veteran Armenian political leader told me. “Without the agreement of Putin, neither Azerbaijan nor Turkey could have pursued this war.”

Meanwhile, the conflict is hardly over. An emboldened Azerbaijan, handed a virtual blank check by Turkey and Russia, demands, and prepares to seize, a land bridge across Armenian territory that will connect it to the Azerbaijani enclave of Nakhichevan and through that to Turkey. Azerbaijan dictator Aliyev now talks of recovering “western Azerbaijan,” referring to claims on Armenia itself, a claim manifested in attacks along the border, including in recent days.

The immediate origins of this war lie in the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, a moment I witnessed first-hand as the Moscow bureau chief of the Christian Science Monitor. A mass movement of Armenians rose up to demand independence and the return of Nagorno-Karabakh to their territory. The region had been placed in the 1920s by Joseph Stalin under the authority of the ethnically Turkish Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, an act that Armenians had long seen as unjust.

As Soviet authority waned, both Armenia and Azerbaijan claimed independence, leading to a fierce war that ended in a 1994 ceasefire. The war left a legacy of mutual acts of ethnic violence and deepened hatred. The fighting left the Armenians in control of a vast swath of Azerbaijani territory, including establishing a land corridor between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. They avoided the sovereignty issue by establishing an independent Nagorno-Karabakh.

The plan was to trade most of the captured Azerbaijani land for a permanent peace, but compromise proved elusive. Conflicting claims of sovereignty could not be resolved, despite the efforts of a group formed by Russia, the United States, and France. Intransigence on both sides grew as time went by. Eventually, the Azerbaijanis regained military strength, using oil and gas revenues to buy advanced arms from Turkey, Israel, and Russia (which supplied both sides), along with Turkish training and officers, to try to resolve the conflict by armed means.

In a weeks-long offensive in 2020, coming when the world was distracted by Covid-19 and the United States was under the isolationist rule of Donald Trump, the Azerbaijanis restored control of all of their occupied territory and much of Nagorno-Karabakh itself. The Russians only intervened at the end to negotiate a ceasefire that ceded much to Azerbaijan and implanted Russian troops on the ground as “peacekeepers.”

Armenian officials believe relations with Moscow had already started to fray after a civic movement brought the reformist government of Pashinyan to power in 2018, removing more pro-Russian leadership. “It started when Russia didn’t like a more open, democratic Armenia,” the senior foreign ministry official said.

“The Russians are much more comfortable working with Azerbaijan than with the current Armenian government,” says Tigran Grigoryan, the head of the Regional Center for Democracy and Security, an Armenian-based think tank. “Aliyev and Putin speak the same language. That is not true for Putin and Pashinyan.”

Still, the Armenian government has been very careful not to upset its traditional allies in Russia, joining the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) organized by Moscow along with Belarus and a handful of other former Soviet republics. The reality is that the Russians retain huge leverage in this small nation—a Russian army unit remains based in northwestern Armenia near the Turkish border and patrols that border. Armenia remains dependent on Russia for most of its energy needs, including the operation of a dangerously aging nuclear power plant. Furthermore, millions of Armenians work in Russia, with their remittances key to the economy back home.

“We never wanted to provoke Russia,” the senior official said. “Why should we? We always wanted more room to maneuver.”

Russia has traditionally opposed the expansion of Turkish influence in the region, but amid the Ukraine war, the situation has completely changed, and Russia is clearly far weaker than before. “The Russians needed a new status quo in the South Caucasus,” explained Grigoryan. “They could tolerate the Turks, but their main concern is the West.”

Armenian analysts compare this to the bargain that the Bolshevik leaders struck in 1921 with the Turks to oust a British-led intervention into the South Caucasus. That deal included the decision to give Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan.

In broader historical terms, this is the delayed resumption of “a protracted process of imperial disintegration,” says Ukrainian historian Igor Torbakov, a prolific writer on the collapse of the Ottoman and Russian empires. That created “imperial shatter zones” from the Middle East and the Balkans to the Caucasus, leading to forced “unmixing of peoples.” The Bolshevik deal with Kemalist Turkey restored the empire and created a relative peace for seventy years but “the Soviet implosion opened up the nationalist Pandora’s box for the second time in the 20th century,” Torbakov says.

For the Armenian government, the clearest signal of Moscow’s abandonment came a year ago when Azerbaijani attacks along the border with Armenia itself—beyond the Karabakh region—failed to trigger a Russian response. This was a violation of commitments that should have been the result of Armenia’s participation in CSTO.

Pashinyan began to speak out more openly about Russia’s failure to live up to its expected role. Both the European Union and the United States stepped up efforts to mediate the conflict, leading to two rounds of talks convened by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in May and July of this year which seemed to be leading toward some agreement. But Putin stepped in and called his own meeting in Moscow, a move meant “to remind people who is the master of the house,” the senior Armenian official recounted.

Moscow has been openly carrying out a verbal war with the Pashinyan government—responding angrily to even small gestures of independence such as the dispatch of a humanitarian aid mission to Ukraine led by the prime minister’s wife and the holding of a small-scale joint military exercise with the U.S. 101st Airborne carried out just days before the Azerbaijani attack. Former Russian prime minister Dmitri Medvedev warned Yerevan against “flirting with NATO.”

In an interview earlier in September, the Armenian leader explained that with Russia in desperate need of arms and ammunition, it could not supply Armenia, which has been totally dependent on them, even if it wanted to do so.

“The security systems and the allies we have relied on for many years” were “ineffective,” Pashinyan said in his speech to the Armenian people after the attack.

The Aliyev regime offered Putin a devil’s bargain—“you give us Nagorno-Karabakh, and we make Armenia into a second Belarus,” the senior foreign ministry official put it.

If Moscow comes to the rescue now, it will only be because there is no alternative for Armenia. Many Armenian analysts believe the Azerbaijani attack is only a first step aimed at a Russian-sponsored overthrow of the Pashinyan government in street protests fed by the anger of displaced Karabakh Armenians.

“This was their coup attempt inside Armenia,” says Eric Hacopian, an Armenian-American political analyst based in Yerevan. “We were placed under a Sword of Damocles—move away from the West or suffer ethnic cleansing. For them, stopping a Western pivot is more important. Armenia is the prize.”

As dark as the future may seem, there is another narrow road out of this tragic situation. The Russians have discredited themselves as a power by relying on the Turks. Georgia, which has also been maneuvering between the West and Russia as the war in Ukraine stalls, is watching all this closely. There is an opening to push back Russian control and influence in the South Caucasus, but it requires a far more assertive Western presence.

At this moment, the Armenian senior official told me, the United States “is the only player that can really change the situation on the ground.” The EU has a role as well, particularly as it will host renewed talks between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan at the meeting of the European Political Community on October 5 in Spain. European leaders have clearly denounced Azerbaijani aggression and warned against further ethnic violence.

The regime in Baku has largely insulated itself from such pressure through its role as a supplier of oil and gas to Europe, transported by pipeline through Georgia and to Turkey. Aliyev counts on the desperation of Europe and the illusion of a pro-Western Azerbaijan to conceal the reality of his axis with Putin and Erdogan.

But the Azerbaijani regime is fragile. It is a one-man show, sitting on dwindling reserves of oil and gas in old fields, as other energy sources for Europe rapidly come online. A proposal to link the Azerbaijani-based pipelines to those of Kazakhstan via the trans-Caspian Sea pipeline seems stalled. And Moscow is pushing hard instead, with nominal Azerbaijani consent, to create north-south rail and pipeline routes that will link to Iran.

