The National Interest

James Holmes

Security, Asia

China wants to deny others access to the South China Sea while keeping free access to trade and military routes for itself.

Key point: Washington knows that Beijing would love to push it completely out of the Western Pacific. Here is how America could try to prevent that from happening.

Suppose the United States and its allies erect a “Great Wall in reverse,” deploying anti-ship, anti-aircraft, and anti-submarine armaments on and around the islands constituting the first island chain.

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will not submit meekly while the allies curb its freedom of movement between its home waters and the Western Pacific. Instead, PLA soldiers, sailors, and aviators will try to puncture, outflank, or otherwise nullify the wall, regaining access to the wider world. They must—lest China forfeit the export and import trade that underwrites its “dream” of prosperity and national dignity, not to mention its capacity to project military might outside its immediate environs. But how?

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

Peering through a glass darkly now may help the allies discern what the red team may do. In turn, foresight may help them get ahead in the inevitable next round of strategic competition, devising countermeasures to defeat PLA efforts to defeat the wall. And on and on the competition will go.

Impelling a Great Wall strategy is the notion that the allies must reply to the challenge manifest in China’s theater-wide “anti-access/area-denial” defenses, which aim to make things tough on U.S. and allied forces seeking entry to embattled Western Pacific waters, skies, or landmasses. China has essayed access-denial on a grand geographic scale, hoping to ward off U.S. reinforcements dashing to the relief of Taiwan, Japan, or some other Asian friend. Rigging barricades across short, defensible narrow seas would remind Beijing that access-denial is not just a Chinese thing. The allies can contest access as well, and they can make geography their ally in a way China cannot.

It’s far easier and cheaper to plug a strait, preventing a Chinese ship from exiting the China seas or returning from beyond, than it is to detect, track, and target a U.S. warship traversing the trackless plain that is the Pacific Ocean. Advantage: America.

That island-chain defense is taking hold within Pentagon circles is palpable even as U.S. military strategy recesses more and more into the hush-hush realm of classified intelligence. Just study acquisition patterns along with the guarded words military potentates and their political masters do utter in public. The U.S. Marine Corps is acquiring truck-mounted launchers capable of lofting anti-ship missiles seaward. Likewise is the U.S. Army. The U.S. Air Force has practiced fitting its bombers with precision-guided sea mines. The U.S. Navy is experimenting with unmanned undersea vehicles optimal for lurking in narrow seas to find or pummel hostile shipping from beneath. Etc.

Yet the PLA will not cower before an allied Great Wall, no matter how formidable. How will Beijing seek to win? By harnessing diplomatic, economic, and military implements throughout the continuum from peacetime strategic competition to armed strife and back again. There’s more to access-denial than weapons, sensors, and computers. It is a variety of grand strategy aimed at deterring an adversary from entering geographic space the access-denier places off-limits, retarding that adversary’s advance into contested space should deterrence fail, or barring entry altogether in the ideal case.

What countermoves are available to Beijing as it surveys an increasingly solid first island chain? In peacetime, it can attempt to corrode or fracture the chain through deft grand strategy. China commands advantages in wealth, geographic proximity, and sheer permanence. Asian capitals covet good trade relations with China. Trade lifts all boats, helping countries prosper. At the same time, Asians are acutely conscious that Big Brother lies just over the horizon and increasingly brandishes a big stick. America may come and go from the Western Pacific; China is forever. Its status as Asia’s central power lets Beijing combine economic inducements with diplomatic outreach, friendly or coercive.

The goal of Chinese diplomacy is to convince neighbors to withhold support from U.S. military strategy. An island-chain defense can accomplish little if Asian allies refuse U.S. forces access to their soil. That’s why Xi Jinping & Co. have wooed Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte with such fervor. Beijing can open a breach in the maritime Great Wall without firing a shot if Duterte closes Philippine territory to U.S. forces for the sake of trade and comity with China. Alliance-breaking represents Beijing’s best option in peacetime—and it’s an option that comes naturally, consonant as it is with Chinese strategic traditions.

Still, China’s adventures in dealmaking could fall flat. The U.S.-led alliance system could hold, and martial strife ensue. What then? Rather than project-specific scenarios whereby the PLA might attempt a breakout, let’s look at factors likely to shape China’s wall-busting strategy. First of all, this is a classic case of perimeter defense. In this case, the perimeter is made up of fixed points—namely the islands—and the waters and military implements between.

Like other martial sages, Carl von Clausewitz is no fan of perimeter defense. In fact, he pronounces it a “ruinous form” of “cordon-warfare.” That’s a cutting indictment. However strong the defending force may be, it must spread out in a vain effort to make the line impenetrable. Forces that aspire to be strong everywhere tend to accomplish little anywhere. In other words, parceling out defenders along a distended perimeter thins out the combat power available at any single point. A feeble but astute foe could mass its forces at one point and punch through.

Clausewitz offers a partial remedy if cordon warfare is unavoidable. He exhorts commanders to keep their defensive lines short, refusing to attenuate firepower any more than necessary. And they should lavish fire support on those manning the ramparts, helping offset the problem of dispersed strength.

By Clausewitzian logic it appears the best places for the PLA to stage a breakthrough would be the Miyako Strait and the Luzon Strait. Miyako Strait lies south of Okinawa. It’s the widest aperture between the China seas and the Western Pacific, spanning about 158 miles. It is also the entryway of choice for PLA vessels and aircraft. Chinese commanders thus might incline to force their favorite strait—especially since allied defenses have more geographic space to protect there and could prove more permeable. That section of the Great Wall could prove collapsible if stormed by determined attackers.

The Luzon Strait lies to the south, separating Taiwan from the main Philippine island of Luzon. It thus rests between a not-quite-ally and a wobbly ally of the United States—opening up space for diplomatic mischief-making on China’s part. It also boasts geophysical advantages. The strait lies far south of the main U.S. Navy and Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force bases at Yokosuka and Sasebo. Distance would stretch allied logistics unless Manila permitted the allies to use Subic Bay and other Philippine facilities. In other words, it would prove hard to sustain a nautical cordon without help from President Duterte. And Duterte is a weak reed on which to rest one’s fortunes.

Policing the Luzon Strait could prove taxing in the best of times, for anti-submarine forces in particular. The deep Bashi Channel runs through the strait, offering submarines and other undersea vehicles a convenient gateway between the South China Sea and Pacific Ocean. Moreover, environmental and hydrographic conditions prevalent in the strait befriend those who want to elude detection; their assailants less so. In short, the Miyako and Luzon straits are not the only candidate sites for the PLA’s great escape. But they are prime candidates.

There is at least one variant to a PLA breakout strategy. Rather than burst through one or more straits in force, the PLA Navy could try to sneak forces through the cordon and employ them to assault islands from easterly points of the compass. Military folk love to “envelop”—meaning surround—their objectives in order to sunder them from outside support. Insinuating forces into the Pacific, then mounting attacks from all axes, would bolster PLA forces’ chances of success amid trying circumstances.

Second, PLA commanders might mount a broad-front offensive rather than thrust a spearhead at a single point. Strategist Edward Luttwak portrays the choice between advancing along a broad or a narrow front as the pivotal choice in theater strategy. Broad-front operations would probe the allied defenses all along a major segment of the island chain, more or less simultaneously. Where they found weakness, PLA units would pour through in what English soldier B. H. Liddell Hart calls an “expanding torrent,” supported and followed by adjacent Chinese forces. If successful, the torrent would further erode the defenses—widening the breach to the shores of the islands adjoining the strait. Access to the Pacific would be restored at least temporarily.

Third, In all likelihood, PLA commanders would want to wrest the islands flanking a newly reopened strait from their guardians. Emplacing PLA forces in a commanding position would consolidate their hold on the contested seaway. Otherwise, the allies might rush in reinforcements to cement the line—and imprison Chinese forces within the China seas anew. Seizing islands would demand multiple amphibious landings coupled with fire support from the PLA Air Force and Navy. And indeed, Beijing has plowed considerable effort and resources into amphibious forces in recent years.

Now, it’s doubtful whether Beijing would content itself with forcing a single passage and the islands overshadowing it. Alfred Thayer Mahan deprecates maritime powers that have only one access point to the high seas. Their poverty of access exposes them to blockade and desolation. To forestall such a fate, Chinese strategy might seek to blow open a wide arc in the first island chain, diversifying China’s geostrategic portfolio. Suppose the Miyako Strait were the principal target of a maritime assault. Rather than settle for momentary control of the strait, PLA forces might swing north toward Okinawa and the Japanese home islands or south toward Taiwan. Sweeping along the island chain would hand them control of multiple islands and straits—easing China’s Mahanian plight.

Which would it be? A southerly turn appears far more promising. Going north would probably demand that the PLA first subdue Okinawa, home to powerful U.S. and Japanese air forces. It would certainly mean approaching the Japanese home islands, the seat of U.S.-Japanese armed might. Clausewitz warns of the perils of plunging into an enemy’s territory, where the enemy enjoys advantages conferred by dense military resources and proximity to likely scenes of action. His admonition would hold sway in an island-chain war even if PLA forces island-hopped around Okinawa the way General Douglas MacArthur bypassed Japanese fortresses such as Truk and Rabaul three-quarters of a century ago. Worse, it would leave Okinawa-based air and sea forces to the rear of the advancing PLA vanguard.

A forbidding prospect. A pirouette toward Taiwan, by contrast, would aim the Chinese campaign toward weakness—elongating allied logistics while interposing PLA forces between the targeted islands and forces coming to their relief from Okinawa or the home islands. In that case, battlefield dynamics would gladden the hearts of Chinese commanders and officialdom. Success in a southerly venture would ameliorate China’s access problem. As a side benefit, it would drive a salient into the Pacific Ocean, granting the PLA positions to Taiwan’s north and astride the sea lanes to Japan’s south. Positions bestow influence. This is an operational option with allure.

And fourth, it’s worth noting that China will have the initiative in island-chain combat. Perimeter defense is a mostly static affair. It has “negative aims,” as Clausewitz would put it, meaning it strives to keep a foe from taking something away rather than trying to take something from the foe. Hence it involves awaiting blows. The negative attitude underlying perimeter defense opens up a menu of options for an enterprising antagonist.

Menus list delicacies. Master of deception Barton Whaley observes that a force that can plausibly pursue more than one objective puts its enemy on the horns of a dilemma. It compels enemy commanders to choose between dispersing forces in a bid to protect all potential objectives and guessing at the one true objective and committing resources to defend it. Guess wrong and you could lose it all. Or as General William Tecumseh Sherman once encapsulated his battlefield strategy: put your opponent on the horns of a dilemma, then gore him with one of them!

In a way, U.S. Navy war planners had it easy during the interwar decades. They could afford to assume the United States would lose Far Eastern possessions of less than paramount importance, chiefly the Philippines and Guam, at the outset of a Pacific war against Japan. This simplified matters. Raw facts of power let them concentrate on explaining how U.S. joint forces should fight their way back into the Western Pacific to retake these possessions and starve out Japan. War Plan Orange and its successors were the result.

Today, though, the United States cannot afford to surrender its commitments in East Asia. An early defeat could see China conquer Taiwan, wrench the Senkaku Islands from Japan, or otherwise order things to Beijing’s liking and Washington’s detriment. Allies would lose faith in U.S. martial prowess and might accommodate themselves to the wishes of a strongman China. The alliance system would falter, and America’s strategic position with it.

Deployed forces, then, must stand until the U.S. Pacific Fleet and affiliated forces can battle their way into the arena to join them. Like their Plan Orange forerunners, war planners today must figure out how to crack the access-denial problem. But they must also shoulder the burden of figuring out how to balk Chinese strategy—and deny Beijing the fait accompli it craves—until the cavalry thunders to the rescue.

Revisiting the basics of perimeter defense would make a good start. After all, a reverse Great Wall is an inert obstacle without wily defenders. Build the wall—and educate the sentries destined to guard it.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College, coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific, and author of A Brief Guide to Maritime Strategy. The views voiced here are his alone. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest

Image: Reuters.

Sebastien Roblin

History, Asia

Japan had already waged biological warfare in China.

Here's What You Need to Know: Plans to employ bioweapons cannot help but seem especially short-sighted given the indiscriminate and unpredictable nature of diseases.

During World War II, Japan infamously deployed biological weapons in attacks that infected and killed thousands of Chinese citizen. Less well known, however, is the fact that Japanese strategists also planned to deploy plague bombs against U.S. forces on at least four separate occasions—each only narrowly averted by circumstance. The last such attack, known as Operations Cherry Blossoms at Night, envisioned bombing San Diego with plague-infected fleas.

The Japanese bioweapons program was the brainchild of Gen. Shirō Ishii, who in the 1930s received backing at the highest levels to form a biological warfare unit known as Unit 731, deceptively designated the “Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department” of the Kwantung Army deployed to China. Unit 731 established a massive 150-building complex in the Pingfang District of Harbin (then part of the puppet state of Manchuria), where it developed and tested its weapons on involuntary human subjects, around two-thirds of whom were Chinese, with most of the rest coming from the Soviet Union. Their subjects would later include a small number of Allied POWs, Koreans and Pacific islanders.

One cannot overstate the monstrousness of Unit 731’s testing program. Human beings were vivisected while still alive without anesthetic, or had major organs removed to see how long they would survive, then had their remains pickled in jars. Subjects had their limbs frozen until afflicted with frostbite, then had those limbs beaten with sticks or amputated. Others afflicted with syphilis, including children, were forced to have sex at gunpoint with other prisoners, and the progression of the disease was then observed. Live human beings were used in weapons tests of grenades, poison gas, flamethrowers and bombs—including air-dropped biological bombs carrying anthrax or fluid-form bacteria.

However, the chief weapon favored by Japanese biowarfare specialists appears to have been the plague, the bacterial infection which wiped out much of Europe’s population in the fourteenth century during the Black Death. A few days after infection, a plague-afflicted person may begin exhibiting symptoms, including grotesque buboes, high fever, gangrene in the extremities and chills or seizures, with a death rate of around 50 percent for untreated individuals.

Unit 731 was capable of producing around sixty pounds of plague agent in a few days, and the method of transmission mimicked that found in nature: plague-infested fleas. The fleas were stored in ceramic Uji-50 bombs with celluloid fins and dropped out of airplanes onto civilian communities. The released fleas went on to infest local rats, which in turn would contaminate food stores, spreading the plague to human beings.

This delivery mechanism was employed by Japanese bombers over the cities of Ningbo and Changde in China, and on some occasions proved “successful” in starting a plague, although whether casualties number in the hundreds or tens of thousands remains disputed. Following the Doolittle raid over Tokyo in 1942, Japanese troops launched a revenge campaign called Operation Sei-Go, which included the employment of cholera, typhoid, plague and dysentery bioweapons—which in addition to killing tens of thousands of Chinese, may have backfired and killed 1,700 Japanese troops by one estimate.

Having used China as a laboratory for its bioweapons, the Japanese military began searching for ways to use the weapons against its chief military threat. In March 1942, plans were made to drop 150 million infected fleas in ten separate plague-bomb attacks against U.S. and Philippine forces, who were fighting a desperate last stand on the swampy Bataan Peninsula of the Philippines. However, Allied forces surrendered that April, before the attack could be executed. That same year, Japanese military commanders mulled biological attacks on Dutch Harbor, Alaska; Calcutta, India; and parts of Australia, but didn’t carry them out. Other schemes proposed including infecting U.S. cattle and grain crops, or using balloon bombs as a means to disperse plague agents in North America.

Japan’s military fortunes had turned for the worse by 1944, when U.S. forces launched an amphibious invasion of Saipan Island in the Marianas. A biological warfare detachment preemptively detached there was overrun before it could deploy its weapons. Separately, a Japanese submarine was dispatched to the island of Truk with twenty biowarfare specialists onboard, including two medical officers and deadly pathogens. However, it was sunk on route by another American submarine, allegedly the USS Swordfish. During the bloody battle of Iwo Jima, Unit 731 even planned to deploy bioweapons via two German-made gliders, according to Japanese pilot Shoichi Matsumoto. However, the two gliders broke down in flight while being transferred from Japan to Unit 731’s base in China.

