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One hell of a plane.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The P-38 did not have a “joy stick” for the pilot, but something more akin to a steering wheel. Its propellers spun in opposite directions. This, of course, meant that the torque created by one propeller was negated by that of the other. Thus the pilot would not have to struggle against torque as he accelerated the aircraft for takeoff. In 1939, the P-38 broke a speed record for transcontinental flight.

Contrary to most other planes designed and used in World War II, Lockheed’s P-38 Lightning had twin booms ending in vertical stabilizers and rudders. The pilot sat in a span between twin engines, nothing behind him but air until the horizontal stabilizer connected the booms at the rear.

The Story of the Lightning

The story of the P-38, which was in production all through World War II—possibly the only plane so honored—and which flew in every theater of the war, goes something like this: In the late 1930s, the U.S. Army Air Corps saw the need for a high-altitude interceptor fighter with speed, firepower, and range. Because propeller aircraft engines were coming to the peak of perfection beyond which they might not proceed much farther, the idea flourished that two was better than one.

There were plenty of two-engine planes then, of course, but the idea of the twin booms was, according to Gil Cefaratt, who worked at Lockheed in 1944 and founded the P-38 National Convention in 1986, less drag and the fact that landing gear could be braced in the engine compartments and not in the wings proper. In fact, the P-38 was the first fighter with “tricycle” landing gear, that is, wheels mounted on the nose and two engines without one at the rear. This allowed the craft to take off and land with its tail about as high as its nose.

Strength vs. Manuverability

The two engines also reflected the fact that the U.S. military was keen on “heavy” aircraft, those with armor that would protect the pilot and other equipment that would make them effective in combat. The Japanese relied on stripping their fighters such as the Zero to the bare necessities. Consequently, Zeros could maneuver well—they could out-turn P-38s and most other aircraft—but caught fire more quickly when hit and far more often took their pilots down with them.

The P-38 did not have a “joy stick” for the pilot, but something more akin to a steering wheel. Its propellers spun in opposite directions. This, of course, meant that the torque created by one propeller was negated by that of the other. Thus the pilot would not have to struggle against torque as he accelerated the aircraft for takeoff. In 1939, the P-38 broke a speed record for transcontinental flight.

Richard Bong: P-38 Fighter Ace

Lloyd Curtis, who also worked at Lockheed during the war, points out that the P-38 offered difficulties when the pilot had to bail out: He was in danger of hitting the horizontal stabilizer. A remedy for this was eventually a pilot’s seat that was ejected from the cockpit, a forerunner of today’s versions. Other measures, says Cefaratt, included putting the plane into a stall, crawling out on the left wing and jumping, or inverting the aircraft and falling out (hoping the fighter would not loop around and smash you seconds later).

The pilot who was most successful in the P-38 was Richard Bong, the United States’ most accomplished fighter ace. Between December 27, 1942, and December 17, 1944, he shot down 40 Japanese planes, still a U.S. record. He was awarded the Medal of Honor and twice was pulled from combat owing to the psychological impact on both sides should be he killed by the Japanese. Bong is thought to have been so successful in P-38s due to eye/hand/foot skills gleaned from a young manhood handling large farm machinery in rural Wisconsin.

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The Bong World War II Heritage Center

He preferred to climb and then dive down on Japanese planes, or to rise up swiftly beneath them—and to come so close before shooting that he often flew through the explosive wreckage. He was killed at age 24 in California on the day the Hiroshima bomb was dropped while testing Lockheed’s first jet fighter.

The Richard I. Bong World War II Heritage Center opens in September 2002 in Superior, Wisconsin. On display, of course, will be a replica of “Marge,” Bong’s exquisite P-38.

This first appeared in Warfare History Network here.

Image: Wikipedia.

Sebastien Roblin

Security,

t remains to be seen whether the U.S. withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal, which can already be linked to an escalating proxy war in Syria, may also see a resumption of the shadowy covert war between Israel and Iran.

Here's What You Need To Remember: It’s hard to deny that the campaign used tactics that would be labelled “terrorism” or “murder” in the West were they waged against Israeli or American scientists engaged in weapons research. It seems assassinations are condemned or praised not according to the methods used but depending on who is performing them.

Approaching eight o’clock on the morning of January 12, 2010 Professor Massoud Alimohammadi walked to his car parked next to his house in North Tehran, passing a small motorbike on the side of the road. The fifty-one-year-old elementary particle physicist was a leading Iranian theorist on quantum-field states, and known to his friends as a political moderate.

As the professor’s open his car door, the person who had been observing him pressed a button on a remote control. The bike suddenly exploded with such force that all the windows on Masoud’s four-story apartment building were shattered. Massoud was killed instantly, and two nearby bystanders injured. The triggerman, ostensibly a man named Arash Kerhadkish, strolled over to a car waiting nearby and was driven away.

Initially, some speculated that Iranian hardliners sanctioned the killing of a reformist professor. However, anonymous Iranian and Western intelligence sources eventually told a different story: the professor was an important figure in a nuclear-research program run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Nine months later, on the morning of November 29, a quantum physicist named Majid Shahriari was driving through Tehran with his wife, Dr. Bejhat Ghasemi, in the passenger seat when several motorbikes road up beside him near Artesh Boulevard. While one rider hemmed in Shahriari’s car, another rider (believed to be Arash Kerhadkish), attached a package of C4 explosive to the door beside Shahriari, then drove back and triggered a detonator. The explosion killed Shahriari, injured his wife and colleague, and even knocked over one of the motorbike-mounted hitmen, wounding the hitman.

At nearly the same time, another motorbike assassin rammed the car of Sharhiari’s colleague, Professor Fereydoon Abassi, a prominent leader of Iran’s nuclear-research program as he awaited Sharhiari for an appointment at Shahid Beheshti University. He and his wife jumped out of the car just before the bike exploded, seriously injuring Abassi in the face and the hand.

Eight months later on July 23, 2011, Darioush Rezaeinejad and his wife drove to pick up their daughter Armita up from kindergarten. At 4 p.m., the thirty-five-year-old postgrad in electrical engineering deposited his wife and child on the curb and was returning to his vehicle to park the car when two bearded motorcyclists pulled up next him and opened fire with nine-millimeter pistols. Rezaeinejad was shot five times in the arm, neck and chest. His wife, Shoreh Pirani, attempted to pursue the attackers, but they shot her too. The engineer died shortly after being hospitalized at Resalat Hospital. Shoreh recovered, and later told an interviewer that her five-year-old daughter continued to draw pictures of the moment of her father’s death.

Darioush’s wife would also state in a later interview that the engineer had been a member of the Iranian nuclear program and had received anonymous threats prior to his death. Tehran blamed the United States and Israel for the killing. The United States denied the charge, while Israeli government social-media accounts suggestively expressed that it did not condemn the killings, whoever might have perpetrated them.

Six months later on January 11, 2012—nearly the anniversary of Alimohammadi’s killing—Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, an expert on uranium enrichment, was the next to fall victim while driving to work through Eastern Tehran in his Peugeot 405. Deputy director of the Natanz facility, he had been photographed with Mohamed Ahmadinejad, who was president at the time. Supposedly, he was tailed by multiple assassins, including the ubiquitous Kerhadkish. One of those assassins attached a magnetic mine to Roshan’s car, which detonated and killed him, but spared the life of his wife, who was sitting beside him.

Iranian counter-intelligence operatives in the Ministry Of Intelligence and Surveillance apparently were at work, however. In 2011, reportedly thanks to a tip from a third country, MOIS picked up a twenty-four-year old aspiring kick-boxer named Majid Jamali Fashi, who claimed to have dropped of the explosive motorbike that killed Alimohammadi. Fashi confessed on public television to receiving training and a payment of $120,000 from Mossad (Institute), the Israeli spy agency connected to dozens of assassinations over the years, including German rocket scientists, Olympic terrorist plotters, and the Canadian Gerald Bull, developer of the of the Iraqi Project Babylon “super gun.”

In May 2012, Fashi was hung—and Tehran announced it had captured eight male and six female Iranian nationals involved in the killings. Iranian media subsequently aired a half-hour documentary dramatizing their confessions. The nationals were reportedly drawn from sympathizers or members of the MEK (Mujahedin of Iran), a violent opposition group to the government Tehran. In this account, the agents had received forty-five days of training in Israel, and then operated in multi-cell teams that had meticulously spied on their victims to determine their routines and then executed the hits based on instructions from Israeli handlers.

Iranian security forces are infamous for using torture, sexual assault, and threats to relatives and to compel false public confessions of guilt. However, anonymous sources in Israeli intelligence and American diplomatic circles conveyed to media that Israel really was behind the assassination campaign that Fashi at least had given a generally true confession, and that Israel really was training MEK members to serve as operatives in Iran.

In 2014, a journalist revealed that Washington had pressured Israel to cease the assassinations, which had threatened to derail attempts to negotiate a nuclear agreement with Tehran. Earlier, president Bush was reportedly angered to learn that Israelis posing as CIA agents had recruit Iranian nationals in Pakistan for its sabotage and assassination campaign in Iran.

Of course, both public Iranian and anonymous Israeli accounts may be calculated and less than reliable. It seems possible, for example, that the Iranian nationals implicated in the assassination may have been working besides un-apprehended Israeli operatives from Kidon (Hebrew for “Tip of the Spear”) an elite assassination unit within Mossad. According to some accounts, the attacks may also have stopped because additional killings would have posed too great a risk, and remaining targets were too well guarded.

There are also a few ambiguous cases to consider. Earlier on January 15, 2007, Iranian scientist Ardeshir Hosseinpour died mysteriously in Isfahan due to a “gas poisoning” incident. The journals Stratfor and Haaretz claimed Hosseinpour’s death was the work of Mossad, while the Iranian government and sources in Mossad denied involvement. Years later, Hosseinpour’s sister claimed instead that the professor had been killed by the Revolutionary Guard for refusing to work with the nuclear program. In 2015, Iranian security claimed it had foiled another Mossad hit. Israeli sources don’t appear to have stepped forth to corroborate either claim.