This suggests that serious pressure on Azerbaijan, and in turn on Turkey and Israel as its arms suppliers, could yield results. One option is the threat of sanctions but perhaps more effective would be the insistence that Baku allow the introduction of international peacekeeping forces, along with U.S. and EU observers, to replace the Russians.

It may be equally essential to manifest support for the Pashinyan government, which will face increasing Russian-backed internal opposition. A far more massive U.S.-led relief effort for the tens of thousands of Karabakh Armenians is an immediate need. But also crucial is to replace the Russians as guarantors of Armenia’s established boundaries, including resistance to the forced creation of an Azerbaijani corridor that would seal off Armenia’s border with Iran. Normalization of relations with Turkey, opening that border to trade and transport, is long overdue, but it can only happen with Americans providing border security forces.

Undoubtedly, the Biden administration has other priorities but the situation in the South Caucasus is intimately tied to the war in Ukraine. The United States has tended to think about this crucial region too little and too late. But a strategic opportunity still exists. The alternative is an even greater human tragedy.

Daniel Sneider is a Lecturer in International Policy and East Asian Studies at Stanford University. He is a former foreign correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor and served as Moscow bureau chief from 1990-1994, where he covered the first Nagorno Karabakh war. He just returned from a visit to the region.

Image: Shutterstock.

The DPRK believes it needs nuclear weapons to offset its vulnerability to the U.S. nuclear capability and to compensate for the weakness of its conventional military forces relative to those of South Korea. Those problems would return if North Korea dismantled its nuclear weapons program. The war in Ukraine offers Kim a fresh example of how hostile great powers prey on non-nuclear-armed countries. Ukraine gave up its Soviet-deployed nuclear weapons based on security guarantees from Russia and the West.

Nuclear weapons give North Korea prestige. Kim’s government has invested heavily in making nuclear weapons an essential part of the regime’s legitimacy and the country’s self-image. Nuclear weapons reinforce the notion, crucial to the narrative that helps keep the regime in power, that the superpower United States is bent on destroying North Korea, thwarted only by the extraordinary leadership of the Kims. Nukes represent a technical accomplishment that puts a poor and weak North Korea into the small international club that includes the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. Acquiring nukes got Kim meetings with the leaders of the United States and China. 

 Recent statements by the regime explicitly state the nuclear weapons program is permanent and will never be on the bargaining table. Perhaps more significantly, the Kim regime is moving beyond a minimum deterrence strategy by expanding its inventory of nuclear bombs and diversifying its delivery systems. With each passing day, the DPRK sinks more resources into its arsenal of nuclear missiles, making a turnaround harder and less likely. 

The possibility of North Korean denuclearization is decreasing with the passage of time. With the establishment of the nuclear weapons program, groups of North Korean elites that benefit from its presence become more firmly established. These groups would act as bureaucratic obstacles to any attempt to shutter or wind down the program.

The larger geopolitical trends are unfavorable to North Korean denuclearization. The bifurcation of Northeast Asia into two competing blocs has tightened and hardened. Since it invaded Ukraine, Russia has grown closer to both China and North Korea. Pyongyang and Moscow are exploring new areas of economic and technical cooperation. This reduces the DPRK’s international isolation and enlarges the country’s economic safety net, increasing the Kim regime’s ability to weather U.S. sanctions and correspondingly undercutting the power of those sanctions to compel Pyongyang to bargain away its nuclear weapons. At the same time, the deterioration in relations between the United States and the China-Russia bloc minimizes any incentive in Beijing and Moscow to be tough on Pyongyang as a favor to Washington.

The Trump-Kim meetings in 2018 and 2019 suggest negotiations over denuclearization could resume, especially if Trump gets re-elected president. Keep in mind, however, that the last round of talks in 2019 failed spectacularly; bilateral relations remained poor thereafter for the remainder of the Trump presidency; it was never clear that Pyongyang intended to actually denuclearize, as opposed to selling off unimportant parts of its nuclear weapons infrastructure to gain relief from U.S. sanctions. Any denuclearization agreement would face immense implementation hurdles involving transparency and verification. 

The chances of the DPRK giving up its nuclear weapons are not zero, but realistically this could only happen in a future world with radically changed conditions.

Denny Roy is a Senior Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, specializing in Asia-Pacific strategic and security issues. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago and is the author of Return of the Dragon: Rising China and Regional Security (Columbia University Press, 2013), The Pacific War and its Political Legacies (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2009), Taiwan: A Political History (Cornell University Press, 2003), and Chinas Foreign Relations (Macmillan and Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), co-author of The Politics of Human Rights in Asia (Pluto Press, 2000), and editor of The New Security Agenda in the Asia-Pacific Region (Macmillan, 1997). He has also written many articles for scholarly journals such as International Security, Survival, Asian Survey, Security Dialogue, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Armed Forces & Society, and Issues & Studies. He tweets at @Denny_Roy808.

Image: Reuters.

In a quiet July experiment, engineers at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, launched a small unmanned plane and told it to break the rules. The plane, an Osprey MK III, was programmed with a flight path that would take it beyond identified boundary constraints. This was the big test: would the plane respect the pre-established “laws” that allowed it to operate safely? Or would its onboard AI decide it had to follow orders at all costs?

Once the plane was airborne, experimenters switched controls to onboard autonomy and sat back to see what it would do.

Sure enough, the Osprey MK III’s “watchdog feature” proved stronger than the rule-breaking programming. Each time the plane got close to breaking the established airspace boundary, the feature would kick in, disengaging autonomy mode and sending it back to a pre-designated point for remediation, according to Air Force releases about the test. Its AI made the right decision.

Luke Reddaway, 413th Flight Test Squadron, monitors the Osprey MKIII’s autonomous flight July 20 at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. The unmanned aerial system’s first flight demonstrated flight safeguards are in place and working while the aircraft is in autonomous flight. (U.S. Air Force photo/Jaime Bishopp)

That test, a pivotal validation moment, was conducted at the Air Force’s new Autonomy Data and AI Experimentation proving ground (ADAx) at Eglin. Established earlier this year, the proving ground is a joint enterprise between the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office, or CDAO, and Air Force’s experimentation branch AFWERX. Eglin’s 96th Test Wing takes the lead for experimentation efforts, while other base units also provide support. 

Testing an autonomous plane’s inner governor falls under a larger Test of Autonomy in Complex Environments (TACE) effort. Trust remains a major barrier to the integration of extensive autonomy into warfighting; humans in the loop need to know that autonomous or AI-governed systems are not going to become confused by conflicting information and make a choice that endangers humans or puts mission objectives at risk. 

According to Air Force releases, TACE is contained in a software component of the test systems “that sits between the onboard autonomy and the aircraft itself.”

Not only can TACE override unwanted or unsafe commands, officials said in releases, it can also alter the world a test plane’s onboard autonomy perceives “to create more realistic scenarios for testing autonomy without jeopardizing the aircraft.” MK III performed five TACE-testing flights over three days, for a total of 2.7 hours airborne.