As the specter of total defeat loomed ever larger over the Japanese military, Ishii conceived Operation PX in December of 1944 as a last-ditch suicide mission on the continental United States. The target: San Diego, California. The delivery mechanism would be new I-400 class of submarine aircraft carriers nearing completion—the largest type of submarine to enter service during World War II. These massive vessels measured well over a football field in length at 122 meters, displaced 6,670 tons, and carried a 140-millimeter gun and three Aichi M6A Seiran floatplanes. These could be stowed in the sub’s hangar thanks to their folding wings and removable floats.

By using similar methods to the plague attack in China on a more densely populated urban area, it was hoped that plague-flea bombs would start an epidemic that would kill tens of thousands of Californians. Furthermore, commando teams aboard the submarines would land on U.S. soil and further disseminate cholera and plague.

The attack, codenamed Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night at Ishii’s insistence, was scheduled for September 22, 1945—five weeks after the Japanese surrender on August 15. While some sources characterize the war’s ending as aborting the attack, others state the bioweapon bombing was cancelled considerably earlier in March of 1945 by Gen Yoshijiro Umezu, who recognized how useless it would be. Even in the “best case” that the plague caused thousands of casualties and a degree of economic disruption in the United States, it would have been delusional to believe it could reverse Japan’s calamitous situation on the battlefields of the western Pacific. However, an account by flight instructor Toshimi Mizobuchi implies that personnel were being assembled as late as July to carry out the attack.

In any event, the Japanese Navy appears to have had different plans for the I-400 submarines, initially intending to use them to deliver a devastating strike on the Panama Canal. The Seiran pilots spent time in June practicing attack runs on simulated canal locks when the mission was scrapped, and another scheme was hatched to launch surprise attacks on U.S. forces assembling at the Ulithi Atoll, with the M6As illegally disguised with U.S. markings. The two operational submarines, I-400 and I-401, were at sea heading for Ulithi when they received word of the Japanese surrender, and promptly catapulted or shoved their planes into the sea.

Following the Japanese surrender, Ishii cut a deal with the U.S. military: he would hand over all the research data from his atrocious experiments on live human subjects in exchange for immunity from war-crimes prosecution for him and his scientists—an arrangement not dissimilar to that struck with many scientists in Nazi Germany. The chief of the U.S. bioweapons program deemed the research “absolutely invaluable” because its findings could not have been obtained in the United States “due to scruples attached to experiments on humans.” Years later, there were even rumors that Ishii had traveled to Maryland to work with the U.S. bioweapons program at Fort Detrick.

The Soviet Union was not as lenient towards twelve members of Unit 731 it captured in Manchuria, finding them guilty of war crimes in the Khabarovsk trials in 1949—though the confessions by the accused were dismissed for decades as Cold War propaganda in the West. In any case, the Soviet Union also scooped up all the documentation it could find in the Pingfang facility, and used it to build its own bioweapons complex in Sverdlovsk, Russia (now Yekaterinburg). Focused on the production of anthrax, the Sverdlovsk facility experienced a deadly leak in 1979 that killed dozens.

Plans to employ bioweapons cannot help but seem especially short-sighted given the indiscriminate and unpredictable nature of diseases. If the attack at Bataan had been carried out, for example, soon-to-be victorious Japanese troops would likely have fallen victim to their own plague. Just as air raids broadly targeting the civilian populations generally proved both cruel and of little military effectiveness during World War II, biological weapons were mostly “useful” for killing civilians. And if a bioweapon ever had proven successful in triggering a pandemic, such an outcome could have proven disastrous for both sides of the conflict.

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

This article first appeared in 2017.

Image: Reuters

Sebastien Roblin

Security,

Since the 1970s, the Russian military has possessed a diverse fleet of armored vehicles it can drop out of airplanes … with parachutes, of course.

Here's What You Need to Know: Though the era of mass airborne drops behind enemy lines may have passed, air-deployable vehicles still have great utility, even if they’re not especially tough.

Since the 1970s, the Russian military has possessed a diverse fleet of armored vehicles it can drop out of airplanes … with parachutes, of course.

The BMD family of infantry fighting vehicles is armed to the teeth with autocannons, machine guns and anti-tank missiles. And despite being very much a product of the Cold War, the little fighting vehicles have continued to see combat — and the new BMD-4 variant is even packing a 100-millimeter gun.

How did an airborne assault tank even come about?

Following World War II, the Soviet Union expanded its elite air landing forces — a separate branch of the military known as the VDV, which at its peak consisted of 15 Guards Airborne divisions and 13 independent brigades. Soviet strategists foresaw deploying the VDV far inside enemy territory as part of their “deep battle” doctrine, with different airborne units dedicated to strategic, operational and tactical missions.

For example, an operational airborne regiment or division might drop 100 to 300 kilometers behind enemy lines to capture river crossings, enemy command centers, logistical bases and nuclear weapons facilities.

However, Soviet military theorists were aware of the problems airborne infantry had faced during World War II, particularly in massive air-landing operations such as Operation Overlord and Market Garden — the latter which resulted in the virtual destruction of the British 1st Airborne Division.

Upon hitting the ground, scattered and disorganized paratroopers lacking mobile anti-tank weapons were likely to be slammed by counter-attacking enemy tanks. Furthermore, once landed, airborne infantry were slow to advance on objectives because they lacked their own motor vehicles.

The Soviet solution, of course, involved giving the airborne troopers their own armored vehicles — ones that can either be air dropped, lifted by helicopter, or rolled readily from a transport plane at a rough satellite airfield recently captured from the enemy.

In 1966, the Soviet Union introduced the BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle, a new type of armored personnel carrier which gave mechanized infantry squads the firepower to take on tanks and entrenched ground troops. The 14.6-ton BMP-1 packs a machine gun, an anti-tank missile launcher for sniping tanks at long range, and a 73-millimeter low-pressure cannon.

Soviet designers crammed the same formidable armament package onto the much smaller and lighter aluminum-hulled BMD-1, or Boyevaya Machine Desanta, meaning “Airborne Combat Vehicle.” The vehicle even boasts two additional machine guns on the corners of the front hull.

The smaller, eight-ton BMD-1 is most easily visually distinguished by its shorter front hull compared to the BMP-1.

The speedy, tracked vehicles can attain roads speeds of 50 miles per hour, 25 percent faster than the BMP-1. By 1982, each 6,500-man Soviet airborne division had 330 BMD-1s on its organizational chart, effectively making them into light mechanized units.

BMDs are compact enough that Mi-6 and Mi-26 transport helicopters can carry them, and up to three can fit inside larger Il-76 transport jets, or two within an An-12 medium transport. Heavy-duty hydraulic suspension helps the BMD cope with the impact of an air drop, and also allows for adjustable ground clearance ranging between 10 and 45 centimeters.

Originally, the Soviets’ plan was to drop the vehicles in cargo palettes separately from their crew of four, but the operators often landed far away from their tanks and had trouble finding them. The solution — simple enough — was for the driver and commander to hit the ground with a jeep and drive to their BMD.

The armored vehicles still experienced rough landings while floating down to the earth at 15 to 20 meters per second, so the Soviet Union developed a rocket parachute. Touch-sensitive rods dangling below the BMD pallet activates a retro rocket upon hitting the ground, helping slow terminal landing velocity to a safer six meters per second.

The BMDs can float in more ways than one.

The light vehicles are fully amphibious, propelled through water at speeds of up to six miles per hour by two water jets similar to those on the PT-76 light tank. Transitioning the vehicle for water operations merely involves lowering a trim vane, raising a driver’s periscope and activating a bilge pump.

BMDs brought paratroopers one more key advantage — the vehicles are protected from many of the effects of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, giving the crews a chance to survive on a contaminated battlefield.

However, the BMD-1 arrived with several major downsides. Its smaller, cramped passenger compartments have a lower passenger capacity of just three or four paratroopers, who must exit out a top hatch, a far more vulnerable disembarkation method than via the rear ramp on a BMP. In recent fighting in Ukraine, infantry have often elected to ride on top of their BMDs, rendering somewhat absurd the entire premise of an armored transport.

For this reason, some observers consider the BMD to be more of a light tank than a true infantry fighting vehicle.

Furthermore, the BMD has lightweight aluminum armor — not steel — which is prone to catching fire and melting, resulting in many battle-damaged BMDs being reduced to charred skeletons after the fuel ignited in combat.

The BMD-1 shares some problems in common with the BMP-1. The BMD’s armor is roughly just as thin, with a maximum of 33 millimeters on the front for protection from 12.7-millimeter machine guns, and as little as 13 millimeters along the vehicles side. That’s just enough to protect those inside from rifle bullets but little else.

The 73-millimeter “Grom” gun has also performed poorly in combat due to limited range and accuracy beyond 500 meters, and insufficient vertical traverse to hit targets on steep hills or at the bottom of deep valleys. The early Malyutka anti-tank missiles carried on top proved difficult to fire, guide and reload.

Neither weapon can be fired accurately while moving.

Airborne armor in Ethiopia and Afghanistan

The Soviet Union exported BMDs not only within the Warsaw Pact, but to Cuba, Iran, Iraq and Angola. Cuban troops were possibly the first to test the Soviet mechanized airborne doctrine in combat during the Ogaden War.

In July 1977, a Somali army of 70,000 troops and 600 armored vehicles invaded Ethiopia in an attempt to capture the Ogaden region in Ethiopia, which was majority Somali in population. The Soviet Union was then allied with both Somalia and Ethiopia.

The Kremlin first attempted to mediate the conflict, and then decided to throw all its support behind the Ethiopians, sending 300 Soviet advisers who joined 15,000 Cuban expeditionary troops.

By September, Somali forces had overrun the 25,000 troops defending the town of Jijiga near the strategic Kara Marda Pass, and in November laid siege to the walled city of Harar, the regional capital. There, an army of 40,000 Ethiopian troops bolstered by Cuban soldiers and Soviet advisers brought the Somali advance to halt.

While the Ethiopians built up their strength during the rainy season, Soviet Gen. Vasiliy Petrov planned a pincer counterattack. As Cuban tanks tackled the Somalis head on in February 1978, Mi-6 transport helicopters landed 70 BMD-1 fighting vehicles and ASU-57 assault guns at Kara Marda, dozens of miles behind the Somali defenses.

Striking in unison with a frontal attack up the pass, the airborne armored offensive swiftly recaptured the pass and Jijiga soon afterward, inflicting 3,000 casualties and spreading panic throughout the Somali army, hastening its total rout from Ethiopian territory.

Two years later, BMD-1s rolled out of the cargo bays of Soviet transport planes in Kabul, Afghanistan, enabling the airborne troops to rapidly seize major Afghan cities. Of course, just as the U.S. military learned, Afghanistan may be easy to invade but it’s difficult to leave, and the Soviet 40th Army remained committed to counter-insurgency operations against the mujahideen for the following decade.

Of the four to six divisions in the 40th Army, the 103rd Guards Airborne Division performed the majority of offensive operations. Although the desantniki, or airborne troopers, are best remembered for their use of air-mobile tactics combined with Hind helicopter gunships, the paratroopers frequently relied on their BMDs to deploy quickly into combat.

However, the lightly armored vehicles were even more vulnerable to Afghan ambushes than Russia’s regular BTR and BMP troop carriers. The little vehicles were vulnerable to mines, and the stony terrain wore down their tracks especially fast.

In 1985, Soviet troops in Afghanistan began receiving the BMD-2, a stop-gap model which swapped the low-pressure gun for a 2A42 30-millimeter autocannon that is more effective against infantry and light vehicles and can be fired on the move. The missile launcher was upgraded to fire newer AT-4 and AT-5 Konkurs anti-tank missiles. New steel rollers improved the vehicle’s durability on rough terrain, though the vehicle was now 50 percent heavier, at 11.5 tons.

A decade earlier, the Soviet Union had introduced the slightly lengthened BTR-D, a troop carrier variant of the BMD that replaced the turret and its armament for the capacity to carry a squad of nine paratroopers. Many BTR-D variants were produced including Rheostat artillery observation vehicles, anti-tank missile and drone carriers, and armored engineering and anti-aircraft vehicles.

The most notable spinoff of the BTR-D is the tank-like 2S9 Nona with a turret-mounted 120 millimeter gun-mortar — effective at both direct fire and lobbing shells at targets up to nine kilometers away.

The 2S9 saw action in Afghanistan, where the armored mortar proved useful due to its mobility, low minimum firing range, and ability to plunge shells at steep angles behind walls and ridges.

By 1990, production began of a new 14-ton BMD-3 with a roomier, redesigned hull that accommodates the same two-man steel turret as the BMP-2, and five passengers. However, Russia only produced 143 of these as its military rapidly contracted following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Despite the BMD’s specialized role, the vehicle did not fade into obscurity. BMDs continued to serve with airborne units fighting in Chechnya and Georgia, and even with Russia’s former peacekeeping force in Kosovo.

Exported BMD-1s saw action in Iran, Angola and Iraq during the ’80s and ’90s. A photo from 2003 credits a tank from the U.S. Marine Corps’ 1st Tank Battalion as having blown the turret off a BMD-1 in Al Tubah Habra, Iraq.

‘Desantniki’ in Georgia

At midnight on Aug. 7-8, 2008, Georgian forces launched an offensive against Russian-backed South Ossetian separatists. The artillery barrage, and the ground offensive that followed it, struck Russian troops based in the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali.

By 4:00 p.m. on Aug. 8, Moscow began flying the desantniki of the 104th Air Assault Regiment based in Pskov on Il-76s to a forward staging airfield in Beslan, North Ossetia — earlier, the site of a horrific terrorist attack. The 104th, which operated BMD-1s, was soon joined by the BMD-2s of the 234th Regiment. Both united and transited into South Ossetia via the Roki tunnel.

The publication The Tanks of August from the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies of and Technologies details some of the confused action that ensued.

On Aug. 11, a battalion each from the 104th and the 234th spearheaded an offensive aimed at pushing back Georgian artillery units from Tskhinvali. Each battalion had around 20 BMDs, supported by 2S9s and BTR-Ds equipped with 23-millimeter anti-aircraft guns.

The BTR-Ds reportedly engaged Georgian Mi-24 Hind helicopters which had just shot up a Russian truck convoy, and damaged one of the gunships. Meanwhile, the 2S9 self-propelled mortars served as the only forward artillery support available to Russian ground forces at that stage of the campaign.

In one engagement, a company of Georgian engineers mounted on a dozen trucks bumped into two BMD-1s — one of them broken down — and a dozen paratroopers who had been left behind in the town of Shindisi. The blaze of cannon shells and rocket-propelled grenades from the desantniki caused the Georgian unit to scatter and take cover in nearby buildings.

The BMDs engaged in a half-hour-long firefight before Russian armored and infantry companies intervened and destroyed the Georgian unit. By the end of the same day, a Russian recon company mounted on BMDs entered the important city of Poti.

The Russian mechanized airborne units had succeeded in securing key objectives in Georgia while suffering only modest losses — with only a single BMD-2 confirmed destroyed near Shindisi.

The BMD-4 gets a large gun

In 2014, Ukrainian and Russian-backed separatist forces both made extensive use of BMD-1 and 2s and BTR-Ds — and lost 40 to 60 of the vehicles between them, highlighting the vehicle’s age and vulnerability to virtually any type of heavy weapon.

Despite being intended to provide a defense against tanks, there are no accounts of BMDs destroying tanks in any conflict. The vehicles have proven handy in reconnaissance and fire support missions, but it is hard to envision large-scale parachute operations on a 21st century battlefield featuring modern anti-aircraft weapons.

Nonetheless, in 2005 Russia produced a small run of new 15-ton BMD-4 vehicles evolved from the BMD-3. This version incorporates the heavily-armed turret of the earlier BMP-3, including a 100-millimeter cannon equipped with high explosive and shaped charge anti-tank shells, and a 30 millimeter co-axial auto cannon.

The BMD-4 not only retains the Konkurs anti-tank missile launcher post on top, but can shoot long-range AT-10 Arkan missiles through the cannon.

A recent modernized variant, the BMD-4M, features increased parts commonality with the BMP-3, including an improved engine, as well a new version with a thermal imager.