In 2018, an article by Ronen Bergman in Politico sketched out the longer history of the Israeli assassination campaign, identifying it as the “fifth prong” of a four-part strategy devised in 2003 by Tamir Pardo, then serving as deputy head of Mossad under Meir Dagan. The concept was to pressure Iran into abandoning its nuclear program using economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, support for Iranian minorities and opposition groups, and interdiction of key nuclear technologies. Though the wider campaign involved close cooperation with the U.S., which famously collaborated to develop the Stuxnet computer virus responsible for destroying hundreds of Iranian centrifuges, Israel alone was involved in plotting assassinations, which the CIA claims it was unwilling to become involved in and preferred not to be aware of. (Bergman also gives an alternate versions of Rezaeinejad’s killing, claiming he was tailed by a lone motorcyclist, and shot while approaching the fortified Imam Ali facility.)

Bergman alleges that the campaign was effective in terrorizing Iranian scientists into avoiding or disassociating with Tehran’s nuclear program, and caused Iran to institute expensive and highly time-consuming security measures to protect its scientists and attempt to root out traitors and bugs. In his account, Dagan saw the assassinations as potentially heading off a push by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Nethanyahu to directly attack Iranian nuclear sites from the air, a course of action he saw as disastrous.

The Mossad campaign did, however, cause the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to plot a series of retaliatory terrorist attacks across the world using its Unit 400 cover operations branch. Hastily and ineptly planned, all but one of the roughly twenty Iranian plots failed, often in spectacular fashion. The campaign’s only “success” was the killing of five Israeli tourists and a local driver on July 18, 2012, in a suicide bombing executed by Hezbollah at the Burgas airport in Bulgaria.

The Mossad assassination campaign did not continue after 2012, though both U.S. and Israeli intelligence sources allege it was effective in slowing the progress of the Iranian nuclear program. While assassination was disavowed by U.S. diplomatic and intelligence officials, some politicians have voiced their support for the scientist killings. After all, the reasoning goes, such targeted assassinations kill far fewer bystanders than would missiles launched in a wider military conflict.

However, it’s hard to deny that the campaign used tactics that would be labelled “terrorism” or “murder” in the West were they waged against Israeli or American scientists engaged in weapons research. It seems assassinations are condemned or praised not according to the methods used but depending on who is performing them. It remains to be seen whether the U.S. withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal, which can already be linked to an escalating proxy war in Syria, may also see a resumption of the shadowy covert war between Israel and Iran.

Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This first appeared earlier in 2018.

Image: Reuters

David Axe

Security,

To even try to sink an American flattop, you first must hit it. That's not easy.

Here's What You Need to Know: The story starts in 2005.

A Chinese admiral and pundit told a trade-show audience that Beijing could resolve China's territorial disputes by sinking two U.S. Navy aircraft carriers and killing thousands of American sailors.

Rear Adm. Lou Yuan's threat isn't an empty one. The Chinese military has deployed an array of weaponry that it acquired specifically to target American flattops.

But a U.S. Navy test in 2005 proved that even if you hit them, carriers are really hard to sink.

Lou made his provocative comment on Dec. 20, 2018 at the Military Industry List summit, according to media reports.

“What the United States fears the most is taking casualties,” declared Lou, an anti-American author, social commentator and military theorist at the PLA Academy of Military Science.

Sinking just one carrier could kill 5,000 Americans, Lou pointed out. Sink two, and you double the toll. "We’ll see how frightened America is" after losing 10,000 sailors, Lou crowed.

Leaving aside the likelihood of a full-scale war breaking out between the world's two leading military powers and economies, sinking a carrier is easier said than done. History underscores the difficulty of the undertaking.

In 1964 Viet Cong saboteurs managed to damage and briefly sink the former U.S. Navy escort carrier Card while the vessel, then operating as an aircraft ferry for U.S. Military Sealift Command, moored in Saigon.

But the last time anyone permanently sank a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier in combat was during World War II. Twelve American carriers sank during the war, usually following intensive air attacks. The last to sink, USS Bismarck Sea, fell victim to Japanese kamikazes in February 1945.

In subsequent decades, American flattops suffered serious accidents including collisions and fires, but none sank. It's very difficult to sink a buoyant, thousand-feet-long ship that's mostly made of steel.

The U.S. Navy knows this from experience. In 2005, the Navy itself targeted the decommissioned carrier America in order to determine just how much punishment the vessel could withstand before slipping beneath the waves.

"The ship was pummeled by explosions both above and below the waterline," The War Zone reporter Tyler Rogoway explained in 2018. "After nearly four weeks of these activities, the carrier was scuttled. On May 14, 2005, the vessel's stern disappeared below the waterline and the ship began its voyage to the seafloor."

"America stood up to four weeks of abuse and only succumbed to the sea after demolition teams scuttled the ship on purpose once and for all, it's clear that America was built to sustain heavy damage in combat and still stay afloat."

Consider also the carrier-shaped pontoon ship that Iran built as a scale target for a 2015 war game. While small and flimsy compared to a real flattop, the pontoon vessel itself endured an intensive assault. "Iran struck the faux carrier with a barrage of anti-ship missiles, then swarmed it with small boats and then landed commandos on it," Rogoway reported.

Still, the fake flattop apparently remained afloat.

To even try to sink an American flattop, you first must hit it. That's not easy, either. No carrier sails without an air wing with as many as 50 fighter aircraft plus several escorting destroyers, cruisers and submarines. A virtual wall of defensive weaponry surrounds the flattop out to a distance of several hundred miles.

Still, China or another country could attempt to target the carriers with submarines, cruise missiles and ballistic rockets. 

"They will employ multiple systems in order to confuse and overwhelm U.S. defenses," naval historian Robert Farley wrote in 2017. "They will rely on the threat of attack to keep U.S. carrier battle groups as far as possible from the main theaters of operation."

"But the observation that the enemy has a missile or torpedo that can kill a carrier only begins a conversation about carrier vulnerability," Farley continued. "Shooting anything at an aircraft carrier is a costly, difficult operation."

The carrier's attackers could face withering counterfire from the vessel's defenders. "Beyond the monetary cost, launching an open attack against an American carrier strike group, with its own cruisers, destroyers and submarines, is almost certainly a suicide mission."

And if the United States' reaction to the 9/11 terror attacks is any indication, Washington surely would deploy all its remaining military might, including its surviving eight or nine carriers, against country behind the sinking.

"So there are two questions that remain for anyone who thinks they even have a shot at taking down one of these enormous steel behemoths," Farley explained. "Can you do it? And even if you can, is it worth it?"

David Axe served as the new Defense Editor of the National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels War Fix, War Is Boring and Machete Squad.

This article appeared last year.

Image: Flickr / U.S. Navy

David Axe

Security, Middle East

Numerous, cheap mines could slow America's large, high-tech warships.

Here's What You Need to Know: The Islamic republic has the potential to drop thousands of mines in key waters.

In the event of war with Iran, the U.S. Navy’s small, aging force of Persian Gulf-based minesweepers would struggle to locate and disarm Iran’s underwater mines.

The consequences for U.S. military operations, not to mention world trade, could be severe.

Four of the Navy’s 11 1980s-vintage Avenger-class minesweepers sail from Bahrain and, if war broke out, would be responsible for clearing the strategic Strait of Hormuz and other important waterways of mines.

But the Avengers suffer from obsolete equipment and a lack of spending. The minesweepers “routinely need repairs,” one Navy officer told Pro Publica reporters Robert Faturechi, Megan Rose and T. Christian Miller.

The Navy for years has diverted minesweeping funding into the development of multi-mission Littoral Combat Ships. The LCS were supposed to replace the Avengers, but the new ships have proved expensive, unreliable and unsuitable for many of the missions the Navy hoped they would handle.

The sailing branch in 2016 canceled development of a dedicated minehunting robot for the LCS. All the while, the Avengers slowly have rusted away.

“The companies that used to make a variety of spare parts no longer exist,” the reporters added. “A sailor recently aboard one ship said the sonar meant to detect mines was so imprecise that in training exercises it flagged dishwashers, crab traps and cars on the ocean floor as potential bombs.”

Minesweeper USS Devastator with the hull number MCM 6 was non-operational for so long that sailors jokingly referred to her as “Building 6,” since she never moved.

Senior Navy officials have called their mine warfare fleet in the Persian Gulf — a mix of aging ships, high-tech drones and helicopters — “the best and the brightest around,” and a Navy spokesman recently said the minesweeper fleet was “fully capable” of fulfilling its mission of finding and neutralizing mines. The Navy’s underwater drones, the spokesman said, “have a high rate of success,” and the sonar systems on the ships “are very accurate at detecting mines.”

While the spokesman conceded “there are challenges with all older ships, including maintenance and repair” that might make it take longer for the ships to accomplish their mission, he said maintenance problems have “dramatically improved” of late. He noted that as recently as July 6, [2019], all four of the older minesweepers based in the Persian Gulf had been at sea at the same time. (An officer aboard one of the ships called it a “photo exercise” and said it was “extraordinarily rare” to see all four out at once.)

War with Iran could require an intensive demining effort. The Islamic republic has the potential to drop thousands of mines in key waters. “Iran’s arsenal includes a mix of cheaper, older ones that float and blow up on impact, and more sophisticated ones that can be dropped from planes,” Faturechi, Miller and Rose wrote. “They sit on the ocean floor and explode after detecting nearby ships.”  

“We certainly have the ability to do it,” Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said last month about closing the Strait of Hormuz, a critical commercial passageway. “But we certainly don’t want to do it because the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf are our lifeline.”

Sailors in the 5th Fleet’s minesweeping operations said they have watched the escalation of hostility in the Persian Gulf — the downing of drones by Iran and the U.S., masked gunmen rappelling from an Iranian helicopter to seize a British-flagged oil tanker — with a mix of excitement and pessimism. They are eager to contribute but doubt their ability to do so.

The Navy wants by 2020 to decommission three Avengers based in the United States in order to free up spare parts for the right minesweepers sailing from Bahrain and Japan. LCSs are still scheduled eventually to handle some minehunting missions, but the Navy also is experimenting with so-called “vessels of opportunity.”

Under that initiative, sailors embark on transport ships, amphibious auxiliaries or other non-combat vessels and use them as bases for minehunting divers, underwater drones and helicopters.

David Axe served as Defense Editor of the National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels  War Fix, War Is Boring and Machete Squad.

This first appeared in August 2019.

Image: Reuters

David Axe

Security,

The U.S. Marine Corps is practicing a new method of speeding firepower across a war zone.

Here's What You Need to Know: HIMARS packing new missiles could give the Corps a serious and survivable anti-ship capability.

