The National Interest

Caleb Larson

Security, Americas

The U.S. Air Force’s legendary U-2 Dragon Lady spy plane made history as the first military plane to fly using an AI program to control key sensors and systems.

In a tweet, Will Roper, the U.S. Air Force’s Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics and so-called acquisition Tsar announced the mating of an AI pilot program with the U-2 Dragon Lady airframe, saying:

“NEW. For the first time, @usairforce put #AI safely in charge of a U.S. military system. Call sign “Artuμ,” we modified world-leading μZero gaming algorithms to operate the U-2’s radar. This first AI copilot even served as mission commander on its seminal training flight!”

The AI program, playfully called ARTUµ after the iconic droid helper R2-D2 from the Star Wars series, helped pilot a reconnaissance flight near Beale Air Force Base. During the flight, ARTUµ looked for ground-based missile launchers that could have posed a threat to the airframe, while the pilot kept an eye out for incoming enemy aircraft. Both the ARTUµ and the human pilot shared the U-2’s onboard radar, though ultimately ARTUµ decided to dedicate radar to missile detection.

Roper went on to explain what the melding of man and machine means for the future of flying, referencing sci-fi pop culture, saying, “Like any pilot, Artuμ (even the real R2-D2) has strengths and weaknesses. Understanding them to prep both humans and AI for a new era of algorithmic warfare is our next imperative step. We either become sci-fi or become history.”

An Important First

The flight marked the first publicly-known time that an artificially-intelligent program was involved with the flying of a military plane. Though not directly in control of the plane, the AI program controlled the airframe’s navigation as well as radar control sensors.

Prior to the flight, which took place in California, the program had successfully completed over one million training flights and is based on a gaming algorithm known as µZero, which has been previously used to best human opponents in popular and complex games like chess or Go, a strategy game popular in Asia.

In an interview, the pilot, identified only as callsign Vudu said that the program’s “role was very narrow … but, for the tasks the AI was presented with, it performed well,” though the human pilot remained “very much the pilot in command.”

Postscript

Roper explained what the implications of this flight are for the future of AI flight and the United States military, saying that ARTUµ “was the mission commander, the final decision authority on the human-machine team. And given the high stakes of global AI, surpassing science fiction must become our military norm.” Stay tuned for more on ARTUµ, and for more on the future of artificially intelligent military flights.

Caleb Larson is a defense writer for the National Interest. He holds a Master of Public Policy and covers U.S. and Russian security, European defense issues, and German politics and culture.

Image: Reuters.

Stephen Silver

Technology, Americas

With a deal at last in hand, Roku users everywhere will not have to worry about missing out on watching Wonder Woman 1984.

Last week, nearly seven months after its launch, HBO Max finally landed on the Roku platform. Roku reached an agreement with AT&T and division WarnerMedia to finally close the biggest hole in the streaming service’s distribution, just in time for the debut next week of the blockbuster movie “Wonder Woman 1984.”

What took so long, and how did the sides finally come to an agreement? The Wall Street Journal reported this week on the protracted negotiations.

Roku, per the Journal report, “had tough financial terms WarnerMedia wouldn’t meet.” The battle ultimately hinged on “the question of how to divvy up the spoils of video streaming.” Both sides, though, were incentivized to reach a deal prior to the arrival of “Wonder Woman,” which will be followed in 2021 with the arrival of the entire planned Warner Brothers movie slate on HBO Max.

In addition, another point of contention in the negotiations was The Roku Channel, Roku’s in-house channel which has expanded throughout the year. Roku has leaned on media companies to provide programming for the channel, but WarnerMedia had resisted, while Roku, in turn, had asked for part of the ad space in a future ad-supported version of HBO Max. The exact shape of the final agreement is unclear, although a source told the newspaper that it did not entail Warner agreeing to supply content to the Roku Channel.

A similar Roku Channel disagreement was at the heart of Roku’s dispute earlier this year with NBC Universal, over the Peacock app. Those two sides reached agreement in September. Meanwhile, WarnerMedia agreed to a deal in November with its other remaining holdout, Amazon, to make HBO Max available on that streaming platform. HBO Max also arrived on Comcast set-top boxes shortly before the announcement of the Roku deal.

The WSJ report, citing Parks Associates, said that Roku now has forty-six million active accounts, and 38 percent of the hardware market in the United States. The Journal also said that Roku makes most of its profit these days not from the sale of physical devices, but rather from selling ads in streaming apps.

The deal that was reached between the parties led Roku’s stock to soar on Thursday. The stock reached as high as $349 a share on the news of the HBO deal, continuing a massive run ever since October. Roku was trading at $138.19 a share on January 1. One analyst, following the news, raised its price target for Roku to a Street-high $410.

Meanwhiile, Roku is in yet another standoff, with the cable company Charter Communications, and the dispute led the company to pull the Spectrum TV app from its channel store for new downloads, although the app still works for existing customers.

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Image: Reuters.

Mark Episkopos

Security, Europe

These boats could lurk beneath the Arctic circle, only to surface when they recieved thier doomsday orders.

The largest and one of the most prolific submarines ever made, the Typhoon-class served for decades as a leading Soviet ballistic missile submarine (SSBN).

Conceived in the late Cold War, Project 941 Akula (North Atlantic Treaty Organization reporting name Typhoon) was meant to compete with the prodigious submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) payload capabilities of the rival U.S. Ohio-class. The Akula class in question is not to be confused with Project 971 Shchuka-B, a line of attack submarines also with the NATO reporting name Akula that is sometimes also referred to as the Akula-class.

Typhoon was to be larger than the Ohio-class, in order to account for its much heftier R-39 Rif missiles. But why were the Typhoon’s missiles so big in the first place? As previously noted by The National Interest, the answer surprisingly stems from differences in the ways that the U.S. and Russian plastics industries developed.

At a submerged displacement of around 48,000 tons, the Typhoon class remains the largest submarine in the world—for a sense of scale, consider that the largest U.S. submarine, the Ohio-class, comes in at just over 18,000 tons. With five internal pressure hulls of premium titanium construction, the Typhoon isn’t just big but also highly resilient. Some of the submarine’s other design features are considerably less practical. In what one can only imagine was a boost for crew morale, the Typhoon’s immense size enabled the addition of a swimming pool, sauna, and even a bird aviary.

As with any strategic submarine, the Typhoon’s core feature is its nuclear-capable arsenal. The Typhoon boasted as many as twenty R-39 Rif SLBM’s, each capable of delivering ten 100-kiloton nuclear warheads. The operational doctrine for Typhoon submarines was fairly straightforward: they would linger beneath the arctic ice cap, where they are much harder to detect and track, before surfacing to launch a devastating nuclear strike on U.S. or Western European infrastructure. But this plan proved difficult, not to mention highly expensive, to fully realize. For one, the submarine had to be of a strong enough construction to readily surface through ice—that’s where the titanium hulls came in. Special design accommodations also had to be made in order to support the massive, ninety-ton R-39 missiles and insulate them from shock.

Typhoon’s unique design had its drawbacks. Precise monetary values are difficult to come by, not to mention somewhat meaningless in the context of the Soviet military-industrial sector, but there is little question that Typhoon’s cost per model was astronomical. The process of extracting and handling titanium is extraordinarily costly, let alone all of Typhoon’s other complex design considerations.

The lead Typhoon submarine, Dmitri Donskoy, was commissioned and transferred to the Northern Fleet in 1981. The Typhoon series was to consist of seven models, six of which were completed over the course of the 1980’s; the last Typhoon entry was scrapped prior to completion. In the decades following the Soviet collapse, all except one—the Dmitri Donskoy, which serves as a testbed for the new Bulava submarine-launched nuclear missiles—were scrapped or decommissioned. Rumors have long swirled of a potential refit that could see several Typhoons turned into cruise missile carriers, but it seems increasingly unlikely with each passing year that the aging Typhoon class will get a new lease on life.

The Borei line of SSBN’s is set to replace both the Typhoon and Delta classes over the coming decade as the new sea leg of Russia’s nuclear triad.

Mark Episkopos is a national security reporter for the National Interest.

Image: Reuters.

Mark Episkopos

Security, Americas

While Austin’s appointment is not necessarily consequential for Biden’s China policy, it sends a clear signal within the broader context of the President-elect’s assembled foreign policy team.

President-elect Joe Biden has tapped retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin to lead the Defense Department. What can Austin’s nomination tell us about the direction of U.S. military doctrine under a Biden administration?

Austin has served in a series of distinguished positions over the course of a forty-one-year military career that ended with his retirement in 2016. As the assistant commander of the 3rd Infantry Division during the early stages of the Iraq War, Austin is widely credited with the Army’s successes in Baghdad. Austin’s service record during the invasion of Iraq propelled him to the Army’s higher echelons; following a flurry of promotions in subsequent years, Austin went on to become the commanding general of all U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. From there, Austin became vice chief of staff to the Army in 2012 and, eventually, commander of U.S. Central Command in 2013.  

Austin enjoys a near-unanimous rapport with the military. Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, described him as a “soldier’s soldier.” “He is popular among many troops that served under his command over the past couple decades, as I can attest from a number of conversations over the years,” O’Hanlon said. Despite being frequently described by Washington insiders as a “team player,” Austin has intermittently broken ranks with Washington military policy orthodoxy—particularly over his skepticism of Middle-Eastern military entanglements. Austin reportedly expressed concerns over the strategic direction of the Obama administration’s efforts to combat the spread of the Islamic State, arguing that the thrust of the military effort should be in Iraq even as the Obama administration increasingly invested itself into regime change in Syria. Austin later testified that the U.S. policy of training “moderate Syrian fighters” as a local wedge against the Islamic State had borne little fruit. In that same testimony, Austin took a forceful stance against the then-popular, bipartisan push for a no-fly zone in Syria: “I would not recommend a buffer zone at this point in time,” stated Austin upon being repeatedly questioned on this point by the late Senator John McCain.

Opposition to Austin’s nomination runs across two broad themes. The first is the argument, fielded by a wide substratum of American political discourse, that the appointment of a retired general undermines the principle of civilian control over the military. There are those who say that Austin’s recent military service is inherently disqualifying. Federal law prohibits military officers from serving as the defense secretary within seven years of their retirement, which means that Austin can only accept the nomination with a waiver provided by congressional vote. There have only been two such cases in the postwar period—one for Army Gen. George Marshall, and the other for retired Marine Gen. James Mattis. It remains to be seen how the 151 House Democrats who voted against Mattis’s waiver will navigate Austin’s upcoming confirmation process.  

The second objection reflects the concern that Austin’s range of policy experience is too regionally-restrictive. ”Biden is rightfully focused on [Austin’s] strength in logistics that pertains to combating the pandemic,” Bonnie Glaser, a senior adviser for Asia and the director of the China Power Project for The Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Japan Times. “But experience in counterinsurgency efforts in the Middle East is not what we need to deal with threats in the Indo-Pacific.” Austin’s proponents in Washington have pushed back against the suggestion that ongoing U.S. military operations in Asia could be hamstrung by Austin’s nomination: “I can assure you that neither free navigation in the South China Sea nor the security of the Third Island Chain will be imperiled merely because a former Army general is defense secretary,” Earl Matthews wrote in an op-ed published by the Washington Post. “The idea that the defense secretary must be an expert on China, or an Asia policy wonk is without merit . . . he or she must be a generalist with a broad strategic vision ready to meet any global challenge,” added Matthews, who served as principal deputy general counsel of the U.S. Army and as deputy assistant to President Donald Trump, in addition to being a senior director for defense policy and strategy on the National Security Council. 

While Austin’s appointment is not necessarily consequential for Biden’s China policy, it sends a clear signal within the broader context of the President-elect’s assembled foreign policy team.  It is not in the defense secretary’s purview to formulate U.S. grand strategy against peer competitors, but Biden’s decision to nominate Austin—especially over Obama-era Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy, a long-speculated potential nominee with an established record of taking a hard line on China—poses yet another affirmation that the coming Biden administration is unlikely to pursue measures that might intensify U.S.-China military competition in the Asia-Pacific region.  

Mark Episkopos is the new national security reporter for the National Interest. 

Image: Reuters

Patrick M. Cronin, Audrey Kurth Cronin

Security, Americas

The Trump administration’s woeful response to many threats, but especially the coronavirus pandemic, demonstrates that dealing with tomorrow’s bioterror threat must be a national security priority.

Despite creating the U.S. Space Force and Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration failed to back U.S. expertise, so millions of Americans suffered as a result of the administration’s shortcomings. President-elect Joe Biden can reverse this with a bold new initiative to build U.S. know-how and skills for the twenty-first century. As John F. Kennedy mobilized all Americans for the space age, Joe Biden can call on all of us to create a knowledge society. 

America’s Pandemic Response—Not the Coronavirus—Is Key 

The groundwork has been laid. The key is that America’s response to the pandemic must be larger than this particular scourge.

Biden’s campaign elevated science to combat the global pandemic overwhelming the country. His first post-election act established a Covid-19 Advisory Board to contain America’s worst health crisis and humanitarian disaster. Appointing a trio of renowned co-chairs and diverse experts, the president-elect signaled that the day when people’s lives are secondary to personal ego and political gain will soon end.

Even great experts cannot make the coronavirus vanish overnight. Beyond therapeutics and vaccines, the logistics of inoculating a large population, many of whom could fall prey to anti-vaxxer misinformation, remains a challenge. Rallying former presidents to demonstrate that the vaccine is safe will help fill the vacuum of scientific leadership under outgoing President Donald Trump. But inoculating the public against anti-science attitudes is even more important than delivering the shots. 

Science Can Cure U.S. National Security Policy 

Science and knowledge can also help cure the maladies afflicting U.S. foreign and defense policy.

Beyond America’s shores, it now looks like an ignorant superpower, which is a perception that must be changed. Some of America’s closest allies think it unexceptional because of the mishandling of the coronavirus crisis. After combating the virus, a presidency dedicated to knowledge can move on to other policy priorities, including climate change, major-power competition, and combating tomorrow’s terrorism. By stating his intention to rejoin the Paris agreement on climate change and the World Health Organization, Biden declares U.S. support for both science and international engagement. Globalism is not an unalloyed good, but in an age of global problems, the United States ignores the world at its peril.

Re-engaging with allies and international institutions will allow America to regain its stature in the world. By working with other democracies, Biden can ensure that America’s values are baked into emerging standards and the regulatory scaffolding around privacy and data collection. Digital technology should advance freedom of thought rather than suffocate it by enabling the rise of oppressive surveillance states.