Supposedly the BDM-4M’s front armor has been reinforced to survive hits from 30-millimeter cannon shells, but chances are it’s vulnerable like its predecessors, and its airborne and amphibious roles remain a specialized niche compared to the larger BMP-3.

This led to a rare spate of internal criticism of the vehicle, with one Russian general ridiculing the production of a light vehicle “with no protection, that costs as much as a tank.”

Nonetheless, the Russian military approved a new order in 2014, and the Volgograd tank factory is currently churning out dozens of BMD-4Ms and their BTR-MDM trooper carrier models each year to fulfill an order of 250. The new model will enter service with Russian naval infantry — and possibly the Indonesian navy as well — due to its amphibious capabilities.

Though the era of mass airborne drops behind enemy lines may have passed, air-deployable vehicles still have great utility, even if they’re not especially tough. The U.S. Army once operated its own parachute-tank, the M-551 Sheridan, which saw action in Vietnam, Panama and the Gulf War. The Sheridan’s only air-dropped combat mission was in Panama.

Like the BMD, the Sheridan was made of aluminum armor that left it vulnerable to mines and heavy weapons, and many were lost in action. However, the light tanks brought heavy firepower to the battlefield, especially as they were sometimes the only armor available to support infantry in the field. The Sheridan’s retirement in 1996 left a gap in the airborne force structure that has yet to be replaced.

By contrast, even though Russia’s airborne force has been reduced to just four divisions, the desantniki seem intent on retaining their lightly armored, air-droppable steeds just in case.

Like the United States, Russia has called up its airborne units time and time again to fight in conventional military operations — and possessing fast and heavily-armed fighting vehicles for those situations is handy, even if their armor leaves something to be desired.

This first appeared in WarIsBoring here.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

James Holmes

Security, Americas

Should America instead invest in other platforms such as submarines?

Key point: Just because we have a certain kind of navy now does not mean it is the best one. Perhaps aircraft carriers are too costly and vulnerable and a different fleet structure is needed?

Here's a thought experiment: would America build the U.S. Navy currently plying the seven seas if it were starting from scratch? Color me skeptical. If not, what kind of navy would it build, and how can we approximate that ideal in light of budgetary constraints, a slew of legacy platforms that can't simply be scrapped and replaced, and an organizational culture and history that frown on revolutionary change?

For the idea behind this exercise, a tip of the hat goes to Shawn Brimley and Paul Scharre of the Center for a New American Security or CNAS, who ran an item over at Foreign Policy last May wondering how the United States would reboot the armed forces as a whole. Brimley and Scharre dangle their query out there with a few remarks about organizational wiring diagrams and personnel policy. They hint at answers without quite giving them. They want to start a rumble within officialdom. In a novus ordo seclorum, would we create, say, a separate U.S. Air Force, or institute recruitment and retention policies reminiscent of conscription? Such matters are worth pondering.

(This first appeared in 2014.) This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Last week, writing in a similar vein, Washington Post columnist and sometime naval enthusiast  George Will asked what kind of navy the nation needs, and wants. That sounds like a technical question. And it is -- in part. Is the U.S. Navy outfitted with the right types and numbers of ships, aircraft, and armaments?

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Yet Will cuts to the heart of the matter. At bottom this is less a question about gadgetry or high-seas tactics than about national purposes and power. Nations, that is, amass military power to fulfill larger purposes. Martial strength helps advance their interests, ward off danger, and uphold their ideals. But does a listless American republic, "demoralized by squandered valor in Iraq and Afghanistan, and dismayed in dramatically different ways by two consecutive commanders in chief," even want to project power overseas?

If so, where, and to what ends? Today, maintains Will, "cascading dangers are compelling Americans to think afresh about something they prefer not to think about at all -- foreign policy. What they decide that they want will define the kind of nation they want the United States to be. This abstract question entails a concrete one: What kind of navy do Americans want?"

Good question. There's a canned quality to what-if exercises like this one. Two basic approaches come to mind. One, there's the tabula rasa. You could posit that the United States is only now rising to regional or world power, and thus is making itself a sea power for the first time. Such a scenario would be a throwback to 1883, when the nation started constructing its first steam-driven battle fleet. Americans could start from first principles, asking themselves what they wanted to accomplish in the world and what kind of naval might their republic needed to accomplish it.

Or, two, you could stipulate that the United States somehow made itself into the world power it is, blessed and burdened by its current array of foreign alliances and commitments, without ever having built an imposing navy to bind such arrangements together. The challenge in this unlikely scenario would be to field a fleet able to uphold commitments to Japan, Australia, NATO, and so forth. The demands of these two constructs are starkly different. For the fun of it, and to avoid a War and Peace-length discourse -- a zero-based look at U.S. foreign policy would consume page after page -- let's go with the latter. What kind of navy should Washington build to discharge today's commitments if starting afresh?

To further simplify the problem, let's accept the geopolitical assessment set forth in the 2007 U.S. Maritime Strategy, titled A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower. In the strategy the chieftains of the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard pronounce the Western Pacific and greater Indian Ocean the primary theaters for U.S. marine endeavor. They pledge to stage credible combat power in the Indo-Pacific for the foreseeable future, using forward-deployed forces to execute a variety of missions. Enforcing freedom of the seas and skies in peacetime, deterring war or winning it, and rendering humanitarian or disaster relief rank high on the sea services' to-do list.

How to proceed? When contemplating grand enterprises, you seldom go wrong starting with Carl von Clausewitz. Clausewitz urges statesmen and commanders to take a tour d'horizon before picking up the sword. To "discover" how many and what type of resources they need to marshal, they need to evaluate the adversary's and their own political aims. What does each belligerent want, and how much does it want it? Strategic overseers should survey the opponent's "strength and situation," appraising everything from geography to military potential to morale. They should "gauge the character and abilities" of the opponent's government and people, and of their own. And they should evaluate the "political sympathies" of third parties, estimating the likely impact of military action on these prospective allies, enemies, or bystanders.

Clausewitz's discovery process is meant for discrete conflicts, but it's a serviceable template for long-term strategy as well. Applied to the Indo-Pacific rimlands, who are the likely competitors, what are their long-term interests and aspirations, and how much are they prepared to invest in fulfilling these aspirations? How can Washington sway them in favor of American policy? What advantages and liabilities does prospective antagonists' offshore geography present, how much and what type of military potential do they boast, and is their warmaking potential likely to wax, wane, or stagnate over time? Are their people and government well suited to long-term strategic competition? And what impact will the competition have on third parties? Will it help the United States firm up its alliances or woo new partners? Or will it erode ties in the region?

Sizing up the strategic surroundings, then, represents the beginning of wisdom. Now let's neck down to the operational and hardware levels. How can a reinvented U.S. Navy achieve its goals amid Indo-Pacific surroundings? For insight let's ask that scion of Edwardian England, sea-power theorist Julian S. Corbett. Corbett partitions navies into the "battle fleet," "cruisers," and the "flotilla." The battle fleet dukes it out with enemy fleets for command of vital waters. Thrashing the enemy frees the cruisers and flotilla -- swarms of lighter, less heavily armed, cheaper craft -- to fan out in large numbers, controlling seagoing traffic at important junctures on the map. Command also empowers a navy to blockade enemy shores, land troops, or otherwise project force from the sea. These too are jobs for cruisers and the flotilla.

And they're the crucial jobs. Harnessing the sea for our purposes while keeping enemies from interfering is the point of maritime strategy. Battle, then, is only an enabler in marine warfare -- not an end in itself. "Capital ships" constituting the battle fleet thus occupy a curious place in navies. They enjoy most of the sex appeal, festooned as they are with radars, missiles, and guns. And their efforts are indispensable to success. Enemy sea power does have to be expelled from the expanses that matter, or at least reduced to near-impotence. But at the same time Corbett insists that the battle line's chief function is to protect unsexy cruisers and flotilla ships at their "special work." Though celebrated in legend and song, then, fleet engagements are merely a means to that happy end. Savvy commanders refuse to fight Trafalgar- or Leyte-like actions for their own sake.

This was true in Corbett's day, but what about our own? Seeking out the enemy fleet for a major action at the outset of a conflict -- Corbett's preferred method for settling affairs -- may avail a dominant navy little in today's strategic setting. That's because incapacitating or sinking an enemy fleet no longer represents a sure route to success, as it did during the age of Corbett a century ago. No longer is sea power all about fleets. For instance, arsenals of anti-ship missiles and aircraft can strike hundreds of miles from a local defender's coasts -- shaping events on the high seas even if no surface fleet gets underway. Even if our hypothetical U.S. Navy, say, knocks China's shiny new fleet out of a conflict, American task forces must still operate under the shadow of shore-based sea power. Disabling Chinese airfields or mobile anti-ship-missile batteries threatens to be harder and more exasperating than fighting a concentrated fleet.

Corbett's Royal Navy never faced barrages of Imperial German anti-ship ballistic or cruise missiles lofted its way. The Corbettian playbook for maritime warfare remains relevant -- but naval commanders should flip to the pages in his book Some Principles of Maritime Strategy that explore how to start campaigns from a position of weakness. If it proves impossible to win command of the commons through a decisive encounter at the outset, what then? Well, a U.S. Navy optimized for an anti-access environment would deploy assets to eliminate the opponent's navy (or, second best, bottle it in port) while trying to nullify the land-based component of enemy sea power. It would deny the opponent his goals as a first step.

But denial is not the same thing as command. Wrestling command from antagonists isn't simply about defeating an enemy fleet. It's about defeating enemy sea power as a whole -- including that land-based component of which Corbett could scarcely have dreamt. Shore-based sea power radiates from an enemy's homeland. That leaves navies operating off enemy coasts an uncomfortable choice. They can strike hard at sites on land, and risk escalating the conflict. They can refrain from hitting targets on enemy soil, and grant a major portion of enemy sea power sanctuary from which to lash out at U.S. task forces. Or they can try to break the opponent's "kill chain" though some mix of deception, electronic warfare, and other measures that inflict little physical damage on opposing forces yet yield decisive effects.

None of these options is especially palatable. Winning command in future conflicts promises to demand a slow grind rather than the knockout blow that so captivates seafarers and maritime theorists. Which is where Corbett furnishes a helpful algorithm for the inferior force. For Sir Julian, maritime warfare is about denying command (which he terms "permanent general control" of important expanses), winning command, and exploiting command. Deftly handled, a lesser fleet can deny an antagonist command of the sea while striving to shift the balance in its favor. It can shift the balance by building new forces, massing existing forces, fighting alongside existing allies or courting new ones, or encouraging adversary commanders to fritter away their strength across the map or do stupid things. This leads, at last, to some specific pointers for rebooting the U.S. Navy:

-    Find out what the American people and government will support. Sea power is a conscious political choice, not a birthright or something that happens in a fit of absence of mind. George Will hints that Americans are too distracted and war-weary to make the choice for sea power. If that's true, then future naval operations will amount to campaigns limited by "contingent." War-by-contingent is Corbett's way of describing an endeavor whose dimensions are determined not by the goals sought but by the amount of resources a society is prepared to spend. This way of executing policy assigns commanders a fixed amount of assets and manpower and instructs them to do great things with it. The founders of a rebooted U.S. Navy must undertake some soul-searching about what they can achieve with stingy means. Preferred methods may be unaffordable.

-    Run silent, run deep. If Congress has indeed capped U.S. maritime means more or less permanently, undersea warfare promises the biggest bang for limited bucks. Nuclear-powered submarines, or SSNs, constitute an enduring U.S. naval advantage. They can deny an adversary the use of the sea. If nothing else, then, submarines could impose a sort of mutual assured sea denial while naval commanders try to neutralize enemy shore-based forces by other means. Subs cannot command the sea, but they can clear it of hostile surface fleets. That's a major contribution if also a negative one. SSNs, consequently, should have first claim on scarce shipbuilding dollars. But undersea combat need not involve all nukes, all the time. To proliferate subs while holding down costs, why not, say, buy Japanese? The U.S. Navy could purchase some Japanese Soryu-class diesel attack boats -- acclaimed among the world's best -- and create a standing combined squadron in Japan. Naval officials should explore such options.

-    Demote the surface fleet. Traditional prestige platforms such as aircraft carriers, cruisers, and destroyers would find themselves demoted in a rebooted U.S. Navy. Their capacity to spearhead the fight against a capable access denier -- a power like China that fields a beatable navy but backs it up with a large shore-based arsenal -- appears increasingly doubtful. Surface ships that have to await the outcome of the struggle for command? That sounds like Corbett's definition of cruisers and the flotilla -- large numbers of lightly armed combatants for policing relatively safe waters and projecting power ashore after the battle is won. Let's act on his guidelines for platforms that exercise command. A mix of workhorse frigate- or corvette-like platforms for peacetime pursuits, combat platforms designed to operate in less threatening wartime theaters, and small missile craft for harrying access deniers in cramped Asian waters looks like the refounded U.S. Navy's best bet. Naval leaders should fund the most capable, most numerous surface force they can -- on a not-to-interfere basis with units that compete for maritime mastery.

Reinventing America's navy, in short, could involve reshuffling priorities for future acquisitions, tactics, and operations. A strategy premised on starting with sea denial, deploying unconventional techniques to incapacitate adversaries' sensors and weaponry, and relegating the surface navy to secondary status would have seismic impact not just on the navy's warmaking methods and force structure but on its very culture. But a cultural revolution may be what the service needs to fulfill its ends while operating on a shoestring budget in a menacing world.

Needless to say, lots of assumptions are at work here. Every system of logic has its givens and its theorems. For one thing, is anti-access just a moment in naval history? I assume not. Prospective Asian competitors outrange U.S. Navy men-of-war for the moment. It's conceivable, nonetheless, that some combination of technological wizardry -- shipboard lasers, electromagnetic railguns, unmanned combat aircraft -- and inventive tactics could restore mobility and superior striking range to fleets. If so, the surface navy could regain its accustomed nautical mastery. Or, lawmakers and administration officials could make the pitch to the electorate for more resources. A bigger navy could withstand combat losses in an anti-access setting and keep fighting. Better a surplus of assets than a deficit. And so forth.

Don't like my thought experiment? Run your own. Let a hundred flowers bloom.

James Holmes is Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific. The views voiced here are his alone. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Sebastien Roblin

Security,

Nuclear artillery shells could have been the ultimate weapon--or not.

Here's What You Need to Know: Modern war won't necessarily involve a liberal sprinkling of little mushroom clouds—an epiphany we should all be thankful for.

Today the use of nuclear weapons is a near-unthinkable military option of last resort. But back in the 1950s, that norm had yet to be established. The U.S. Army believed then that in the event of war with the Soviet Union, tactical nukes would be landing left and right across the battlefield. It therefore fielded the “Pentomic” division to fight on the anticipated nuclear hellscape. It even gave battalion-level commanders access to short-range nuclear shells, which risked blasting the units that fired them.

The motive behind the Pentomic divisions may have been more political than military. In the 1950s, the Eisenhower administration believed nuclear weapons were so powerful that conventional ground troops would be rendered irrelevant. The doctrine of “massive retaliation” dictated that the United States would respond to any Soviet attack with full-scale nuclear attack. Indeed, Eisenhower even considered going nuclear to prevent Vietnamese and Chinese Communist forces from securing battlefield victories that were hardly direct threats to U.S. national security.

Because the U.S. Air Force and Navy had the majority of nuclear-weapons systems, they received the lion’s share of military funding. Under the “New Look” defense budget of 1955, the Army was considered a mere garrison force to protect nuclear-weapons facilities. The infantry branch in particular fell from a height of 250,000 personnel during the Korean War to around 130,000.

Eager to get a bigger cut, the U.S. Army decided it needed to field a force fit for the nuclear age. At the time, U.S. infantry divisions still had the “triangular” force structure used in World War II, with units organized in threes: three companies in a battalion, three battalions in a regiment, three regiments in a division, and so forth. The battalions in each regiment were supposed to stick close together for tactical, logistical and communications support. However, military theorists worried that large regiments would be make ideal targets for nuclear attacks. To their thinking, numerous smaller, independent units would be more survivable.