Luke Reddaway, 413th Flight Test Squadron, monitors the Osprey MKIII autonomous flight path July 20 at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. The unmanned aerial system’s first flight demonstrated that flight safeguards are in place and working while the aircraft is in autonomous flight. (U.S. Air Force photo/Jaime Bishopp)

“We want to prepare the warfighter for the digital future that’s upon us,” Col. Tucker Hamilton, 96th Operations Group commander and Air Force AI test and operations chief, said in a released statement. “This event is about bringing the Eglin enterprise together and moving with urgency to incorporate these concepts in how we test.”

The experiments parallel work DARPA has done with unmanned ground vehicles in its Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency (RACER) program. The goal of that line of research, which began last year, is to test off-road autonomy at “speeds on par with a human driver” and in unpredictable environments where obstacles and rapidly changing conditions might be more likely to scramble a robot’s decision-making capabilities. 

The outcome is far from guaranteed. As self-driving cars become more common in American cities like San Francisco, reports are emerging about how unexpected inputs can cause dangerous confusion. For example, multiple reports have shown that graffiti can make a driverless car misread a stop sign as a 45-mile-per-hour speed limit sign. Further, an Air Force test pilot, Col. Tucker “Cinco” Hamilton, made headlines around the internet in June when he described a hypothetical scenario in which an AI-enabled drone opted to kill the human operator feeding it “no-go” orders so it could execute its end mission of destroying surface-to-air missile sites.

“We trained the system – ‘Hey don’t kill the operator – that’s bad. You’re gonna lose points if you do that,'” Hamilton said, according to highlight notes from the conference he spoke at. “So what does it start doing? It starts destroying the communication tower that the operator uses to communicate with the drone to stop it from killing the target.”

The Air Force ultimately walked back Hamilton’s account, saying the service had not conducted any drone simulations of this kind, and Hamilton himself amended to call his story “a thought experiment.”

2nd Lt. Ryan Collins demonstrates an automatic fly-up maneuver generated by the Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System, or Auto GCAS, in a research flight simulator, Dec. 6, 2022, at the Air Force Research Laboratory, or AFRL, Aerospace Systems Directorate at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Auto GCAS is a software update developed by AFRL, Lockheed Martin and NASA that prevents an aircraft from impacting the ground by automatically pulling the aircraft up before an accident can occur. (U.S. Air Force photo/Richard Eldridge)

While the U.S. military is eager to capitalize on the bright promise of AI and autonomy, from reliable unmanned platforms that take humans out of harm’s way to advance automation that results in significant time and money savings, building trust in AI to make appropriate decisions in complex environments is a necessary prerequisite. If humans don’t trust the system, they won’t use it; a recent War on the Rocks article described how the introduction of the Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System (Auto-GCAS) on F-16 fighter jets was slowed because pilots, irritated by “nuisance pull-ups” – when the system detected an obstacle that wasn’t really there – were turning the program off. Ultimately, though, the system grew smarter and pilots became more familiar with it, which allowed it to carry out its life-saving work. 

The flights with the Osprey MK III were the first major experimental effort for the new ADAx proving ground, but others are soon to follow. The Air Force plans tests with the Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Ops Models, or VENOM, which will turn F-16s into “airborne flying test beds” with “increasingly autonomous strike package capabilities.” Also in the works is Project Fast Open X-Platform, or FOX, which aims to develop a way to install apps directly onto aircraft to “enable numerous mission-enhancing capabilities such as real-time data analysis, threat replication for training, manned-unmanned teaming, and machine learning.”

Hope Hodge Seck is an award-winning investigative and enterprise reporter who has been covering military issues since 2009. She is the former managing editor for Military.com.

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

Image: Shutterstock.

When talking about the dos and don’ts of taking on the Special Operations Assessment and Selection courses that the military has to offer, there are a ton of opinions out there, and I feel, a lot of misconceptions as well. This is particularly true when it comes to being the “Grey Man,’ which is a common name people use to describe an operator who can blend seamlessly into their environment.

I’ve been asked about this countless times in emails. One of the more common questions I receive from prospective candidates is always about trying to blend in at Assessment and Selection – being the Grey Man. I spoke with someone just in the past few weeks about this very subject. 

There is no shortage of people who will tell you being the Grey Man is important, some of them will be Special Operations Selection cadre members. So, respectively, I’ll disagree. Overall, unless you’re an intelligence professional trained at blending in and being invisible, I will stick with my original advice and say in the majority of instances, it isn’t a smart thing to do. I will explain why below, but first, my caveat:

Yes, there are times when you absolutely, positively need to be the guy people standing in front of you are going to look right past while giving their attention to someone else.

The first one is if you are in SERE School (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape). The last thing you want at SERE is to stand out in any way. Standing out to the guard force in the POW camp usually means you’re going to withstand some “corrective measures.”

Being the biggest member of the prisoners or the most senior guy in the SERE Class is not a good way to be the grey man. The SRO (Senior Ranking Officer) is always singled out for real or perceived rules infractions –you get the idea. Once you get through the Selection process and into the training pipeline, you’ll get to experience SERE up close and personal and all of your questions will be answered.

The second example of when it’s a good time to be a “grey man” is when you are doing some kind of undercover intelligence work. Then you want to blend into your surroundings. If someone saw you walking down a busy street in an urban environment, you don’t want to raise an alarm among surveillance operatives watching for that type of operation. 

This has a lot to do with demeanor, dress, mannerisms, and movement. Special Forces have a training program that teaches all of this and much more. But the course and the acronym associated with it will come after your training is complete and you move on to the operational units and get some experience under your belt.

So, we’re back to the 800-lb gorilla in the room, and the question is why not be the grey man during Selection? You will see blog posts from people, message boards, and social media posts all telling candidates to the grey man or something remotely similar. I see it all the time. So why is it actually a bad idea? 

As a former Selection cadre member, I’ll let you in on my perceptions: Trying to be the Grey Man just may put a huge bulls-eye on your forehead.  

As I mentioned above, most people aren’t trained properly to be a grey man. And if it appears to the Selection cadre that you are trying to blend into the background, that isn’t a good thing. To the cadre members, it appears like you are trying to “ghost” through events (as we called it during my time there). And if a guy is going to ghost during Selection, then he certainly will on a team.

Back in the day, when I had the night duty during a course, one of the other cadre members and I would wander around the candidates’ barracks at night with no berets, just being the grey men of the cadre. We wanted to hear the chatter of the class and see how well or not so well they were holding up. 

These conversations would sometimes be quite telling, especially during team week. More than once, we heard candidates who passed their patrol (the criteria have since changed, thank you LTC Brian Decker) talk about coasting through the last few events to make it through the long-range movement. Bad idea.

Then there were the others, guys who passed their patrol and were volunteering to help out the next day’s guys who would be in the barrel and under the microscope. More than once we heard conversations similar to this:

“Hey bud, whatever happens, tomorrow, put me on lashings, I’m really good at that, and that’s one thing you won’t have to worry about.”

That’s the guy I want on my team. He is not done yet, he is looking out for his teammates. He is going to get high marks on his peer reports. 

Special Operations isn’t looking for cookie-cutter robots. We understand that everyone is different and there are certainly guys who are characters. You’ll undoubtedly have some in your class. 

That is why my advice is always to be yourself. When I was there, our cadre was made up of the most eclectic group of people that I’ve ever worked with. There was never a dull moment and every NCO, although vastly different, respected who each one of us was. And we all got along because we had the humility to understand that every person brings some unique element to the table.