Resurgent great-power competition gravitates around technology. Biden’s advisers understand that the U.S.-China relationship is too crucial for America to allow it to fail. Thus, it must wage “competition without catastrophe.” Yet, Biden must not concede technological dominance to Beijing, which seeks to lead on 5G telecommunications, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and other high-tech frontiers. Fortunately, outstanding bipartisan studies and proposed legislation offer blueprints, including the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence; the Endless Frontier Act to enhance basic research and technology; and the Cyberspace Solarium Commission. The Biden administration can stabilize relations with China while competing in science and technology (S&T).  

S&T will also play a prominent role in U.S. defense modernization by building a small, smart, and affordable force. The Biden administration’s defense team needs to wisely adopt fourth industrial revolution advancements in autonomy, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology into the nation’s arsenal. The U.S. military force structure must graduate from and transform our expensive and exquisite twentieth-century systems. 

Yet the same technology promising unprecedented breakthroughs poses untold future threats in the hands of irresponsible humans. For example, rapid progress in bioengineering, including CRISPR technology for editing genomes, could yield unintended consequences if unmoored from ethical constraints. America’s woeful response to the pandemic demonstrates that dealing with tomorrow’s bioterror threat must be a national security priority. 

S&T Can Unlock Political Gridlock

Despite Biden’s desire to heal the “soul of the nation,” his goodwill will not expunge U.S. political polarization. Faced with a surging pandemic, a K-shaped economic recession and recovery, a ramshackle infrastructure, a rival like China bent on technological hegemony, and an underperforming education system, Biden can inspire all Americans to respond to the challenge by learning new skills. Broader S&T literacy—covering everything from education to research and development to economic and military modernization—can improve bipartisanship.

To thrive, Americans must replace extreme arguments with pragmatism. The same rifts regarding anti-coronavirus mask-wearing hamper climate change discourse. Climate alarmists who push a green new deal and climate deniers who peddle dangerous myths will not hear each other. Biden can assemble a new political coalition, finding common ground with enough Republicans to invest in science and new technologies to lower emissions and drive a modern economy. 

 Scientific Literary is Necessary but Insufficient 

As First Lady, Dr. Jill Biden will bring personal experience as a professor of English and writing.  She can boost badly needed science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education at all levels, with an equal push to study human behavior, regional studies, civics, and ethics. The academy needs better linkages between the sciences and the humanities. Not every American needs to learn how to code or evaluate drug trials, but America does need to rebuild a literate, educated citizenry that can recognize expertise and objective facts. 

Congress should get involved.  Just as the 1958 National Defense Education Act catalyzed a generation capable of putting a man on the moon, a similar act is required today. A Knowledge Society National Security Act could open opportunities for all Americans to learn the hard and soft skills critical to confronting human problems, ranging from disease and global warming to countering disinformation and the malign uses of emerging technologies. 

Building Back Better with Knowledge

In his inaugural address on January 20, Biden might echo sentiments of Kennedy, who sixty years ago advocated civility and summoned Americans to reach for a New Frontier. “Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors,” he said. “Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.”

In a similar vein, Biden can bridge our fractured polity and inspire all Americans to stretch toward the future. Francis Bacon is credited with the phrase “knowledge is power” (scientia potentia est). For Biden, power is knowledge, and presidential power can propel a dynamic new American knowledge society.

Dr. Patrick M. Cronin is the Asia-Pacific Security Chair at Hudson Institute.

Dr. Audrey Kurth Cronin is Professor of International Security and founding director of the Center for Security, Innovation, and New Technology at American University's School of International Service; her book, Power to the People: How Open Technological Innovation is Arming Tomorrow’s Terrorists earned the 2019/2020 Neave Book Prize.

Image: Reuters

Peter Suciu

History, Americas

It was a tank that could do some hard-hitting and wouldn't need to run from a fight.

Here's What You Need To Remember: In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there was fear in Washington over the Soviet Union's superiority in armored warfare. The Chrysler M103 was certainly not an ideal weapon - but it helped to alleviate those fears.

When the tank was originally conceived during the First World War by the "Landship Committee," the concept was to have a lumbering vehicle that would be truly massive in size. That proved to be impractical—but as tank development continued tanks of different sizes were devised. This included light tanks able to scout and exploit breakthroughs, while a medium tank would offer firepower and mobility.

The bulk of most tanks used during the Second World War fell into the medium tank category, but Germany and the Soviet Union also fielded "heavy tanks," which could dominate the battlefield, taking out bunkers and fortifications while being able to stand up to the smaller tanks that attempted to stop them. The United States lacked such a tank, and during the war its M4 Sherman medium tank, while more than adequate when it entered service in 1942, couldn't stand up to the more powerful German tanks such as the Tiger.

Even the M26 Pershing wasn't heavy enough to withstand the Tiger and Panther. The development of a new heavy tank began for the next war even as the conflict in Europe was winding down.

This was because there was a real concern that the Soviet heavy tanks would be just as hard to stop as anything the German's had, maybe even more so. The IS-3 and IS-4—which the Soviets built due to Premier Josef Stalin's obsession for heavy tanks and thus named for him—worried American planners. These were heavy in every sense of the word, with strong front armor and a 122mm gun.

To address the threat from those Soviet behemoths came the T43E1, which was developed out of a series of prototypes built in 1953-54 at Chrysler's Newark, Delaware tank plant. Production ramped up even as the Korean War ended.

A total of three hundred tanks were produced and these were designed as "Tank, Combat, Full Tracked, 120mm, M103" – but known simply as the M103. It is notable too that no nickname was ever assigned to the tank.

As its official name implied, however, it had a powerful 120mm M58 main gun, which was fitted in the M89 turret mount. The tank was as well armored as it was armed, with upwards of five inches of hull armor at the front. It weighed 62 tons, and had a crew of five. It was a tank that could do some hard-hitting and wouldn't need to run from a fight.

Yet, like most heavy tanks, the size meant some compromises. The M103 had a maximum speed of just 21mph and only a range of 80 miles. It could pack a punch but it wouldn't exactly get into or out of a fight quickly, and that fight couldn't be all that far away.

Because the M103 was rushed into service it didn't entirely meet the needs of the U.S. Army, which operated eighty of the original T43E1 models – of which seventy-four were converted to the M103 standard. Instead, while it was the Army that had sought the tank, the U.S. Marines operated 220 of the T43E1s, with 219 converted to M103A1 of which 154 were further rebuilt as the M103A2. The former upgrade included a new Stereoscopic T42 sight, M14 ballistic computer and new turret electric amplidyne system traverse with a turret basket. The M103A2 upgrade, which took place in 1964, added a new 750 hp diesel engine that provided better range a top speed. The M24 Coincidence Rangefinder also replaced the older rangefinder.

The M103 served with the USMC until 1972 and reportedly none ever left American soil. It was replaced by the M60, and thus ended the American experiment to develop a true heavy tank.

As a footnote, only twenty-five of the original three hundred M103 tanks are preserved in museums around the world, including one at the Tank Museum in Bovington in the UK.

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 2020.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

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Peter Suciu

Security, World

The company was founded in 1526—just over thirty years since Columbus “discovered” America.

Here's What You Need To Remember: At nearly five hundred, the company is certainly the oldest modern arms manufacturer in the world - and still as good as ever.

There is no denying that Italians are often called lovers, not fighters, and have a reputation for taking long vacations and not working much. However, the folks at Fabbricad’Armi Pietro Beretta would have reason to dispute that fact. The company was founded in 1526—just over thirty years since Columbus “discovered” America—making it among the oldest companies in continuous operation, the oldest family-owned business and certainly one of the oldest firearms makers in the world.

While the company has been known for centuries for its finely made firearms including hunting rifles and shotguns, it has had long ties to the militaries of the world. According to the company, it first made cannon barrels for the Venetian fleet, which were used in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 and Beretta has supplied weapons for every major European war since the middle of the seventeenth century.

During World War I, the Beretta Model 1918 was one of the first submachine guns—and it is still debated whether it was fielded before the German MP18. During the fascist era, it produced weapons for the Royal Italian Army, including the Modello 38 (Model 38), an innovative submachine gun. Instead of having a fire-selector, it featured two triggers—one for semi-automatic and the other for full-automatic fire. That weapon, which was chambered for the 9x19-millimeter Parabellum round, was also used by German Waffen-SS as well as by the Romanian Army and saw postwar use in the Algerian War and the Congo Crisis.

The 9-millimeter Beretta 92 pistol had the unique distinction of being the handgun that replaced the venerable Colt M1911 .45 pistol. It was selected as the service handgun for the U.S. military under the designation of “M9 Pistol.” The Italian firearms maker provided the first 450,000 pistols in January 1945 after a contentious competition that had dragged on for the better part of a decade.

However, since its introduction, the Beretta has been seen to have several disadvantages including the size and weight, while its exposed locking block, which can fail and needs replacing every five thousand rounds, has also been seen as a serious issue. For those and other reasons in the mid-2010s, the Army began to seek a replacement, even as Beretta unveiled its newly redesigned M9A3.

Beretta claimed that the new pistol solved many of the problems with the older models. “The M9A3 Beretta looks like a futuristic, high tech version of its Reagan-era ancestor—which of course it is. The A3 is finished in a three-tone black, coyote, and flat dark earth scheme, unlike the flat black of the M9, a bit of marketing that reflects the type of environment U.S. forces have been fighting in for the last seventeen years,” according to Kyle Mizokami.

The A3 has “harder lines” than the original Beretta, along with a flattened mainspring housing that eliminated the bulge along the backstrap, creating a more angular grip reminiscent of the M1911A1. However, that wasn't enough to keep the U.S. Army interested but the M9A3 is available on the civilian market. 

While Beretta’s day with the U.S. military may be coming to an end, this company has seen the unification of Italy, the rise and fall of Benito Mussolini, endured countless wars and even Italian socialism. Beretta will likely be around when today’s firearms are thus dead and buried.

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.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Peter Suciu

History, Asia

In the 1930s as Japan became more nationalist and more imperialist the bushido – "the way of the warrior" – was revived and Japan's military moved away from European style sabers for ceremony to a sword that resembled the samurai katana.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The decision was more cultural than tactical - but the swords did serve a military purpose, and sometimes a gruesome one.

It is a scene from World War II movies and comic books; seeming fanatical Japanese soldiers charging out of the jungle wielding a "samurai" sword, swinging widely and yelling "banzai." It isn't actually Hollywood or comic book fiction, however.

The "banzai" war cry began as a generic cheer uttered by soldiers and civilians alike, as the word literally means "ten thousand years." It had long been used in Japan to indicate joy or a wish for long life and during the war was used in celebration. Often the soldiers yelled "Tenno Heika Banzai," which roughly translated to "long live the Emperor." The war cry took up new meaning as the tide turned against the Japanese forces, which made the so-called "banzai charges" – the last-ditch attacks, which may have almost seemed futile in retrospect.

And during those charges, it was common for an NCO or officer to draw his curved sword and lead the attack. While thousands of these swords were certainly captured in the field, untold thousands more were surrendered to the Allies at the end of the war and given to U.S. and other Allied soldiers, including those who had been prisoners of the Japanese. The Japanese swords were among the most common "war trophy" from the Pacific campaigns of the Second World War, and even today these are misidentified as "samurai swords."

The swords may have the appearance, as well as many of the features, as the famed katana swords that were carried by the samurai, but apart from some few "ancestral blades" that were refitted with new hardware, the swords were in no way linked to the samurai class of earlier historic periods of Japan. The samurai, which had been part of the powerful military caste in Japan for centuries, rose to power in the 12th century. However, the Meiji Restoration of 1868 led to the abolition of the feudal system. While they were relieved of their traditional privileges, many samurai did enter the elite ranks of politics and industry in Japan.

In the 1930s as Japan became more nationalist and more imperialist the bushido – "the way of the warrior" – was revived and Japan's military moved away from European style sabers for ceremony to a sword that resembled the samurai katana.

The Imperial Japanese Army's "shin gunton" – meaning new pattern – replaced the western style "kyu gunto." The quality of the blades varied greatly. Some reused old blades, and this was common of higher-ranked officers whose ancestors may have been members of the samurai class, while some officers of means (who weren't of the old guard) opted for hand-made swords that were made by such famous smiths as the Yasukuni Shrine, the Gassan School and Ichihara Nagamitsu among others.

For the vast majority of officers and almost all NCOs the blades were machine-made and produced before the war in Germany and even in the UK. While officer's swords typically featured a traditional rayskin and a wooden base with a cloth wrapping, the NCO swords' handles were cast brass or aluminum. As the war progressed the quality of the swords suffered. The late war swords featured simpler mounts and nearly all were machine-made. Even the officer's handles featured simple wooden hilts.

While most of the swords lacked the craftsmanship of the earlier katanas, the swords still proved quite deadly. In 1937 during Japan's campaign in China, two officers – Tsuyoshi Noda and Toshiaki Mukai – reportedly took part in a gruesome contest to see who could kill 100 enemy soldiers with their swords. It has been questioned if such a contest took part, but both men were tried and executed as war criminals.

After the war, Japanese soldiers were required to surrender all arms, which included swords. There were many special ceremonies where the swords were surrendered and these were held in Japan as well as in many previously occupied areas. It has been reported that many of the soldiers who had taken their family blades to war would eventually have the swords returned. Over the years this has created some controversy as those blades were considered family heirlooms and have become especially valuable. The debate as to whether those should have been consider legitimate war trophies or priceless art objects continues to this day.

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 2020.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

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Russia Has Missing Nuclear Weapons Sitting on the Ocean Floor 

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Peter Suciu

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When it comes to military hardware rarely does a "one-size fits all approach" work, especially across services, but the F-35 could truly be the exception to the rule.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The F-35 isn't exactly purpose-built; it's been designed as a multi-role fighter. This could be a problem - it's usually better to have multiple single-purpose jets than one that can fill all roles less well. However, the F-35 is such an excellent plane that it might not matter.

When is a new plane actually three planes? Answer: when it is the F-35 Lightning II, a fifth-generation fighter that combines advanced stealth with fighter speed and agility. Three variants of the F-35 will be produced and these are meant to replace the United States Air Force's A-10 and F-16, the United States Navy's F/A-18, and the United States Marines Corps F/A-18 and AV-8B Harrier.

The single-engine, single-seat plane is unique in that it can also operate as a conventional-takeoff-and-landing (CTOL) variant for the USAF while the Navy version will operate from an aircraft carrier (CV). The United States Marine Corps, along with the UK's Royal Air Force and Royal Navy, will utilize an F-35 that can operate as a short-takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL) fighter.

The aircraft was developed, produced and supported by an international team at prime contractor Lockheed Martin, with support from principal partners including Northrop Grumman, Pratt & Whitney and BAE Systems.