The U.S. Marine Corps is practicing a new method of speeding firepower across a war zone. And that could have big implications for America's military strategy in the western Pacific.

On Dec. 7, 2018, Marines with Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 352 hauled two M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System launchers from Camp Pendleton in California to Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, where a war game was underway.

At least one of the 12-ton HIMARS, a wheeled vehicle that fires a variety of surface-to-surface rockets, rolled off its KC-130J transport, quickly fired a training rocket, then loaded back into the KC-130J for its return flight.

There's a name for the practice of deploying a rocket launcher via aircraft, promptly firing then redeploying. The U.S. Army, which pioneered the method, calls it "HIMARS Rapid Infiltration" or HIRAIN.

Combined with other new tactics and new rockets, HIRAIN could allow U.S. force to quickly position long-range artillery, frustrating an enemy's own movements. The method might even allow American troops to impede China's expansion in the western Pacific.

Beijing considers the string of islands stretching from Japan south to The Philippines -- what it calls the "first island chain" -- to be China's historical sphere of influence. The Chinese Communist Party uses trade deals, diplomacy and the threat of military force to exert influence over the region and, in the event of war, could seize many islands along the chain.

The Pentagon aims to complicate this expansion. While air and sea forces are central to American strategy in the region, ground troops could play a role, too. Retired U.S. Army general H.R. McMaster, who briefly served as Pres. Donald Trump's national security advisor, said he wanted the Army to consider "projecting power outwards from the land."

Janine Davidson, an undersecretary of the Navy under former president Barack Obama, said she tried to "get the Army to sink a ship." The Marine Corps, which possesses many of the same capabilities that the Army does, likewise could sink ships.

Imagine a Chinese flotilla sailing toward some remote island group near Japan or The Philippines during some near-future war. A Marine rocket battery could quickly deploy to one island aboard Marine or Air Force transports and lob a few rockets at the Chinese ships while the transports idled nearby. "After firing each volley, the missile battery would move to a new hide site and await orders to fire again," the California think-tank RAND explained in a 2017 report.

"Fortifying the offshore island chain while deploying naval assets in adjoining waters could yield major strategic gains on the cheap," James Holmes, a professor at the Naval War College in Rhode Island, advised in 2014. "Doing so is common sense."

The Army has practiced parts of the concept in realistic conditions. During the Rim of the Pacific war game in and around Hawaii in July 2018, an Army HIMARS battery struck the decommissioned U.S. Navy amphibious ship Racine with five rockets. An aerial drone provided the coordinates for the 50-mile strike.

Still, an unguided 227-millimeter-diameter rocket with a 200-pound warhead and a 40-mile range -- of which a HIMARS can cary six at a time -- is less than ideal as an anti-ship weapon.

Alternatively, a HIMARS can carry one guided 610-millimeter Army Tactical Missile System with a 500-pound warhead and a 190-mile range. In 2016, the Army began modifying the seekers on some ATACMS in order to improve their ability to hit ships.

The Marine Corps is considering buying a dedicated anti-ship missile for its HIMARS launchers. The Corps proved, in a fall 2018 demonstration in Arizona, that an F-35 stealth fighter can pass targeting data to a rocket battery, improving its accuracy. A Marine F-35B detected a metal container on the ground and passed the GPS coordinates via radio data-link to the HIMARS crew.

HIMARS packing new missiles could give the Corps a serious and survivable anti-ship capability. Adding F-35s could help the rockets strike with greater accuracy. And swiftly moving the launchers by air could protect them from counterattack ... and keep the enemy guessing.

David Axe is the author of the new graphic novels MACHETE SQUAD and THE STAN.

This article appeared last year.

Image: Flickr / U.S. Marine Corps

Seth J. Frantzman

Security, Middle East

Why are they needed? Think gas deposits.

Israel has been known for its expertise in counter-insurgency and using hi-tech aircraft, like the F-35 jet, to confront enemies across the Middle East. Israel’s power was concentrated on land with its Israel Defense Forces investing in the best air defenses and new combat vehicles. Now that may be changing as Israel takes delivery of its new Sa’ar 6 corvette ships. These four new 2,000 ton vessels, which will be delivered from Germany over the next year, will give Israel new firepower at sea and the ability to protect its emerging gas fields off the coast.

In a recent statement the commander of the Israeli Navy, Maj. Gen. Eli Sharvit: Said that "the mission of defending Israel's exclusive economic zone and strategic assets at sea is the primary security mission of the Israeli Navy. These assets are essential to the operational continuity of the State of Israel, and having the ability to protect them holds critical importance.” The gas exclusive economic zone stretches over an area twice the size of Israel. Gas fields off the coast, near Lebanon and Gaza, both could be threatened by missiles. Israel confronted a surprise missile threat like this in 2006 when Hezbollah targeted the INS Hanit.

More recently reports indicated Hezbollah may have access to the Russian-made Yakhont missile or a variant. The group already has stockpiled some 150,000 missiles and rockets with Iran’s support. It is also developing precision-guided munitions. The threat of missiles at sea is well known, especially after the Houthis targeted ships off the coast of Yemen and after militants in Gaza struck an Egyptian ship in 2015. Anti-ship missiles can pose a major threat to modern navies. During the Falklands war in 1982 Argentinian Dassault-Breguet Super Etendard planes air-launched Exocet missiles that struck several British ships. During the Iran-Iraq war in 1987, the USS Stark was hit by a missile as well.

For this reason, Israel is putting to sea advanced ships with stealth technology and the latest in Israel’s Adir phased array radar, as well as numerous interceptors designed to protect it from missile threats. Many of the combat systems on the Sa’ar 6 ships will be new or recent designs and more than ninety percent will come from Israel’s defense companies. For instance, Rafael Advanced Defense systems reportedly supplies the C-Gem offboard active decoy, which defends against missile threats. Elbit Systems electronic warfare suite will be incorporated along with IAI’s Barak missiles and the sea version of Israel’s Iron Dome. Israel has made rapid advances in all this technology over the last several years, attempting to keep up with the threats emerging from Iran and Hezbollah Lebanon. For instance, Israel announced it had tested a new ship-to-ship missile in September. The missile represented a partnership between IAI and Israel’s research and development division within the Ministry of Defense. At the time Israel said, “the new missile system offers enhanced offensive precision capabilities, has longer range, possesses improved offensive flexibility and is better equipped to engage advanced threats.”

On November 11, the Israeli Navy will receive the new ship but it will still be in Kiel in Germany where it was laid down at Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems. It will then sail to Israel. Israel’s navy says that “Upon the arrival of the corvette to Israel and after the operationalization and installation of battle systems, of which the vast majority are Israeli-designed systems, INS Magen will start its operational service in the Navy and will lead the defense of the Israeli economic exclusive zone and maritime strategic assets.”

The name of the ship and the program, “Magen,” comes from the Hebrew term for “shield.” This is because the ship is a shield for the gas platforms and off-shore infrastructure Israel is investing in. This will include a new gas pipeline to Cyprus and Greece, according to a recent agreement. It is also part of Israel’s increased role in the eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum, which was established this summer. Israel is increasingly a naval ally of Egypt, Cyprus and Greece. As tensions have increased between Turkey and Greece, Ankara has also laid claim to rights to the Mediterranean stretching to Libya, which puts it astride the potential pipeline. An Israeli ship was harassed by the Turkish navy in December 2019 as Ankara pushed its demands in the Mediterranean. The IDF has assessed that Turkey could be a future challenge and reports in British media have indicated the Mossad also sees Turkey as an emerging threat.

This shift in naval strategy, although it is not tailored to relate to Turkey, gives Israel more eight at sea and a more relevant navy that can operate further from shore. Previously Israel relied on small patrol boats to deal with terror threats from Gaza, as well as a handful of missile boats. It also commissioned a half dozen submarines since the late 1990s. Now Israel will have fifteen surface vessels, the four Sa’ar 6 ships, three Sa’ar 5 ships and eight missile boats. The decision to build the Sa’ar 6 was made in 2013 and represents a major investment in the navy. The last time Israel put new surface ships to sea in such a build-up was in the 1990s. The Sa’ar 6 is supposed to be the backbone of the navy for thirty years. Combined with the Dolphin-class submarines, it will give the Israeli navy the latest technology for naval warfare.

Israel’s navy held a briefing and put out an explainer about the new ships in early November. The navy says that the ships will defend the gas fields up to several hundred kilometers offshore and that they can not only be on station at the rigs for a significant period of time but can also do other missions. “The ability to carry mid-size helicopters, such as the Seahawk: The new Seahawk helicopters that will be used by Sa’ar 6-Class Corvettes will be powerful, and able to operate over long ranges and extended periods of time. In this fashion, the ships will be able to provide a comprehensive defensive envelope.”

The understanding of the threat Israel faces has grown in recent years. Israel once had to confront convention armies, fighting the Soviet-armed Egyptians and Syrians in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s the threat shifted more to counter-insurgency. Now the threat has moved to what Israel calls the “third circle,” a term used for Iran. Israel incorporated this understanding into its new Momentum plan. That means Israel is reducing some of its older units, making its armored corps and infantry more “multi-dimensional” and relying on communications, artificial intelligence and algorithms to bring the most amount of information to frontline troops to give them more lethality in times of conflict. That is designed to land a knock-out blow on an enemy.

Israel is also training more with the United States using the F-35, of which Israel is acquiring at least fifty of the advanced aircraft for several squadrons. The goal of Israel’s current operations, called the Campaign Between the Wars, is to reduce the Iranian threat and Iranian entrenchment in Syria and prolong the period before the next war. At sea, that means dealing with potential missile threats from places like Lebanon. Only one missile getting through Israel’s defense net can harm the gas platforms. That necessitated ships of the type Israel is putting to sea, and also knitting them in to Israel’s advanced early warning systems on land. This means confronting “blue water” and “brown water” threats, at sea and closer to land.

Israel receives most of its trade from the sea. It’s two Mediterranean ports, Haifa and Ashon, now account for around 43 percent and 53 percent respectively, with the Red Sea port of Eilat taking in only four percent of the country’s trade. New relations with the UAE and new pipeline deals could change some of that situation. Changing Israel’s strategy meant assigning ships to the three gas fields and taking into consideration that one ship might always be at port or on other missions. It also means having better naval-air connectivity, and multiple layers of defense. This basically means extending the Iron Dome and David Sling and other defense system umbrellas to the sea.