Thus the Army coined the Pentomic division, so named because it was based around five battalions—renamed “battle groups”—each composed of five infantry companies. A sixth support company in the battle group included radars, a battery of 4.2-inch mortars, 106-millimeter antitank recoilless rifles and eventually the U.S. Army’s first antitank missiles, the French-made SS-10. The infantry squads were increased to eleven men each and issued squad-level radios for the first time, as well as new M14 semiautomatic rifles with twenty-round magazines that could be switched to (inaccurate) automatic fire.

The Pentomic divisions possessed no regimental level of organization. Instead, armor, artillery and logistical elements were detached from the division to reinforce each 1,400-man battle group. By 1960, the Pentomic divisions had five direct support artillery battalions, with one battery apiece of 105- and 155-millimeter howitzers, as well as a five-company tank battalion. These would be split up to support battle groups on the frontline, allowing the infantry units to remain self-sufficient even if they were cut off from support by radiation and advancing Soviet tanks.

The three Airborne Divisions then active were the first to convert to the Pentomic organizational structure in 1957, and all the active Infantry Divisions followed in 1958. The armored branch did not undergo conversion, as it already had a smaller and more flexible organization. In general, there was not much enthusiasm for the Pentomic system, as each division became smaller and lost much of the historical identity invested in the absent regimental units.

The Army’s first nuclear weapon system, the M65 280-millimeter cannon, lacked mobility. But soon rockets and lighter nuclear artillery shells made nuclear firepower available to divisional commanders in the Pentomic division’s general support battalion. World War II–era eight-inch M115 howitzers were issued W33 nuclear-tipped shells with a yield of up to forty kilotons. These could be lobbed up to ten miles away. Meanwhile, truck-mounted MGR-1 Honest John rocket systems could strike targets fifteen to thirty miles distant, depending on the model. The unguided 760-millimeter rockets were prone to scattering the length of a couple football fields off target, but a high level of precision wasn’t a priority when delivering thirty-kiloton nuclear warheads.

The ultimate upgrade to the Pentomic division came in 1961, when battle groups received the M28 and M29 Davy Crockett towed recoilless guns. These fired W54 .01-kiloton nuclear warheads that weighed seventy-six pounds. The miniature nukes emitted enough radiation to immediately kill everyone within five hundred feet of the point of detonation, and cause blindness or slow death in a much wider radius. But the 120-millimeter M28 had a maximum range of just slightly over a mile, which meant the crew of three could easily be affected by the radiation from their own weapon. The 155-millimeter M29 variant had double the range, making it somewhat more practical. Placing so many nuclear weapons in the hands of frontline battle groups multiplied the chance of unauthorized use, and the more than two thousand rounds produced increased the likelihood of the man-portable warheads being lost or stolen.

In battle, a Pentomic division was supposed to keep its battle groups spread out in defensive islands, so that no more than one could be wiped out by a single nuclear strike. Pre-sighted Davy Crocketts deployed in Europe would irradiate key chokepoints, killing Soviet tank crews inside their vehicles and preventing other units from advancing through the area. When the division went on the attack, nuclear artillery would be used to blast holes through enemy lines which Pentomic battle groups could exploit.

Eventually, the Army evaluated the performance of the new divisions—and realized they were terrible. Five reinforced battalions simply weren’t as effective as three full regiments, especially in conventional warfare. Although the Pentomic divisions theoretically had 33 percent more troops in frontline roles, they often needed to shift those troops back to logistical tasks because the support services were undermanned. The Pentomic battle groups also lacked battlefield mobility in the form of armored all-terrain transport. Eventually, divisional transport units received M113 APCs and H-34 helicopters in order to provide mechanized or airborne movement to one or two battle groups at a time—out of five.

Despite modernized communication systems, the Pentomic division also posed command-and-control problems. The colonel in charge of a battle group had to direct five to nine companies at a time once typical supporting units were accounted for, rather than the three to five a battalion commander would normally have to deal with. This was more than most officers could efficiently keep track of. The lack of a regimental organization also distorted the Army’s rank structure. The armies of Australia, Spain, Turkey and West Germany all considered adopting the Pentomic structure—and all gave up on it within a few years.

Most importantly, under President Kennedy the Pentagon switched to a doctrine of “flexible response,” which did not automatically assume escalation to nuclear warfare. This way of thinking was encouraged by improvements in Soviet nuclear capabilities. American military planners were horrified to discover from war games that even “limited” use of nuclear weapons would cause massive devastation to Europe, and so the Army reoriented itself towards winning conventional conflicts, as well as counterinsurgency in developing countries.

The Pentomic divisions fortunately never saw combat, though they came close to doing so in the Cuban Missile Crisis. After only five years, the Army began transitioning in 1962 to the ROAD division, which largely reverted to a triangular organization. The Davy Crocketts were withdrawn from operational units by 1968. While the Army retained nuclear artillery shells for several more decades, the passing of the Pentomic division marked the turning point when the Pentagon realized modern war wouldn’t necessarily involve a liberal sprinkling of little mushroom clouds—an epiphany we should all be thankful for.

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

This article first appeared in 2016.

Image: U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Bill Boecker

James Holmes

Security, World

Carriers are large, complex warmachines and it is impressive when a country gets it right.

Key point: These ships made history, either through combat or sheer technological advancement. Which is your favorite?

Anyone who's tried to compare one piece of kit—ships, aircraft, weaponry of various types—to another will testify to how hard this chore is. Ranking aircraft carriers is no exception. Consulting the pages of Jane's Fighting Ships or Combat Fleets of the World sheds some light on the problem. For instance, a flattop whose innards house a nuclear propulsion plant boasts virtually unlimited cruising range, whereas a carrier powered by fossil fuels is tethered to its fuel source. As Alfred Thayer Mahan puts it, a conventional warship bereft of bases or a coterie of logistics ships is a "land bird" unable to fly far from home.

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

Or, size matters. The air wing—the complement of interceptors, attack planes and support aircraft that populate a carrier's decks—comprise its main battery or primary armament. The bigger the ship, the bigger the hangar and flight decks that accommodate the air wing.

Nor, as U.S. Navy carrier proponents like to point out, is the relationship between a carrier's tonnage and number of aircraft it can carry strictly linear. Consider two carriers that dominate headlines in Asia. Liaoning, the Chinese navy's refitted Soviet flattop, displaces about sixty-five thousand tons and sports twenty-six fixed-wing combat aircraft and twenty-four helicopters. Not bad. USS George Washington, however, tips the scales at around one hundred thousand tons but can operate some eighty-five to ninety aircraft.

And the disparity involves more than raw numbers of airframes. George Washington's warplanes are not just more numerous but generally more capable than their Chinese counterparts. U.S. flattops boast steam catapults to vault larger, heavier-laden aircraft into the wild blue. Less robust carriers use ski jumps to launch aircraft. That limits the size, fuel capacity, and weapons load—and thus the range, flight times and firepower—of their air wings. Larger, more capable carriers, then, can accommodate a larger, more capable, and changing mixes of aircraft with greater ease than their lesser brethren. Aircraft carriers' main batteries were modular before modular was cool.

And yet straight-up comparisons can mislead. The real litmus test for any man-of-war is its capacity to fulfill the missions for which it was built. In that sense George Washington, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, may not be "superior" to USS America, the U.S. Navy's latest amphibious helicopter carrier, or to Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force "helicopter destroyers"—a.k.a. light aircraft carriers—despite a far more lethal air wing and other material attributes. Nor do carriers meant to operate within range of shore-based fire support—tactical aircraft, anti-ship missiles—necessarily need to measure up to a Washington on a one-to-one basis. Land-based implements of sea power can be the great equalizer. Like any weapon system, then, a great carrier does the job for which it was designed superbly.

And lastly, there's no separating the weapon from its user. A fighting ship isn't just a hunk of steel but a symbiosis of crewmen and materiel. The finest aircraft carrier is one that's both well-suited to its missions and handled with skill and derring-do when and where it matters most. Those three indices—brute material capability, fitness for assigned missions, a zealous crew—are the indices for this utterly objective, completely indisputable list of the Top Five Aircraft Carriers of All Time.

5. USS Midway (CV-41):

Now a museum ship on the San Diego waterfront, Midway qualifies for this list less for great feats of arms than for longevity, and for being arguably history's most versatile warship. In all likelihood she was the most modified. Laid down during World War II, the flattop entered service just after the war. During the Cold War she received an angled flight deck, steam catapults, and other trappings befitting a supercarrier. Indeed, Midway's service spanned the entire Cold War, winding down after combat action against Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1991. Sheer endurance and flexibility entitles the old warhorse to a spot on this list.

4. USS Franklin (CV-13):

If Midway deserves a place mainly for technical reasons, the Essex-class carrier Franklin earns laurels for the resiliency of her hull and fortitude of her crew in battle. She was damaged in heavy fighting at Leyte Gulf in 1944. After refitting at Puget Sound Navy Yard, the flattop returned to the Western Pacific combat theater. In March 1945, having ventured closer to the Japanese home islands than any carrier to date, she fell under surprise assault by a single enemy dive bomber. Two semi-armor-piercing bombs penetrated her decks. The ensuing conflagration killed 724 and wounded 265, detonated ammunition below decks, and left the ship listing 13 degrees to starboard. One hundred six officers and 604 enlisted men remained on board voluntarily, bringing Franklin safely back to Pearl Harbor and thence to Brooklyn Navy Yard. Her gallantry in surviving such a pounding and returning to harbor merits the fourth position on this list.

3. Akagi:

Admiral Chūichi Nagumo's flagship serves as proxy for the whole Pearl Harbor strike force, a body composed of all six Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) frontline carriers and their escorts. Nagumo's was the most formidable such force of its day. Commanders and crewmen, moreover, displayed the audacity to do what appeared unthinkable—strike at the U.S. Pacific Fleet at its moorings thousands of miles away. Extraordinary measures were necessary to pull off such a feat. For example, freshwater tanks were filled with fuel to extend the ships' range and make a transpacific journey possible—barely.

The Pearl Harbor expedition exposed logistical problems that plagued the IJN throughout World War II. Indeed, Japan's navy never fully mastered the art of underway replenishment or built enough logistics ships to sustain operations far from home. As a result, Nagumo's force had too little time on station off Oahu to wreck the infrastructure the Pacific Fleet needed to wage war. And, admittedly, Akagi was lost at the Battle of Midway, not many months after it scaled the heights of operational excellence. Still, you have to give Akagi and the rest of the IJN task force their due. However deplorable Tokyo's purposes in the Pacific, her aircraft-carrier force ranks among the greatest of all time for sheer boldness and vision.

2. HMS Hermes (now the Indian Navy's Viraat): 

It's hard to steam thousands of miles into an enemy's environs, fight a war on his ground, and win. And yet the Centaur-class flattop Hermes, flagship of a hurriedly assembled Royal Navy task force, pulled it off during the Falklands War of 1982. Like Midway, the British carrier saw repeated modifications, most recently for service as an anti-submarine vessel in the North Atlantic. Slated for decommissioning, her air wing was reconfigured for strike and fleet-air-defense missions when war broke out in the South Atlantic. For flexibility, and for successfully defying the Argentine contested zone, Hermes rates second billing here.

1. USS Enterprise (CV-6):

Having joined the Pacific Fleet in 1939, the Yorktown-class carrier was fortunate to be at sea on December 7, 1941, and thus to evade Nagumo's bolt from the blue. Enterprise went on to become the most decorated U.S. Navy ship of World War II, taking part in eighteen of twenty major engagements of the Pacific War. She sank, or helped sink, three IJN carriers and a cruiser at the Battle of Midway in 1942; suffered grave damage in the Solomons campaign, yet managed to send her air wing to help win the climatic Naval Battle of Guadalcanal; and went on to fight in such engagements as the Philippine Sea, Leyte Gulf, and Okinawa. That's the stuff of legend. For compiling such a combat record, Enterprise deserves to be known as history's greatest aircraft carrier.

James Holmes is Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific. The views voiced here are his alone.

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

Image: Reuters.

Peter Suciu

Security, Americas

The weapon was developed by the Dirección General Industria Militar Mexicana (Directorate of Military Industry) or DGIM, the Mexican military's industrial arm, to replace the German-designed Heckler & Koch G3, which was produced in Mexico under license.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The FX-05 has several improvements over the old G3. The biggest is that it has been re-chambered to 5.56mm ammunition, which has been used extensively during the Mexican Drug War.

Literally meaning "turquoise serpent" but also carrying the symbolic significance "fire serpent," the Xiuhcoatl was a creature of Aztec mythology – thus it is a fitting moniker for the FX-05 Xihcoalt Mexican assault rifle that entered service with the Mexican Army in 2006.

The weapon was developed by the Dirección General Industria Militar Mexicana (Directorate of Military Industry) or DGIM, the Mexican military's industrial arm, to replace the German-designed Heckler & Koch G3, which was produced in Mexico under license. The FX-05 was gradually phased into Mexican Army and was first seen in the September 16, 2006, Mexican Independence Day celebration when it was carried by soldiers of the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE), the Special Forces Airmobile Group.

The FX-05, which has been widely used in the Mexican Drug Wars since its introduction, is chambered for the 5.56x45mm NATO round. It is a selective-fire, gas-operated assault weapon that utilizes a rotating bolt and has a rate of fire of 750 rounds per minute. It has an effective range of 200 to 800 meters and is fed from a 30-round detachable box magazine or 100-round drum magazine. It is currently available in three variations that include a full-length rifle, carbine and short carbine, and these differ mainly by barrel length. All three versions are made of carbon fiber reinforced impact-resistant polymer and utilize a translucent magazine, and each is adaptable for left-handed shooters as the charging handle can be installed on either side of the weapon.

This Mexican-made assault rifle isn't without some controversy. The Mexican government and German-based H&K had some 20 years ago agreed to supply locally-produced versions of the H&K G36 that were built at factories in Mexico under license. For a number of reasons, the Mexican government decided to go another direction, deciding it made more financial sense to design, develop and produce a homegrown weapon instead.

From appearances, it looked similar to the H&K G36 – so much so that the German government and H&K accused Mexico of copying the G36V design, and even threatened to take the case international tribunals. Mexico took the threat seriously enough that soon after the FX-05 was first seen in use with the GAFE units that it stopped manufacturing the new rifle.

The head of the DGIM, General Alfredo Oropeza, was caught in the legal crossfire. He had been in line to become the next Secretary of National Defense but was passed over due to the matter. Yet, just some three months later in a meeting between H&K and the Mexican government it was determined that the FX-05 was not, in fact, a copy of the G36. How this came to be as been a matter of conjecture but in the end, the Mexican Army has ramped up production.

While the 5.56mm round of the FX-05 is less powerful than that of the 7.62mm round of the G36, it is more ideally suited to the close-quarters urban warfare being seen in the sadly still ongoing war on the drug cartels. It could take something as powerful as fire serpent to truly turn the tide in that struggle.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites. He is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com. This article first appeared in April 2020 and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

James Holmes

Security, Asia

Chinese missiles were made to ensure U.S. bases throughout the Pacific could be taken out of action.

Key point: Beijing knows that America has the technological edge in a major war. But they also know that America's forward-deployed bases are also very vulnerable to attack.

Last week the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Center (USSC) set policy circles aflutter when it issued a novella-length report that questions the staying power of U.S. military strategy in the Indo-Pacific theater while urging inhabitants of the region to take up their share of the defense burden vis-à-vis a domineering China. Read the whole thing.

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

In one sense the report presents little new information or insight. That the U.S. military has retooled itself for counterinsurgency warfare and must now reinvent itself again for great-power strategic competition is old news. So is the notion that Washington suffers from strategic ADHD, taking on new commitments around the world willy-nilly while shedding few old ones to conserve finite resources and policy energy. Over the past decade-plus, it’s become plain that Communist China is a serious, strategically-minded maritime contender and has equipped itself with formidable shore-based weaponry to assail U.S. and allied bases in the region and supply firepower support to its increasingly impressive battle fleet. Beijing can now hope to fend off U.S. reinforcements from coming to the aid of regional allies, to slow them down, or to make the effort so expensive in terms of lives and hardware that no U.S. president would order the attempt. If it does any of these things it could spring a fait accompli on the region, accomplishing limited goals before powerful outsiders could intercede.