The F-35, which was born out of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program, addresses key issues facing the United States military along with those of its allied fighter fleets, which have gotten both smaller and older. The USAF has fewer fighters than it did during the Cold War, while on average many of its current fighter aircraft are twenty-five-years-old.

As a fifth-generation fighter, the F-35 provides advanced stealth along with improved agility and maneuverability, plus better sensor and information fusion, network-enabled operations and advanced sustainment. This makes the F-35 among the world's most advanced multi-role fighters flying today. It has a range of 1,200 nautical miles, and can reach speeds of upwards of Mach 1.6 (1,200 mph). It is powered by F135-PW-100 engines that provide 40,000lb. of maximum propulsion.

The stealth, multirole fighter's armament includes a 25mm GAU-22/A 4-barrel rotary cannon with 180 rounds of ammunition. There are four internal and six external stations on the wings. It can carry a variety of air-to-air missiles, air-to-surface missiles, anti-ship missiles and bombs. In a "stealth mode" it can infiltrate enemy territory and carry 5,700 pounds of internal ordnance, and in its "beast mode" it can carry up to 22,000 pounds of combined internal and external weapons.

The F-35 features advanced electronic warfare (EW) capabilities that allow the pilots to locate and track enemy forces. In addition, the pilots can jam radars and disrupt threats, while the advanced avionics give the pilot real-time access to battlespace information that includes 360-degree coverage of the tactical environment. In addition, data collected by the fighter's sensors will be shared with commanders at sea, in the air or on the ground. This provides real-time data on the combat situation, which makes the F-35 a true force multiplier during collation operations.

When it comes to military hardware rarely does a "one-size fits all approach" work, especially across services, but the F-35 could truly be the exception to the rule.

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: Wikimedia Commons.

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Peter Suciu

Security, Eurasia

More hype from Moscow? Or the real deal?

Here's What You Need to Know: The Avangard is still just one component of Russia’s large arsenal of such weapons.

Exactly how serious a threat Russia's Avangard hypersonic intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is to the United States isn't entirely clear. The ICBM is reported to have both hypersonic speed and an ability to fly a “maneuvering” flight path through the atmosphere. Such a combination would make it considerably difficult to counter. 

It can reportedly cruise at twenty-seven times the speed of sound and its ability to maneuver could make it almost impossible to correctly predict its trajectory, which provides the ICBM with the ability to protect itself from air and ballistic missile defenses that try to impede its path.  

“The United States has practically no chances to resist the Avangard, since, in the event of large-scale hostilities, Russia will attack a potential enemy with all available weapons,” Maj. Gen. Vladimir Popov, honored military pilot of the Russian Federation and candidate of technical sciences, was quoted by the Eurasian Times earlier this month.

“In this case, the defensive complexes will not be able to identify all targets,” Popov added. “Among the attackers, there will be false missiles without charges as well as electronic interference due to electronic warfare. Among the many attacking missiles, some will still reach their destination.”

The news outlet, which suggested that Beijing has praised the fact that Russia’s nuclear-tipped hypersonic ICBMs, could “devastate” U.S. defenses, also noted that the United States and Russian Federation remain very much in parity, while other nations cannot yet catch up.

The Avangard is still just one component of Russia’s large arsenal of such weapons, which include 528 land- and submarine-based ICBMs, plus nuclear weapons on bombers. America’s missile defenses have only focused on intercepting a handful of ICBMs launched by a small power like North Korea. 

“The air and missile defense system of the United States is very strong,” Popov added. “It cannot be written off and underestimated; we are talking about a deeply echeloned engineering network. It is thought out and protects the most important regions of the country.”

U.S. Response 

The development of such weapons may not give America's adversaries a significant advantage, however. Should U.S. nuclear launchers, ICBMs or even land-launched, nuclear-armed strategic bombers be rendered ineffective or destroyed, the United States still has available options with which to retaliate; including measures via the U.S. Navy’s nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines.   

In addition, the United States is continuing to develop weapons that could be seen as a deterrent against the use of the Avangard and other ICBMs. Earlier this month, the U.S. Air Force announced that it had awarded Northrup Grumman a $13.3 billion Engineering and Manufacturing Development contract for the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) intercontinental ballistic missile program.

Moreover, in June, President Donald Trump addressed the fact that the United States military has its own hypersonic missile.

“We are building new ships, bombers, jet fighters, and helicopters by the hundreds; new tanks, military satellites, rockets, and missiles; even a hypersonic missile that goes seventeen times faster than the fastest missile currently available in the world and can hit a target one thousand miles away within fourteen inches from center point,” the president said during his address at the 2020 United States Military Academy at West Point Graduation Ceremony.

While the president’s description of the accuracy of the United States’ hypersonic missiles has been called into question, it remains very much true that the U.S. military won’t allow any nation to gain such an upper hand when it comes to ICBMs. 

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.

Image: YouTube / Russian Ministry of Defense

Peter Suciu

History, Asia

The Type 59 was not the first domestically-built (or at least modified) tank used by the PLA.

Here's What You Need to Remember: After the defeat of the Nationalist forces during the Chinese Civil War, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of the People's Republic of China began to develop its own tank force. But it took until 1959 for the Chinese to develop the Type 59 main battle tank.

Before the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, which merged into the Second World War when Japan attacked American and British forces in late 1941, the National Revolutionary Army of China under Chiang Kai-shek was armed with mostly aging European armor. This included the truly antiquated Renault FT tanks, which were “upgraded” to some extent with 37mm guns.

Fearing the Japanese more than the Chinese at the time, Soviet Russia also supplied the Nationalist Chinese with some 82 T-26 tanks, while tank crews were even trained under the supervision of Soviet specialists. The Soviet Red Army was already in the process of upgrading its armored forces and supplied the same T-26 tanks to the Republican forces in Spain as well.

Later during World War II the American's also supplied a few M3 Stuarts and M4 Shermans, and those tanks were put to good use stopping Japanese attacks.

The First Domestic Chinese Tank 

After the defeat of the Nationalist forces during the Chinese Civil War, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of the People's Republic of China began to develop its own tank force. But it took until 1959 for the Chinese to develop the Type 59 main battle tank (MBT), and in truth it was little more than a Chinese-produced version of the Soviet T-54A, which had been developed after World War II to replace the venerable T-34.

The T-54A was supplied to China under the Sino-Soviet Friendship Treaty after the Korean War. The Chinese military leadership negotiated with the Soviets to acquire the blueprints and assembly know-how to domestically produce their own version. The Type 59 subsequently became the backbone of the Chinese Army, and it was the longest PLA tank production to date, spanning all the way until 1985 when nearly 10,000 were produced in a number of variations. Moreover, it also served as the basis for several other MBTs including the light Type 62, the Type 69, and the Type 97.

However, the Type 59 was not the first domestically-built (or at least modified) tank used by the PLA.

In 1945, the Japanese surrendered large numbers of the Type 97 Chi-Ha ShinHoTo, but most were handed over to the Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist forces. However, the Chinese PLA also captured a pair of the tanks at the Imperial Japanese Arsenal in Shenyang, and these were given the designations 101 and 102.

The PLA troops also forced a group of captured Japanese personnel to help repair/refurbish the tanks. Before the work was completed, the Japanese engineers successfully sabotaged 101, leaving the Communists forces with just the one functional but nearly complete tank.

The Number 102 Tank

That particular tank has become the stuff of legend. It was used by the Northeast Special Tank Brigade with thirty soldiers. The tank was used to smash through a wall to help the PLA unit successfully escape from Shenyang as the KMT retook the city.

The number 102 tank then took part in various actions and according to PLA propaganda it was used to kill upwards of 3,000 KMT soldiers. It was later used in the October 1948 action at the Battle of Jinzhou along with other Type 97 tanks, and somehow it survived largely undamaged. Dubbed the “Gongchen” or “Heroic” tank, it took part in the Liaoshen and Tianjin Campaigns and drove within the walls of Peiping in February 1949.

When the People's Republic of China was proclaimed on October 1, 1949, the Gongchen Tank served as the lead armored vehicle in the military parade in Tiananmen Square. It remained in service under the new Communist Red China, until it was officially retired in 1959. Number 102 has been in the Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution ever since.

There were other Type 97 Chi-Ha tanks that were produced in China during World War II and later used by the KMT, but it is the Gongchen Tank that remains the most remembered tank today in the People's Republic of China.

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, World

These nuclear-powered carriers, which have two reactors and four shafts for propulsion with a top speed of 30+ knots (34.5mph), were the largest warships in the world until the USS Gerald R. Ford, the lead ship of her class of carriers entered service in 2017.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier is unquestionably a symbol of American might and power projection abroad. But that isn't necessarily a bad thing - just ask the many recipients of carrier-based humanitarian assistance programs.

At 1,092 feet, the Nimitz-class supercarriers are more than three times the length of a football field, and with a crew of 3,200 sailors and 2,480 airmen, these are essentially floating cities. The lead ship of the class, USS Nimitz – nicknamed "Old Salt" – was commissioned in May 1975, was named after Admiral Chester Nimitz, who led the U.S. Navy through the Second World War.

The ship was first deployed to the Indian Ocean during the Iran Hostage Crisis and has since logged untold miles, providing security at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games and later service in the Persian Gulf after Operation Desert Storm. Most recently USS Nimitz was deployed against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, where her F/A-18s took part in the Battle of Afar in 2017.

A total of 10 Nimitz-class carriers have been built, and the last of the class, USS George H.W. Bush, was commissioned in January 2009. These nuclear-powered carriers, which have two reactors and four shafts for propulsion with a top speed of 30+ knots (34.5mph), were the largest warships in the world until the USS Gerald R. Ford, the lead ship of her class of carriers entered service in 2017. Each of the Nimitz-class has an expected 50-year service life with one mid-life refueling. These warships, which have a displacement of 102,000 tons, were all built by Huntington Ingalls Industries Newport News Shipbuilding (now Northrop Grumman Ship Systems) based in Virginia at a unit cost of approximately $8.5 billion (constant year FY 12 dollars).

Each carrier has approximately 60 aircraft onboard and this includes a variety of fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft with up to 90 of various types. Typical aircraft on a Nimitz-class carrier include 12 F/A-18E/F Hornets, 36 F/A-18 Hornets, four E-2C Hawkeyes and four EA-6B Prowlers fixed-wing and helicopters, including four SH-60F and two HH-60H Seahawks. In addition, the carriers could also deploy the S-3B Viking, before these were phased out and replaced the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. The flight deck, which measures 1,092 feet by 252 feet, is equipped with four lifts, four steam-driven catapults and four arrester wires. The carriers are capable of launching one air every 20 seconds.

The air wings of the carriers are customized according to the nature of operations, with the usual air wings replaced with 50 army helicopters on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower for its operations in Haiti in 1994. Similar considerations can be made when a carrier is used for disaster response and humanitarian assistance.

In addition to the aircraft, the mostly recently built Nimitz-class carriers are now armed with three Raytheon GMLS mk29 eight-cell launchers for NATO Sea Sparrow surface-to-air missiles, which has semi-radar terminal guidance. There are also four Raytheon/General Dynamics 20mm Phalanx six-barreled Mk15 close-in weapons systems that have a 3,000rpm rate of fire.

While the last of the Nimitz-class carriers has been commissioned, and the class will eventually be replaced by the Gerald R. Ford-class, these ten carriers will still strike fear into potential U.S. adversaries for many years to come.

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 several years ago.

Image: Wikipedia.

More From The National Interest: 

Russia Has Missing Nuclear Weapons Sitting on the Ocean Floor 

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Where World War III Could Start This Year

Sebastien Roblin

Security, Europe

Was it as good?

Here's What You Need to Know: The unglamorous Su-25 has had great impact on a wide range of conflicts.

The Su-25 Frogfoot, known as the Grach or “Rook” by Russian pilots, is one of those aircraft that may not be at the cutting edge of technology, but still has seen widespread service around the world because it offers an effective and useful solution to the need to blast targets on the ground.

As such, its obvious stablemate is the American A-10 Thunderbolt II attack plane. But while the U.S. Air Force wants to retire the A-10 starting in 2022, the Su-25 is undergoing extensive upgrades to keep with the times.

Also unlike the Thunderbolt, it has been disseminated it all over the world and seen action in over a dozen wars, including in the air campaigns over Syria, Iraq and Ukraine.

Not only has Russia had a lot of experience flying Su-25s in combat—it has shot several down as well.

During World War II, Russia’s armored Il-2 Sturmovik attack planes, nicknamed “Flying Tanks,” were renowned for their ability to take a pounding while dishing it out to German Panzer divisions with bombs, rockets and cannon fire.

Unlike the U.S. Air Force in the 1960s, which was enamored with the concept of “winning” nuclear wars with strategic bombers, the Soviet air service, the VVS, placed more emphasis on supporting ground armies in its Frontal Aviation branch. However, no worthy successor to the Shturmovik immediately appeared after World War II

In 1968, the VVS service decided it was time for another properly designed flying tank. After a three-way competition, the prototype submitted by Sukhoi was selected and the first Su-25 attack planes entered production in 1978 in a factory in Tbilisi, Georgia. Coincidentally, the American A-10 Thunderbolt had begun entering service a few years earlier.

Like the A-10, the Su-25 was all about winning a titanic clash between the ground forces of NATO and the Warsaw Pact by busting tanks and blasting infantry in Close Air Support missions. This meant flying low and slow to properly observe the battlefield and line up the plane for an attack run.

Flying low would also help the Su-25 avoid all the deadly long-range SAMs that would have been active in a European battlefield. However, this would have exposed it to all kinds of antiaircraft guns. Thus, the pilot of the Su-25 benefited from an “armored bathtub”—ten to twenty-five millimeters of armor plating that wrapped around the cockpit and even padded the pilot’s headrest. It also had armored fuel tanks and redundant control schemes to increase the likelihood of surviving a hit. And in their extensive combat careers, Su-25s have survived some really bad hits.

Despite the similarities with the A-10, the Su-25 is a smaller and lighter, and has a maximum speed fifty percent faster than the Thunderbolt’s at around six hundred miles per hour. However, the Frogfoot has shorter range and loiter time, can only operate at half the altitude, and has a lighter maximum load of up to eight thousand pounds of munitions, compared to sixteen thousand on the Thunderbolt.

More importantly, the types of munitions usually carried are typically different. The Thunderbolt’s mainstays are precision-guided munitions, especially Maverick antitank missiles, as well as its monstrous, fast-firing GAU-8 cannon.