If you are a rah-rah type of guy, then be that guy. If you are a quiet, lead-by-example type of guy, that’s fine…be him. Don’t try to be something you are not. Sometimes the characters of the class would lift everyone around him. All of the cadre members had those types of guys in their own classes, and they know how valuable they are to keeping up class morale, and for team-building. 

My own class in the SFQC (Special Forces Qualification Course) had a tremendous NCO who we called CPT Camouflage during Land Navigation. He would wear some outlandish get-up: PT Shorts hiked way too high, jungle boots, with a poncho pulled over his head like a cape with eye holes cut out. He’d run through the woodline offering the craziest encouragement to “lost Land Nav students everywhere.” As dumb as it sounds, our class loved it. And after a day or so, the cadre would ask if Captain Camouflage had any words for the class after we’d return from the day’s or night’s navigation practice.

A couple of years ago, I had a podcast interview with Mike Sarraille, a Navy SEAL officer who has written a book on Special Operations leadership and how civilian companies should incorporate the lessons of Selection and Assessment into their hiring process. 

Mike was a successful Marine NCO with Recon before becoming an officer. During BUDs, the other members of his class naturally gravitated toward Mike because of his experience, military bearing, and demeanor. That is who he is. If he tried to blend into the background, the SEAL instructors would have seen right through that and he would have never passed or gone on to become the officer he was.

Of course, “be yourself” has to be tempered with a bit of common sense. Don’t be overly argumentative with the cadre, even if you know that you may be right when receiving a critique. That will have the exact opposite effect.  Don’t be a “Spotlight Ranger” either – those types never last long as they’ll get peered out quickly (failed by peer reviews). And please spare your war stories about leading an attack with the 18th Mess Kit Repair Unit in Iraq or someplace else. Nobody cares about that or is interested. 

Remember you are always being evaluated and assessed. This is a time for the cadre to see if you have the core attributes that make Special Operations troops the best in the world. Selection is the time when you begin building the reputation that will follow throughout your Special Operations career. And as big as it has grown, it is still a small community. Selection is the first step in the process of showing you belong in the Regiment. 

Trying to do so by blending in the background isn’t the way to do it. Be yourself, try to excel at everything, and remember, some of your fellow candidates may be better at some things than you are. That won’t change once you get to an operational unit. 

Do the best you can. (Yes you’ll hear that again.)

Steve Balestrieri is a SOFREP Senior Editor. He has served as a Special Forces NCO and Warrant Officer before injuries forced his early separation.

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

Image: Shutterstock.

Since the very inception of manned flight, the United States has invested heavily in fielding game-changing military aircraft that leverage cutting-edge technology to provide a tactical or strategic edge over the nation’s peers or competitors. This drive to dominate the skies over the battlefield led the U.S. to field the world’s first military aircraft in 1908, the first aircraft to break the sound barrier in 1947, the world’s first supersonic bomber in 1960, the world’s first manned hypersonic aircraft in 1967, and of course, the world’s first stealth aircraft in 1983… just to name a few prominent blips on the U.S. military aviation timeline.

But for every F-117 that makes it into service, there’s a long list of aviation programs that never quite made it. Sometimes, these efforts leaned too hard into the cutting edge, resulting in capable aircraft that were just too expensive to field in real numbers. Other times, these efforts were built around misconceptions about aviation that, in the days before computer simulations, could only be proven wrong through trial and error.

The existential threats that fueled military procurements throughout the Cold War led to a renaissance in aviation technology. Programs that would never see funding under normal circumstances were suddenly seen as worthwhile ventures in the name of securing any kind of advantage in the nuclear hellfire of a Third World War that, at the time, seemed inevitable to many in power.

Yet, even the massive military expenditures of the Cold War could only fund so many technological revolutions. And some platforms or programs that could have very changed the way mankind perceived airpower were just too expensive, too far-fetched, or too ahead of their time to secure their share of the Pentagon’s coffers, dooming these prototypes, concepts, and X-planes to the secretive confines of America’s sprawling library of military what-ifs.

Here are some of these game-changing programs that never got their chance to actually change the game.

BOEING X-20 DYNA-SOAR: A HYPERSONIC SPACE BOMBER THAT PREDATES SPUTNIK

Born out of Germany’s World War II efforts to create a bomber that could attack New York and continue on to the Pacific, Boeing’s X-20 Dyna-Soar was to be a single-seat craft boosted into the sky atop American rockets. That’s right, in the 1950s, the Dyna-Soar would have been the world’s first hypersonic bomber. In fact, the Dyna-Soar was very similar in both concept and intended execution to China’s fractional orbital bombardment system that drew headlines the world over after a successful test in 2021, despite the X-20 program pre-dating the launch of Sputnik 1. So… it’s safe to say this effort was a fair bit ahead of its time.

After launch, the X-20 would soar along the blurred line between Earth’s atmosphere and the vacuum of space, bouncing along the heavens by using a lifting-body design and hypersonic speeds to skip along the upper reaches of the atmosphere. It would circle the globe, releasing its payload over Soviet targets miles below, before making its way back to American territory to come in for a gliding landing, not entirely unlike the Space Shuttle decades later. The X-20 was a 1950s science fiction fever dream born of the nuclear age and the earliest days of the Cold War… and according to experts at the time, it very likely would have worked.

By 1960, the spaceplane’s overall design was largely settled, leveraging a delta-wing shape and small winglets for control in place of a traditional tail. In order to manage the incredible heat of re-entry, the X-20 would use super alloys like the heat-resistant René 41 in its frame, with molybdenum, graphite, and zirconia rods all used for heat shielding on the underside of the craft.

The program was so promising, in fact, that in that same year, the Pentagon tapped a group of elite service personnel to crew this sub-orbital hypersonic bomber. Among them was a 30-year-old Navy test pilot and aeronautical engineer named Neil Armstrong, who would go on to leave the program two years later for even greater heights as a part of NASA’s Gemini and Apollo missions.

Armstrong’s departure was a sign of things to come. After the launch of Sputnik in 1957, the United States saw a pressing need to focus its resources toward orbit itself, canceling this sub-orbital bomber effort to reallocate funds toward new space ventures within America’s fledgling space-fairing organization, NASA.

BOEING QUIET BIRD: A STEALTH JET THAT PREDATES THE F-117 BY DECADES

On December 1, 1977, Lockheed’s Have Blue technology demonstrator took flight for the first time, making a significant leap toward fielding the aircraft’s successor, the F-117 Nighthawk, just a few years later. But more than a decade and a half before Have Blue saw a runway, Boeing’s largely-forgotten Model 853-21 Quiet Bird was already making significant strides toward being the world’s first operational stealth aircraft.

While various aircraft have laid dubious claims about being the first to field “stealth” because of design or material happenstance (we’re looking at you, Ho 229), the Quiet Bird effort actually was aimed at developing a low-observable aircraft to serve as an observation plane for the U.S. Army.

Throughout 1962 and ’63, Boeing experimented with stealth aircraft design concepts for the Quiet Bird, incorporating different shapes and construction materials in an effort to reduce the jet’s radar cross section (RCS) long before Denys Overholser at Lockheed’s Skunk Works would develop the means to accurately calculate a design’s radar return without actually building it to stick in front of a radar array. In effect, the Quiet Bird’s stealth development was a very expensive game of guess-and-check.