This is old—if still potent—wine in a new bottle.

And yet. The report is clearly written and forceful, no small virtues. It adds a welcome new voice to the chorus—and that voice booms out from the region rather than from such precincts as Washington, DC or Newport, RI. One hopes the leadership in Canberra listens up, and other Indo-Pacific governments wary of Chinese Communist Party pretensions should bend an ear as well. The USSC coauthors’ central message—that the United States can no longer provide for common security alone and must have help—is precisely correct. They stop short of espousing an Asian NATO by name, but they invoke the basic concept underlying the Atlantic Alliance, namely “collective defense.” Allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific must shoulder their part of the defense burden, just as Europeans helped stave off the Soviet menace.

For its part, Washington must stop trying to do it all alone—and afford allies and friends the deference their interests and contributions warrant. All parties to the common defense must readjust not just strategy, resources, and hardware but also their way of thinking about these matters. They must nurture a culture of collective defense.

Three points the report puts forward are worth exploring: culture, strategy and operations, and alliance building and maintenance. First, culture. Note the coauthors: “In an era of constrained budgets and multiplying geopolitical flashpoints, prioritizing great power competition with China means America’s armed forces must scale back other global responsibilities.” But culture is a stubborn thing—and the strategic culture in Washington lags behind disconcerting new realities. The report maintains that “political leaders and much of the foreign policy establishment remain wedded to a superpower mindset that regards America’s role in the world as defending an expansive liberal order.” Acting as the lone custodian of the world order, including freedom of the sea, sets the United States up for strategic overreach and failure. Something will give.

The classics of strategy instruct statesmen and military commanders to wind down commitments or theaters that have outlived their usefulness, that no longer command the same importance they once did, or that have come to consume resources needed for more pressing priorities. That’s easy to say. It’s a simple matter of toting up costs and benefits, estimating the opportunity costs of one commitment against another, applying resources to the most important priorities, and downgrading or jettisoning the rest. But breaking up is hard to do, even with an Afghanistan, where eighteen years of combat and diplomacy have yet to yield a durable sovereign government. Why such obtuse stick-to-it-iveness? Because every foreign commitment attracts a constituency within the establishment, the think-tank sector, or academia. That constituency sees its chosen commitment as the top priority for Washington, bar none, and clamors tirelessly for policy attention and resources.

For bureaucratic institutions the easiest path is to try to please everyone and do everything. Yet setting and enforcing priorities is what strategy is at its most fundamental. Political leaders must harden their hearts when deciding on policy and strategy. If the Indo-Pacific is now the most critical geopolitical theater, other worthwhile commitments may have to give way.

Second, strategy and operations. The Australian coauthors do not counsel despair. They deny that “America is becoming a paper tiger.” It still fields “the world’s largest and most sophisticated armed forces; and is likely to continue to supply the central elements of any military counterweight to China in the Indo-Pacific.” Still, “the United States’ longstanding ability to uphold a favorable regional balance of power by itself faces mounting and ultimately insurmountable challenges.” Just so. But let’s not sell ourselves short, either as the U.S. armed forces or as part of alliances that have endured for seven decades. It may be the case that Fortress China now boasts the capacity to reach out and smite allied military bases, or even forces in the field. But let’s refuse to succumb to a reverse form of the fallacy of “script writing.” We have options.

Scriptwriting in strategy reduces a living, thinking, impassioned foe to an inert, docile mass on which we work our will. Scriptwriters in Los Angeles or New York develop storylines that instruct the characters in a drama or sitcom what to do, and the actors do it. But in strategic competition or warfare, some of the “actors” in our script are under no obligation to play the part we set out for them. In fact, they have every incentive to go off-script and wreck our production so that they can fulfill goals diametrically opposed to our own. Now flip that logic around. Sure, Communist China may be able to pound our legacy infrastructure or forces. But the United States and its allies aren’t lifeless masses. We too have ingenuity and the desire to prevail. Let’s refuse to follow Beijing’s script—and figure out how to ruin its production.

How do multinational and joint forces go off China’s script? The U.S. Studies Center insists that girding for strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific “will not be easy or cheap. On the contrary, it will require major changes to the U.S. military’s force structure, regional posture and concepts of operations, only some of which are currently in train.” But dodging the brunt of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) strategy while giving PLA commanders strategic headaches may be less burdensome than all that. Read the Commandant’s Planning Guidance issued by the new U.S. Marine Corps leadership last month. Geography favors the allies. They can deploy low-cost measures along the first island chain, throwing up a barricade to Chinese maritime movement between the China seas, the Western Pacific, and the Indian Ocean. Small bodies of ground troops could fan out along the island chain, using volleys of anti-ship missiles to halt surface traffic. Sea mines, diesel submarines, and surface patrol craft could lend their firepower to the mix. Etc.

There’s no free lunch in strategy, but such measures could levy some serious military, economic, and diplomatic pain at manageable cost to the allies. One leading strategy professor in China pronounces challenging such a strategy a “suicide mission” for the PLA. If that reflects how Chinese Communist magnates reckon matters, then the prospects for deterrence—and thus for peacetime strategic success—may be brighter and more affordable than the Australian team lets on. Offbeat approaches to force design, operations, and strategy merit debating in allied circles.

And third, alliance building and maintenance. There are unmistakable signs that what the strategic canon calls a “community of interest” is gelling around the idea of counterbalancing Chinese overreach. What the U.S. Studies Center depicts as a brave new world in the Indo-Pacific is in many ways a return to geopolitical business as usual. During the Cold War, few deluded themselves that the United States could deter or defeat the Soviet empire all by itself. Allies chipped in niche capabilities without which the U.S. armed forces would have found it hard to execute their strategy. For instance, I was grateful to NATO navies for supplying minesweepers in the Persian Gulf back in 1991. Approaching the Kuwaiti coast would have been perilous in the extreme without Europeans running interference for us. Mine warfare is a traditional zone of neglect for the U.S. Navy—not so for the allies. Same goes for the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, whose diesel submarines prowled along the first island chain throughout the Cold War to cramp communist maritime movement. Another niche but invaluable capability.

Such examples are legion. It’s good to see allies take ownership of their own security, and of freedom of the sea. The French and British governments have bruited about a return to Asia, possibly including naval bases in the South China Sea where aircraft-carrier groups can tarry. Here’s how a grand bargain could work should the USSC team get its way. A Golden Rule governs alliances and ententes of all types: the ally who furnishes the gold makes the rules. If Washington could provide for the common defense all by itself, it would have little reason to consult with allies or heed their advice. It would remain the sole agenda-setter. But if others contribute significant resources of their own, Washington must consult with them and consider—and perhaps embrace—their advice. U.S. leaders often deferred to allies during the Cold War, allowing them a say in policy and strategy. Consensus prevailed for the most part, even when decisions ran afoul of American preferences. And U.S. alliances proved resilient for the most part.

So America needs to rediscover the habit of strategic humility after being top dog for a generation. Here’s what Indo-Pacific allies need to do: help us help you. Even if island-chain defense works out, U.S. reinforcements must gain access to the Western Pacific to prevail in wartime. PLA commanders have predicated their access-denial strategy on disheartening their U.S. counterparts or convincing the U.S. administration the military effort cannot succeed at a cost the country is prepared to pay. Allies and partners should devise strategies and operations that hold down the price of access for U.S. forces—and thus make it thinkable if not easy for an American president to order them into combat.

Let’s march jointly in the Indo-Pacific.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific. The views voiced here are his alone. This article is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Robert Farley

Security, Asia

The demands of positioning either side for victory will continue to tax diplomatic, military, and technological resources for the foreseeable future.

Here's What You Need To Remember: A war would be catastrophic for both sides. Both sides have arsenals of incredibly deadly weapons. Perhaps just as important, both sides have extremely productive economies and longstanding trade links to one another - links that would be severed in an instant.

How does the unthinkable happen? As we wind our way to the 100th anniversary of the events that culminated in World War I, the question of unexpected wars looms large. What series of events could lead to war in East Asia, and how would that war play out?

The United States and China are inextricably locked in the Pacific Rim’s system of international trade. Some argue that this makes war impossible, but then while some believed World War I inevitable, but others similarly thought it impossible.

In this article I concentrate less on the operational and tactical details of a US-China war, and more on the strategic objectives of the major combatants before, during, and after the conflict. A war between the United States and China would transform some aspects of the geopolitics of East Asia, but would also leave many crucial factors unchanged. Tragically, a conflict between China and the US might be remembered only as “The First Sino-American War.”

How the War Would Start

Fifteen years ago, the only answers to “How would a war between the People’s Republic of China and the United States start?” involved disputes over Taiwan or North Korea. A Taiwanese declaration of independence, a North Korean attack on South Korea, or some similar triggering event would force the PRC and the US reluctantly into war.

This has changed. The expansion of Chinese interests and capabilities means that we can envision several different scenarios in which direct military conflict between China and the United States might begin. These still include a Taiwan scenario and North Korea scenario, but now also involve disputes in the East and South China Seas, as well as potential conflict with India along the Tibetan border.

The underlying factors are the growth of Chinese power, Chinese dissatisfaction with the US-led regional security system, and US alliance commitments to a variety of regional states. As long as these factors hold, the possibility for war will endure.

Whatever the trigger, the war does not begin with a US pre-emptive attack against Chinese fleet, air, and land-based installations. Although the US military would prefer to engage and destroy Chinese anti-access assets before they can target US planes, bases, and ships, it is extremely difficult to envisage a scenario in which the United States decides to pay the political costs associated with climbing the ladder of escalation.

Instead, the United States needs to prepare to absorb the first blow. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the U.S. Navy (USN) and U.S. Air Force (USAF) have to wait for Chinese missiles to rain down upon them, but the United States will almost certainly require some clear, public signal of Chinese intent to escalate to high-intensity, conventional military combat before it can begin engaging Chinese forces.

If the history of World War I gives any indication, the PLA will not allow the United States to fully mobilize in order to either launch a first strike, or properly prepare to receive a first blow. At the same time, a “bolt from the blue” strike is unlikely. Instead, a brewing crisis will steadily escalate over a few incidents, finally triggering a set of steps on the part of the US military that indicate to Beijing that Washington is genuinely prepared for war. These steps will include surging carrier groups, shifting deployment to Asia from Europe and the Middle East, and moving fighter squadrons towards the Pacific. At this moment, China will need to decide whether to push forward or back down.

On the economic side, Beijing and Washington will both press for sanctions (the US effort will likely involve a multilateral effort), and will freeze each others assets, as well as those of any co-belligerents. This will begin the economic pain for capital and consumers across the Pacific Rim, and the rest of the world. The threat of high intensity combat will also disrupt global shipping patterns, causing potentially severe bottlenecks in industrial production.

How do the Allies Respond

Whether US allies support American efforts against China depends on how the war begins. If war breaks out over a collapse of the DPRK, the United States can likely count on the support of South Korea and Japan. Any war stemming from disputes in the East China Sea will necessarily involve Japan. If events in the South China Sea lead to war, the US can probably rely on some of the ASEAN states, as well as possibly Japan. Australia may also support the US over a wide range of potential circumstances.

China faces a less complicated situation with respect to allies. Beijing could probably expect benevolent neutrality, including shipments of arms and spares, from Russia, but little more. The primary challenge for Chinese diplomats would be establishing and maintaining the neutrality of potential US allies. This would involve an exceedingly complex dance, including reassurances about Chinese long-term intentions, as well as displays of confidence about the prospects of Chinese victory (which would carry the implicit threat of retribution for support of the United States).

North Korea presents an even more difficult problem. Any intervention on the part of the DPRK runs the risk of triggering Japanese and South Korean counter-intervention, and that math doesn’t work out for China. Unless Beijing is certain that Seoul and Tokyo will both throw in for the United States (a doubtful prospect given their hostility to one another), it may spend more time restraining Pyongyang than pushing it into the conflict.

War Aims

The US will pursue the following war aims:

1. Defeat the affirmative expeditionary purpose of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN).

2. Destroy the offensive capability of the PLAN and People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF).

3. Potentially destabilize the control of the CCP government over mainland China.

Except in the case of a war that breaks out on the Korean Peninsula, the first task involves either defeating a Chinese attempt to land forces, or preventing the reinforcement and resupply of those troops before forcing their surrender. The second task will require a wide range of attacks against deployed Chinese air and naval units, as well as ships and aircraft held in reserve. We can expect, for example, that the USN and USAF will target Chinese airbases, naval bases, and potentially missile bases in an effort to maximize damage to the PLAN and PLAAF. The third task probably depends on the successful execution of the first two. The defeat of Chinese expeditionary forces, and the destruction of a large percentage of the PLAN and the PLAAF, may cause domestic turmoil in the medium to long term. US military planners would be well-advised to concentrate the strategic campaign on the first two objectives and hope that success has a political effect, rather than roll the dice on a broader “strategic” campaign against CCP political targets. The latter would waste resources, run the risk of escalation, and have unpredictable effects on the Chinese political system.

The PLA will pursue these ends:

1. Achieve the affirmative expeditionary purpose.

2. Destroy as much of the expeditionary capability of the USAF and USN as possible.

3. Hurt America badly enough that future US governments will not contemplate intervention.

4. Disrupt the US-led alliance system in East Asia.

The first task requires the deployment of PLAN surface forces, possibly in combination with PLAAF airborne forces, to seize an objective. The second involves the use of submarines, aircraft, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles to destroy US and allied installations and warships across East Asia.

The third and fourth tasks rest upon the second. The PLA will attempt to inflict sufficient casualties on US forces that future US decision-makers will hesitate to use force against the PRC. Similarly, the survival of the US-led alliance system requires that the United States successfully defeat Chinese aggression; if it cannot, the alliance system could deteriorate and collapse.

The United States hasn’t lost a fighter in action since the 1999 Kosovo War, and hasn’t lost a major warship since World War II. The sinking of a warship would likely also result in the greatest loss of life of any single action for the US military in action since the Vietnam War. However, both US and Chinese strategists may overestimate US casualty aversion. The loss of a major warship and its crew might serve to solidify US commitment (at least in the short term) rather than undermine it.

The “Hold Your Breath” Moments

The biggest moment will come when the PLA makes an overt attack against a US aircraft carrier. This represents the most significant possible escalation against the United States short of a nuclear attack. If China decides to attack a US carrier, the war no longer involves posturing and message sending, but rather a full-scale commitment of capabilities designed to defeat and destroy enemy military forces.

The means for this attack matters. An attack launched from a ship or a submarine makes any PLAN military vessel fair game for the United States, but doesn’t necessarily incur US attacks against PLAAF airbases, Second Artillery missile installations, or even naval installations.

The most dangerous form of attack would involve a ballistic missile volley against a carrier. This is true not simply because these missiles are difficult to intercept, but also because such missiles could carry nuclear warheads. The prospect of a nuclear state using a conventional ballistic missile against another nuclear state, especially one with a presumptive nuclear advantage, is laden with complexity.

The next “hold your breath” moment will come when the first US missiles strike Chinese targets. Given the overwhelming nuclear advantage that the United States holds over China, the first wave of US attacks will prove deeply stressful to the PRCs military and civilian leadership. This is particularly the case if the Chinese believe that they can win at the conventional level of escalation; they will worry that the United States will bump to nuclear in order to retain its advantage.

We can expect that China will deploy its submarines in advance of the onset of hostilities. The surface fleet is a different story, however. In any high intensity combat scenario, the U.S. Navy (USN) and U.S. Air Force will see Chinese warships as legitimate targets for destruction, and will attack with air and subsurface assets. Indeed, even hiding in port probably won’t prevent attacks on the PLAN’s largest ships, including the carrier Liaoning and the big new amphibious transport docks.

China will only sortie the PLAN under two circumstances; if it feels it has sufficient force protection to allow a task force to operate relatively unmolested, or if China’s position has become desperate. In either situation, US submarines will pose the most immediate threat to the surface forces.