The Su-25’s armament has typically consisted of unguided 250 or 500 kilogram bombs, cluster bombs and rockets. The rockets come in forms ranging from pods containing dozens of smaller 57- or 80-millimeter rockets, to five-shot 130-millimeter S-13 system, to large singular 240- or 330-millimeter rockets. The Su-25 also has a Gsh-30-2 30-millimeter cannon under the nose with 260 rounds of ammunition, though it doesn’t have the absurd rate of fire of the GAU-8.

The lower tip of the Frogfoot’s nose holds a glass-enclosed laser designator. Su-25s did make occasional use of Kh-25ML and Kh-29 laser guided missiles in Afghanistan to take out Mujahideen fortified caves, striking targets as far as five miles away. KAB-250 laser-guided bombs began to see use in Chechnya as well. However, use of such weapons was relatively rare. For example, they made up only 2 percent of munitions expended by the Russian Air Force in Chechnya.

The Su-25 was still packing plenty of antipersonnel firepower—and that’s exactly what was called for when it first saw action in Afghanistan beginning in 1981. The Su-25 was the workhorse fixed-wing attack plane in the conflict, flying more than sixty thousand sorties in bombing raids on mujahedeen villages and mountain strongholds. They often teamed up with Mi-24 attack helicopters to provide air support for Soviet armored units.

However, as the Afghan rebels began to acquire Stinger missiles from the United States, Su-25s began to suffer losses and the Soviet pilots were forced to fly higher to avoid the man-portable surface-to-air missiles. In all, some fifteen Su-25s were shot down in Afghanistan before the Soviet withdrawal.

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Su-25s were passed onto the air services of all the Soviet successor states. Those that didn’t use Su-25s in local wars—on both sides of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, for example—often exported them to countries that did. Frogfoots have seen action in the service of Macedonia (against Albanian rebels), Ethiopia (against Eritrea, with one shot down), Sudan (target: Darfur), and Georgia versus Abkhazian separatists that shot down several. And that list is not comprehensive.

In one notable episode, Cote d’Ivoire acquired several Su-25s and used them in its civil war. When the government of President Laurent Gbagbo was angered by the perceived partisanship of French peacekeepers, his mercenary-piloted Su-25s bombed the French camp, killing nine. Whoever ordered the attack didn’t consider that there was a French contingent stationed at the Yamoussoukro Airfield where the Frogfoots were based. The French used anti-tank missiles to destroy the fighter bombers on the ground in retaliation.

Russian Su-25 were back in action in the Chechnya campaign of 1994 to 1995, flying 5,300 strike sorties. Early on they helped wipe out Chechen aircraft on the ground and hit the Presidential Palace in Grozny with anti-concrete bombs. They then pursued a more general bombing campaign. Four were lost to missiles and flak. They were again prominent in the Second Chechen War in 1999, where only one was lost.

Of course, it’s important to note at this juncture that the Su-25 is one of a handful of Soviet aircraft that received its own American computer game in 1990.

Modern Su-25s

In addition to the base model, the Frogfoot also came in an export variant, the Su-25K, and a variety of two-seat trainers with a hunchback canopy, including the combat-capable Su-25UBM.

There were a number of projects to modernize the Su-25, including small productions runs of Su-25T and Su-25TM tank busters. But the Russian Air Force finally selected the Su-25SM in the early 2000s for all future modernization.

The SM has a new BARS satellite navigation/attack system, which allows for more precise targeting, as well as a whole slew of improved avionics such as news heads-up displays (HUDS), Radar Warning Receivers and the like. The Su-25SM can use the excellent R-73 short-range air-to-air missile, and has improved targeting abilities for laser-guided bombs. Other improvements reduce maintenance requirements and lower aircraft weight.

The National Interest’s Dave Majumdar has written about the latest SM3 upgrade, which includes the capacity to fire Kh-58 anti-radar missiles, which could enable Su-25s to help suppress enemy air defenses, as well as a Vitebsk electronic-countermeasure system that could increase its survivability against both radar- and infarred-guided surface to air missiles.

Georgia and Ukraine also have limited numbers of their own domestically upgrade variants, the Su-25KM and the Su-25M1 respectively. You can check out the Su-25KM variant, produced with an Israeli firm, in this video full of unironic 1980s flair.

Speaking of Georgia, things got messy in 2008 when both Russia and Georgia operated Frogfoots in the Russo-Georgian War. The Georgian Frogfoots provided air support for Georgian troops seizing the city of Tskhinvali. Then Russian Su-25s assisted Russian armor in blasting them out. Russia lost three Su-25s to MANPADS—two likely from friendly fire—and Georgia lost a similar number to Russian SAMs. To the surprise of observers, however, the Russian Air Force did not succeed in sweeping Georgian aviation from the sky.

In 2014, Ukraine deployed its Frogfoots to support ground forces combating separatist rebels in Eastern Ukraine. They assisted in the initial recapture of the Donetsk airport in May, would be followed over a half year of seesaw battles ending in a separatist victory in 2015. Ukraine lost four Su-25s in the ensuing ground-attack missions—three were hit by missiles (one MANPADS, two allegedly by longer-ranged systems across the Russian border), and a fourth was reportedly downed by a Russian MiG-29. Two others survived hits from missiles. As a result, Su-25 strikes were sharply curtailed to avoid incurring further losses.

In 2015, the Russian separatists of the Luhansk People’s Republic claimed to have launched airstrikes with an Su-25 of their own. Depending on who you ask, the airplane was restored from a museum or flew in from Russia.

The Iraqi Air Force has deployed its own Su-25s in the war against ISIS, purchasing five from Russia in 2014 and receiving seven from Iran that had been impounded during the 1991 Gulf War.

Finally, in the fall of 2015, Russia deployed a dozen modernized Su-25SMs in support of the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. Many observers noted that of the aircraft involved in the mission, the Su-25s were the best adapted for the close air-support role. The Frogfoot flew 1,600 sorties against rebel-held Syrian cities, and expended more than six thousand munitions, mostly unguided bombs and S-13 rockets. They were withdrawn this year, leaving attack helicopter behind to perform more precise—and risky—close air support missions.

Lessons Learned from Flying Tanks?

While it’s fun to admire high-performing fighters like the MiG-29 or F-22 Raptor, the unglamorous Su-25 has so far had a greater impact on a wide range of conflicts. We can draw a few lessons from its recent combat record.

First, the significant losses suffered by Su-25s demonstrate that without effective air-defense suppression and electronic counter-measures, low-and-slow ground support planes are poised to take heavy losses against Russian-made surface-to-air missiles deployed in sufficient numbers.

Second, observation of Russia’s Syrian contingent suggests that despite possessing a diverse arsenal of precision guided munitions, the Russian Air Force continues to rely primarily on unguided bombs and rockets for the close air support mission.

Lastly, aircraft capable of delivering punishing attacks on ground targets while retaining a good chance of surviving hits taken in return are going to remain in high demand worldwide.

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 and is being reposted due to reader interest. 

Image: Reuters

Kyle Mizokami

Security,

Among the latest innovations is a new generation of pistol-caliber rifles, which combines smaller pistol calibers with a rifle or carbine-length weapon.

Here's What You Need to Know: Pistol caliber carbines (PCCs) are not new.

The explosion of interest in the modern sporting rifle, as well as the natural pace of industry innovation, has driven the firearms industry to field semi-automatic rifles in an increasingly broad number of configurations. One of the latest innovations is a new generation of pistol-caliber rifles, which combines smaller pistol calibers with a rifle or carbine-length weapon.

Pistol caliber carbines (PCCs) are not new: some of the more famous from recent history include the Ruger .44 Magnum carbine and 9mm rifles. The adaptability of the AR-15 platform—as well as those offered by manufacturers including Beretta, Kel-Tec and CZ—has made it possible to adapt them to calibers including 9mm Luger, 10mm Auto, .40 Smith & Wesson and even .45 ACP. These are five of the best PCCs out there.

Quarter Circle 10 Pistol Caliber Carbine

The modular nature of the AR-15 weapon system makes it possible for designers to concentrate on perfecting a pistol caliber action without concern for the rest of the weapon. From the consumer side, a familiarity with AR rifles makes adoption of an AR-based PCC a relatively easy matter. Several manufacturers offer their own AR-based pistol-caliber carbine, and Texas-based Quarter Circle 10’s PCCs are representative of industry trends.

Quarter Circle PCCs are primarily based on the AR-15, but use a blowback operating system instead of the AR platform’s direct impingement system. In other words, the recoil generated from the gun firing drives the action instead of burned gunpowder gasses. Like many AR-based vendors, Quarter Circle’s designs accept Glock magazines and magazines derived from Colt’s 9mm line of carbines. The QC carbines and pistol receivers come in 9mm Luger, .40 Smith & Wesson, and .45 ACP, while the weapon can use existing rifle stocks, carbine stocks, and pistol braces.

Beretta Cx4 Storm

Just as AR-15 owners can smoothly transition to AR-based pistol caliber carbines, the Beretta Cx4 allows those familiar with Berettas to quickly adopt a shoulder-fired weapon. The Storm has the same set of controls as Beretta pistols—an appealing feature to police agencies and individuals that already use Beretta weapons. The Cx4 takes magazines in the grip, like a Beretta pistol, instead of a separate magazine well in front of the trigger control group.

The Cx4 can also use magazines from the company’s Px4 and 90 series handguns, including the famous Beretta 92. This allows the Cx4 to use magazines with capacities as large as twenty rounds. The Cx4’s other features include light recoil, ambidextrous controls, a chrome hammer forged barrel for durability, a 16.6-inch long magazine and Picatinny rail for attaching aiming accessories that runs along the top of the receiver. Beretta’s PCC is available in 9mm Luger and .40 Smith & Wesson. The weapon weighs 5.6 pounds unloaded.

CZ Scorpion EVO3 S1 Carbine

The CZ Scorpion EVO3 S1 Carbine shares its name with a older weapon, the Czechoslovakian Vz. 61 Skorpion machine pistol. The small and compact Skorpion—chambered in .380 and taking twenty-round magazines—was popular with Soviet-aligned vehicle crews, rear area service personnel and terrorist groups. The new EVO3 S1 carbine shares the name but otherwise has little in common with the old weapon.

The EVO3 carbine has an overall length of thirty-four inches and features a metal receiver with a fiber-reinforced polymer exterior. It features ambidextrous controls. The barrel is 16.2 inches, cold hammer forged and is factory installed with a compensating muzzle break or faux suppressor. The ½-28 threads allow user installation of a third-party muzzle brake, compensator or suppressor. CZ’s pistol caliber carbine has a MLOK-compatible handguard for attaching weapon accessories, including lights and lasers.

Kel-Tec Sub-2000

One of the more unorthodox-looking weapons on the market is the Kel-Tec Sub-2000 carbine. Like the Cx4, the Sub-2000 looks like a pistol with an elongated barrel and shoulder stock, with a magazine well in the grip. It also features Picatinny accessory rails above and below the barrel.

Kel-Tec’s offering differs in having a specific talent: folding down for compact storage. By rotating the barrel upwards and back, the Sub-2000 essentially folds over onto itself for an overall length of just sixteen inches and a height of seven inches. Once in the compact configuration, the carbine can be secured that way with a built-in lock and key system.

The Sub-2000, like other weapons on this list, has a 16.25-inch barrel. Thanks to a skeletal, minimalist configuration the weapon weighs just 4.25 pounds. The weapon comes in both 9mm Luger and .40 Smith & Wesson variants, and furthermore can be ordered to accept Glock 17, 19, 22, 23, Smith & Wesson M&P, Sig Sauer P226, and Beretta 92 or 96 magazines.

Heckler & Koch USC 45

German gunmaker Heckler & Koch tends to place restrictions on its sale of its paramilitary and military-style long guns. The H&K USC 45, the civilian version of the UMP 45 submachine gun, is one such weapon that is once again back on the American market.

The UMP45 submachine gun was designed to complement the world-famous MP5 submachine gun in Heckler & Koch’s product line. The UMP is a newer design meant to take greater advantage of modern materials—particularly polymers—resulting in a weapon that is lighter than the MP5 yet capable of handling heavier, higher recoil calibers. The UMP is a blowback submachine gun and is available in 9mm, .40 Smith & Wesson and .45 ACP versions.

The civilian USC 45 is available in .45 ACP and has a cold hammer forged sixteen-inch barrel, ambidextrous controls and large trigger well for use with gloves. It has a fixed webbed stock, accepts ten-round magazines and includes a weaver rail for attaching accessories.

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

This article first appeared in 2018.

Image: Heckler & Koch

Charlie Gao

Security, Europe

Could it make it into 007's arsenal?

Here's What You Need to Remember: Detachment A was about as close to a real “James Bond” unit as it got in the Cold War military.

While the most famous product of Carl Walther GmbH in fiction is the PPK pistol used by James Bond, Walther actually made a line of submachine guns that were the weapon of choice of real covert operatives during the Cold War. The Walther Maschinenpistole (MP) line—in either the MP Lang (MPL) or MP Kurz (MPK) format—was used by numerous police agencies, special forces units, and counterterror teams during the Cold War, due to its compact yet controllable design, accuracy and light weight. But what made the Walther MP the best of its time? Why did later SMGs like the H&K MP5 replace it?

The operating mechanism of the Walther MPs is fairly conventional. Like most submachine guns of the WWII era, it is an open bolt blowback design, meaning that upon pulling the trigger the bolt would move forwards, strip a round from the magazine, chamber it, then fire. Unlike the older guns, the Walther MP uses an interesting layout where the majority of the bolt mass is contained within a tube above the barrel, reciprocating above it with a little blocky protrusion under the main cylindrical bolt mass that handled feeding, firing and extracting the cartridge with the actual bolt face. The result of placing this heavy bolt above the barrel was that recoil and muzzle climb was reduced versus other designs, and the gun was allowed to be much more compact. It also featured other ergonomic improvements like a selector/safety (including a semi-automatic mode) that could be easily actuated by the thumb, and a left-side cocking handle making it easy for an operator to cock it after an empty reload. Sights were simple but adequate, one aperture sight for long-range shooting, and one post and notch sight for close-range work. Rounding out the features of the Walther MP was a simple but sturdy folding stock, a brisk yet controllable rate of fire at 550 rounds per minute, and light weight (6.17 lbs for an MPK, compared to 7.1 lbs for a WWII Sten Mk. II or 8.75 lbs for an MP40).