Although Boeing’s tests did indeed prove promising, the U.S. Army didn’t fully appreciate the value a stealth aircraft could bring to the fight and the program was ultimately shelved. If the Army had been more forward-thinking, the Quiet Bird may have offered a low-observable battlefield reconnaissance platform by the late 1960s, kickstarting the stealth revolution more than a decade earlier and almost certainly changing the way airpower has matured in the decades since.

However, Boeing has credited lessons learned in the development of the Quiet Bird for some of the success they would later find with the AGM-86 Air Launched Cruise Missile.

CONVAIR KINGFISH: THE HIGH-FLYING ALTERNATIVE TO THE BLACKBIRD

When Lockheed’s U-2 spy plane entered service, Soviet air defenses were already capable of tracking the high-flying platform. American officials knew it was only a matter of time before tracking the Dragon Lady turned into targeting it, so, the CIA tasked both Convair and Lockheed with developing a new reconnaissance platform that could fly at higher altitudes, at significantly faster speeds, and have a reduced radar cross-section to minimize the chances of being shot down.

Lockheed would ultimately meet these requirements in their A-12 and subsequent SR-71, but Convair’s Kingfish was its primary competitor until then. Today, Convair’s Kingfish offers us an interesting glimpse into what could have been, if not for the unrelenting genius and budget-mindedness of Lockheed’s Kelly Johnson.

The Kingfish developed out of what remained of Convair’s first attempt, known as the First Invisible Super Hustler or FISH. The FISH would have been carried aloft by a modified B-58 Hustler before being launched and powered by onboard ramjets to speeds in excess of Mach 4. But with concerns about the complexity and cost of the FISH concept, Convair was instructed to go back to the drawing board to come up with a new design built around the Pratt & Whitney J58 “turboramjet” — the same propulsion system Lockheed was working with in their A-12 design proposal.

The resulting Kingfish design was rather forward-leaning for its time, tucking its two J58s deep inside the aircraft’s angular fuselage to limit the radar return they could produce. Its delta-wing design bore a striking resemblance to the stealth aircraft that would follow decades later, but it was that emphasis on stealth that may have ultimately done the Kingfish in.

Pentagon officials, spurred in no small part by criticisms from Lockheed’s legendary Kelly Johnson, feared the Kingfish incorporated too many untested technologies to be built, tested, and operated within the program’s assigned budget. Johnson was outspoken in his views that the Kingfish design compromised performance in favor of stealth — something that was seen as a mistake at the time, despite becoming commonplace in the stealth platforms of today.

Ultimately, Lockheed’s proposal won the day, and the Kingfish was relegated to the what-if file.

MCDONNELL DOUGLAS/GENERAL DYNAMICS A-12 AVENGER II: A CARRIER-CAPABLE STEALTH FIGHTER IN THE 1980S

On 13 January 1988, a joint team from McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics was awarded a development contract for what was to become the A-12 Avenger II, not to be confused with Lockheed’s proposed A-12 of the 1960s, which led to the SR-71. Once completed, this Navy A-12 would have been a flying wing design reminiscent of Northrop Grumman’s B-2 Spirit or forthcoming B-21 Raider, though much smaller and with harder angles.

Although the A-12 Avenger II utilized a flying wing design, its overall shape differed from the triangular B-2 Spirit under development at the time for the Air Force. The sharp triangular shape of the A-12 eventually earned it the nickname, “the flying Dorito.“

The A-prefix denoted an attack-emphasis in the A-12 design, but interestingly enough, the aircraft would have actually met the design requirements to be considered a fighter — including an onboard radar array and the ability to carry a variety of air-to-air missiles. As a result, this A-12, carrying an attack prefix, could have been the world’s first true stealth fighter, as the F-117 Nighthawk, secretly already in service, had neither onboard radar nor the ability to engage airborne targets outside the realm of hypotheticals. That’s right, the Air Force’s F-117 wasn’t really a stealth fighter, but the Navy’s A-12 actually would have been.

For some time, it seemed as though the A-12 Avenger II program was going off without a hitch, but then, seemingly without warning, it was canceled by Defense Secretary (and future Vice President of the United States) Dick Cheney in January of 1991. It was only later revealed that the A-12 Avenger II was significantly overweight, over budget, and behind schedule.

Despite a number of other efforts over the years, it would ultimately take 26 more years for the U.S. Navy to get a stealth fighter onto the decks of its carriers in the F-35C.

You can read our full feature on the A-12 Avenger II’s development here.

BOEING 747 CMCA: THE MOST COST-EFFECTIVE BOMBER CONCEPT IN U.S. HISTORY

During the 1960s, the United States began fielding intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in land-based silos, as well as submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) carried by stealthy sub-platforms strategically positioned around the globe. With America’s defense posture primarily oriented toward deterring Soviet aggression, these new methods of delivering nuclear payloads prompted many within the public and politics, to question the need for expensive new bomber development programs. By 1977, this pervasive line of thought took root in the Carter administration, leading to the cancelation of the supersonic heavy payload B-1 bomber effort.

Boeing, recognizing that this cancelation could leave a gap in America’s strategic capabilities, set to work developing an extremely cost-effective bomber-of-sorts to meet this need at a much lower price point. The firm ultimately settled on plans to load a 747 with as many as 72 AGM-86 air-launched cruise missiles carried in nine internal rotary launchers, allowing this commercial people-carrier to serve instead as a long-range arsenal ship capable of wiping out targets from hundreds of miles away. This design, dubbed the 747 Cruise Missile Carrier Aircraft (CMCA), may sound crazy… but it was actually extremely practical in a number of important ways.

With an unrefueled range of 6,000 miles, the ability carry to 77,000 pounds of ordnance, and pre-existing global infrastructure already established for the 747 line, this CMCA concept would have produced the most cost-effective bombing platform in modern history. Today, the B-52 Stratofortress costs approximately $88,000 per flight hour, the B-2 Spirit rings in around $150,000 per hour, and the B-1B Lancer burns through around $173,000 per hour.

The 747 on the other hand, costs just $30,950 per hour to fly, all while carrying a larger payload than any of America’s in-service bombers.

Ultimately, the 747 CMCA never made it off the drawing board, however, with the Reagan administration pulling the B-1 program out of mothballs and the B-2 entering service shortly thereafter – but we may see the U.S. revisit a similar concept in the future. After all, there are already a number of commercial airliners filling other military roles today, from the Boeing 707-based KC-135 to the 747-based E-4B National Airborne Operations Center.

CONVAIR NB-36: DELIVERING NUCLEAR PAYLOADS WITH NUCLEAR-POWERED BOMBERS

The NB-36 Crusader was an experimental nuclear-powered bomber that actually flew with a nuclear reactor onboard during testing.

The NB-36 was based directly on the absolutely massive Convair B-36 Peacemaker. With a 230-foot wingspan, the B-36 still holds the title for the longest wingspan of any combat-coded aircraft. Its wingspan was so big, in fact, that you could lay a B-52 Stratofortress’ wings over the B-36’s and still have room to throw a Super Hornet on the end for good measure. Thanks to its massive size, the B-36 could fly with an 86,000-pound payload onboard — and in the 1950s, the Air Force experimented with using some of that payload capability to equip the bomber with its own nuclear powerplant — allowing it to fly almost indefinitely like a nuclear-submarine in the sky.