Recent attacks by Iran, such as the drone and cruise missile swarm used to attack Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq in September 2019, point to the kinds of threats that Israel must consider. The Sa’ar 6 will have around 80 personnel on board and Israel is also hoping to have a quarter of the personnel on the new ships be female. In recent years, Israel’s navy increased the number of women in the service. It is thus a technological and societal leap for the country.

The ship was custom-designed so that it has the stealth capabilities and room to install the weapon systems Israel wants. This is an upgrade of existing corvette-class ship models. Many navies today are racing to put to sea better ships, especially as the naval arms race continues in the Pacific and elsewhere. Not all the plans for new types of ships, such as the American Zumwalt-class destroyers or the littoral combat ships like the USS Independence, have proven successful. Israel hopes its updates will be a model that does perform well.

Israel engaged in what I call a “design spiral” to build these ships. That included making sure the payloads, such as the massive radar, could be incorporated. It also meant making it flexible and with a low radar cross-section. It is the boat with the highest firepower per square meter, the Israeli navy says. In the end, I will also have a 76mm cannon as its main gun, along with the missiles it carries. Together the firepower and defenses will be a gamechanger off the coast of Tel Aviv and extending far into the sea.

Seth J. Frantzman is a Jerusalem-based journalist who holds a Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the executive director of the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis and a writing fellow at Middle East Forum. He is the author of After ISIS: America, Iran and the Struggle for the Middle East. Follow him on Twitter at @sfrantzman.

Image:

Sebastien Roblin

Security, World

The Pentagon’s F-35 and F-22 stealth fighters, which it has made the lynchpin of its twenty-first century air warfare strategy, simply can’t fly far enough.

Here's What You Need To Remember: To conduct missions over hostile territory for extended time, America's jet fighters need fuel. Conventional tankers are vulnerable to long-range missiles, particularly Russian and Chinese ones. A stealth tanker might be able to avoid this problem.

The United States has devoted billions of dollars to building stealth fighters, stealth bombers, stealth cruise missiles and stealth spy drones. Surely a stealth tanker for refueling aircraft midflight would be an extravagance too much?

However, the concept of a stealth tanker is not as absurd you’d think for one simple reason: the Pentagon’s F-35 and F-22 stealth fighters, which it has made the lynchpin of its twenty-first century air warfare strategy, simply can’t fly far enough.

At first glance, the F-35’s six to eight-hundred-mile range doesn’t seem bad compared to conventional fighters like the Super Hornet or F-16. But those non-stealth designs can carry fuel in in underwing tanks into combat—meanwhile, an F-35 can’t carry those extra lumps of metal under its wings if it wants to preserve its miniscule radar cross-section.

Another problem with the short range of stealth and non-stealth fighters alike is the need to deploy them airbases or aircraft carriers well within range of an adversary’s ballistic and cruise missiles. Conflicts ranging from World War II to Afghanistan have shown that advanced fighters are never more vulnerable than when they are caught on the ground (or a carrier deck). It is virtually a given that in the event of a great power conflict, a terrifying missile barrage would rain down on forward airbases; and just how many airframes would emerge intact from that hail of death is anybody’s guess.

Fortunately, all U.S. jet fighters can be refueled mid-air. But though the modified airliners serving as tankers would strive to stay far away from hostile fighters, they are increasingly at risk to being shot down by very-long range air-to-air missiles like the Russian R-37, which can hit airliner-type targets from 250 miles away. The small numbers of stealth aircraft fielded by Russia or China would also likely concentrate on slipping past fighter screens to destroy the tankers and radar planes supporting them. After all, knock down the lumbering tankers, and you may also effectively strand a bunch of fighters over the Pacific without the fuel needed to return to base.

The dilemma is much worse for stealth fighters attempting to penetrate enemy airspace, as the F-35 is designed to do. Contemporary surface-to-air-missiles like the S-400 can already strike less agile aircraft (again, think tankers) up to 250 miles distant using 40N6 missiles. This means conventional tankers simply will have to loiter hundreds of miles back from defended airspace—and even there, will be visible on radar and vulnerable to attack by enemy fighters.

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A tanker with a reduced radar cross section, therefore could neatly address both problems, without having to be every bit as low-observable as a stealth fighter.

Enter the KC-Z

Currently, the Air Force is procuring 179 new KC-46A Pegasus tankers based on the Boeing 767. As it progressively retires its aging fleet of 400 KC-135 and KC-10 tankers, the Air Mobility Command originally planned to phase in another relatively conventional tanker called the KC-Y starting in the 2024s, before finally pursuing a KC-Z stealth tanker.

However, in 2016 General Carlton Everthart told Defense News the Pentagon may scrub the KC-Y in favor of procuring additional upgraded KC-46s and phasing in the KC-Z stealth tankers sooner—though by ‘sooner,’ think procurement beginning in 2035.

Already, there are multiple proposals as to what a KC-Z might look like—and they’re all bizarre enough to resemble the Quinjets from The Avengers movies.

In June 2018, the Air Force Research Lab, based in Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, floated this angular and very bizarre-looking ‘Advanced Aerial Refueling’ concept model at the AIAA forum.

Meanwhile, Lockheed has its own stealth tanker concept model dubbed the ‘Advanced Tanker Concept.’ (photos here and here) that looked ready for filming in Star Wars: Episode IX. Earlier in 2018, the major defense manufacturer lost a competition to produce an MQ-25 carrier-based aerial refueling drone; Lockheed’s proposed flying-wing design emphasized stealth more than other entrants in the competition. The firm has also proposed embedding the stealth tanker’s high-bypass turbofans on the upper surface of the wings, like on the B-2, for cross-section reducing purposes.

However, the proposed designs aren’t pure flying wing, but instead take their cues from the Air Force’s expressed interest in a ‘Blended Wing Body’-type tanker. Rather than crossing a tubular fuselage against the wings, a BWB aircraft seamlessly merges the wings into the fuselage, resulting in a triangular shape. These are also known as ‘Hybrid Wing Body’ designs, as they are not a pure ‘flying wing’ because of the size of retention of a fuselage and tail fins.

A flying wing’s curved wing surfaces are very efficient at generating lift, and its ‘infinite plane’ naturally lend themselves to low radar cross sections as they lack hard, radar-reflective angles. However, tanker aircraft are routinely called upon to do double duty as cargo jets, so a stealth tanker may still need to have a bulged cargo compartment and bay door to serve as a fully capable substitute—the ‘C” in KC-Z stands for ‘Cargo’ after all. Those wouldn’t gel well with a pure flying wing design, which is why extant concepts have been hybrids.

An upside of a stealthy cargo plane is that it could be used for inserting Special Forces operators behind enemy lines—a capability the Special Operations branch has discretely studied for decades—or delivering critical supplies to forward outposts located under the anti-access umbrella of an adversary’s long-range anti-aircraft missiles. Nonetheless, a cargo-carrying stealth tanker design would simply not be as stealthy as a pure flying-wing designed only for aerial refueling.

Another challenge to making an affordable stealth tanker concerns the fact that stealth fighters and bomber achieve their low cross-section partly by incorporating radar-absorbent material (RAM) coatings or panels. However, RAM application significantly increases the operating costs and maintenance requirements of small stealth fighters. Presumably, that cost would be far greater spread out across a huge tanker that needs to fly thousands more hours every years, so a more cost-efficient form of RAM is surely necessary to avoid the $135 to $169,000 per flight hour operating costs of a B-2 stealth bomber.

The Air Force has additional ideas for making its future tankers more survival, including incorporating active protection systems to shoot down incoming missiles—yes, possibly with lasers. Another concept, however, would involve using next-generation radar jammers that employ a cognitive intelligence system to automatically adjust frequencies to keep up with frequency-agile radars. Such jammers could obscure or even misrepresent the position of an aircraft on radar. The Pentagon also would like its next-generation tankers to feature more autonomation to reduce the number of necessary crew and speed up the refueling process.

However, the Air Mobility Command has also expressed openness to a radically different approach to a stealthy KC-Z—taking a page from the Navy’s MQ-25, and deploying small, stealthy unmanned autonomous vehicle.

Stealthy drone tankers might fit with a ‘distributed’ refueling strategy in which multiple drones draw fuel from a large, conventional tanker ‘mothership’ and then zip forward into to provide refueling for stealth fighter in contested airspace. However, such a chain-refueling scheme could crash catastrophically should the un-stealthy mothership tanker be targeted by adversaries. Thus a ‘system of systems’ could also proposed mixing multiple ‘tiers’ of stealthy and non-stealthy tankers.

It’s worth noting there may be simpler, less expensive solution: weaning the Pentagon from its dependency on short-range jets, perhaps by relying more on long-range B-21 stealth bombers or future sixth-generation Penetrating Counter-Air fighter, making greater use of stand-off missiles, or introducing long-range unmanned UCAV stealth drones.

Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This article first appeared in September 2018.

Image: Reuters.

Charlie Gao

Security, Asia

The Navy has a wide variety of modern weapons to find and destroy enemy submarines.

Here's What You Need to Know: Anti-submarine warfare is an art learned in two world wars.

With things heating up in the South China Sea (SCS), much attention has been paid to the ships and submarines that could potentially square off against each other in the region. This ignores a key asset of most navies that is already on the “front lines” and shaping military interactions—Maritime Patrol Aircraft (MPA). Skillful use of these aircraft may determine how an engagement plays out, or it could prevent one from happening in the first place.

MPA have been around almost as long as combat aircraft. Navies quickly realized the potential of aircraft when it came to patrolling the sea, as they could move far more quickly than boats and had the significant advantage of altitude.

But modern MPA use advanced sensors to detect to see far more than what can be seen with the naked eye—Magnetic Anomaly Detectors (MADs) can detect underwater submarines, and radar systems are used to detect ships that might just be specks on the horizon. Infrared/thermographic cameras allow MPA to identify vessels even at night.

MPA can also deploy sonobuoys, floating sensors that either detect noises or send out pings to find submarines. ELINT sensors can detect the radar emissions of enemy MPA or ships. All of these sensors means that MPA are incredibly useful in peacetime as well as wartime.

One way they could deter potential escalation is through detecting potential violations of EEZ or civilian ships in contested waters ahead of time through the use of radar and infrared. Since modern MPA have all-weather detection capability, they can watch for fishing vessels day and night, and give a navy an advanced warning of such violations so they can be headed off before a more violent encounter up close.