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This combination of features made the Walther MP, specifically the MPK, extremely attractive for covert police and military units worldwide. 1st SFOD “Delta Force” used Walther MPKs, notably during Operation Eagle Claw, the failed Iranian hostage rescue attempt and during training during the 1970s. The other unit that participated in the raid, Detachment A, who managed to infiltrate Iran prior to the failed heliborne assault, also used Walther MPKs. Detachment A was about as close to a real “James Bond” unit as it got in the Cold War military, in the combination of fieldcraft, direct action and surveillance skills. Members of the detachment often operated in plain clothes, assisting the police in busting criminals that crossed the Berlin border. In the event of war, they would attempt to infiltrate East Berlin, possibly by means of underground, water-filled tunnels. On such missions, the MPK was the weapon of choice. German Navy units (Kampfschwimmer) tasked with similar missions of underwater sabotage and infiltration in the waterways of Germany during the Cold War also preferred the MPK. German police units also used them, notably during the 1972 Munich hostage crisis. While it was not a big success on the export market, it also found favor in the Republic of South Africa, arming the Special Task Force of the South African Police Service under the name HMK. MPKs also served in small numbers in various other militaries.

While the MPK was replaced in service in almost every unit listed above by the H&K MP5, the Walther was known to have some advantages over the MP5. James Stejskal, a Detachment A veteran, described the MPK as being more reliable in dirty and dusty conditions than the MP5. However, the MP5 edged out the MPK on accuracy, likely due to the MP5 being a closed bolt design. In the end, the MP5 is very similar on many design features to the MPK, both use left side cocking handles, have ergonomic thumb selectors, and make use of aperture sights. The Walther MP ended its production run in 1980, having been superseded by the MP5.

Charlie Gao studied political and computer science at Grinnell College and is a frequent commentator on defense and national-security issues.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

James Clark

Security,

Scavenger 6 is designed to solve a specific problem that could arise in a post-apocalyptic situation: Ammo.

Here's What You Need to Know: Let’s hope the apocalypse doesn’t come before this rifle goes on sale.

In a post-apocalyptic scenario where survival is dependent upon scavenging resources, it pays to be prepared. That’s the thinking behind Scavenger 6, a new rifle that can fire 21 different calibers of ammunition.

Though rifle hardly seems a fitting term. It looks like a cross between a .44 Magnum and an M1A1 carbine, and the crazy thing is that’s not inaccurate.

Scavenger 6 was designed and created by Air Force veteran Tim Ralston, who rose to prominence as an inventor and survivalist after appearing on the National Geographic Channel’s “Doomsday Preppers,” a reality television show about post-apocalyptic scenarios and survival planning.

The rifle can fire 21 different calibers of ammunition just by switching out the cylinder barrel, referred to as a CB. However, Ralston notes that if there’s a specific caliber you want, it can be custom ordered, though there are some exceptions: No .50-cal ammo, guys, don’t be ridiculous.

“Because the cylinder and barrel are one, I can get really creative about boring out the cylinder to whatever I want,” explained Ralston.

Scavenger 6 has three multi-caliber CBs, which fire six different rounds — one of each. The multi-caliber CBs are designed to fulfill three unique roles. There’s a hunting CB, which lets you fire ammunition like .223 and .308; a battle CB, which chambers 5.56 and .308, among others; and a survival CB, which is designed to fire ammunition you’re most likely to find lying around.

According to Ralston, Scavenger 6 is designed to solve a specific problem that could arise in a post-apocalyptic situation: Ammo.

“Ammo’s going to be the number-one-sought-after commodity in a post-apocalyptic scenario,” Ralston explained to Task & Purpose.

Fortunately, the world’s not ending just yet, but that doesn’t mean Scavenger 6 isn’t useful.

In addition to the multi-caliber CBs, the rifle comes with standard CBs that are tailored to a specific caliber and can chamber six rounds of that size. So, say, for example, you’re a military aviator and you want a backup weapon in case you’re ever shot down behind enemy lines, you could get a CB that fires 5.56, one that fires 9mm, and another that fires 7.62. You can also customize Scavenger 6 for specific purposes. If you’re headed deep into the wilderness, you may want a .44 Magnum for putting down large animals that pose a threat, as well as a .22 for hunting smaller animals for food.

On top of firing 21 calibers with one weapon system, Scavenger 6 can mount a scope, a foregrip, and has a folding buttstock. Ralston also has plans to add a mount for a strobe light and a laser on the foregrip.

The weapon is in its final stages, with the finished product expected mid-October. Ralston says he plans to officially put Scavenger 6 on the market by January 2017.

Let’s just hope the apocalypse doesn’t come before it goes on sale.

This article by James Clark originally appeared at Task & Purpose. Follow Task & Purpose on Twitter.

This article first appeared in 2016.

Image: Flickr

TNI Staff

Security, Asia

Beware.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The UFD also has a covert counterpart that trains infiltrators and attempts to sow dissent and chaos in the South. “The 225th Bureau is responsible for training agents to infiltrate South Korea and establishing underground political parties focused on fomenting unrest and revolution,” the Pentagon report states. North Korean intelligence apparatus is one of Pyongyang’s strong suites. Indeed, Pyongyang’s security services have demonstrated their ability to strike far from home as was shown during the assassination of Kim Jong-Nam—elder half-brother to the North Korean despot—in Malaysia. The Kim regime’s intelligence apparatus is ruthless and effective and could be used to good effect during any conflict on the Korean peninsula.

North Korea maintains an extensive intelligence collection and security apparatus—as might be expected of a totalitarian regime such as the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Pyongyang maintains two main agencies—one focused on external intelligence collection and clandestine operations and another focused on counterintelligence. There are also two smaller organizations dedicated solely to infiltrating South Korea. “North Korean intelligence and security services collect political, military, economic, and technical information through open-source, human intelligence, cyber, and signals intelligence capabilities,” reads a Pentagon report to Congress about Pyongyang’s expected capabilities in 2015. “North Korea’s primary intelligence collection targets remain South Korea, the United States, and Japan.”

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North Korea’s primary external intelligence agency is the Reconnaissance General Bureau—which seems to be modeled on the Soviet/Russian GRU military intelligence agency. “The Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB) is North Korea’s primary foreign intelligence service, responsible for collection and clandestine operations,” the Pentagon report reads. “The RGB is comprised of six bureaus with compartmented functions including operations, reconnaissance, technology and cyber, overseas intelligence, interKorean talks, and service support.”

North Korea’s internal security agency—though it might have some foreign intelligence functions too—is the Ministry of State Security. Not coincidentally, it shares the same name as the Soviet Union’s Stalinist-era Ministry of State Security—Ministerstvo Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti in Russian—the MGB. Indeed, the North Korean agency was modeled on the Soviet-era organization.

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“The Ministry of State Security (MSS) is North Korea’s primary counterintelligence service and is an autonomous agency of the North Korean government reporting directly to Kim Jong Un,” the Pentagon report states. “The MSS is responsible for operating North Korean prison camps, investigating cases of domestic espionage, repatriating defectors, and conducting overseas counterespionage activities in North Korea’s foreign missions.”

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North Korea also maintains two other units specifically designed to infiltrate the South. One is overt, while the other group is covert. “The United Front Department (UFD) overtly attempts to establish pro-North Korean groups in South Korea such as the Korean Asia-Pacific Committee and the Ethnic Reconciliation Council,” the report states. “The UFD is also the primary department involved in managing inter-Korean dialogue and North Korea’s policy toward South Korea.”

The UFD also has a covert counterpart that trains infiltrators and attempts to sow dissent and chaos in the South. “The 225th Bureau is responsible for training agents to infiltrate South Korea and establishing underground political parties focused on fomenting unrest and revolution,” the Pentagon report states.

North Korean intelligence apparatus is one of Pyongyang’s strong suites. Indeed, Pyongyang’s security services have demonstrated their ability to strike far from home as was shown during the assassination of Kim Jong-Nam—elder half-brother to the North Korean despot—in Malaysia. The Kim regime’s intelligence apparatus is ruthless and effective and could be used to good effect during any conflict on the Korean peninsula.

This first appeared several years ago and is being reposted due to reader interest. 

Image: Reuters. 

Stratfor Worldview

Security, Asia

The North Korean military's most powerful tool is artillery.

Here's What You Need to Know: Even subtracting the most dated portions of the North Korean stockpile — which may not be in operational condition — it still has more than 1,000 ballistic missiles that could strike across South Korea.

North Korea is powerless to prevent a U.S. strike on its nuclear program, but retaliation is well within its means. The significant military capability that North Korea has built up against South Korea is not advanced by Western standards, but there are practical ways Pyongyang could respond to aggression.

The North Korean military's most powerful tool is artillery. It cannot level Seoul as some reports have claimed, but it could do significant damage. Pyongyang risks deteriorating its forces by exposing them to return fire, however, which significantly restricts their use. Less conventional methods of retaliation, such as sabotage or cyber warfare, are less risky but also limit the shock that North Korea would desire.

After a strike, North Korea's most immediate and expected method of retaliation would center around conventional artillery. Many of the North's indirect fire systems are already located on or near the border with South Korea. By virtue of proximity and simplicity, these systems have a lower preparatory and response times than air assets, larger ballistic missiles or naval assets. Nevertheless, there are several critical limitations to their effectiveness.

Tube and Rocket Artillery

The biggest anticipated cost of a North Korean artillery barrage in response to an attack would be the at least partial destruction of Seoul. But the volume of fire that the North can direct against the South Korean capital is limited by some important factors. Of the vast artillery force deployed by the North along the border, only a small portion — Koksan 170-mm self-propelled guns, as well as 240-mm and 300-mm multiple launch rocket systems — are capable of actually reaching Seoul. Broadly speaking, the bulk of Pyongyang's artillery can reach only into the northern border area of South Korea or the northern outskirts of Seoul.

All forms of North Korean artillery have problems with volume and effectiveness of fire, but those issues are often more pronounced for the longer-range systems. Problems include the high malfunction rate of indigenous ammunition, poorly trained artillery crews, and a reluctance to expend critical artillery assets by exposing their positions.

Based on the few artillery skirmishes that have occurred, roughly 25 percent of North Korean shells and rockets fail to detonate on target. Even allowing for improvements and assuming a massive counterstrike artillery volley would be more successful, a failure rate as high as 15 percent would take a significant bite out of the actual explosive power on target. The rate of fire and accuracy of North Korean artillery systems is also expected to be subpar. This belief is founded on the observably poor performance of North Korean artillery crews during past skirmishes and exercises. Though inaccuracy is less noticeable in a tactical sense — especially as part of a "countervalue attack," where civilian areas are targeted — at the higher level an artillery retaliation rapidly becomes a numbers game.

Ineffective crews also rapidly curtail the potential for severe damage. Rate of fire is crucial to the survivability of artillery systems — the name of the game is to get the most rounds on target in the shortest period of time, lest your position be identified and destroyed before the fire mission is complete. Poor training translates to a greatly reduced volume of fire and a painfully limited duration of effectiveness.

The Barrage Principle

Although North Korea could technically open fire on South Korea with all of its artillery systems at once, this would open Pyongyang up to significant counter-battery fire and airstrikes that could rapidly reduce the artillery force it has so painstakingly built up. Instead, as other studies have shown, only a portion of North Korean artillery would be used at a time. This is particularly true for the advanced systems that are most important to Pyongyang: long-range artillery that is able to strike at Seoul. The heavier, more advanced systems are not only difficult to replace, but they are also priority targets for counter-battery fire and airstrikes. Even when firing, artillery systems would be able to do so only temporarily before relocating or otherwise trying to hide the system's firing location to avoid destruction.

Aside from constraints on range and volume of fire, North Korea has to decide what targets to hit in South Korea. There are two realistic options: a counterforce attack or a countervalue attack. In a counterforce attack, North Korea would target South Korean and possibly even U.S. military facilities near the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and north of Seoul. A countervalue attack, on the other hand, is intended to shock South Korea by causing significant civilian casualties and damage to economically critical infrastructure. If North Korea opted for a countervalue attack, the lack of focus on South Korean and U.S. military targets would reduce Pyongyang's ability to limit any response. (Typically, the easiest way to counteract enemy artillery is to destroy it in place.) Engaging civilian targets and infrastructure would not only limit the effectiveness and sustainability of the North Korean artillery volley itself, but it would also open up Pyongyang to more significant counteraction targeting. A mix of both counterforce and countervalue responses may mitigate this risk but would in turn lower the overall effectiveness of the mission compared to full commitment.

Regardless of these considerations and constraints on the North Korean side, if Pyongyang embraces the worst-case scenario for Seoul — the indiscriminate targeting of the capital and its suburbs — the damage would still be significant. Some research claims that overall damage and casualties in Seoul would be minimal, but those studies have relied on very conservative data, especially regarding the effective range of North Korean artillery systems. Many findings do not take into account newly deployed, modernized 122-mm multiple launch rocket systems with extended range, or the much more capable 300-mm multiple rocket launchers. If projectile flight distances reach proven ranges (or commonly accepted ones) and involve these new systems, then the northern portion of Seoul could be saturated with fire. Even areas south of the Han River could be within range of 170-mm self-propelled guns, 240-mm multiple rocket launchers or 300-mm multiple rocket launchers, depending on their position on the North Korean side of the DMZ. If every one of Pyongyang's 300-mm multiple rocket launcher systems were directed against Seoul, their range would be sufficient to rain fire across the city and beyond. A single volley could deliver more than 350 metric tons of explosives across the South Korean capital, roughly the same amount of ordnance dropped by 11 B-52 bombers.

This is an extreme scenario, however, and one in which North Korea chooses to expose all of its most advanced rocket artillery systems simultaneously, suffers no failures, and chooses to direct all of them against Seoul itself. Yet in northern parts of Seoul, well within range of Koksan 170-mm self-propelled guns and 240-mm multiple rocket launchers, a more intense volume of fire could be achieved even if North Korea is prudent enough not to expose all of its capable artillery pieces. Infrastructure damage in Seoul, particularly its northwestern areas, would be difficult to prevent in the event of an immediate saturation of artillery fire. That said, underground shelters and concerted evacuation efforts, which would be initiated immediately in the event of an attack, could greatly reduce civilian casualties. It is also unlikely that North Korean artillery fire would be sustained at great volume. Even an initial mass volley imposes great risk to the artillery systems themselves, making them vulnerable to counter-battery fire. This means casualty rates would drop significantly after the initial barrage, limiting potential civilian casualties to thousands of dead rather than tens of thousands, as has been speculated in some instances.

Ballistic Missiles

In addition to its conventional artillery capabilities, North Korea also has a large stockpile of ballistic missiles with much greater ranges. These missiles vary from older Scud variants to North Korean versions of the Russian-designed system. There are also a number of self-developed longer-range missiles in the North Korean arsenal. Even the lowest-range Scud ballistic missiles would be capable of striking anywhere in South Korea. The main factors constraining the use of these systems, therefore, are volume of fire, equipment failures and depletion of stockpiles.