Under most war scenarios, China needs to fight for some affirmative purpose, not simply the destruction of US or Japanese military forces. This means that the PLAN must invade, capture, supply, and defend some geographical point, most likely either Taiwan or an outpost in the East or South China Sea. The PLA will need to establish the conditions under which the PLAN can conduct surface support missions.

Who Will Win?

The most difficult question to judge is “who will win?” because that question involves assessing a wide variety of unknowns. We don’t know how well Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles will function, or how destructive US cyber-attacks against the PLAN will prove, or how dangerous the F-22 Raptor will be to conventional Chinese fighters, or how effectively the different elements of the PLAN will cooperate in actual combat. Finally, we don’t know when the war will start; both the PLA and the US military will look much different in 2020 than they do in 2014.

However, in general terms the battle will turn on these questions:

1. Electronic Warfare:

How severely will the United States disrupt Chinese communications, electronic, and surveillance capabilities? Attacking US forces will depend on communication between seers and shooters. To the extent that the US can disrupt this communication, it can defang the PLA. Conversely, Chinese cyber-warfare against the United States could raise the domestic stakes for American policymakers.

2. Missiles vs. Missile Defenses:

How well will the USN and USAF be able to defeat Chinese ballistic and cruise missiles? The PLAN, PLAAF, and Second Artillery have a bewildering array of missile options for attacking deployed and deploying US forces in depth. The American capacity to survive the onslaught depends in part on the effectiveness of defenses against cruise and ballistic missiles, as well as the ability to strike and destroy launchers within and around China.

3. Joint Operations:

How well will the disparate elements of the PLA operate together in context of high intensity, disruptive military operations? Unlike the US military, the PLA has little relevant combat experience from the last three decades. On the flipside, how well will US “Air-Sea Battle” work prepare the USN and the USAF for working together?

4. Quality vs. Quantity:

Chinese forces are highly likely to achieve local numerical superiority in some types of assets, primarily aircraft and submarines. The (narrowing) gap between US and Chinese technology and training will determine how well American forces can survive and prevail in such situations.

How the War Would End

This war doesn’t end with a surrender signed on a battleship. Instead, it ends with one participant beaten, embittered, and likely preparing for the next round.

The best case scenario for an American victory would be a result akin to the collapse of the Imperial German government at the end of World War I, or the collapse of Leopoldo Galtieri’s military government after the Falklands conflict. Humiliating defeat in war, including the destruction of a significant portion of the PLAN and the PLAAF, as well as severe economic distress, could undermine the grip of the CCP on Chinese governance. This is an extremely iffy prospect, however, and the United States shouldn’t count on victory leading to a new revolution.

What if China wins? China can claim victory by either forcing the United States into an accommodation to US goals, or by removing the alliance framework that motivates and legitimates US action. The United States cannot continue the war if South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines no longer have an interest in fighting. Either of these require doing significant damage to US military forces and, potentially, to the US economy.

The impact of a defeat on US domestic politics would be tough to predict. The United States has “lost” wars in the past, but these defeats have generally involved negotiated settlements of areas not particularly critical to US global interests. It’s not clear how the US people would interpret a major military defeat at the hands of a peer competitor, especially a peer competitor that continues to grow in military and economic power. The President and political party that led the US into war would likely suffer dramatically at the polls, at least after the immediate shock of defeat wore off.

The biggest diplomatic and political challenge that both countries face will probably be finding a way for the other side to give up while maintaining its “honor.” No one benefits if this war becomes a struggle for regime survival, or for national prestige.

How the Peace Begins

The prospect for US conflict with China in the Asia-Pacific depends on a basic appreciation of the changing balance of economic and military power. World War I could not change the fact that Germany would remain the largest and most powerful state in Central Europe. Similarly, war is unlikely to change the long-term trajectory of Chinese growth and assertiveness.

A key to peace involves the re-establishment of productive economic relations between China, the United States, and the rest of the Pacific Rim. Regardless of how the war plays out, it will almost certainly disrupt patterns of trade and investment around the world. If either side decides to attack (or, more likely, inter) commercial shipping, the impact could devastate firms and countries that have no direct stake in the war. However, the governments of both the US and China will face strong pressures to facilitate the resumption of full trade relations, at least in consumer goods.

China will not find it difficult to reconstruct war losses. Even if the United States effectively annihilates the PLAN and the PLAAF, we can expect that the Chinese shipbuilding and aviation industries will replace most losses within the decade, probably with substantial assistance from Russia. Indeed, significant Chinese war losses could reinvigorate both the Russian shipbuilding and aviation industries. Moreover, the war will, by necessity, “modernize” the PLA and PLAAF by destroying legacy capability. A new fleet of ships and planes will replace the legacy force.

War losses to trained personnel will hurt, but the experience gained in combat will produce a new, highly trained and effective corps of personnel. This will lead to better, more realistic training for the next generations of PLA soldiers, sailors, and airmen. Win or lose, the Chinese military will likely be more lethal a decade after the war.

The United States may have a harder time replacing losses, and not only because US warships and aircraft cost more than their Chinese counterparts. The production lines for the F-15 and F-16 are near the end, and the US no longer produces F-22. Moreover, US shipbuilding has declined to the point that replacing significant war losses could take a very long time. This might prove particularly problematic if the war demonstrated severe problems with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Given US intention to arm the USAF, USN, and USMC with F-35 variants over the next decade, proof of inadequacy would wreck force planning for the foreseeable future.

The United States will have to face the “was it worth it?” question. In victory or defeat, the US will suffer substantial military and economic damage. Even if the US wins, it will not “solve” the problem of China; even in the unlikely event that the CCP collapses, a successor regime will still dispute China’s littoral.

Potentially, victory could cement the US-led alliance system, making the containment of China considerably less expensive. Assuming that the war began with an assertive Chinese move in the East or South China Sea, the United States could plausibly paint China as the aggressor, and establish itself as the focal point for balancing behavior in the region. Chinese aggression might also spur regional allies (especially Japan) to increase their defense expenditures.

A war could invigorate US government and society around the long-term project of containing China. The US could respond by redoubling its efforts to outpace the Chinese military, although this would provoke an arms race that could prove devastating to both sides. However, given the lack of ideological or territorial threats to the United States, this might be a tough sell.

Finally, the United States could respond by effectively removing itself from the East Asian political scene, at least in a military sense. This option would be hard for many in the US to swallow, given that generations of American foreign policy-makers have harbored hegemonic ambitions.

Conclusion

The window for war between the United States and China will, in all likelihood, last for a long time. Preventing war will require tremendous skill and acumen from diplomats and policymakers. Similarly, the demands of positioning either side for victory will continue to tax diplomatic, military, and technological resources for the foreseeable future. At the moment, however, we shouldn’t forget that China and the United States constitute the heart of one of the most productive economic regions the world has ever seen. That’s something to protect, and to build on.

Robert Farley is a senior lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and The Diplomat. Follow him on Twitter: @drfarls. This article first appeared in 2014. 

Image: Wikimedia Commons. 

Peter Suciu

Security, Americas

The USS Midway arrived too late for World War II, and was commissioned on September 10, 1945 – but she would play a major role during the changing geopolitical climate of the Cold War.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The Midway arrived too late for the Second World War, but led America's navy for the next five decades - launching fighter jets in Vietnam and serving in the 1991 Gulf War.

Conceived as a beefier "battle carrier," the Midway­-class aircraft carrier featured an armored flight deck was more resilient and better able to recover from dive-bombing and kamikaze attacks – and to ensure that it could still carry enough planes to do the job the ship was longer than three football fields.

Six of the nearly 1,000 foot long behemoths were planned, and three were built. And from her launching on March 20, 1945 USS Midway (CV-41), which was named after the decisive World War II carrier battle fought just three years earlier, was the largest warship on the planet.

The USS Midway arrived too late for World War II, and was commissioned on September 10, 1945 – but she would play a major role during the changing geopolitical climate of the Cold War. For 47 years, as the longest-serving aircraft carrier in the 20th century, she was a pioneer as well; the first American carrier to operate in sub-Arctic midwinder, which required the development of new flight deck procedures, and became the only ship to launch a captured German V-2 rocket and then sent a patrol plane aloft to demonstrate that atomic bombs could be delivered from a carrier.

Midway's sister ship USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CV-42), the first carrier to be named for a former U.S. President, became the first carrier to have a planned jet-powered landing on her deck. She also demonstrated carrier long-range attack capabilities when a P2V-3C Neptune took off and flew over Charleston, South Carolina to the Bahamas to the Panama Canal and then finally to San Francisco – a total of 5,060 miles and the longest flight ever made from a carrier deck.

Along with the third sister ship USS Coral Sea (CV-43), USS Midway and USS Roosevelt were modernized for jet aircraft in time for the Vietnam War. USS Midway pilots shot down the first and last MiG fighters of the Vietnam War, and the ship led the evacuation of Saigon in 1975 rescuing more than 3,000 refugees in two days.

"They were the perfect ships for what the U.S. Navy needed," said Mike Fabey, America's Naval reporter for Jane's. "We needed a much larger carrier to maintain our global navy."

The arrival of these large carriers came at a time when the United States was becoming a global superpower, and these ships played a key role.

"You could say America was getting the keys to controlling world events," Fabey told The National Interest. "Ships like Midway were what were needed to keep the peace and maintain order, especially in the Western Pacific. You needed a different kind of ship."

Today the supercarrier isn't really such a novel concept, but in the early Cold War, this wasn't so readily apparent.

"The Midway shows something about the concept of the carrier at large," explained Fabey. "It is a floating city/airfield/naval base. The ships were designed for a particular war, but were able to morph to stay on patrol longer."

Then there is the fact that this class of warships was able to hold such a significant number of aircraft – upwards of 130 in the immediate post-World War II era, and still nearly 70 more modern aircraft.

"This is very important because it is very much the aircraft and the carrier," added Fabey. "Without the aircraft you really just have a super ugly cruise ship."

On April 11, 1992, after 47 years, the first of the class and the last to remain in service was finally decommissioned. Midway didn't arrive in time for World War II, but along with her two sister ships played a crucial role in the Cold War – remaining in service through the 1991 Gulf War. Today she is preserved as a museum ship in San Diego.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com. This article first appeared earlier this year and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

More From The National Interest: 

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Peter Suciu

Security, Americas

Their guns are not to be trifled with.

Here's What You Need to Remember: While the H&K UMP has begun to replace the MP5, the latter remains that gold standard around the world even fifty years after it was introduced.

Despite making some of the most iconic firearms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—including the MG08 machine gun, the Kar-98K, MP-40 and StG44—the German arms industry isn’t actually all that old. Among the largest, Rheinmetall was only founded in 1889 while Deutsche Waffen-und Munitionsfabriken (German Weapons and Munitions public limited company) was only founded in 1896. Even Königlich Württembergische Gewehrfabrik, which eventually became Königliche Waffen Schmieden and later Mauser, only dated back to 1812.

Yet all those firms seem practically ancient compared to Heckler & Koch GmbH, which only came into existence in 1949. Commonly known today simply as H&K, this company was founded in the ashes of World War II and could be considered a major part of the Wirtschaftswunder or “economic miracle” that saw the rapid reconstruction and development of the economy of West Germany. 

When it was formed in 1949, given the restrictions placed on Germany at the time, it didn’t actually produce firearms but instead manufactured machine tools, bicycles and sewing machines. 

All that changed during the Cold War.

In 1956, the firm responded to the West German government’s calls for a new firearm for the Bundeswehr (German Federal Army) and this resulted in H&K’s first weapon, the G3 battle rifle, which was based on the Spanish CETME rifle. That contract allowed the firm to transform into one of the most successful military small arms suppliers in the world.

At the time, the Belgian FN FAL dominated that class of weapon and was used throughout the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Perhaps as a matter of nationalism in West Germany, the G3 won out—despite being notorious for having a violent action and requiring considerable force to charge the rifle when compared to the FAL or American M14. The G3 offered modularity that enabled operators to mix and match accessories years before this was commonplace, but more importantly, it was accurate and reliable. 

The next “big break” for the company came in 1969 when H&K introduced the MP5 submachine gun—a firearm that truly evokes the company motto: “Keine Kompromisse!” (No Compromises!).

As The National Interest previously reported, “The gold standard for decades in submachine guns, the Heckler and Koch MP-5 is still found worldwide in use by a variety of police and military units. The MP-5 is actually a scaled-down H&K G3 battle rifle, chambered for nine-millimeter Parabellum. The MP-5 follows the G-3’s general shape and conventional configuration, right down to the adjustable sights.”

The weapon is everything a Special Forces operator or SWAT team would want—it comes in at just 27-inches and has an 8.9-inch barrel. The MP-5 achieved notoriety and the best possible PR money couldn’t buy when it was used by the British Army’s Special Air Service (SAS) during Operation Nimrod to free hostages being held in the Iranian embassy in London. The MP5 was chosen over the British-made Sterling L2A3 because the H&K weapon fired from a closed-bolt, which made the firearm more accurate—something deemed essential for hostage rescue situations.

While the H&K UMP has begun to replace the MP5, the latter remains that gold standard around the world even fifty years after it was introduced.

In June 2020, soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division became the first combat soldiers to receive the new M110A1 Squad Designated Marksman Rifle (SDMR), which is based on the H&K G28/HK417 sniper rifle. The semi-automatic 7.62x51mm weapon was fielded to soldiers in the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team at Fort Stewart, Georgia.

More recently, H&K had been awarded a $44.6 million contract in 2016 to develop a special version with a baffle-less OSS suppressor. It has a 16-inch long barrel and weighs 8.7 pounds with an empty magazine—meeting the U.S. Army’s Compact Semi-Automatic Sniper System (CSASS) program size and weight requirements. It is just the latest firearm to live up to the No Compromises motto.

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

Image: Reuters

Peter Suciu

Security,

The Smith & Wesson M76 might be the only actual commercial submachine gun actually marketed to civilians

Here's What You Need to Remember:

Today, even among shooters, the name Smith & Wesson likely conjures images of handguns–notably the infamous .44 Magnum. Yet, the company actually produced a submachine gun for use in clandestine operations in Southeast Asia for the U.S. Navy.

Meet the Smith & Wesson M76 submachine gun. 

The origin of the need for this largely forgotten weapon goes back to the early stages of the Vietnam War when the U.S. Navy’s elite SEALs employed a variety of small arms in their operations in the region. Teams utilized suppressed pistols, shotguns and even experimental weapons such as the modular designed Stoner 63. One weapon that was especially well-liked was the Swedish-designed Carl Gustav m/45 submachine, which had been developed during the Second World War.

Sweden may have remained neutral, but as Nazi Germany occupied Norway to its west and Finland was aligned with the Germans in the east, the nation began to develop new small arms in case it was dragged into the conflict. While the m/45 wasn’t actually produced until the war was nearly over, it proved to be a reliable weapon. 

It had more than a passing resemblance to the German-designed MP40 and fired the same widely available 9x19mm Parabellum pistol cartridge from a thirty-six-round detachable box magazine. Sweden continued to maintain its neutrality even as the lines were drawn in the Cold War and sought to export its new submachine gun. Some 300,000 of the m/45 SMGs were produced from 1945 to 1964, while the weapon was even produced under license in Egypt as the Port Said/Akaba. 

Whether the SEALs used actual Swedish or Egyptian made versions isn’t completely clear, but it is likely that it was, in fact, the Swedish versions of the weapon that was employed in the clandestine missions. As noted, Sweden had been widely exporting guns, and the U.S. military seemed to be a happy customer. 

Then that sticky neutrality point crept up, and suddenly in 1966 Sweden halted all exports of small arms to the United States in protest to the Vietnam War. Without a supply of the reliable 9mm SMGs, the U.S. Navy turned to Smith & Wesson–but why that firm was selected is a point that remains largely unclear.

However, by 1967 the American gun manufacturer won a contract and began to produce a version of the gun as the Smith & Wesson M76. Yet by that time, the war changed and the U.S. Navy decided it did not actually require the submachine after all. Only a limited batch was produced. Ultimately, S&W marketed the weapon to law enforcement and a few were even sold to civilians. Despite being fully-automatic weapons, at the time civilians could still purchase machine guns but had to undergo a National Firearms Act (NFA) background check. 