MPA also can provide critical information in tracking enemy submarine posture. While this is a more intensive and not “guaranteed” way to track submarines—as the battle between submarine stealth and submarine detection is ongoing—determining the patrol routes and positions of enemy submarines is critical information. Such intelligence may allow nations to avoid potential losses to convoy raiding (if it occurs) and set up anti-submarine warfare plans before the event of war.

In their traditional role in the detection of surface ships, MPA are critically important in the SCS region. Due to the relatively short distances between islands, MPA flying out of Japan or Taiwan could potentially track the movement of ships from base to base in China.

Basic MPA surveillance radars like the Seaspray 5000 have publicized ranges of around 200 nm. The more advanced AN/APS-115 and AN/APS-137D(V)5s mounted on Japan, and Taiwan's P-3C MPA undoubtedly have better performance. Even with a 200 nm range, an MPA flying over the East China Sea could easily track ships moving south along China's coast.

This could yield significant strategic intelligence on the development and deployment of Beijing’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). In addition, the ELINT suite onboard these aircraft could provide insight into the capabilities of Chinese radars.

However, MPA still face considerable limitations from the human component. Crews get tired and need to be rotated out, and MPA—like other aircraft—are expensive to fly and operate. Therefore, the future will see navies using UAVs to accomplish the MPA mission, assisting manned MPA and also surveying without them independently.

The U.S. Navy has already made significant steps in this direction with the acquisition of MQ-4C Triton UAVs, which can augment the P-8A in surveillance and patrols. As multiple UAVs can accompany a single manned aircraft, the amount of area patrolled can increase drastically with the integration of UAS, bringing even more benefits.

Most militaries in the region appear to have recognized the importance of MPA in securing their maritime borders. While not in the SCS, Japan's Defense Forces have one of the best MPA fleets, the star of which is their purpose-built Kawasaki P-1, which boasts advanced sensors and even artificial intelligence to reduce the crew workload.

Taiwan is also no slouch, acquiring twelve American P-3C Orions MPA in 2017. Other militaries in the region (such as Vietnam, Singapore, and the Philippines) field lighter MPA, mostly converted civilian light propeller planes as opposed to heavier purpose-built aircraft. While these converted aircraft are sufficient for tracking surface ships, purpose-built aircraft are far superior for tracking submarines, due to features like the extended tail on the P-3C, which houses the magnetic anomaly detector.

China's premier MPA is the Y-8Q, which is a rough analog to the P-3C in function. Like the P-3C it has a distinctive tail boom for detecting submarines, and a powerful surface search radar in a radome under the cockpit.

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

This article first appeared in August 2018.

Image: Reuters

War Is Boring

Security, Europe

Moscow made a good investment when it created the Su-27.

Key point: The Su-27 is a fast interceptor that can find American bomber planes and threaten them. In fact, they've been doing just that to keep NATO on its toes.

On June 9, 2017, examples of all three of the U.S. Air Force’s heavy bombers — the swing-wing B-1, the stealthy B-2 and the lumbering B-52 — gathered in international air space over the Baltic Sea for a rare photo-op with allied fighters and patrol planes.

They had a surprise visitor. A Russian air force Su-27 Flanker fighter sidled up to the U.S.-led formation and flew alongside long enough to appear in multiple photos. A few days prior, an Su-27 intercepted a B-52 over the Baltic.

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

The Su-27 was apparently one of seven Flankers that fly from Kaliningrad, Moscow’s Baltic enclave, sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland and geographically separate from the rest of Russia.

The Kaliningrad Flankers are arguably the busiest—and most dangerous—Su-27s anywhere in the world.

They patrol over the Baltic, intercept NATO and neutral spy planes in international air space and, on occasion, harass the rival planes so aggressively that they have no choice but to flee.

If any Russian warplanes end up causing an international incident in the tense Baltic region, it will likely be the Kaliningrad Su-27s.

Over the Baltic on Oct. 3, 2014, an Su-27 with the numeral 24 on its nose in red paint flew so close to a Swedish air force Gulfstream spy plane—around 30 feet, according to Combat Aircraft’s Babak Taghvaee—that the Swedish crew could clearly identify the Russian jet’s weapons, including four R-27 and two R-73 air-to-air missiles.

In June 2017, Russia’s defense minister Sergey Shoigu was flying to Kaliningrad when a Polish F-16 intercepted the minister’s transport plane. A pair of Su-27s — likely from the enclave — intervened.

A few days later, an apparent Kaliningrad Su-27 with the nose code Red 93 flew so close to a U.S. Air Force RC-135 spy plane that the Pentagon formally complained.

While for many decades opposing air arms have routinely intercepted each other’s planes in international air space, NATO and Swedish authorities have grown increasingly concerned over Moscow’s actions in the Baltic region.

Russian aerial activity in the Baltic region has been on the rise for years — and escalated sharply following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2014. Fighters from NATO and neutral countries have intercepted Russian planes on hundreds of separate occasions since then.

“We have seen examples of the actions of air power that can be perceived as more aggressive than what we’ve seen in a long time,” army general Sverker Goranson, then Sweden’s top officer, told a Swedish news outletin 2014.

In June 2014, Kaliningrad Su-27s again flew within 30 feet of a Swedish spy plane. The Su-27s have also tangled with Swedish Gripen fighters and French Mirage jets. The Flankers have repeatedly intercepted, and occasionally endangered, American RC-135s.

In July 2014, an RC-135 was presumably monitoring electronic signals from the Russian enclave when at least two of the resident Su-27s—which as of 2014 included three Su-27SM3s, one Su-27P and an Su-27S, among others—vectored for an intercept.

Something about the Flankers’ behavior frightened the American aircrew. The RC-135 turned and ran—straight into Swedish territory. “The U.S. aircraft was directed towards Swedish air space incorrectly by U.S. personnel,” the Pentagon’s European Command said in a statement.

Five months later in September 2014, the Kaliningrad Flankers—which the Russian air force detached from the 6972nd Aviation Base in Krasnador, just north of the Black Sea—took part in a massive exercise that tested the Kremlin’s ability to reinforce Kaliningrad with scores of extra warplanes and hundreds of paratroopers.

War games have become commonplace off Kaliningrad. In July 2017, Russian and Chinese warships conducted mock naval combat off Kaliningrad. And Russia staged parts of its sprawling Zapad exercise in Kaliningrad in September 2017.

Russian Flankers have also escorted heavy bombers conducting mock attack runs on European countries—although it’s not entirely clear that those Su-27s came from Kaliningrad.

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

Image: Reuters

Kyle Mizokami

Security, Asia

New Delhi has two dangerous neighbors to keep an eye on.

Key point: India has worked hard to modernize its forces and that includes getting aircraft carriers. Can it really compete with Beijing?

India occupies one of the most strategically important locations in the world. A short distance from the Persian Gulf, Central Asia and Southeast Asia, India has been an important hub for ideas, trade and religion for thousands of years.

That geographic positioning has its disadvantages. India is faced on two sides by powerful, nuclear-armed countries it has fought wars with—China and Pakistan.

India’s most formidable rival is China, with whom it fought a short, sharp border war with in 1962. China’s growing military has transformed it from a mainly ground-based threat to a multifaceted one with powerful assets in the air, at sea and even in space.

India’s second most powerful rival is Pakistan, which was also part of the British Raj. India and Pakistan have fought four wars since 1947, and frequently appear on the verge of a fifth.

Complicating matters for India, the two countries are allies. Advances in military technology mean India’s large reserves of manpower are no longer as useful as they once were, and India will need to favor the former over the latter if it wants to match—and deter—Chinese and Pakistani forces.

AH-64D Apache Longbow Block III Attack Helicopter

Indian selection of the AH-64D Apache as its future attack helicopter is a prime example of technology over manpower. The Apache’s versatility means that it will be able to do everything from engage tank formations in a conventional war to hunt guerrillas in a counterinsurgency operation.

The heavily armed, fast-moving Apache can counter a number of land-based threats to India, sensing enemy armored vehicles with its mast-mounted millimeter-wave radar and destroying them with Hellfire missiles, Hydra-70 anti-armor rockets and a 30mm chain gun. The helicopter can also detect insurgents under heavy cover using its thermal imaging sensor and engage them with anti-personnel rockets or the 30mm chain gun.

Unlike other attack helicopters, the Apache has a proven combat record, destroying armor in Iraq and decimating Taliban hiding in the hillsides of Afghanistan.

INS Vikramaditya Aircraft Carrier

Commissioned in November 2013, INS Vikramaditya is India’s newest aircraft carrier and the only aircraft carrier that calls the Indian Ocean home. In the event of war, Vikramaditya will be used to blockade Karachi, Pakistan’s largest port, or sever China’s economic lifeline to the Persian Gulf and beyond.

Vikramaditya is 282 meters long and displaces 44,000 tons, making her about 20 percent smaller than China’s aircraft carrier Liaoning. Unlike Liaoning, however, she is a fully operational carrier, with an air wing capable of executing air superiority, anti-surface, anti-ship and anti-submarine warfare. The carrier air wing is expected to consist of twenty-four MiG-29K or Tejas multirole fighters and ten anti-submarine warfare helicopters. India has ordered forty-five MiG-29Ks.

Vikramaditya will operate as the centerpiece of a full carrier battle group, protected by the new Kolkata air-defense destroyers. A further two carriers of indigenous designs are planned, bringing India’s total carrier force to three.

BrahMos Anti-Ship Missile           

A joint Indian-Russian project, BrahMos is a short-range supersonic cruise missile capable of being launched from a wide variety of platforms. BrahMos is one of the most advanced missiles in the world, capable of hitting targets on land and at sea with precision. The versatility of BrahMos means it could equally target enemy ships and terrorist training camps with ease.

A ramjet propels BrahMos to speeds of up to Mach 3, or 1,020 meters a second. The anti-ship version is a so-called “sea skimmer,” flying just over the wavetops to give enemies as little as 35 seconds’ warning time.

Depending on the variant and method of launch, BrahMos is armed with a 440-660 pound penetrating high explosive warhead and has a range of 186-310 miles.

The combination of speed and hitting power makes BrahMos a particular concern to the Pakistani Navy, whose surface ships lack adequate area air defenses. Even the Chinese Navy will find BrahMos formidable, as it would face the daunting prospect of a Mach 3 missile threat launched by aircraft, coastal defense batteries, destroyers and submarines.