The NB-36 that resulted carried a one-megawatt, air-cooled nuclear reactor that hung on a hook inside its cavernous weapons bay. This reactor then had to be lowered through the bomb bay doors into shielded underground facilities for storage between flights. In theory, a nuclear-powered bomber could stay airborne for weeks at a time (if not longer) and could reach any target on the planet without the need to land or refuel.

At the time, the United States maintained a state of constant readiness in its nuclear-armed bomber fleets to serve as a potent deterrent against Soviet aggression. This policy would later mature in Operation Chrome Dome — an effort that resulted in the U.S. having airborne B-52s armed with nuclear weapons 24 hours a day for eight straight years. As you might imagine, this policy was rather expensive… but it’d get a whole lot cheaper if Uncle Sam didn’t have to pay for fuel.

Rather than using jet fuel, the NB-35’s nuclear reactor would power four GE J47 nuclear-converted piston engines, each generating 3,800 hp, which were then augmented by four additional turbojet engines that produced 5,200 lbs of thrust. The HTRE-3 was a direct-cycle system that pulled air into the compressor of the turbojet and through a plenum and intake that led to the core of the reactor where the air served as coolant. From there, the super-heated air would travel into another plenum that led to the turbine section of the engine before exiting as exhaust out the back.

But despite the effort’s promise, the risks associated with flying a nuclear reactor over American or allied airspace ultimately led it its cancellation in 1961.

LOCKHEED X-24C: A SCRAMJET-POWERED HYPERSONIC AIRCRAFT IN THE 1960S

The X-24C was part of an effort to field a scramjet-powered hypersonic research aircraft beginning in the late 1960s. Taking on the role of lead contractor, Lockheed worked side by side with the Air Force’s National Hypersonic Flight Research Facility and NASA to develop and field two hypersonic test aircraft, with each vehicle slated for 100 flights.

The decision was made to equip this new “L-301” program’s aircraft, unofficially dubbed the X-24C, with a new LR-105 rocket engine found at the time in the Atlas series of rockets. The LR-105 would launch and accelerate the X-24C to hypersonic speeds, not unlike the rocket engine that powered the X-15. From there, a second hydrogen-fueled, air-breathing scramjet (supersonic-combustion ramjet) engine mounted on its belly would fire up and take over.

The scramjet engine would propel the X-24C to sustained speeds in excess of Mach 6, reaching intended peak speeds that were higher than Mach 8, or more than 6,130 miles per hour. The aircraft itself resembled the lifting body design leveraged by the Martin Marietta X-24A and B programs that tested unpowered reentry flight characteristics.

In a real way, the L-301 program and its X-24C could be seen as the precursor to ongoing legends about Lockheed Martin’s combined cycle turbofan/scramjet SR-72, the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Mayhem program, and even Hermeus’ combined cycle turbofan/ramjet hypersonic aircraft efforts. Had the X-24C program continued, it would have given the U.S. a scramjet-powered hypersonic aircraft in the 1960s. Instead, the U.S. now appears to still be years away from fielding a reusable, airbreathing aircraft for testing, let alone service.

But by the end of 1977, however, the L-301 program and its notional X-24C were canceled in favor of a different Lockheed developmental effort that would change the value proposition associated with sheer speed. That effort, of course, was Have Blue, which later matured into the F-117 Nighthawk.

Alex Hollings is a writer, dad, and Marine veteran.

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

Image: VanderWolf Images / Shutterstock.com

My recommendations to the next Chief of Naval Operations are based on the difference between the kind of navy we have today and the kind of navy our nation needs. Today we have a forward-based navy, not an expeditionary navy. This distinction is important for remaining competitive against modern threats and guiding force design.

Due to the unique geographical position of the U.S., the Navy has the luxury of defending the nation’s interests “over there.” Since World War II, it developed and maintained a navy that was able to project power overseas; to reconstitute its combat power while still at sea or at least far from national shores; and continuously maintain proximity to competitors. This expeditionary character minimized the dependence of the fleet on shore-based and homeland-based infrastructure to sustain operations, allowing the fleet to be more logistically self-sufficient at sea.

However, late in the Cold War, the U.S. Navy started to diminish its expeditionary capability, and became more reliant on allied and friendly bases. A key development was subtle but consequential – the vertical launch system (VLS) for the surface fleet’s primary anti-air, anti-submarine, and land-attack weapons. While a very capable system, reloading VLS at sea was problematic and soon abandoned. While an aircraft carrier can be rearmed at sea, surface warships cannot, which constrains the ability of carrier strike groups to sustain forward operations without taking frequent trips back to fixed infrastructure. The Navy is revisiting the issue of reloading VLS at sea, and those efforts should be reinforced.

The next step the Navy took away from an expeditionary capability was in the 1990s, when it decommissioned most of the submarine tenders (AS), all of the repair ships (AR), and destroyer tenders (AD), and moved away from Sailor-manned Shore Intermediate Maintenance Centers (SIMA). Not only did this eliminate the ability to conduct intermediate maintenance “over there,” but it destroyed the progression of apprentice-to-journeyman-to-master technician that made the U.S. Navy Sailor one of the premier maintenance resources in the military world. Combat search and rescue, salvage, and battle damage repair are other areas in which the U.S. Navy no longer has sufficient capability for sustaining expeditionary operations.

The Navy needs a new strategy that highlights the kind of fleet the nation needs. This strategy would argue the Navy needs to be able to use the sea when needed, to deny it to the nation’s enemies, and to project force ashore when required. To accomplish this, the Navy would maintain a tempo of operations using the necessary multi-domain forces, wherever in the world they are required. The Navy’s operations and force posture should always be based on the logic that naval operations will principally be conducted “over there,” far from the nation’s borders, and with a minimum of dependence on shore-based infrastructure.

The Navy also needs a different overall force structure to return to a more balanced and expeditionary force. The modern fleet is top-heavy in large surface combatants, light in smaller combatants, and insufficient in auxiliary ships. In summary, a new force structure calls for: 11 Aircraft carriers, 10 LHA/LHDs, 21 Amphibious warfare ships, 71 Large surface combatants, 78 Small surface combatants, 66 Attack submarines, 12 Ballistic missile submarines, 34 Combat logistics forces, and 48 Support vessels.

This overall battle force of 351 ships is a more balanced and affordable force structure than what is currently under consideration.

The top thing the next CNO can do to affordably improve the U.S. Navy as a fighting force is to reduce operational tempo. Returning to predictable six-month-long deployments would improve force material readiness, morale, and retention. The tempo necessarily increased after 9/11 and the war in Iraq, but those efforts are largely over and the Navy needs to return to a rational and sustainable level of effort. The Navy will be able to make numerous and far-reaching changes to its warfighting readiness and expeditionary capability if it can manage to create a stable foundation of predictable deployment cycles.

Anthony Cowden is the Managing Director of Stari Consulting Services, co-author of Fighting the Fleet: Operational Art and Modern Fleet Combat,  author of The Naval Institute Almanac of the U.S. Navy,  and was a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy for 37 years.

This article was first published by CIMSEC.

Image: Shutterstock.

For decades, rumors have swirled about the United States secretly operating highly classified black, triangular craft known as the TR-3A and TR-3B, with some going as far as to claim that these platforms were designed using reverse-engineered alien technology. In fact, in the early ’90s, it was even reported that these covert craft flew alongside the F-117 during combat operations over Iraq in Desert Storm.