As a result of the timing, the Smith & Wesson M76 might thus be the only actual commercial submachine gun actually marketed to civilians other than perhaps the Thompson dating back to the 1920s and early 1930s. The catch, of course, was that the buyer had to pass that complex background check and pay for the $200 transfer tax. Even at the time, nearly all other NFA weapons were likely war trophies or surplus weapons. Although it doesn’t seem like many were sold to civilians, more than a dozen years later, another firm stepped in.

Beginning in 1983, MK Arms actually produced a copy of the M76 in selective fire and semi-automatic, but the company went out of business after the passage of the Firearm Owners Protection Act in 1986, which banned civilians from buying or owning “newly made machine guns.” 

As for the actual M76, it probably didn’t see much–if any action–in Southeast Asia. Moreover, while it might not have been carried by Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” in the movies like the S&W .44 Magnum, the 9mm S&W M76 submachine gun was used by Charlton Heston in the 1971 zombie-esque film The Omega Man. Perhaps in the end, if Heston had been able to make a quotable quip about the M76 it might have been as famous as the most powerful handgun on earth! 

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

Image: Reuters

Peter Suciu

Security,

The B-29 bomber has remained so controversial that there were protests when it was put on display at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The Bockscar is largely forgotten even though it carried the second atomic bomb—Fat Man—which was dropped on Nagasaki days after the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

The Enola Gay is remembered today as being the aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan nearly seventy-five years ago, and its infamous flight has been the subject of much debate. The aircraft’s mission has been chronicled in movies, TV shows and even a 1980s anti-war song by the British New Wave group Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark—although the song was as much about UK’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s decision to allow nuclear missiles to be stationed in Great Britain.

In fact, the B-29 bomber has remained so controversial that there were protests when it was put on display at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC.

Then there is Bockscar, another B-29 that hasn't shared in such controversy—at least not to the level of its sister aircraft. In fact, Bockscar is largely forgotten even though it carried the second atomic bomb—Fat Man—which was dropped on Nagasaki days after the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

Bockscar was actually one of fifteen specially modified “Silverplate” B-29s that were assigned to the 509th Composite Group. While most B-29s were armed with eight .50 caliber machine guns in remote-controlled turrets along with two additional .50 caliber machine guns and one twenty-millimeter cannon in the tail, these modified aircraft had retailed the tail guns and even had their armor removed to save weight to be able to carry the extremely dangerous atomic bombs at extreme flight distances.

What is also notable about the two aircraft is that their respective pilots who regularly flew the aircraft named the planes. Colonel Paul Tibbets, who piloted the Enola Gay, had named his aircraft for his mother “Enola Gay Tibbets” (1893–1983) who herself was named after the heroine of the novel Enola; or, Her Fatal Mistake. In the case of Bockscar—not to be confused with the Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar—the moniker was a play on Captain Frederick Bock's last name, who had previously participated in air raids on Japan that were launched from parts of China controlled by the Allies.

Yet it wasn’t Bock who piloted the aircraft he had named on August 9, 1945. 

That is because Maj. Charles W. Sweeney had used Bockscar for more than ten training and practice missions even though he and his usual crew had piloted another aircraft named The Great Artiste. When Sweeney and his crew were chosen to deliver the Fat Man while Bock and his crew were chosen to provide observation support the decision was made to swap the crews rather than to move the complex instrumentation equipment.

So what is largely forgotten is that while Bock didn't pilot Bockscar he was in fact present in the other B-29, The Great Artiste, which was used for scientific measures and photography of the effects caused by the release of Fat Man.

Today the Enola Gay remains in the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC while Bockscar is in the collection of the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.

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

Image: Reuters

Peter Suciu

Security, Americas

The weapon could be carried on the B-52 and B-1B bombers or even perhaps the F-15 fighter.

Russia has been ramping up its tests of its Tsirkon hypersonic missile, a weapon that the United States military currently has no countermeasure against. If defense isn’t an option, then perhaps it is time to go on offensive and that is exactly what the United States Air Force plans to do—and last week announced that it will conduct a flight test of its own air-launched hypersonic missile before the end of the year.

Planned for production next year, the Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) would be the first hypersonic missile developed by and employed with the U.S. military. Such capabilities could provide the United States with a stand-off strike opposition to address increased threats from China and Russia.

Will Roper, the Air Force’s top weapons and research official, said during the inaugural Doolittle Leadership Center Forum on Dec. 14 that the test will occur this month, but he added that while the development of a hypersonic weapon is a notable achievement, it is not a full solution to the challenges the U.S. military is facing.

The AGM-183A ARRW completed a captive-carry test earlier this year, and the first planned booster test flight is expected to occur in the coming weeks, while production would begin next year, Air Force Magazine reported.

While such weapons could provide increased capabilities as a stand-off strike platform, Roper added that hypersonic missiles may not be as crucial to addressing the threats from China and Russia.

“As we field the first hypersonic weapon, and I’m excited we’re doing that, it doesn’t undercut this investment our adversaries have, nor take away the principle of safety that I would expect they hold,” Roper said. “The U.S. has exceptional capabilities, especially in stealth aircraft that can penetrate and put weapons where they wish. So do our adversaries believe we don’t have the ability to target them? I would hope not. Hypersonic weapons just then become another way to do it.”

The ARRW is an air-launched boost-glide hypersonic weapon, which allows it to be initially accelerated using a rocket before gliding unpowered to the target at speeds greater than the speed of sound. Along with such speeds, the missiles also have the ability to maneuver with computerized precision, which could make it difficult to counter. Additionally, a hypersonic missile’s speed and force is so significant that it can inflict damage by sheer
“kinetic” impact without even needing explosives.

The Air Force has been conducting ARRWs tests with Cold War-era B-52H Stratofortress bombers. Over the summer, this included a “captive carry” test, which demonstrated the transmission of telemetry and GPS data from the weapon, called the AGM-183A IMV-2 (Instrumented Measurement Vehicle), to ground control stations, solidifying an essential part of the weapons overall launch, guidance and flight trajectory systems.

The Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC) is also equipping the B-1B to carry hypersonic weapons. This month, a B-1B Lancer was used to launch an inert Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) from an external pylon underneath the aircraft’s fuselage, following a previous test, during which a B-1B carried an inert JASSM under an external pylon for the first time. The goal of these tests is to determine how the Cold War era B-1B bombers can be best employed to carry hypersonic weapons externally.

Earlier this year Roper also suggested the ARRW could even be carried on the F-15 fighter. While not quite hypersonic, the Air Force is certainly picking up speed on the development and deployment of the ARRW.

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

Image: Reuters.

Peter Suciu

Security,

Even those who know guns probably don't know this. 

Here's What You Need to Remember: This brand got its start at the same time as Beatlemania. 

Thanks in no small part to movies such as Die Hard II even people who don't know firearms know Glock, the Austrian firm best known for its polymer-framed pistols. What most don't know is that the company was only founded in 1963, yet today produces more than two dozen models of handguns in three sizes and seven different cartridges in three calibers.  

That’s not bad for a brand that got its start at the same time as Beatlemania. 

And even those who do know firearms, still likely don't know all that much about Glock, which isn’t actually the manufacturer but rather the product that is made by the Austrian firm Glock Ges.m.b.H. The company may be known for its firearms, but it also produces field knives, entrenching tools and apparel.

Long before its founder Gaston Glock ever decided to produce the Glock 17, the company's first handgun, he started by making household products including curtain rods and later knives. While prolific firearms designer John Browning received his first patent for a firearm in his 1920s, Gaston Glock was fifty-two years old before he developed a firearm. 

In the 1970s Gaston Glock developed grenade castings and machine-gun belt links, and as an expert in polymers he began to use the materials to make knife handles and sheaths. Then in the early 1980s, he decided to see how polymers could be used in the production of a handgun. The result was the semi-automatic Glock series pistol, and it featured a polymer frame—which soon led to concerns about the “plastic gun” that some believed (even before Die Hard II) could get past airport X-ray machines.

However, the Glock 17 passed the strict NATO durability test and was selected by the Norwegian Army as its standard sidearm. That put the company and its unique handgun on the road to become the preferred international law enforcement sidearm. While the U.S. military adopted the Beretta M9 to replace the aging Colt M1911 .45 pistol, various Glocks have been the preferred weapon for Special Forces including the U.S. Navy SEALs.  

Moreover, the USMC followed by adopting the Glock 19M as the “M007 Concealed Carry Weapon” in 2016 for those Marines who had a need for a compact pistol—such as criminal investigation units and the crews of the HMX-1 helicopter squadron. 

Today, if there is a complaint about Glock it is that the handgun models can be downright confusing—instead of being named for the year or caliber, the company names the product for the next patent number. Hence the first Glock handgun was dubbed the Glock 17 not because it held seventeen rounds in the magazine, but rather because it was named after number patented by Gaston Glock during the development of the pistol. While that might seem reasonable for the day, especially for an inventor who also created field knives and a folding shovel, it has created confusion for gun owners today especially considering that the company has produced dozens of models.

The other big complaint is that some models aren't available in the U.S. for commercial sale. This has included the Glock 18, a full-sized nine-millimeter "automatic pistol" that can be fired like a submachine gun with a rate of fire of 1,200 rounds per minute. Yet, other handguns such as the Glock 25 and Glock 28, which each fail to meet the ATF's criteria for importation.

However, even if a select few Glocks can’t be imported, the company has shooters covered by offering its polymer-framed handguns in numerous calibers and sizes. It’s a good thing old Gaston didn’t decide to stick with curtain rods.

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

Image: Wikimedia

Peter Suciu

Public Health, Americas

The Combat Cloth Face Covering is ready for action, even if it took this long to make.

Even as the vaccine for the coronavirus is now rolling out across the United States, it could be months before every American can be vaccinated. As a result, mask mandates are likely to remain in place across many parts of the country well into the spring and possibly even the summer.

Seeing that face masks will be required for the foreseeable future—not to mention that masks could be required for a future pandemic—the U.S. Army has responded with an official Army-designed, -tested, and -refined face mask. It even has an official military designation: Combat Cloth Face Covering (CCFC), and it will be provided to new U.S. Army soldiers during the second quarter of fiscal year 2021 (FY21). The mask was one of the updates provided by the Army Uniform Board (AUB) during its 152nd meeting on Nov. 18.

Fighting the Pandemic

Throughout the current novel coronavirus pandemic the Army has provided disposable as well as reusable, solid color masks to soldiers, and also permitted the use of neck gaiters and other cloth items, including bandanas and scarves, as face coverings.

This past summer, the AUB recommended and the U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. James C. McConville approved the issue of CCFCs to soldiers at Initial Entry Training (IET) as part of their clothing bag. It was announced at the 152nd AUB that the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) would begin to issue two CCFCs to each new soldier during the Q2 FY21.

Additionally, CCFCs will be available for purchase at the Army & Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) uniform stores later in FY21.

The Army noted that the CCFC was designed, developed and produced along an expedited timeline. Whereas it can normally take 18 to 24 months for the DLA to make an item available for order once the technical description, design and components are approved and slated—the CCFC, from inception to issuance, is slated to take less than a year.

The current U.S. Army guidelines for face coverings stated, “SOLDIERS ARE AUTHORIZED TO WEAR THE NECK GAITER AND OTHER CLOTH ITEMS, SUCH AS BANDANAS AND SCARVES, AS FACE MASKS. TO PROTECT THE FACIAL AREA, THE CLOTH ITEM MUST COVER THE MOUTH AND NOSE AND EXTEND TO THE CHIN OR BELOW AS WELL AS TO THE SIDES OF THE FACE. THE ITEM MUST ALSO BE SECURED OR FASTENED TO THE FACE IN A MANNER THAT ALLOWS THE SOLDIER TO BREATHE WHILE ALSO PREVENTING DISEASE EXPOSURE OR CONTAMINATION.”

The guidelines also stated that the soldiers may not wear masks that have “PRINTED WORDING, PROFANITY, RACIST, DEMEANING OR DEROGATORY LOGOS, SCRIPT OR IMAGERY.” Moreover, soldiers are not allowed to cut up clothing materials such as the Army Combat Uniforms to use for face masks as those materials may have been treated with chemicals. Any fabrics used for face coverings are required to be subdued and conform to the uniform.

Leaders were asked to use their “best judgment” regarding the color cloth and design of face masks, while soldiers were instructed to replace items that became soiled, damaged or difficult to breathe through.

Other AUB Updates

Beyond the face masks, the AUB also received updates on the implementation status of four other uniform changes from the 151st AUB, which took place in June 2020.

These include an Improved Hot Weather Combat Uniform-Female (IHWCU-F), which is expected to be added to the clothing bag in Q4 FY21 and available for purchase in Q2 FY22; a Hot Weather Combat Boot-Improved (HW ACB-I), expected to transition to DLA Troop Support for new contracting action in Q2 of FY21 and available for purchase by FY24; Black Athletic Socks, estimated to be available in the clothing bag in Q2 of FY22; and the Army Physical Fitness Uniform-Maternity (APFU-M).

Prototypes of the APFU-M are in development and the Army is working with the United States Air Force and United States Marine Corps on their respective past maternity uniform efforts in order to expedite pattern development. Form, fit, and function evaluations are expected to occur in Q3 of FY21. Additionally, the AUB discussed additional clothing articles, including items for new and expecting mothers. More information will be provided about these discussions in 2021 after Senior Leader decisions are made the Army noted.

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

Image: Reuters.

Graham Allison

Security, Asia

Unless China can be persuaded to constrain itself and indeed cooperate with the United States, it will be impossible to avoid catastrophic war or preserve a climate in which both can breathe.

THE RISE of China presents the most complex international challenge any American president has ever faced. China is at one and the same time the fiercest rival the United States has ever seen, and also a nation with which the United States will have to find ways to co-exist—since the only alternative is to co-destruct. If Xi Jinping’s Party-led autocracy realizes its dream, Beijing will displace Washington from many of the positions of leadership it has become accustomed to during the American Century. Unless China can be persuaded to constrain itself and indeed cooperate with the United States, it will be impossible to avoid catastrophic war or preserve a climate in which both can breathe.

To meet this challenge, President-elect Joe Biden and his team will have to craft a strategy that passes what F. Scott Fitzgerald defined as the test of a first-class mind. In Fitzgerald’s words, it is “to hold two contradictory ideas in one’s head at the same time and still function.” Fortunately, in sharp contrast with his predecessor, Biden comes to this test well prepared. Seasoned by decades of experience as vice president, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a legislator during the Cold War, he has wrestled with the hardest choices and developed considered views about how the world works.

On the one hand, unless it crashes or cracks up, Xi’s China will be “the biggest player in the history of the world,” as Lee Kuan Yew once put it. With four times as many people as the United States, if the Chinese were only one-half as productive as Americans, China would have a GDP twice our size. That would allow it to invest twice as much in defense as we do. Since the beginning of this century, China has risen to become the largest economy in the world (according to the metric the CIA judges the best yardstick for comparing national economies). Today, it is also the manufacturing workshop of the world, the No. 1 trading partner of most major economies, and since the financial crisis of 2008, the primary engine of global economic growth. At the end of 2020, only one major economy will be larger than it was at the beginning of the year. And that is not the United States of America.

To create a correlation of forces that can shape China’s behavior, the United States will have to attract other nations with heft to sit on our side of the seesaw of power. Despite President Donald Trump’s disdain for allies, his vice president and secretary of state-recognized this imperative. But their hope to take a page from America’s successful strategy in the Cold War by persuading other nations to “decouple” from China behind a new economic iron curtain misunderstood the underlying realities. As a politician, Biden knows that the mandate of other countries’ leaders to govern depends on their ability to deliver increasing standards of living for their people. Any attempts to force them to choose between their military relationship with the United States that makes them secure, and their economic relationship with China that is essential for their prosperity, are thus a fool’s errand. Enlisting allied and aligned powers in a much more complex web will be vastly more difficult than it was when confronting the Soviet Union.