Su-30MKI Fighter

One of India’s newest fighters is an updated design dating back to the late 1970s. An evolution of the Su-27 Flanker, the Su-30MKI has been extensively upgraded, and the result is a long-range, twin-engine fighter with a powerful radar and amazing twelve hard points for the attachment of weapons.

The Su-30MKI’s air-to-air armament includes R-73 infrared guided missiles and R-77 and R-27 radar-guided missiles. Of particular interest is the upcoming Novator K-100 “AWACS killer” missile, capable of engaging targets at up to 300 to 400 kilometers. Against targets on the ground, the Su-30MKI can employ laser-guided bombs, Kh-59 standoff land-attack missiles and the BrahMos missile.

The Indian Air Force has 200 Su-30MKIs air superiority fighters in service with another seventy-two on order. A portion of the IAF’s Su-30MKI force has been modified by Israel for the strategic reconnaissance role.

INS Chakra Nuclear Attack Submarine

India’s first nuclear attack submarine, INS Chakra, started life as a Russian Navy submarine funded to completion by the Indian Navy in return for a ten-year lease.

Based on the Soviet Union’s Akula II class, Chakra displaces 8,000 tons, making it more than twice as large as any of India’s German-made Type 209 or Russia Kilo class submarines. It can sustain a speed of 30 knots submerged and can dive to a depth of 520 meters. The submarine has eight submarine tubes enabling it to launch regular homing torpedoes, Kh-55 “Granat” cruise missiles, and “Shkval” supercavitating torpedoes, capable of traveling at 220 knots to ranges of 15 kilometers.

As a nuclear submarine, Chakra will be able to spend prolonged periods underwater, making it difficult to detect. During wartime, the advanced submarine will go after high value targets, such as Pakistani submarines (possibly carrying nuclear-armed cruise missiles) and Chinese submarines, destroyers, aircraft carriers and submarines.

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

Image: Reuters

James Holland

Security,

Why much of what you think about World War II is wrong. 

Here's What You Need To Remember: Germany, on the other hand, was very under-mechanized but had a vast army, which meant it was dependent on horse-power and foot-slogging infantrymen. As a result of so many German men at the front, their factories were manned by slaves and POWs, who were underfed and treated abominably, and whose production capacity was affected as a result.

The Second World War remains an enduringly fascinating subject, but despite the large number of films, documentaries, books and even comics on the subject, our understanding of this catastrophic conflict, even seven decades on, remains heavily dependent on conventional wisdom, propaganda and an interpretation skewed by the information available. 

In my new book The War in the West: Germany Ascendant 1939-1941, first in a three-volume history, I am challenging a number of long-held assumptions about the war, many of which are based on truth by common knowledge, rather than through detailed and painstaking research.My Damascene moment came some years ago when I was being given a tour of the Small Arms Unit at the British Staff College at Shrivenham. I was glancing at a German MG42, known as a “Spandau” by the Allies. “Of course, that was the best machine gun of the war,’ I commented, relaying what I’d read in many books.

“Says who? Says who?” retorted my guide and head of the unit, John Starling. In the next few minutes, he proceeded to deconstruct everything I thought I knew about this infamous weapon: that its phenomenal rate of fire caused massive problems of over-heating, that it was widely inaccurate (for which having since fired one, I can now vouch), that is was incredibly expensive to manufacture, massively over-engineered and lacked certain simple additions that would have made its handling so much easier. The men supporting this weapon not only had to carry vast amounts of ammunition to feed this thirsty beast, they also had to lumber around six spare barrels because of its readiness to over-heat. And each barrel bore multiple inspection stamps. “Which were,” John told me, “an utter waste of time in the middle of total war.”

I was gobsmacked, but this visit led me down an entirely new line of research, and one that was equally revelatory. I began to realize that almost everything the Germans made was over-engineered, from the tanks to gas-mask cases to the field jacket of the lowly landser. Eventually, in the German military archives in Freiburg in the Black Forest, I found a memo from early December 1941, signed by Hitler, in which was the line, “From now on, we have to stop making such complete and aesthetic weapons.” In other words, up to that point, they had been consciously doing so. Needless to say, his instruction was not followed; those all-metal, finely-designed-yet-cumbersome and utterly pointless cylindrical gas-mask cases were made right up to the end of the war, while still to come was the Panther tank, not to mention the Tiger, with its Porsche-designed six-speed hydraulically controlled semi-automatic pre-selector gear-box, as complicated and sophisticated as it sounds and entirely unsuitable for front-line combat or use by poorly-trained young drivers. The transmission on a U.S.-built Sherman tank was a robust four-speed manual, simply made in vast numbers. America built 74,000 Sherman hulls and engines; Germany built just 1,347 Tigers.

Studying such things in detail meant I was now looking at the operational level of war. Any conflict — or business for that matter — is understood to be conducted on three levels. The first is the strategic — that is, the overall aims and ambitions. The second is the tactical: the coal face, the actual fighting, the pilot in his Spitfire or man in his tank. And the third is the operational — the nuts and bolts, the logistics, economics and the supply of war.

Almost every narrative history of the war ever published almost entirely concentrates on the strategic and tactical levels, but gives scant regard to the operational, and the result is a skewed version of events, in which German machine guns reign supreme and Tiger tanks always come out on top.

Studying the operational level as well, however, provides a revelatory perspective. Suddenly it’s not just about tactical flair, but about so much more. Britain, for example, decided to fight a highly mechanical and technological war. “Steel not flesh” was the mantra and that’s why the British had a small army, yet still ensured it was 100-percent mechanized. They also developed a vast air force and built a staggering 132,500 aircraft during the war — and that’s 50,000 more than the Germans. Until the start of 1944, the priority for manpower in Britain was not the army or navy or even air force, but the Ministry of Aircraft Production. Well-fed men and women were kept in the factories.

Germany, on the other hand, was very under-mechanized but had a vast army, which meant it was dependent on horse-power and foot-slogging infantrymen. As a result of so many German men at the front, their factories were manned by slaves and POWs, who were underfed and treated abominably, and whose production capacity was affected as a result.

And if the ability to supply war was key, then in the war in the West, it was the Battle of the Atlantic that was the decisive theater. Yet Germany built a surface fleet before the war, which could never hope to rival Britain or France and in doing so neglected the U-boat arm. Despite sinking substantial amounts of British supplies in 1940, it was still nothing like enough to even remotely force Britain to her knees. In truth, there were never enough U-boats to more than dent the flow of shipping to Britain. In fact, out of 18,772 sailings in 1940, they sank just 127 ships, that is, 0.7 percent, and 1.4 percent in the entire war.

Suddenly, rather than appearing like David against Goliath and backs-to-the-walls amateurs as is so often depicted, Britain emerges once again as a global super-power in command of the largest trading empire the world has ever seen, while Germany, despite impressive victories on land early in the war appears to be woefully under-resourced and flagrantly squandering what supplies it could call upon. What’s more, after the initial glut of conquest booty, the occupied territories swiftly became a drain and burden that had to be manned and which proved a further drain on precious resources. The words “Teutonic” and “efficiency” usually go together; in the Second World War, nothing could have been farther from the truth.

Image: Reuters.

David Axe

Security, Asia

There's one region where mass-takeoffs are an important military procedure: the Korean Peninsula.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The air force maintains three F-16 squadrons and an A-10 squadron in South Korea and two F-15 squadrons in Japan. Additional squadrons, almost certainly including F-35 units, would join them during a crisis. An air campaign targeting North Korea would require 2,000 sorties per day, U.S. military officials told Air Force magazine.

On Nov. 19, 2018, two U.S. Air Force wings in Utah launched thirty-five F-35 stealth fighters in a short span of time.

The air force lauded the display as evidence of America's overwhelming military might. At least one critic dismissed it as a publicity stunt.

In fact, there's one region where mass-takeoffs are an important military procedure: the Korean Peninsula. Ironically, that's the one region where the Trump administration is deliberately limiting the flying branch's authority to organize large-scale warplane-launches.

The November group-takeoff, which the air force calls an "elephant walk," involved F-35As from the 388th and 419th Fighter Wings at Hill Air Force Base. The active-duty 388th and reserve 419th train air force F-35 pilots.

The 388th's 34th Fighter Squadron, whose F-35s have the latest Block 3F software, also has a front-line role. In late 2017, it became the first air force F-35 unit to deploy overseas, to Japan.

At the time of the elephant walk—the first for the F-35—the Utah wings possessed around forty F-35s. The wings are on track to receive a combined seventy-two F-35s by 2019.

The Hill stealth fighters took off one at a time in roughly 30-second intervals. In just a few minutes, the wings launched as many F-35 sorties as they normally do in a full day of routine training.

"Exercising with multiple squadrons of F-35s can demonstrate our ability to defeat potential adversaries wherever they may arise," Maj. Caleb Guthmann, the 34th Fighter Squadron's assistant director of operations, said in a statement.

But Valerie Insinna, a reporter for Defense News, echoed a more cynical sentiment when, on Twitter, she described the elephant walk as "cool" but "very choreographed."

“Call me when they fix all the ALIS problems and then we'll talk,” Insinna added, referring to the F-35's buggy Autonomic Logistics Information System, a computer network for the type's maintainers.

In a March 2018 congressional hearing, Lt. Gen. Jerry Harris, the air force's deputy chief of staff for plans, programs and requirements, said it cost around $50,000 to fly one F-35 for an hour. That's roughly twice what an F-16 costs for an hour in the air.

In fact, elephant walks significantly contribute to the readiness of American and allied squadrons in South Korea and nearby countries.

In the event of war with North Korea, U.S. and allied forces plan to quickly target the roughly 13,000 artillery pieces that Pyongyang has massed along the Korean demilitarized zone. In the early hours of a war, that artillery likely would bombard Seoul, which lies just 25 miles south of the DMZ.

"A serious, credible threat to 25 million [Republic of Korea] citizens and approximately 150,000 U.S. citizens living in the [Greater Seoul Metropolitan Area] is also posed from its long-range artillery," U.S. Army general Vincent Brooks, head of U.S. Forces Korea, told a U.S. Senate committee in March 2018.

The air force maintains three F-16 squadrons and an A-10 squadron in South Korea and two F-15 squadrons in Japan. Additional squadrons, almost certainly including F-35 units, would join them during a crisis. An air campaign targeting North Korea would require 2,000 sorties per day, U.S. military officials told Air Force magazine.