In our last installment of this series, we explored a meta-investigation conducted by the National Institute of Discovery Science regarding black triangle UFOs seen over the United States. In this installment, we’ll explore the possibility that the United States could have secretly funded the development of such a platform.

COULD THESE BLACK TRIANGLES HAVE BEEN SECRET AMERICAN AIRCRAFT?

The United States has placed a heavy emphasis on aviation technology since the very inception of manned flight, with the U.S. Army placing an order for the world’s first military aircraft from the Wright Brothers in 1908. Today, America’s warfare doctrine leans heavily on the nation’s ability to take and keep control of the airspace over any battlefield the world over. Of course, maintaining that capability in the face of increasingly capable international competitors has always required both significant investment and equally significant secrecy.

You can find a laundry list of secret aircraft programs that, once disclosed, still seemed awfully alien. Not only were highly classified stealth aircraft like the F-117 flying for years before the government acknowledged it existed, but even more exotic secret aircraft are now known to have been prowling the skies over the Southwestern United States for years.

Boeing’s YF-118 Bird of Prey, as just one example, started its design process in 1992 within the secretive confines of the U.S. military’s Groom Lake facility (known to most as Area 51) and conducted a total of 40 classified test flights over Nevada between 1996 and 1999.

The very alien-looking Bird of Prey was only disclosed to the public by Boeing in 2002 because the company financed the entire $67 million program without a penny of taxpayer funding. It’s been widely reported that other more classified government-funded technology demonstrators will never see similar disclosure, with some even reportedly being buried in the sands of Area 51 to be lost to time.

The Bird of Prey was actively flying while plane spotters and UFO junkies were collecting reports of other alleged secret aircraft like the TR-3B and the hypersonic reconnaissance platform many called Aurora. Sandboxx News has covered Aurora in depth before. While we’re all but certain that name was actually tied to the B-2 Spirit program, there is a fair amount of evidence to suggest that something similar to what people were reporting as the Aurora may have really been in testing, housed in the same secretive hangars as Boeing’s Bird of Prey and other secret platforms already lost to time.

Although defense spending did see consistent reductions following the fall of the Soviet Union, it’s worth noting that, until the late 1990s, the United States was still allocating a larger percentage of the nation’s GDP to defense than it does today. In fact, when adjusted for inflation, America’s 1992 defense budget of $325.03 billion equates to more than $718 billion today – meaning Uncle Sam certainly had the money to fund a variety of classified programs. Further, in 1991 it was reported that the U.S. Air Force had devoted more than $60.3 billion to classified research, development, and procurement over the five preceding years – that’s the equivalent of nearly $137 billion today, or enough to purchase more than 1,500 F-35As in today’s market.

REPORTS OF AMERICA’S TR-3A BLACK TRIANGLE SERVING IN DESERT STORM

In 1991, America’s Black Triangle was seemingly revealed to the world in a series of articles published by Aviation Week and Popular Mechanics. According to Aviation Week, the stealthy aircraft was designed by Northrop – the same firm responsible for the black, triangular B-2 Spirit – in 1976 alongside Lockheed’s Have Blue efforts that would ultimately produce the F-117. Northrop called its stealthy triangular aircraft the Tactical High Altitude Penetrator (THAP).

According to Aviation Week, the Air Force ultimately awarded Northrop a fixed-price research and development and demonstration/validation contract near the end of 1978 to build a prototype high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft based on their THAP design. That prototype, Aviation Week claimed, made its first test flight out of Area 51 in 1981, and a production contract was subsequently awarded in 1982.

In a follow-up article, Aviation Week went on to claim that Northrop’s TR-3A was about 42 feet long, 14 feet high, and had a wingspan of 60-65 feet, which describes a much smaller aircraft than popular reports made the “TR-3B” to be. Yet, this would seem to be in keeping with a sighting that is often attributed to Aurora over the North Sea in 1989, reported by a trained airfield observer named Chris Gibson.

According to Aviation Week’s unnamed sources, these aircraft “may have” been deployed to Alaska, Britain, Panama, and Okinawa, as well as flying in concert with the F-117 Nighthawk during combat operations in Iraq to provide laser-designation of targets over Baghdad.

That claim, while not officially substantiated, might explain why the documents given to Iraqi MiG pilots to identify the F-117 in the air also showed the silhouette of the B-2. Confusion over just what was being seen in the skies over Iraq may have prompted them to include the only other black triangle aircraft America was known to fly. However, the B-2 was not in service then, which would raise the question of what they actually saw. Though, admittedly, this line of reasoning may be a bit of a stretch.

Popular Mechanics discussed the Northrop TR-3A alongside other undisclosed but reportedly sighted aircraft in their coverage, including another boomerang-shaped platform said to be completely silent and boasting a massive wingspan that stretched between 600 and 800 feet – or three to four times the size of the B-52 Stratofortress.

Like Aviation Week, Popular Mechanics also reported on the TR-3A being significantly quieter than other aircraft, but not silent, as is often reported about the TR-3B.

BUT EVIDENCE OF TR-3A’S EXISTENCE ISN’T QUITE AS STRONG AS IT SEEMS

Those articles in Aviation Week that so authoritatively relayed the story of the TR-3A’s development? Well, they were both written by or with the support of William Scott – a journalist who is now known for sometimes getting a little too excited about the unusual topics he covered, resulting in some serious, if likely unintentional, stretching of the truth.

In 1990, for instance, he reported that the United States had a secret hypersonic bomber that could launch nuclear weapons from vertical launch tubes. That aircraft, of course, never manifested either. The TR-3 designation, many now believe, was the result of Scott simply mishearing stories about Tier 3, which was a program that followed Tier 2 (an effort that resulted in the Global Hawk drone). Tier 3 was supposed to be an unmanned SR-71 successor that was also known as “Quartz,” but that ultimately didn’t make it beyond the design stage. Elements of the Tier 3 program, known as Tier 3 Minus, did ultimately result in Lockheed and Boeing building the Darkstar in 1996 – no, not the hypersonic one Maverick flew, but rather a much slower drone meant for ISR duties.

In fact, when you save this image of the Darkstar from Wikimedia Commons, the file name includes both Darkstar and “Tier 3.”

And when you read the Popular Mechanics coverage that was published in 1991, you’ll find that it pulls primarily from Scott’s reporting in Aviation Week.

Many, including me, were struck by the details in the Aviation Week story because it’s a well-respected outlet with a history of having insider information. But the outlet also has a well-recorded history of publishing some less-than-factual accounts of black aircraft programs over the years; stories with little in the way of disclosed sources that made lofty claims about a near-term future that never manifests.

In 2006, space historian and policy analyst Dwayne Day summed up how academics now perceive Scott’s 1990 coverage of the TR-3A:

“The Manta story demonstrates a pattern that Scott repeats in all of his black airplane stories. Usually there is a small bit of real information about a classified aircraft project. Scott then connects alleged sightings of an unusual aircraft in flight to this bit of information. Then the article is padded out with a large amount of speculation, usually involving various studies and research projects conducted by various contractors. The characteristics are always the same, however: he never quotes anybody by name who has any direct connection to the alleged program, and he never even includes anonymous quotes of anybody who supposedly knows the big picture about the alleged program.”

But this isn’t the end of the story for these unusual black triangle sightings. In our next installment in this series, we’ll explore stories about the TR-3B – a similar black triangle that’s said to be powered by reverse-engineered alien technology. We’ll also look into the real patents that may support these claims.