Even subtracting the most dated portions of the North Korean stockpile — which may not be in operational condition — it still has more than 1,000 ballistic missiles that could strike across South Korea. These range from Scud-based Hwasong missiles to Nodong and Taepodong projectiles. The Hwasong and Nodong missiles are the most important for achieving volume of fire, especially considering North Korea's limited ability to launch Taepodong missiles. The Taepodong is restrained by Pyongyang's dependence on large surface infrastructure, found in only two locations in North Korea. The long preparation times before launch make the larger missiles extremely vulnerable to counterstrikes, and the Taepodong does not deliver significant advantages over the Nodong missiles.

When assessing the damage that could be done by North Korean ballistic missile strikes, much depends on how they would be used. In conjunction with conventional artillery strikes, ballistic missiles could provide significant extra firepower directed at Seoul and surrounding areas. North Korea could also use these weapons to expand the indirect fire threat to the entirety of South Korea. This means that there would be less concentration of firepower as a whole but that a diverse spread of locations throughout the country would be subject to infrastructure damage or casualties.

Moreover, ballistic missiles could strike U.S. military positions beyond the Korean Peninsula, specifically in Japan. Whatever the targets, Pyongyang's existing ballistic missile stockpile could easily deliver approximately 1 kiloton (1,000 metric tons) of high explosives, as well as other nonconventional munitions — chemical, biological or even nuclear. Because of the inaccuracy of different North Korean missile systems, these strikes would most appropriately be used against urban centers or other wide-area targets. If employed against specific military facilities at longer ranges, a significant amount of misses would occur.

As with conventional artillery, North Korea will also be forced to show restraint in the use of these systems. Survivability may be less of a challenge because of the predominance of mobile launcher systems, but unlike conventional artillery munitions, ballistic stockpiles are limited — as is the ability to replenish them, which would draw on significant resources. Every missile spent by North Korea in an immediate retaliation scenario will diminish the leverage it maintains immediately after the retaliation. Furthermore, the high potential for failed launches, as demonstrated by frequent unsuccessful missile tests across a variety of platforms, could further damage Pyongyang's ability to influence through its ballistic missile stockpile.

The most significant threat from North Korea's ballistic missile stockpile is the potential for a nuclear strike. Some estimates indicate North Korea may have between two and five nuclear warheads at its disposal already, at least some of which could be made to fit on a Nodong missile. Even a single nuclear strike against a South Korean population center would result in catastrophic shock and incur an immense cost. Though a nuclear strike would not automatically guarantee Seoul's capitulation, South Korea and the United States factor the possibility of such a strike heavily into their considerations of a strike on the North's nuclear program.

Editor's Note

This is the fourth installment of a five-part series that originally ran in May 2016 examining the measures that could be taken to inhibit North Korea's nuclear weapons program. The purpose of this series is not to consider political rhetoric or noninvasive means of coercion, such as sanctions. Rather, we are exploring the military options, however remote, that are open to the United States and its allies, and the expected response from Pyongyang. Part five can be found here.​

In the final installment of this series, we will explore other, unconventional retaliatory options open to North Korea and conclude with an assessment of the likelihood and severity of military action against Pyongyang.

Part 1: Assessing the North Korean Hazard

Part 2: Derailing a Nuclear Program by Force

Part 3: What the U.S. Would Use to Strike North Korea

Part 4: How North Korea Would Retaliate

Part 5: The Cost of Intervention

How North Korea Would Retaliate is republished with the permission of Stratfor Worldview, a geopolitical intelligence and advisory firm.

Image: Reuters

Adam Makos, Marcus Brotherton

Military History, Asia

Marine combat veterans tell all about the dangerous and deadly work in some of the war’s toughest fighting.

Here's What You Need to Remember: On August 6, 1942, the men of Maj. Gen. Alexander Vandegrift’s U.S. 1st Marine Division watched from the railings as their troopship, the USS George F. Elliott, steamed into the waters north of Guadalcanal in the South Pacific’s Solomon Islands. They had come to seize the island’s semi-completed airfield at Lunga Point from the Japanese before it became operational. With Guadalcanal’s airfield, the Japanese could bomb the shipping lanes to Australia and choke the continent, putting Australia at risk for Japanese invasion.

Among the thousands of troops nervous with anticipation about the battle to come were four Marines from H Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment––Jim Young, Sid Phillips, Roy Gerlach, and Art Pendleton––dressed in their steel helmets and green cotton-twill uniform (the Marines’ familiar, mottled-green camouflage uniforms had not yet been issued). This is their story.

“This was the real deal.”

Jim Young: “We were awakened around three in the morning on August 7, 1942, the day we were to fight the Japs. Breakfast was at 5:00 am. The food was steak and eggs. After eating, which was hard to do, we went up on deck to watch the bombardment of Guadalcanal. It was unbelievable, and the noise was horrendous! Most of us were scared and bewildered. We couldn’t even hear each other without yelling.

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“We received orders to go below and get everything ready to disembark. The sea was rough and dangerous. Due to the waves, boats were dropping six to 10 feet, just as men were ready to get in them. Or if the boat didn’t drop, it came roaring up. A man was crushed between the landing craft and the side of the ship. Lots of guys were hurt that way.

“One of the men from my gun crew, a Marine Pfc., had made it into the landing craft and had his hand on the craft’s rail when our wiremen stated to lower metal coils of communication wire from the ship. A line broke and the heavy coil of wire hit his arm and snapped it. They hoisted him back aboard.

“It was go time. The engines on the landing craft were all roaring at full throttle. We were on our way in and everyone was nervous.”

Sid Phillips: “There was a flag flying on the stern of every landing craft. I looked over the side at the flags, and my friend Carl Ransom was doing the same thing. You could see a whole line of them. It looked like they reached to the end of the world. I got a lump in my throat. Ransom did, too. As he wiped his eyes, he said, ‘That salt spray makes your eyes water, don’t it?’

“We had never had that happen before, never in training, and I never saw it [a U.S. flag on every landing craft] happen again after that. They were too good a target. A big old red, white, and blue thing like that shouts, ‘Here I am! Here I am!’ Our Colonel Cates [Clifton B. Cates, CO of the 1st Marine Regiment] was a very patriotic Marine. If there was an order given to fly a flag on every landing craft, I’m sure Cates gave that order.

“I noticed that morning how everybody’s cartridge belt was full and bulging. You could see the shiny brass cartridges here and there in the belt. You had two clips of five rounds in each of those pockets. When we had made practice landings in the Fiji Islands, they never issued any live ammunition. We made the landings with empty, flat, cartridge belts. They didn’t want some idiot firing his rifle into someone. Things were different now. This was the real deal.

“When we came ashore at Guadalcanal, we were in that landing craft where the front end would drop down…. We had the front ramp because otherwise we couldn’t get that mortar out of the boat. We were expecting a life-and-death struggle with hand-to-hand combat on the beach. When the ramp went down, we found our guys on the beach laughing at us and opening coconuts. We came out of the landing craft ready to fight and they just laughed. They had done the same thing a few minutes before. There were no Japs in our vicinity at all.”

Roy Gerlach: “I didn’t go in on the first wave. I was a mortar man assigned to the mortar platoon, but I spent a lot of time as a cook. In the Marine Corps, you were assigned to the job you were supposed to do, and then if you could do something else, you did that, too. Whenever there was action, I was on the mortars. But if they needed a cook, well, I did that, too….

“I don’t remember much about coming in to the beach. There were no Japs there. They’d all taken off to the hills. Right away we found all these coconuts. They fell out of the trees. We took our bayonets, bored holes in the coconuts, and drank the milk. But it made the guys sick. Too much fresh milk, I guess.”

“The heat was so oppressive.”

Sid Phillips: “All the first day we struggled through the jungle to reach a hill called the Grassy Knoll, a mile inland. We had no good maps for Guadalcanal at all. They had some maps drawn up by some Australian people who had been on Guadalcanal. These crude maps were named by the Australians. They even had the names mixed up for the Tenaru and Ilu Rivers.

“So the game plan was to go to the Grassy Knoll and get the high ground. The thing that stands out so clear in my memory was the heat, the incredible heat in the jungle, with no breeze. And we had just come from winter in New Zealand, so it was a severe climate change. We just griped and bitched. In that jungle, it’s so hot, and you’re carrying a 60-pound pack when you come ashore. Extra ammunition, packs of food for four days, a change of clothing. You drop your bedding and keep going. The heat was so oppressive.

“We were issued one canteen then. We’d been taught water discipline. You were only supposed to take small sips of water and roll the water around in your mouth before you swallowed. You were never supposed to guzzle water. Everybody nearly died of thirst that first day. We ate crackers, cans of hash—there was no water in the food; it just dried you out more and made you more thirsty. At the end of the first day, we were exhausted, halfway up the Grassy Knoll. They told us to lie down where we were, dig a foxhole, shut up, and go to sleep. So we did.”

Jim Young: “When morning came, we were ordered back to the beach to set up defenses in an effort to repel any Jap attempt to land. One of our lieutenants was bitten in the face by a scorpion during the night. He had swollen up so much that he was completely blind and had to be led by the hand on the long march back to the beach.

“As we approached the beach, about 10 Japanese torpedo bombers skimmed the water and headed for the convoy. They were so low we could see the faces of the pilots and the big red meatballs on their wings. They did not care about us on the beach. They went straight for the convoy of ships. One plane headed directly for our ship, the Elliott. It crashed into the water first and bounced up and slammed into the ship.”

Roy Gerlach: “We didn’t have no galley for the first three or four weeks because our cooking equipment sunk with the Elliott. I wasn’t on the ship then, but I saw it all. Most of the troops were on shore by then. But the unloading of the ship wasn’t done yet. There was one shipman I knew on the Elliott. He always used to say, ‘I’m gonna be here when you go, and I’ll be here when you get back.’ He wasn’t.”

Sid Phillips: “People ask me when we first contacted the enemy. We were strafed by enemy planes almost immediately on Guadalcanal. You dig a foxhole and try to dig it as deep as you can, just try to bury yourself with the earth. The strafing never ended on Guadalcanal. They were always coming in, bombarding us. We considered that contact with the enemy.”

Jim Young: “The Jap Zeros would come swooping over us. I could actually see the pilots, the faces in those airplanes. You could see them turn their heads and look down at you. Sometimes they were grinning.”

“The Savo sea battle was like watching a summer storm from a beach.”

Sid Phillips: “The day after we landed, we captured the airfield. When I first saw the airfield, I was surprised that there weren’t many buildings except for this pagoda-looking thing. That served as the tower. The runway wasn’t very visible unless you were up in the air. There were no wrecked Japanese planes. The place was empty. We went over there and looked at the pagoda. We were some of the first Americans to walk into that building.

“The first American planes we saw come in there were the B-17 Flying Fortresses. Sometimes two, sometimes three. They would stop, refuel, and leave. The Flying Fortresses came in before we had any Navy or Marine planes at all.”

On August 9, from its bivouac on a hilltop over the beach, H Company witnessed a violent naval battle between the U.S. and Japanese navies. This, the Battle of Savo Island, produced so many sunken ships off the island’s shore that the waters gained the name Iron Bottom Sound.

Sid Phillips: “The Savo sea battle was like watching a summer storm from a beach. You would hear this rumble of naval gunfire and see what looked like flashes of lightning. You’ve seen distant lightning where the sky lights up? It was that sort of thing. You couldn’t see any real details of the naval battle, but when a ship would blow up, we cheered. We assumed it was our boys doing the whipping. The next morning we saw one American cruiser creep slowly by, right offshore, with part of its bow blown off. Somebody said it was the Chicago.

“We were then told about the disaster. We lost four cruisers that night. You could maybe see a ship smoking, three miles away. Our supply ships were still in the harbor, but they were pulling out. Leaving us. They hadn’t even unloaded half our supplies. But they had to get the hell out of there.

“At that moment we felt that we might be considered ‘expendable.’ It had occurred in the Philippines. It had occurred at Wake Island. It had occurred at Guam. It had occurred at every stage of the war in the Pacific up to Guadalcanal, so yes, we felt expendable.”

Jim Young: “Without our ships, we were alone on the island. There was no food except for what we had in our backpacks––K rations. After sending out search parties to look for food, we found stores of Japanese rice and oats which would hold us over until the Navy could return with more supplies. It took a strong stomach to eat this because the rice and oats were crawling with maggots and worms. We found that if we dumped the rice and oats in water then all the bugs would float to the top where we could skim them off.

“We bivouacked at the end of a coconut plantation, near a meadow with a patch of trees. The trees were lime trees, and we made limeade. We used warm water and we had no sugar. This stuff was terrible, but it was something different to drink. This meadow had the oddest plants I’ve ever seen. If you took a walk through them, it looked like a well-worn path, but 20 minutes later there was no trace of where you’d walked.

“In the days that followed, we still hadn’t seen the Japs up close, but the air raids continued. We had an old gunnery sergeant, 50 years old, real nice guy and a real Marine. We called him Gunny Dixon. Gunny told us to dig foxholes. When we were finished, he took one look at them and started to laugh. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘They don’t look deep enough to me. I bet by the end of the week they will be deep enough to stand in.’ How right he was! Bombers flew over us, and we couldn’t do a thing about it. We had no guns that could reach them, and we had no airplanes. The bombs falling had a whistling sound as they came down.

“One day the Jap bombers came from a different direction. They had always bombed the airstrip from the takeoff point to the liftoff point, but this day they came straight from the sea toward our tree grove. This time they were after us, and not the airstrip. I was watching them with field glasses, and I could see the pattern of bombs exploding and knew it would surely hit us. I yelled a warning, and we just made it to our foxholes in time. It was impossible to stand in the foxhole. The earth was shaking like an earthquake. Big chunks of earth filled the air, and the smell of cordite was overpowering. It’s hard to believe that no one was killed.

“We found a Jap bunker near us that held about 20 of us. It was very dark inside, and while using it during an air raid one day one of the guys let out a loud scream. It scared all of us, and we scrambled for the exit even though the air raid was still in progress. A six-foot-long lizard was up on the roof of the bunker, and its scaly tail had flopped down and touched the Marine’s face. He thought it was the guy next to him so he reached up to brush it away. When he felt the tail, he went ape. We all got a kick out of it when it was over.

“At night the Japs sent a lone bomber that kept flying around for hours before he decided to drop his bombs. They did this to keep us from getting any rest. We called him ‘Washing Machine Charley’ because of the sound of his engine.