By comparison, the allied air war over Iraq and Kuwait in January 1991 averaged 1,200 strike sorties per day, according to statistics compiled by David Deptula, a former air force general who is now an analyst for the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in Virginia. The U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria averaged just fifteen strikes per day, according to Deptula.

The roughly 100 U.S. F-16s and A-10s in South Korea and Japan—and any F-35s that deployed in time for the first day of fighting—likely would be the first to hit North Korean artillery. And they'd have to launch fast to save lives in Seoul.

There is a reason that the 7th Air Force in South Korea and Japan has organized more elephant walks than most air force commands have done. "The threat here on the peninsula is very real, and countering that threat needs to be in the forefront of our minds," Col. William D. Betts, then-commander of the 51st Fighter Wing in South Korea, said in 2017.

But the Korea elephant walk is an endangered species. The 7th Air Force has conducted most of its mass-takeoffs, which require intensive planning and maintenance efforts, under the auspices of the annual Vigilante Ace exercise.

In 2018 the Trump administration suspended Vigilant Ace as a concession to North Korea, hoping that Pyongyang in turn would suspend its nuclear-weapons program. North Korea has continued to develop its nukes.

The air force organized elephant walks in South Korea in 2016 and 2017 but not in 2018. The suspension of large-scale exercises with South Korea hasn’t created "immediate" concerns about combat-readiness, Pacific Air Forces commander Gen. Charles Brown said in November 2018. But it could cause "difficulties" if it continues.

There's nothing preventing air force squadrons that aren't in South Korea, including Hill's F-35 units, from practicing mass takeoffs. These same squadrons might deploy to the Korean Peninsula during wartime, in which case their elephant walks would amount to more than an expensive public relations exercise.

They'd be preparation for the kind of sudden, overwhelming violence a new Korean war would require.

This first appeared in 2018.

Image: DVIDShub.

Michael Peck

History, Asia

While senior U.S. naval commanders were aware of Taranto and the danger posed by torpedo attack to Pearl Harbor, actual improvements to Hawaii's defenses were buried under memos and reports that meandered through the naval bureaucracy.

Here's What You Need To Know: The prelude to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor occurred two years earlier in the small Italian port of Taranto. 

“This was Lt. Takeshi Naito, assistant air attache at the Japanese embassy in Berlin. The implications of those sunken battleships were not lost to him.”

It was the hour before midnight when the battleships slept.

Snug in their harbor, cocooned behind layers of anti-aircraft guns and searchlights, the Italian fleet lay peacefully unaware of the fate droning towards them.

Through the dark skies came waves of aircraft lumbering under the weight of the torpedoes they carried. The date was November 11, 1940, the place was the southern Italian port of Taranto, and the battle that ensued that night was the prelude to the Japanese raid at Pearl Harbor.

In the fall of 1940, Britain was in trouble. France had fallen, Nazi Germany ruled Western Europe, and the British Empire stood alone. To make matters worse, Mussolini's Italy had entered the war. Though weaker than Germany or Japan, Italy had a priceless advantage: it was situated in the middle of the Mediterranean, athwart the sea routes to the Suez Canal and the vital island of Malta, which the British needed to supply as a thorn in Axis supply routes to North Africa. To avoid Italian naval and air forces, British convoys would have to forgo the direct route into the Mediterranean through the Straits of Gibraltar, and sail all the way around Africa to come up through the Suez Canal.

The Royal Navy rightfully reckoned itself superior to the Italian Regia Marina. Fortunately, so did the Italians. Though the Italian fleet was smaller, the Royal Navy was badly overstretched guarding against a possible German amphibious invasion, watching for sorties by German surface raiders against Atlantic convoy routes, and battling the German U-boat menace. The Italian Navy was often accused of timidity, but they had some reason not to risk their precious and irreplaceable ships in a big Jutland-like naval battle. Like the German High Seas Fleet in World War I, they could stay in port, only sallying forth -- covered by land-based aircraft in Italy -- to pounce on an exposed British force.

Nonetheless, if the Italian fleet wouldn't come out to fight, then the British -- in time-honored Royal Navy tradition -- would take the fight to them. After December 7, 1941, the idea of aircraft carriers striking a fleet in harbor seemed obvious. But just a year before, aircraft carriers were still a new and relatively untried weapon. Still, the British were studying a torpedo strike on Taranto by carrier-based aircraft as early as 1938.

Compared to the six aircraft carriers and 400 aircraft with which Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the forces that Britain could muster for Operation Judgement seemed but a child's version of a carrier task force. The Royal Navy committed just the carrier Illustrious, two heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and five destroyers. The Italian fleet at Taranto comprised six battleships, nine heavy cruisers, seven light cruisers and 13 destroyers. Had they intercepted the British flotilla, the outcome would have been a slaughter.

The Fleet Air Arm -- the flying fist of the Royal Navy -- also seemed a joke. The Illustrious would launch just 21 aircraft, and these were Fairey Swordfish-- nicknamed "the Stringbag." Obsolete two-man biplanes that looked like First World War leftovers, they plodded through the air at about 140 miles per hour. Yet they could fly low and slow to accurately drop torpedoes, as they did to cripple the German battleship Bismarck.

The British struck by night, when the vulnerable Swordfish could avoid Italian fighters that would easily swatted them from the skies. The Illustrious launched two waves of 12 and nine aircraft apiece, with half carrying a single torpedo each, and the remainder armed with flares to illuminate the ships and armor-piercing bombs to strike them. Not only did the British achieve surprise, they also had a lucky break: the Italians had laid some nets in the harbor to catch torpedoes, but the torpedoes weren't long enough to reach the seafloor, allowing the torpedoes to slip under them.

As one of the British aviators later recalled:

 “We turn until the right hand battleship is between the bars of the torpedo sight, dropping down as we do so. The water is close beneath our wheels, so close I am wondering which is to happen first — the torpedo going or our hitting the sea — then we level out, and almost without thought the button is pressed and a jerk tells me the ‘fish’ is gone.”

The attack began just before 11 p.m., and concluded around midnight. The British lost two aircraft, with two crewmen killed and two captured. But those mere 21 aircraft and a handful of torpedoes (the bombs did no damage) sank or damaged three battleships. Three battleships were torpedoed. The Conte di Cavour partly sank to the harbor bottom and never returned to service. The Caio Duilio was saved only by running her aground, as was the Littorio, whose hull had been punctured by three torpedoes.

For the price of just two aircraft, the Italian battleship force had been devastated. Just as important, the Italian Navy had taken a blow to its already fragile morale and aggressiveness. The Italians got their revenge later, when frogmen riding midget submarines planted limpet mines that badly damaged two British battleships docked at the Egyptian port of Alexandria on December 19, 1941. Nonetheless, in the autumn of 1940, when Britain seemed down and out, the Royal Navy demonstrated who ruled the waves.

However, the real significance of Taranto was to come later. “Several days after the Taranto raid, almost unnoticed in the confusion and destruction, a slight figure in an unfamiliar uniform studied Taranto harbor intently, inquiring about depths and distances, making careful notes,” according to the book The Attack on Taranto: Blueprint for Pearl Harbor.

“This was Lt. Takeshi Naito, assistant air attache at the Japanese embassy in Berlin. The implications of those sunken battleships were not lost to him.”

One problem with assessing Taranto is that there is a tendency to blame Italian inefficiency for the disaster, even though no one else had ever experienced such an attack before. Nonetheless, if Taranto supposedly reflected some peculiarly Italian failing, what was the excuse of the Americans?  Why didn't the U.S. learn from the Taranto raid that aircraft carriers could destroy a fleet in a port, namely Pearl Harbor?

Indeed, a U.S. Navy observer, Lieutenant Commander John Opie, was aboard the Illustrious to witness the Taranto strike, and he lost no time in reporting back what he had learned, including that the Royal Navy now favored aircraft-delivered torpedoes over bombs. Yet while senior U.S. naval commanders were aware of Taranto and the danger posed by torpedo attack to Pearl Harbor, actual improvements to Hawaii's defenses were buried under memos and reports that meandered through the naval bureaucracy. Opie's request to visit Pearl Harbor and pass on his Taranto experience was ignored. In fact, the Navy opted not to install anti-torpedo nets at Pearl Harbor on the ground that the waters there were too constricted to allow, and too shallow for torpedoes to run without hitting the bottom.

The Imperial Japanese Navy, and eight U.S. battleships sunk or damaged, would soon prove those decisions wrong.

Michael Peck is a frequent contributor to the National Interest. This article first appeared several years ago.

Image: Reuters.

Peter Suciu

Security, Americas

A new $38 million center will allow Air Force pilots to practice advanced tactics that can replicate combat against near-peer nations and other adversaries. It will provide training for a range of aircraft including the F-16 Fighting Falcon, F-22 Raptor, F-35 Lightning II and F-15E Strike Eagle.

The United States Air Force has taken a serious interest in utilizing virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) as tools to aid in the training of pilots and other Airmen. In August the Air Force announced the inauguration of its new Virtual Test and Training Center (VTTC) at Nellis Air Force Base (AFB), which will house the future of joint-aerial combat training.

The $38 million center will allow Air Force pilots to practice advanced tactics that can replicate combat against near-peer nations and other adversaries. It will provide training for a range of aircraft including the F-16 Fighting Falcon, F-22 Raptor, F-35 Lightning II and F-15E Strike Eagle.

The Coronavirus Effect 

While the Air Force has been adopting VR/AR technology, it hasn't fully embraced the concept, but because of the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic Air Force leaders could get the extra push to go all in.

“Despite some previous investment by the USAF and other federal agencies into virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), there has been limited practical uptake of these technologies,” explained William Davies, associate aerospace and defense analyst at analytics company GlobalData, via an email to The National Interest.

“However, the [coronavirus] pandemic has accelerated spending on the technology, as well as the amount of training that takes place using it,” Davies added. “An increase in U.S. defense spending on VR and AR, and contracts will help maintain training schedules and push pilot training.” 

Shifting the Focus 

The VTTC at Nellis AFB is just one new VR-based program being adopted by the Air Force. In July the Virtual Reality Procedures Trainer (VRPT) was introduced and could potentially transform the way B-52 Stratofortress student-pilots train for combat. The main advantages of the VRPT are in its potential to reduce human bias in instruction, provide better access to training for student pilots, and give students immediate feedback that lessens the chance they develop poor habits in the early phases of training.