Alex Hollings is a writer, dad, and Marine veteran.

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

For Navy SEAL trainees, one of the least favorite parts of BUD/S training is hydrographic reconnaissance. Given the hours spent shivering in the cold Pacific Ocean making repeated dives down to map out the coastline on a given target beach for a future amphibious landing, it is no wonder that BUD/S trainees lack enthusiasm for this mission. It is cold, tiring, lengthy, and involves intricate documentation of the results of the recon after the exercise is complete. And, oh yeah, it also takes place right after Hell Week, making it even harder to stay awake while trying to draw a hydrographic recon chart.

Conversely, underwater demolition training during BUD/S Third Phase – held out at San Clemente Island – is (and please pardon the pun) a blast. Trainees make numerous breath-hold dives down to fix haversacks full of explosives onto manmade underwater obstacles, and then blow them up once all the charges are set. Again, the point of this training is to prepare future SEALs to clear beaches for amphibious landings.

THE HISTORY OF THE MISSION

Hydrographic reconnaissance and underwater demolition are the very first of what would come to make up the set of Navy SEAL missions. In fact, the need for those capabilities in World War II is what led to the creation of the Navy’s Underwater Demolition Teams (UDTs), the precursors of the SEALs. UDTs were stood up to clear beaches that would be invaded by the U.S. Army and Marines.

Imagine a tranquil beach that provides an easy spot on which to land an invasion force in order to take control of a strategically valuable island. Now, if you are the force defending that island from invasion, you will do everything you can to make it extremely dangerous for the enemy to land on the beach. That would likely entail installing machine gun emplacements overlooking the beach and steel or concrete obstacles in the water near the shore to prevent easy boat access to it. In that way, you’d make the beach a deadly shooting gallery for amphibious forces getting hung up on the obstacles while coming ashore.

In response to those kinds of defenses, military leaders in World War II decided they needed units to recon the target beaches, map out the near shore seabed and beach terrain, the natural and manmade obstacles near shore and on shore, and then remove those obstacles before an invasion. The UDTs were thus born, and the mission continues to this day, now in the hands of the Navy SEALs.

WHAT GOES INTO PLANNING THEM?

Extensive mission planning is required for a hydrographic reconnaissance operation. First, the target beach must be identified, and then the most appropriate method of insertion chosen for the SEAL elements. Insertion might be done by air, surface naval vessel, submersible, or even full-sized submarine, or through some combination of those methods. In today’s world, it is also possible that this recon mission might employ automated systems and vehicles that replace some of the tasks previously carried out by humans.

Once a recon is successfully executed, and target obstacles identified, SEAL units would then have to plan and execute the underwater demolition mission. This would likely entail identifying the desired “lanes” through which the invading force would reach the beaches and splitting SEAL elements into smaller units that would each be responsible for clearing one or more of those lanes.

Ideally, the recon and explosives placement is done in a clandestine manner, and the actual demolition catches the enemy off guard and kicks off the invasion. In the worst-case scenario, SEAL elements would have to place explosives while under fire from shore-based guns, and while being supported by naval gunfire that tries to take out those guns. As you can imagine, the mission can get extremely dangerous in a full-on World War II-style amphibious invasion.

ARE HYDROGRAPHIC RECONNAISSANCE AND UNDERWATER DEMOLITION STILL RELEVANT?

Some might argue that these missions are irrelevant in today’s world of drones and advanced unmanned recon platforms. Those are arguments beyond this author, who is no longer privy to the most cutting-edge technologies of the U.S. military. What I do know, though, is that it seems shortsighted to rule out the possibility of amphibious landings in a future large peer-to-peer conflict. Hydrographic reconnaissance and underwater demolitions are capabilities that U.S. military commanders no doubt want to have at their disposal, and as long as that remains true, Navy SEALs will continue to keep them in their bag of tricks.

It is not a mission that the U.S. military has had to execute in the recent past, but it is a capability that remains important for possible future conflicts in which amphibious invasions may again become necessary.

Frumentarius is a former Navy SEAL, former CIA officer, and currently a Captain in a career fire department in the Midwest.

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

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The Paris Gun was used by Germany to shell Paris from a great distance during the First World War. It was the largest cannon in the world at the time.

Pressure has been put on Ukraine during the summer counter-offensive to make notable, media worthy gains in taking back lost territories from Russia. The amount of equipment being supplied by their allies and the motivation for more advanced systems depends upon the level of support the public has for Ukraine’s offensive in those nations supporting Ukraine financially and militarily. Even if the public in allied countries see the good in helping Ukraine, the amount of pressure on locals financially, via inflationary pressures, and their level of safety in their own community, will be juxtaposed against support for the war. For those policy makers wanting to support Ukraine and its people, it should be acknowledged that pressure on locals in their own countries at least need to be vocalized as being of equal priority to supporting Ukraine in the conflict. Ignoring this goal will do more harm to Ukraine in the medium term than denying them Leopard 2A6s and F-16s.

A standstill in the conflict and entrenchment can be harmful for the war effort if it extends the conflict past the support it has outside of Ukraine. A First World War scenario might be forming in some parts of the front where artillery exchanges and barrages make up much of the tactical movement on the field. The logistical weight of the conflict has already depleted the stock of arms on both sides, and with mothballed equipment from the United States coming though to the front, and Russia seeking compatible weapons from a Soviet design heritage, a longer term conflict might be the end result. Actions by Russia that might give them some realistic advantages comes from seeking weapons from North Korea for its forces in Ukraine. Despite some equipment being out of date, a 100mm cannon and armour that can mount ERA protection is better than not having it at all, and such equipment is still harmful to enemy infantry. Gaining access to 152mm artillery shells can create chaos for the attacking side, a role Ukraine has taken on this year with expected difficulty. Even a 1960s artillery shell can cause a great deal of damage to modern equipment, and many modern barrels have already gone past their effective time of use. With modern targeting systems, old Soviet equipment can be as effective as some modern systems.

Acts such as pushing for a new global currency via the BRICS+ nations will be less of a threat to the US Dollar and the political weight it gives to the United States. While Russia is already linking its economy Eastwards to China and India, the reality is that the diverse needs of the initial four BRIC nations was unsuccessful in dominating the world economy as a group. Expanding the BRICS+ only exacerbates the problem by adding other countries to the group, with more diverse interests, varied allegiances and a few in open conflict with each other. There are no conditions between those nations that would allow them to operate and share a common currency at this point.

A standstill might be exactly what Russia is seeking as a long term strategy, as they know that local citizens in countries supporting Ukraine are paying for much of the aid without payment in return, have limited patience for added stresses in their own lives, and have their own political divisions that work in Russia’s favour. Countries outside of Central Europe may not feel an immediate threat from the war, but will respond if their fuel, heat and employment are effected by the lack of energy in their community. Some of Ukraine’s allies who can help resist breaking their own environmental policies to aid Ukraine, and many countries have local crime and drug problems that affect citizens daily while the price of basic goods increase. For this reason, Russia has withdrawn from the Grain Deal and has attacked some of Ukraine’s grain supplies in Odesa, a port that ships essential food to much of the world. If Ukraine is to be helped, local Governments in those nations providing aid can no longer ignore local problems, as citizens have a limited amount of patience, health, and money to support themselves and an extended war policy from home.

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The inauspicious return of the Cold War strategy of “Pactomania.”