“The bombing raids never ceased. After a while, we were shelled from Jap cruisers and subs as well. What made us mad is that we could see the Japs scurrying around their decks and manning the guns. But we had nothing that we could reach them with. All of our long-range guns were on the ships that took off when the naval battle took place.”

“… the next night the whole island seemed to be deserted…”

Sid Phillips: “The rifle platoons, they had daily patrols. Fifteen to 20 men would go out with an officer, scouting, trying to find out if there were any Japs in a particular area. In the mortar platoon we seldom went on patrols.

“But we did go out after a Marine patrol had been ambushed and the survivors came back to our lines. So they put together a 300-man patrol to go back out there to recover our dead. They wanted one 81mm mortar to come along, so they came to the mortar platoon and said, ‘Number four gun is going.’ That was me. Lieutenant “Benny” Benson, he was the lieutenant for our gun, went with us.

“The riflemen were on the point, watching for the enemy. In the mortar squad we trudged along behind them with that damn heavy stuff. We went about five miles out, carrying that mortar the whole way. You either carry part of the mortar or the ammunition. If you were an ammunition carrier, you carried a cloverleaf of ammunition on your shoulder.

“It was a strenuous march in the tropics. There were no roads. To be on the ground in a dense jungle, you did not even need to see combat to have a miserable time. You might have hiked way out and way back and had to ford several streams and walked through water waist-deep where your clothes got soaked and your feet didn’t dry out and your pants chafed your crotch. You just can’t convey that misery in words.

“When we reached the area where the ambush had occurred, the mortar platoon stopped 150 yards from the site and set up our mortar. If the Japs were gonna ambush this big patrol, we were gonna give our guys mortar support. You could just look where our guys were, and we would have fired beyond them. But the Japs had vacated the area.

“We never did get up to the actual site of the ambush, but this old Marine sergeant came walking back, and Benny knew him real well because Benny was an old Marine, too—30 years old was ancient in our minds. Benny said, ‘What’s the scoop up there?’ and this sergeant said that all the Marines had been beheaded and had their genitals stuffed in their mouths. They brought our dead back on canvas stretchers, their bodies covered by ponchos.

“Our hatred for the enemy burned from early on. We had heard about the Bataan Death March, where they bayoneted American prisoners who fell exhausted by the roadside. We had talked to the 90mm antiaircraft battery that was near our bivouac—they were a defense battalion that had been at Pearl Harbor.

“Then there was the Goettge patrol. A few days after we landed on Guadalcanal, some Jap prisoner told Colonel Frank Goettge that the Jap’s buddies wanted to surrender five miles west of our lines, where the Matanikau River met the sea. Goettge took a patrol of 25 men out to take their surrender. But it was an ambush. Goettge and his men were butchered. Only three of them escaped by swimming back to our lines.

“Was he an idiot for thinking the Japs would surrender? No, we just didn’t really understand the enemy yet. Surrender was out of the question for a Jap unless he was knocked unconscious. But even then, if you saw an unconscious Jap, you’d be very cautious because he might be only pretending. He might try to kill you.

“Japan soon proved a brutal enemy. They ignored the Geneva Convention. They tortured prisoners of war, then killed them. Hell, they would torture a body and mutilate it even after a guy was dead. A hatred between the Marines and the Japanese rapidly developed. We never took a prisoner, never in my battalion, that I know of.”

On August 20, bad news came to the Marines, word that the Japanese were landing fresh troops to retake the airfield. That same day a new armada of planes was heard in the sky.

Sid Phillips: “It was late in the afternoon, and we were at our mortar position when we heard airplanes circling the field. We ran for cover. They came in from the south over those ridges. The roar of all the airplanes was deafening. They were loud by themselves, but when you have the sky full of them—wow! Someone screamed that they were our planes.

“We just went wild. I looked up and saw a blue-gray SBD dive bomber with the letters ‘USMC’ painted on the underside of the wing. We flung our helmets way up in the air. We were beating on each other. Some of the guys were crying with joy they were so happy. We hadn’t had any friendly planes except those two or three Flying Fortresses that came in. We had been strafed regularly by the Japanese Zeros. Seeing our planes told us that Uncle Sam had decided we were going to fight for this miserable island.”

On August 21, 1942, the Marines and the Japanese Army would meet in the first major battle of Guadalcanal. The Japanese had landed 900 soldiers of the elite Ichiki Detachment, who marched west along the beach, toward the airfield. The Marines of H Company waited for the enemy along the west bank of a small river they called “Alligator Creek,” or “the Tenaru.” [Actually, the stream was the Ilu River.]

Jim Young: “We took turns manning defense lines at night. It was scary. The jungle was thick in front of us, and the nights were black. We heard all kinds of noises, and some of us would fire a few rounds in front of us just in case Japs were sneaking up on us. The trouble was that everyone got jumpy when someone fired, and the whole line would open up. You would think a hell of a battle was going on.

“Well, the general got fed up with all the shooting and nothing to show for it. He issued an order that if any more of that wild firing happened, he wanted to see dead Japs, or that unit would catch all the working parties. Let me tell you, the next night the whole island seemed to be deserted, it was so quiet. The only sound came from ‘Washing Machine Charley.’”

“The Battle of the Tenaru [River] was the first real fight on the island.”

Sid Phillips: “The Battle of the Tenaru [River] was the first real fight on the island. Our lines ran north and south from the ocean back to where the airfield began. We did not have a perimeter around the airfield; we didn’t have that many men.

“We were stretched out in these holes, every seven yards, two men with rifles, two men with rifles, then maybe six men with a machine gun, their position covered with logs and dirt, then two men with rifles, and two men with rifles, and so on. The jungle around you was so thick, you didn’t know who was where, or what was where. You would lie there and listen to all those different damn jungle noises.

“One of those iguanas, three feet long, could be scurrying around, wrestling and making noise. You would wonder, Is that a damn Jap or is that an iguana? So you stayed awake. You didn’t want to give a false alarm. After a while, you would get used to it, and you began to take pride in the idea that you could tell a land crab from a creeping Jap, you know.

“The mosquitoes were eating us alive. There was no repellent or anything. We just lay in those holes and fed those mosquitoes all night long. We’d been living on rice and nothing else for a long time there. Everybody was wore out, exhausted before long. Every two hours you were supposed to switch off on watch with the guy in your foxhole. We were always on edge.

“Because things were so spooky, they would take our squad leader, Sergeant Carp from Brooklyn, and put him up on the perimeter. He carried the BAR [Browning Automatic Rifle], and they wanted his firepower up there. Plus, he had been in the Marine Corps about three years and was an old timer that they considered much wiser than us kids. They put him up on the perimeter every night with that BAR.”

On the H Company line, a Marine named Art Pendleton led one of 12 machine gun squads.

Art Pendleton: “I was a corporal. I had joined the Marine Corps in January 1942 in Worcester, Massachusetts. Before that I was a pretty ordinary guy, a country boy from central Massachusetts—horse-and-buggy country. I enjoyed school. Never had any such thing as an affair with a girl (until I got into the Marine Corps). Never would touch a drop of alcohol. Never even heard of drugs. It was a whole different way of life. Women were also much different. If you ever saw a woman in the barroom in our town, it would be a story to tell.

“That all impacts your character, I suppose. When I boarded the train in Boston to go to Parris Island [the Marine Corps’ boot camp and training center in South Carolina], there were lots of other men there from all over New England. One fellow who ended up in H Company with me came from Southborough, Massachusetts, which was just a short distance from where I lived. His name was Whitney Jacobs.

“Jacobs was a hairy little guy and powerfully strong but not the kind of person that you would think of being a Marine. The rules and regulations for joining at that time were stringent. You couldn’t be an African American, which was sad. [Not until June 1942 did the Marine Corps accept its first black recruits. By the war’s end, more than 19,000 black Marines would serve with distinction.]

“You had to have all of your teeth except for two, you had to be a certain weight, a certain height, you had to have certain education, and the list goes on and on. You wouldn’t think that little Whitney Jacobs would have ever made it, but he did.

“The night of our first battle with the Japanese, our machine-gun emplacement was on the beach looking out at the ocean while others were on the riverbank. There was only one likely place that the Japanese could breach our lines—the sandspit. The sandspit was part of the beach that separated the river from the ocean. The sandspit was like a dam. The river trickled over it all the time. The only time the river would run freely over it was when I suppose there was a heavy rain.

“Right behind the sandspit the river got deep. We knew the Japanese could walk across that bit of sand if they attacked, so we strung some barbed wire on some poles there. It was like a 90-degree angle. We were about the only gun that was that close to the sandspit.

Whitney Jacobs, who was a rifleman, was near the river. Riflemen and the machine guns and BARs were right up front. Whitney thought that he heard something out of place in the night. He fired without waiting for orders. That one shot started the battle because the Japanese were there, trying to cross the river.”

Jim Young: “Around 1:30 am on August 21, a few shots were fired up on our defense line at the Tenaru River. The tempos of firing increased with a few machine-gun bursts. Then all hell broke loose.”

Sid Phillips: “The Japanese unit had come marching down the beach, moving west, and when they got to the Tenaru River, they spread out and formed a front. Some of them waded through the creek quietly. It was black as dark. When the Japs hit, Sergeant Carp and his foxhole companion, a Marine named Beer, had fallen asleep. They were just so exhausted and so tired. A Jap officer jumped in their hole and hacked them up, killing them both, until someone shot him. When the firing started, the darkness became almost as bright as day. A wall of fire poured from our lines. A real roar. We knew the real enemy was here. They were disciplined and vicious.”

Art Pendleton: “The Japanese had landed nearly 1,000 men of the best that they had from the Ichiki Detachment. They tried to come across the sand first but ran into our barbed wire, so they had to cross the river. It was neck deep in spots. The Japanese put themselves to a big disadvantage from the start.”

“Marine, tonight you die!”

Jim Young: “A screaming horde of Imperial Japanese soldiers tried to cross. They came in waves of 50 and 100 men at a time. We had about 90 men on the defense line.

“Japs who could speak English were screaming, ‘Marine, tonight you die!’ and ‘Blood for the emperor!’ We started yelling back at them, ‘F—k your emperor!’ and ‘Go to hell!’––anything we could possibly think of.

“The Japs threw coconuts in the river. That way, it was hard to tell if you were shooting at a coconut or a Jap’s head. Then they charged across the water. Some of them got through our line and were bayoneting our men.

“On the front lines, one of my close friends, Crotty from New York, was in a two-man foxhole. A Japanese officer had snuck through the line and came at him from the back of the foxhole. The other Marine in the foxhole with Crotty had put a bandolier of ammo across the back of the foxhole and rolled onto his back to reach for it. When he looked up he saw the Jap officer with his saber raised over his head. The Marine drew his knees to his chest to protect himself. The Jap’s saber hit him in the kneecap and split his knee down through the shinbone.

“Crotty heard his buddy scream and turned around. He shot just before the Jap could bring the blade down for the second hit. The bullet went up through the Jap’s rib cage and came out under his armpit. He fell on them.

“Our lieutenant, Benson, was yelling for us to prepare to move the mortars into action. We were powerless for the moment. A mortar required light to see where you’re aiming, so we just waited, watching the flashes, praying for the hint of dawn. I thought to myself …You wanted to see Japs, well, here they are.”

Art Pendleton: “My gun was on the beach when the battle started. John Rivers and Al Schmid’s machine-gun emplacement was on the bank of the river. John Rivers was a very nice guy and very tough––a former boxer. He had given up a chance to be a champion lightweight prizefighter to enlist instead.

“We had four heavy machine guns in our platoon, and his happened to be right in the spot where the Japanese came across the river. John was right in the middle of it. The Japanese never should have hit us there. They were in water up to their neck getting across the river. Hell, they were fodder for us.”

Jim Young: “John [Rivers] was the gunner and Al [Schmid] was his loader. Even though they had boxed one another on the deck of the ship, they worked together well. Their gun was in a sandbagged pit on the riverbank, and the Japs were attacking them like herds of cattle. Johnny was mowing them down until he was shot in the face and killed.

“Al took over as gunner and kept fighting until the Japs threw a grenade into his gun pit and wounded him and his ammo bearer. Blinded, Al resumed firing with the ammo bearer shouting in his ear, directing his fire.

“A guy from North Carolina named Pfc. Steve Boykin, a very nice gentleman, got hit up there on the line. His one leg, the whole back of it was almost blown out. His men slid him back off the line and set him against a tree. One of the Japs got through and got to him and stuck him with a bayonet but didn’t kill him. The Jap was killed. Somehow Boykin survived.”

Art Pendleton: “As the battle raged on, Whitney realized that one of our machine guns had stopped firing, the one that had been devastating the enemy. You can’t fire a machine gun steady because if you do the enemy will zero in on you. But when you’re in that kind of a situation, you don’t use common sense. You’re firing for your life.

“Whitney crawled a few feet to the silent gun emplacement. He stayed on his stomach and peered into that emplacement and called out. Inside, John Rivers was dead, and Al Schmid, who was blinded and in bad shape, answered him. Whitney shouted, ‘Don’t shoot—I’ll go get help.’ So he backed off and reported to the officer in charge. Right away our lieutenant called my gun in because I was about 100 feet from that point.

“We rushed to move. The gunner carried the gun, and the assistant gunner carried the tripod. When running up to the line to get a look at where we’re going, a hand grenade, I believe, went off between my legs. It lifted me up in the air a little bit, but it didn’t touch me. I thought, Wow! How lucky can you be?

“Everything seemed so confusing. We were directed to Rivers’ gun position. No one was in it. I don’t know where Rivers’ body went or where Schmid went. They were destined to get knocked out because they were firing so heavily. Rivers’ gun was totally destroyed, so I just threw it out of the emplacement. That machine gun killed many, many, many Japanese. I put my gun in its place. We were in the middle of it now.

“The Jap officers had these fancy sabers and were swinging them in the air trying to scare the hell out of us. Our guys were way beyond being scared. They were there to kill everybody. You forget about being scared when your life is at stake. There’s no such thing as scared.

“I started firing as soon as I got the gun set up. If you didn’t, you were going to get killed. Rivers’ position was the focus of the whole Japanese attack. The Japs were all over the place.”

“Those flares were probably one of the most dangerous things in the battle.”

Sid Phillips: “As the battle raged, our 81mm mortar platoon––all four tubes––was facing the beach in case there was a landing coming in from the ocean. So the attack was coming from our right flank. Our lieutenant moved us toward the battle, up parallel to the river. Our foxholes were all over. Our machine guns were so well dug in you could hardly see them at all in the dim light. As we moved up in the dim light, we kept falling in foxholes. To fall in a foxhole with a mortar tube or base plate can be painful as hell. It could kill a man if it fell on him.”