On the other hand, Biden knows full well that the United States and China share a small globe on which each faces existential challenges it cannot defeat by itself. Technology and nature have condemned these two great powers to find ways to live together in order to avoid dying together. As a veteran Cold Warrior, Biden understands in a way most of today’s generation do not that we continue to live in a MAD world. He recalls how difficult it was for American policymakers to get their minds around the concept of nuclear MAD—mutually assured destruction—and to accept its strategic implications for sane statecraft. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, John F. Kennedy and his successors learned the lesson Ronald Reagan summarized succinctly in his favorite bumper sticker: a nuclear war cannot be won and must therefore never be fought. Realizing what that meant in practice for the U.S. rivalry with the Evil Empire was a huge struggle—one in which Biden spent countless hours helping Senate colleagues appreciate.

Today, in addition to nuclear MAD, President-elect Biden knows that we also face Climate MAD. Sharing a small globe on which we breathe the same air, either one of the top two emitters of greenhouse gases can disrupt the climate so severely that neither can live in it. Recognizing that reality, Biden worked with President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to hammer out a climate accord with China that made possible the international Paris Agreement that began to bend these curves. While Trump withdrew from this agreement, Biden will rejoin it on Day 1 and seek to work with China to stretch to more ambitious targets.

In sum, the challenge posed by China is daunting. But brute facts are impossible to ignore. Having overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles to become the forty-sixth president of the United States, Biden will be ruthlessly realistic about the magnitude of this challenge, and unflinching in his determination to do what has to be done.

Graham T. Allison is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is the former director of Harvard’s Belfer Center and the author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?

Image: Flickr / Office of the U.S. Navy

Peter Suciu

History,

They live by the motto, “better to die than be a coward.”

They’ve been described as the world’s most savage soldier, yet the average Nepalese volunteer stands at just five-foot, three-inches tall. Looks are truly deceiving because the men who make the cut to fill the ranks of the world's most famous mercenary units are ones few would want to face in a fight.

These are the Gurkhas and they live by the motto, “better to die than be a coward.”

If that doesn’t say enough about the determination of these men, then their history might. The Gurkhas, whose name originates from the Nepalese hill town of Gorkha, were actually an enemy of the British East India Company as it expanded in the Indian subcontinent in the early nineteenth century. The two sides fought so fiercely against one another during the Gurkha War of 1814–16 that a mutual respect was earned. 

According to the terms of a peace treaty between Nepal and Great Britain, the Gurkhas were allowed to join the ranks of the East Company’s army—essentially as mercenaries. During the Victorian Era, the Nepalese warriors were considered a “martial race” and were noted for their masculine qualities and general toughness.

For more than two hundred years they’ve been recruited exclusively from Nepal with the majority coming from the hill villages. In total, more than two hundred thousand Gurkhas have fought alongside the British military in every corner of the world.

They took part in wars in the Indian frontiers, in colonial wars in Africa, in both World Wars and even the 1982 Falklands War. To date, more than forty-six thousand Gurkhas have died fighting for the British Crown.

British Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw once said, “if a man says he is not afraid to die, he is either lying or a Gurkha!”

A total of twenty-six Victorian Crosses—the highest British military honor—have been awarded to Gurkhas. Until 1947 most served in the Indian Army under British officers—but following the end of British rule four Gurkha regiments were transferred to the British Army and became the Gurkha Brigade.

Their Infamous Weapon

Even those who haven’t heard of the Gurkha soldiers or their exploits in combat may know their even more infamous fighting knife—the curved eighteen-inch bladed knife known as a kukri. 

The modern kukri is based on the traditional weapon carried for centuries by the warriors of Nepal, but only in modern times have members of the Brigade of Gurkhas received combat training with the knife.  

A very common myth is that if the weapon is drawn in battle the blade has to “taste blood”—either of the enemy or its owner—before it could be re-sheathed. While not true, stories of the blade being used in close combat have only contributed to the misconceptions.

For much of its history, the weapon was just as often used for foraging and cooking by its owners, but the mystique around it has spawned countless “knockoffs.” 

Fewer in the Ranks 

As the British Army has scaled back in recent years so too have the number of Gurkhas in the ranks—numbers were cut from thirteen thousand in 1995 to just three thousand today. 

Yet many continue to try for those few coveted openings.  

In 2019 the Gurkha Company of the British Army agreed to a significant increase in the number of recruits that could be selected and instead of the initial 320—which had the biggest intake in thirty-three years—more than 400 joined the ranks of the famous unit. In total, 580 of more than 10,000 applicants were invited to return for the final assessment.  

The selection process is far from an easy one. Tests include a three-mile uphill race while carrying in excess of sand and rocks strapped to the applicants back; doing seventy-five bench jumps in one minute and seventy sit-ups in two minutes.  

Until quite recently, those who made the cut and were willing to die for “Queen and Country” weren’t actually allowed to live in the UK following their retirement from the service. That was because Nepal isn’t a member of the Commonwealth, so even as those men served in the British Army they were not technically British subjects. Some UK officials even went so far as to claim that allowing all thirty-six hundred living former Gurkhas into the UK could even create massive pressure for immigration and social services. 

However, in 2009 it was announced that Gurkha veterans who retired before 1997 and served at least four years would be allowed to settle in the UK. Yet, another controversy that involved pensions hasn't been resolved and even now-former Gurkha soldiers receive only a fraction of what British soldiers are paid after retirement.  

Many Gurkhas veterans who returned to Nepal were also left homeless after the early 2016 earthquake that struck their homeland and hit the hill villages quite hard. 

Today, even with the hardships many young Nepalese men from the foothills will still do everything they can to join the elite military unit. 

While the British Army remains the largest “employer” of the Gurkhas today, other nations including Singapore, Malaysia and India have all employed them in their respective armies and police forces. It is easy to see how these fierce warriors from the foothills of the Himalayas have become the world's most famous mercenaries.  

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

Image: UK Army

Peter Suciu

History, Europe

These five machine guns that deserve their moment to shine.

Here's What You Need to Remember: These guns were some of the best Europe had to offer.

World War I was truly the conflict in which the machine gun came into its own. It offered a devastating rate of fire that was able to mow down any troops that tried in vain to cross no man's land in one of the countless futile attacks. Heavy water-cooled machine guns were employed at the beginning of the war, and that lead to the development of more “mobile” weapons including automatic rifles such as the French Chauchat and American Browning Automatic Rifle. 

Germany also produced more machine guns than any other combatant power, yet still relied on captured and foreign-produced machine guns due to the demand for weapons at the front lines. While the war made such weapons as the Lewis Gun and Maxim almost famous, there were still weapons that have been largely overshadowed and almost forgotten.

Here are five machine guns that deserve their moment in the spotlight. 

The Austrian Schwarzlose M. 7/12

Developed by Prussian firearms designer Andreas Schwarlose at the turn of the century, the water-cooled, belt-fed Schwarzlose M. 7 resembled the German Mashinengewehr 08 (MG08), but it actually featured a far simpler design that relied on a delayed blowback action, which was unusual in early machine gun designs. However, the design also resulted in a far less expensive machine gun, which was one of the reasons cash-strapped Austria-Hungary adopted it as its standard machine gun. 

It had a slower rate of fire than the MG08 or British Vickers when it was introduced, but the cyclic rate of about four hundred rounds per minute was increased by the utilization of a far stronger mainspring. The Schwarzlose, which was chambered for the standard eight-millimeter cartridge employed by the Austro-Hungarian Army, proved to be a reliable machine gun when used primarily as an infantry weapon. It remained the standard heavy machine gun for the Austrian Empire throughout the war. 

After the war surplus weapons were used by the Czechoslovakian, Dutch, Romanian and even Swedish Armies. During World War II, some of the weapons were used by second-line units of the German Army while its Romanian Allies used a version that converted the weapon to 7.62x54mmR, which required the lengthening of the water jacket. Those guns were used with border guards and as anti-aircraft weapons and reportedly proved ineffective in that capacity.  

The British Hotchkiss Portative

After centuries of rivalry, Great Britain and France became close allies during World War I, but even then it was almost unheard of for either nation to use small arms from the other. There was one notable exception—the British adopted a special version of the French Hotchkiss M1909 Benét–Mercié light machine gun, which was developed and built initially by Hotchkiss et Cie. As the Hotchkiss factory in Saint-Denis near Paris was close to the front and there were fears that it could be captured by the Germans, production of the M1909 moved to Lyon while in 1915 the British government invited Hotchkiss to set up a factory in Coventry. 

Thus a French-designed machine gun was produced in the UK as the Hotchkiss Portative. As it was lighter and more compact than the heavy water-cooled Vickers machine gun, the British military found the Portative more suitable for cavalry and mounted infantry units and the weapon was widely used in campaigns in Gallipoli and Palestine. It was carried by such noted units as the Australian Light Horse, New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade and the British Army’s Camel Corps.

One factor that aided in the portability was the weapon's ability to be fed either from cloth belts like other machine guns or from brass stripper clips that held 30 rounds—the latter option allowing a soldier to move forward without having to carry an ammunition box. 

As it was actually introduced before the mass adoption of the Lewis Gun or the French Chauchat, the Hotchkiss Portative was among the first truly portable light machine guns to see combat in the Great War.  

The Italian Fiat-Revelli Modello 1914

Much like the Austrian-produced Schwarzlose the Italian Fiat-Revelli Modelo 1914 was a machine gun that was visually similar to the Maxim in appearance but had internal workings that were quite different. It was unique for a water-cooled machine gun in that it offered selective-fire for both single-shot “semi-automatic” or fully automatic fire. It featured a recoil-delayed blowback mechanism and fired from a closed bolt. 

With a rate of fire of around 500 rounds per minute, its cyclic rate was slower than the Maxim/Vickers guns but on par with the original version of the Schwarzlose—which seems fitting as these were used on opposing sides of the lines. It was chambered for the 6.5x52 millimeter Carcano round, which helped with ordnance supply issues but gun experts have noted it was underpowered compared to the other heavy machine guns of the era. Instead of being fed from a belt, the Fiat-Revelli Modelo 1914utilized a 50-round or 100-round strip-feed box magazine.

The Italian machine gun saw use in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, while the Italian supplied it to the Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War. It was used in a limited capacity by the Royal Italian Army during World War II.

Italian Beretta M1918

Along with the German MP-18, the Beretta M1918 has the distinction of being among the first submachine guns—and technically the Italian weapon predates the German effort. However, it grew out of the M1915 Villar-Perosa machine gun, which had been developed as an aircraft machine gun—albeit one that fired a 9-millimeter pistol round rather than the full rifle ammunition standard in other aircraft weapons of the era.

The Villar-Perosa was also unique in that it was a portable double-barreled weapon and consisted of two independent receivers and firing mechanisms that were attached together. It also had a high rate of fire that exceeded 1,500 rounds per minute but the 9-millimeter ammunition provides insufficient against enemy aircraft—not to mention that its range was limited—so the weapon was redeveloped for use as a ground-based submachine gun.

In its new capacity, the Beretta M1918 entered service in the spring of 1918, and some sources suggest it saw service a few weeks before the Germans deployed the MP-18 in battle. The two weapons have similarities in that each was mounted to a rifle stock and clearly inspired the next generation of submachine guns. 

However, the Beretta weapon was unique in that it featured a folding bayonet—and thus truly was the first SMG to utilize a bayonet—while it featured a top-loading stick magazine rather than the side-fed magazine of the MP-18. The Italian weapon saw limited use at the end of the World War I and even some use during World War II. 

The Danish Madsen Machine Gun: 

Denmark remained neutral in World War I, yet its Madsen light machine gun was employed by both the Allies and Central Powers. The weapon first entered service in 1902 and predated the Hotchkiss Portative and Chauchat and was arguably the very first portable machine gun produced. Its first use in battle was during the Mexican Revolution, while it also saw use with the Imperial Russian Army during the Russo-Japanese War. 

During World War I, it was used by the German Army, which had it chambered in the 7.92-millimeter caliber. It was used with infantry units, mountain troops and then at the end of the war with storm troopers.  

It was also the first machine gun to feature a top-mounted magazine, in its case offset to the left side of the receiver to allow the sights to remain on the centerline. It featured a unique fully automatic falling block action with a mixed recoil-operated locking system, which resulted in a relatively slow rate of fire of just 450 rounds per minute. While sophisticated, its unique operating cycle proved to be a reliable system that could stand up to the harsh conditions of trench warfare. 

The Madsen proved to be a reliable weapon and was produced in dozens of calibers and configurations—so much so that it has been used in literally dozens of conflicts over the past one hundred years, and a few of the weapons even remain in use with the Brazilian Military Police.   

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

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Peter Suciu

History, Europe

Great Britain "won" the naval arms race, but at a terrible cost. It changed the balance of power in Europe as the Anglo-German naval race heightened tensions between the two great powers.

Here's What You Need To Remember: Dreadnought means "fear nothing," and the name was very appropriate. The ship was lightyears ahead of anything that rival navies could throw at it - though rival navies quickly began to catch up.

Prior to the First World War, Great Britain was the dominant naval power in the world. As an island nation with a vast colonial empire, it had to be, and since the Napoleonic Wars, the British feared not only invasion but being cut off from that empire. Moreover, while fielding the only truly "professional army" in Europe, the British Army was far smaller in terms of the men it could mobilize compared to its longstanding rivals France and Russia.

The Royal Navy sought to counterbalance the traditional military strengths of those nations with a "two power" standard at sea, whereby it had to feature enough powerful warships to stand up to what any allied coalition could throw at it.

It wasn't simply enough to have the largest fleet; the Royal Navy needed the finest and most powerful warships. That fact became apparent in 1858 when France—a long rival of Great Britain—constructed La Gloire, the first large warship that combined an armored hull, steam propulsion and explosive shell-firing guns. The Royal Navy began a vigorous campaign to build modern ships and more of them.

Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, the Royal Navy maintained a numerical advantage with some of the most powerful warships in the world.

Then in 1906, the HMS Dreadnought was launched. It featured an innovative battleship design, and by the time the First World War broke out in 1914, all major navies measured their strength by the number of Dreadnought battleships and battlecruisers in their respective fleets.

When John "Jackie" Fisher became First Sea Lord in 1905 he retired many of the Royal Navy's older ships, as his vision centered on the battlecruiser—a ship that had the armament to destroy a foe and the speed to escape if necessary. The Admiralty saw the potential in such ships, but also called for a new class of battleship and that was the Dreadnought, which means "fear nothing." This new warship would actually be the sixth to carry the moniker, but it truly changed everything.

This new warship combined the "all-big-gun" armament, which included ten 12-inch guns, but was also quite speedy thanks to the new steam turbine engines. In addition to being well-armed, HMS Dreadnought featured redistributed armor to protect its guns, engines and magazines, while an innovative bulkhead structure in the interior made flood control easier, which increased her survivability.

The ship was so revolutionary that its name came to describe an entire class of battleships of the era—with the major all-big-gun warships built before her now described as "Pre-Dreadnought." The British may have had the most powerful warship in the world, but only briefly.

The arrival of this new ship inspired a naval arms race—and while at her commissioning the Royal Navy possessed a lead of twenty-five first-class battleships over the fleets of foreign navy, with HMS Dreadnought the Royal Navy possessed just a lead of only one ship in the newest class. Instead of providing a technological advantage, it essentially leveled the playing field.

While the Royal Navy had a head start, navies around the world built more powerful warships and soon even Dreadnought was eclipsed by so-called "Super-Dreadnoughts." By 1910, even Brazil had more powerful ships in its navy than HMS Dreadnought.  

By the time war came in 1914, Great Britain "won" the naval arms race, but at a terrible cost. It changed the balance of power in Europe as the Anglo-German naval race heightened tensions between the two great powers. While Germany never really closed the gap and had just seventeen Dreadnought battleships and battlecruisers to the Royal Navy's twenty-nine, the two navies only met in one major, yet far from decisive engagement at the Battle of Jutland on May 31, 1916.

After the war naval treaties limited the number of battleships navies could possess. Yet, the "all-big-gun" ships remained the Queen of the Seas through World War II, by which time the battleship was overshadowed by the aircraft carrier and Great Britain had lost its place as the world's dominant naval power.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and website. He is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com. This article first appeared in early 2020.

Image: Wikipedia.

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