Jim Young: “We set up the mortars in the coconut grove parallel with the river. We had no defensive cover for protection. It was like being in the middle of a football field. We had to work fast because the Japs spotted us and started shelling us. The lieutenant was worried that we may not have enough clearance through the coconut leaves. I told him I thought I could get through. I fired the first round and knocked a palm leaf off a tree, but the shell didn’t explode, so the lieutenant gave the order to ‘fire for effect.’ This means to fire as fast as you can.

Sid Phillips: “There was a pile of Japanese dead right out in front of our new mortar position, about 30 yards away. They had killed them before we got up there. We were trying to hit an area about the size of six football fields on the other side of the river. We just kept blanketing the whole area over there.”

Roy Gerlach: “Our front lines kept the Japs backed up in the river. I was with the 81mm mortars; I carried shells to the guns. Our mortar fired a three-inch-wide shell that you dropped down into the tube and it shot up into the air. It reached out over our lines and came down and killed anyone for 30 yards. No, it never bothered me being a Mennonite and being in the war. I guess I was more broadminded.”

Art Pendleton: “The thing that impressed me more than anything were the flares. When they would shoot a flare in the air, you could hear it pop when it lit. When they ignited, it was a very bright light. Then the parachute opened, and the flare would very slowly float down to earth. No matter what you were doing, everybody stopped. You didn’t move a hair. If you dared to move, you were going to get shot. We lit flares, and so did they. It was just to check positions and see who was where. Those flares were probably one of the most dangerous things in the battle.”

Sid Phillips: “We were firing heavy, 15-pound shells. It is a deafening explosion when that thing goes off. You just can’t believe it. If you shot the biggest firecracker ever, it was a thousand times louder than that. We were actually awed by the results of that 15-pound shell. At Camp Lejeune we had one day of firing live ammunition, but the range was over 2,000 yards away. We had never had any close-up firing until that battle.”

Jim Young: “We saw Japs, their clothes on fire from our mortar bursts, running to the sea and river to put the fire out. Our number-four gun had a misfire and had to be taken out of action; Corporal Mugno’s ramrod for cleaning the mortar tube had a sock wrapped around the end of it that came off and fouled the gun. It was utter chaos.”

Art Pendleton: “At one point they tried to flank us at the sandspit. My gun wasn’t shooting at the sandspit at all since that was covered by another gun on our left. That was also covered by the 37mm cannon. The 37mm was a lightweight cannon, but they had canister shot for it, the same as you would shoot game birds with. It was not one bullet; it was many pieces of metal flying through the air, like a giant shotgun. It was firing again and again.

“I wasn’t worried about the sandspit. I wasn’t even thinking about it. We had our hands full just taking care of what was in front of us. They had to cross the river and climb up the bank in order to get to us. We slaughtered them.”

Sid Phillips: “During the battle, Colonel Pollock [Lt. Col. Edwin A. Pollock, CO of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines] came running over to our gun and said, ‘Who is the gunner here?’ I held my hand up and he said, ‘Well, boy, use me as the range stakes.’ He ran out about 40 feet in front of the gun and held his hand up. I put the sights on zero deflection, and we dragged the gun so that we had him lined up. Then I noticed beyond him through the trees was an abandoned American amphibian tank on the enemy side of the river. The Japs had gotten a machine gun into that thing and were firing from inside it.

“Pollock said to try 300 yards. Our shot was right on, but it was a little bit beyond the target. We lowered our mortar down, and our third round landed right in the tank. Everybody along the line cheered like a touchdown in a football game.”

Art Pendleton: “Near the end of the battle, Colonel Pollock, who was a great man, came to me and said, ‘Stop firing.’ I said, ‘I’m trying to take out a couple of guys that I’m seeing running there.’ He said, ‘Don’t. We don’t know what’s over there, and we might open up another Rivers situation here.’ He knew the fight was over and didn’t want us getting ourselves killed or the other Marines who were surrounding the enemy from different directions at that time. He was our colonel, and I respected him a lot.”

Sid Phillips: “The Japs tried to pick us off with a 75mm howitzer cannon they had wheeled up. It had iron wheels on it, and they drove us away from our mortar once. They also fired those grenade launchers, those knee mortars, at us. When those things went off, it sounded like you had slapped two pieces of two-by-four together. A crack! And if it hit close it would scare the hell out of you.”

“… the Jap dead were piled three to five feet high.”

Jim Young: “The battle wound down, and it grew light. In the end, the Jap dead were piled three to five feet high. There must have been a hundred or more bodies in front of our 37mm cannon that was located on the sandspit, which was the only way the Japs could attack without going through the creek.”

Art Pendleton: “I can remember looking at these Japanese soldiers who were caught in the barbed wire, and their heads were blown open and the brains and innards was dripping out of their heads. That scene is still with me nearly every day, 70 years later.

“The Japanese soldier was very different from what you would consider the Japanese population. They’re a kind, generous, easygoing nation of people who love nice things and are very delicate in their artistry, music, and everything else. Their soldiers, however, were brainwashed to the point where suicidal attacks were nothing for them, nor were acts of unspeakable brutality. We were a bunch of American kids. Our social system was different, and we were brainwashed, inasmuch as you do what you’re told to do and don’t question orders, but if someone told us to throw our lives away we weren’t ready to give it up. There’s a big difference.”

Jim Young: “Two hundred bodies were piled up in front of the gun position of Johnny Rivers and Al Schmid. Schmid survived the battle, although he was blinded. I could hardly believe I was seeing so many dead enemy soldiers. Some just looked like they were sleeping. Others were mangled. Some were burnt.”

Sid Phillips: “General Vandegrift and his staff came right up behind our guns. Vandegrift was the top dog on Guadalcanal. He was within 10 feet of us. A corporal followed behind General Vandegrift with a 12-gauge pump shotgun, and he kept the shotgun at port arms; I don’t even know if it was on safety, but all he had to do was point that thing and fire it. He stayed right with the general, and that’s when my buddy Ransom said, ‘Phillips, if you want to get your ass kicked, just go over there and stand between the general and that corporal.’

“Our tanks didn’t come up until maybe 10 o’clock in the morning. They passed right down the beach right there. You could have walked over and touched them. When the tanks got through, our whole 1st Battalion, A, B, C, D Companies of infantry, had circled around from the south, and they came around and drove all the Japanese survivors ahead of them out into the ocean. About 30 Japs ran out and jumped in the surf. Everybody kept firing at them until no more heads were visible.”

Jim Young: “At about two in the afternoon the next day, the temperature was around 95 degrees. We walked among them [the dead Japanese] looking for ones that were still alive. Several of our men had been shot by Japs who were only playing dead. The colonel issued orders to shoot any one of them that might be alive. The smell of death almost took your breath away. The chaplains were taking the dog tags off the dead Marines. They said we lost 40 men. It was one hell of a night, and we were glad it was over.”

Art Pendleton: “I can’t even begin to tell you how many bodies were in the river floating around after this battle. You could hardly see the water. We killed almost 800 of them. They were some of their best men that used to train on Mount Fujiyama. They’d put on full marching gear and run up the mountain and run down the mountain. We never would have won that battle if we didn’t have the advantage of the river.

“Their bodies were all over the place for two weeks. The crocodiles were ripping them apart. There were a few of them that survived and escaped back on their fast ships to the other side of the island. These men fought again, but they were all annihilated in the end.”

Sid Phillips: “After it was over, Colonel Pollock came over and told us we had done real well and shook hands with everybody.

“This Japanese unit that hit us there was half of the Ichiki Detachment, an elite unit. They first went ashore at Guam and captured our Marines there. Evidently they had gone through all the Marines’ personal gear because the Japanese packs were full of snapshots of American people—Marines and their girlfriends. We found about 100 of these snapshots after the battle.

“We collected up all the pictures of Americans and decided that the best thing to do was burn them. You wouldn’t want to send them to the families, even if you could identify them. We kept all the Japanese pictures. You’d never burn them. You could trade them to sailors on board ships for almost anything—clothes, chewing tobacco. Money had no value, but you could do a lot by trading souvenirs. I opened one Jap pack that had three Marine globe-and-anchor emblems in it. My friend Deacon Tatum got stuck with Carp’s BAR and had to clean his blood off of it.”

Art Pendleton: “I remember two riflemen, who were my friends. A big shell landed beside them and killed them both. It didn’t just kill them, it blew them to pieces. Their names were Barney Sterling and Arthur Atwood. They would both receive the Navy Cross posthumously. Our lieutenant gathered me and a couple of guys, and we got ponchos and picked up their body parts. We carried them up through the coconut grove and dug their graves right near the end of the Henderson Field airstrip. That was the beginning of the Marine cemetery on Guadalcanal. From that time on there were a lot of graves in there. I never cared about going back to Guadalcanal, but a friend told me it’s a big cemetery now.”

The Battle of Guadalcanal went on for another six months and ended in a decisive American victory. The Lunga Point airfield was renamed Henderson Field in honor of Marine aviator Major Lofton Henderson, killed at the earlier Battle of Midway. Today the airfield is known as Honiara International Airport (see WWII Quarterly, Fall 2011). The island was not declared secure until February 9, 1943. By then the American Marines and Army had lost 1,592 men killed and 4,283 wounded, while the Japanese were decimated: over 28,000 killed, missing, or dead from disease.

The outcome of the battle also marked the end of Japanese expansion in the Pacific and, from then until August 1945, Japan was on the defensive until its final defeat.

This article by Adam Makos & Marcus Brotherton originally appeared on Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Robert Beckhusen

Military History, North Africa

Weapons rushed into combat often make for poor weapons — and the Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Company’s self-propelled Bishop howitzer was exceedingly poor indeed.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The Bishop, Deacon, Sexton and Abbot provided plenty of fire support.

In 1940, the United Kingdom went to war with the Axis in North Africa and quickly encountered an unnerving tactical problem.

The nature of warfare in the flat, open desert inevitably favored tanks, which could easily outrun the range of supporting artillery that could not move unless towed. Limbering and unlimbering artillery was time consuming, so the British Army hastened development of a 25-pounder self-propelled howitzer called the Bishop.

Weapons rushed into combat often make for poor weapons — and the Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Company’s self-propelled Bishop howitzer was exceedingly poor indeed.

Foremost was the technical problem of affixing a howitzer onto a chassis. The company took a Valentine tank, a rugged workhorse of the British armored forces, and swapped the turret for an enormous, boxy superstructure which increase the vehicle’s height to 10 feet. That became the inspiration for its name, and gave the Bishop a tall profile.

A high profile for a howitzer was not a serious problem, in theory, as artillery is supposed to stay far away from the lines. But the Bishop couldn’t stay very far back given the howitzer’s limited vertical elevation which tapped out its firing range to 5,900 meters — well within the range of the fearsome German 88-millimeter gun and half the 25-pounder cannon’s normal maximum range.

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In the open desert, the Germans could see the Bishop coming, and with the right weapons, destroy it before it could get close enough to fire its own cannon.

As a result, British crews often parked the Bishop on ramps to add as much extra elevation as possible.

Nevertheless, ramp or no, the combination of relatively short range — for a howitzer — and the Bishop’s enormous size was a problem particularly in combination, because the Bishop was intended to also serve as an anti-tank weapon, as British tanks lacked the firepower to stand up to German Panzer III and IV tanks arriving to North Africa.

The Bishop superstructure’s interior was also cramped, making for an uncomfortable experience for the crew, and only 149 were produced in total between 1942 and 1943.

While the gun did see combat, including during the enormous Second Battle of El Alamein in November 1942, which helped break the Axis Powers’ back in North Africa, the British quickly moved on to better self-propelled guns including the U.S.-made 105-millimeter M7, dubbed “Priest” by the British, although that required a steady supply of American ammunition instead of the British industry’s 25-pounder shells.

However, it was the Bishop’s failure that helped spawn later successes, as the Bishop was part of a family of ecclesiastically-named howitzers.

Deacon

The AEC Mk I Gun Carrier “Deacon” followed the Bishop and was a decidedly lower-tech self-propelled gun than its heavier counterpart — with a significantly smaller armament of a single six-pound gun mounted on the back of a wheeled AEC Matador 4×4 truck.

The Deacon was lightly armored compared to the Bishop — some 20 millimeters of armor compared to 60 millimeters in the Bishop’s chassis. But one advantage possessed by the Deacon was its ability for the crew to cover the gun and disguise it as a regular truck.

The Deacon’s firing range of around 5,000 meters, and penetrating power, made it a capable tank-killer without the Bishop’s high profile. The Deacon’s maximum speed of 19 miles per hour was also slightly faster than the Bishop, which topped out at 15 miles per hour.

Sexton

Of Britain’s ecclesiastically-inspired howitzers, the Sexton — a church officer who watches over the graveyard — was perhaps the most appropriate. It was the most satisfactory of Britain’s war-time mobile howitzers, and was the most widely produced with more than 2,000 built between 1943 and 1945. It continued to serve for 11 more years after the war.

The Sexton solved two problems. First, it corrected the Bishop’s deficiencies including the gun, which had only a +15 degree elevation. The Sexton’s gun could reach up to +40, and the vehicle’s maximum speed was a brisker 25 miles per hour, comparable to a Sherman tank. Second, the Sexton carried one of Britain’s familiar 25-pounder guns, which was easier to supply than the U.S.-provided M7 Priests.

That the Sexton could keep up with Shermans came from the fact that the self-propelled gun was practically a Sherman. The British Army contracted the design to the Canadian Army, which developed the howitzer on the Ram and later Grizzly chassis — Canadian versions of the M3 and M4A1 Shermans, respectively.

The Sexton went on to see extensive combat use during World War II with both British and Canadian forces in Europe.

Abbot

The last of the church-themed British mobile guns, the FV433 Abbot SPG, became Britain’s contribution to self-propelled artillery during the Cold War soon after it entered production in the 1960s. It was not the only weapon of its type in the British Army, however, as it shared service with U.S.-made self-propelled M109 howitzers.

The Abbot was, of course, a generation beyond the Sexton with its fire-control computer, traversable turret, 105-millimeter howitzer capable of elevating upward to +70 degrees, and a significantly farther firing range of 10 miles. The British Army would ultimately retire the Abbot in the 1990s with the introduction of the AS-90, although India — the only other user — still fields around 80 Abbots, to be replaced with an Indian-manufactured variant of the South Korean K9 Thunder.

India, however, has has struggled to acquire artillery since the Bofors scandal in the 1980s, which helped bring down a government, and the recent death of two South Korean soldiers in a K9 mishap has clouded the arms deal.

Image: Wikimedia Commons