“Along with technology developments in AR and VR, military forces are shifting their focus to flexible training solutions in the area of advanced distributed simulation, wherein live training is combined with constructive and virtual simulation by networking.” Noted GlobalData's Davies. “While these contracts will help promote aircraft familiarization, they will not have the capabilities to replace manual instruction completely, and the Air Force faces a balancing act in training for both maintenance and combat.” 

Increasing Pilot Production

The entire federal government has had to pivot to address the challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic—and this has included the military. Keeping pilots healthy has been a priority for the Air Force, but social distancing efforts have slowed pilot production. The service had a shortfall of ten percent or roughly twenty-one hundred of the twenty-one thousand pilots needed to execute the National Defense Strategy, and all of these new initiatives have been aimed at addressing that challenge.

“Air Force officials have reported that social distancing measures have slowed the production of new pilots and that increased uptake of VR technology could address this slowdown,” said Davies. “Air Force leaders recently announced that they saw future virtual pilot training as a way to facilitate training in a way which is both cheaper and faster, and specifically cited the Covid-19 pandemic as enhancing their potential to innovate and utilize new technologies.”

Technologies such as VR and AR can help potentially increase production but also have the added benefit of bringing the costs down for traditional military flight training, which costs about $40,000 per hour. VR/AR can further be far less risky.

The technology isn't just for pilots, and VR has been used to transform the way C-130J Super Hercules aircraft maintainers learn and perfect their craft at the Dyess AFB, Texas, which this year developed the largest VR room in the Air Mobility Command.

It is possible that VR could be as much a part of the Air Force as traditional training.

“(A) five-year contract with Mass Virtual signals that the Air Force considers the uses of VR technology to go beyond the pandemic and are looking to integrate the technology into training long-term,” noted Davies. “This is a positive move as USAF can strongly benefit from using virtual training for military training purposes.”

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

Image: Wikimedia Commons / Senior Airman Clay Lancaster

James Holmes

Security, Asia

The Navy could blockade North Korea or help win a war if necessary.

Key point: America has the world's most powerful military, and that includes its Navy. What could these warships do in a fight with North Korea?

How can the U.S. Navy destroy North Korea should Washington give the word? It can’t. Or at least it stands little chance of doing so by its lonesome barring improbable circumstances. What the navy can do is contribute to a joint or multinational campaign that destroys the Northern regime or its armed forces. But even that would involve perils, hardships and steep costs.

It bears noting at the outset that destroy is a loaded term, connoting wholesale slaughter of a foe. It need not be so. For martial sage Carl von Clausewitz, destroying an opposing force means incapacitating it as a fighting force. “The fighting forces must be destroyed,” insists Clausewitz; “that is, they must be put in such a condition that they can no longer carry on the fight.” Disabling a hostile regime so it cannot resist our demands would likewise qualify.

Recommended: Stealth vs. North Korea’s Air Defenses: Who Wins?

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So it’s possible to overcome an antagonist with minimal loss of life and treasure to both contenders. Indeed, it’s highly desirable, as China’s strategist Sun Tzu counsels. The “best policy,” advises Master Sun, “is to take a state intact,” and to do so without bankrupting your own treasury and wasting the flower of your military youth. Such forbearance is hard to pull off amid the clangor of combat, but it constitutes an ideal to strive toward. In 1940, for example, German legions destroyed the French Army as a fighting force along the Meuse while inflicting minimal destruction by physical measures. It can be done.

Onward. Let’s proceed down the scale of violence, beginning with strategic nuclear strikes and ending with interdiction of shipping and air traffic bound to or from the North. First, start with the trivial case, namely submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) disgorged from Ohio-class fleet ballistic-missile subs (SSBNs) or, someday, their Columbia-class successors. Full-scale atomic bombardment would end the North Korean military and government beyond question.

Trivial may seem like an odd word choice to describe firepower of end-of-times magnitude. Nevertheless, it’s a fitting choice as a matter of logic. We can discount this course of action altogether. Any president would order SLBMs unleashed to retaliate against an enemy first strike, but no sane president would order them used to execute a first strike. Such a rash course would vitiate nuclear deterrence, which has underwritten national security for seven decades.

After all, the keystone of strategic deterrence is an invulnerable second-strike force. That refers to an arsenal of nuclear weapons certain to survive an enemy first strike, thence to rain down fire and fury on the offender afterward. SSBNs represent the quintessential retaliatory force. Fleet boats rotate out on patrol all the time. Having ridden out the attack, U.S. SSBN skippers would fire their missiles—setting ablaze an inferno sure to consume the attacker. Any nonsuicidal foe would desist from aggression rather than roll the iron dice.

Using SLBMs or other strategic nuclear weapons for first strikes would gut the logic of deterrence—and set a grim precedent in future controversies involving major opponents like China or Russia. Therefore, no president would or should take that step. QED.

Second, there are tactical nuclear weapons, in the form of bombs dropped from aircraft and nuclear-tipped cruise missiles unleashed by surface ships or attack subs. With their lesser yields, tactical nukes could accomplish much the same as SLBMs if delivered in sufficient volume, and without such frightful risk of escalation.

But tactical strikes aren’t a near-term option for technical reasons. President George H. W. Bush ordered tactical nukes withdrawn from seagoing forces in 1991 (eliciting cheers from those of us who handled them). Now, the Trump administration may reverse Bush’s decision. Officialdom is putting the finishing touches on a new Nuclear Posture Review that may espouse new sea-launched tactical nukes. Leaked copies of the review indicate that a nuclear-tipped cruise missile may indeed be in the offing.

Still, decreeing that a weapon system should exist doesn’t bring that system into being overnight. Lawmakers have to debate and approve it—always a fractious process when it comes to doomsday weaponry. Contracts have to be negotiated with munitions makers. Hardware and software have to be developed. The system has to be built, tested under realistic conditions, refined afterward in keeping with the test results, and manufactured and deployed to the fleet.

That takes time. Back in 2009, for example, the U.S. Navy prevailed on industry to develop a new long-range antiship missile (LRASM). The new “bird” is a modified version of a working missile, yet only this year is it ready to be fitted aboard U.S. Air Force B-1 bombers (give ‘em the gun!). Only next year—ten years after the initial request—will it be deployed aboard navy warplanes. And that’s a sprightly pace by Pentagon standards. By the LRASM standard we might see nuclear-tipped cruise missiles in the fleet circa 2027–28 if the administration gets congressional assent and funding this election year. Kim Jong-un is not sweating at the prospect of tactical atomic strikes from the sea.

If not nuclear weapons, then what? Let’s ask the English sea-power scribe Julian Corbett. Corbett partitions naval warfare into three basic phases: disputing maritime command if you’re the weaker antagonist, winning command if you’re stronger and exploiting command after the battle is won. We can set aside the first two phases. America and its allies will command Northeast Asian waters against North Korea’s feeble navy and air force unless they botch things dreadfully. That leaves putting the sea to work as an offshore safe haven.

In Corbett’s scheme, thirdly, conventional shore bombardment constitutes an option. Carrier strike groups tote an array of bombs and cruise missiles suitable for peppering North Korean targets. Yet it’s doubtful in the extreme that conventional fire would compel Pyongyang to abandon its fledgling nuclear stockpile, let alone terminate the regime or its armed forces altogether. Denizens of the hive of scum and villainy learned a lesson from Desert Storm and the ensuing campaign to disarm Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Namely, dig. If you want to develop unconventional armaments, that is, dig in—hardening weapons laboratories and deployment sites against American air and missile power.

With its rough, rocky, mountainous terrain, North Korea enjoys ample places to tunnel—and to all appearances Kim’s army has done so. A mountain fastness will prove resilient even against precision firepower. Air and sea power alone couldn’t defeat North Korea and its Chinese patron during the Korean War. Nor is it likely that U.S. Navy carrier groups carry enough ordnance to subdue North Korea today. And even if they do, it would take preternatural operational and tactical dexterity to put ordnance on the right targets at the right times to defeat the North.

But fourth, navy task forces could do what dominant marine powers have always done. They could cordon off the Korean Peninsula from seaward while preventing an unlimited counterstroke against the American homeland. U.S. Navy air, surface, and subsurface forces would interdict all sea and air traffic around the peninsula, while Aegis cruisers and destroyers equipped for ballistic-missile defense would bring down any strike aimed at Guam, Hawaii or North America. Safeguarding South Korea and Japan, home to forward-deployed U.S. forces, would be a corollary to this defensive effort. Doing so would create favorable conditions for U.S. Army and Marine Corps forces to stage a ground offensive.

Corbett depicts Korea as the ideal theater for such an amphibious campaign, flanked as it is by water on three sides. Such a strategy could work if allies consent and if the United States values its cause enough to spend lavishly in lives, military hardware and national treasure for a substantial period of time. Newport’s own strategist, Admiral J. C. Wylie, warns that destroying things on the ground from aloft does not confer control of that ground—and control represents the paramount purpose of military strategy. Rather, says Wylie, the “man on the scene with a gun”—or in this case, enough soldiers on the scene with guns to outmatch the North Korean Army—represents the arbiter of victory. The soldier determines who wins and loses.

Wylie and Corbett, accordingly, would profess extreme skepticism that the U.S. Navy could incapacitate North Korea short of a concerted ground, air, and naval offensive—preferably in consort with Asian partners. And in fact, Corbett’s logic starts breaking down north of the narrow waist midway up the Korean Peninsula, roughly coinciding with the inter-Korean border. The peninsula widens as you proceed northward from the narrow waist—and geography demands that attacking warbirds operate across greater and greater ranges while exposed to ground fire and hostile aircraft.

And, of course, North Korea shares a long, distended frontier with China and Russia. That’s a frontier that must be sealed to isolate the battleground, yet can’t be sealed by naval aviation. The border can only be sealed by Beijing and Moscow—dubious partners at best in the Korean standoff. That grants Pyongyang an opportunity for mischief-making. In short, it will be hard to crush North Korea’s armed forces, even if Washington orders a joint offensive.

And lastly, to swerve back to purely saltwater campaigns, there’s the least violent option: a full-bore naval blockade of the peninsula. Enforced with vigor and sufficient assets, a blockade would deprive North Korea of imported fuel, foodstuffs, and other commodities the beleaguered country must have to survive and fight. It would also balk Pyongyang’s efforts to export weapons, the makings of weapons, and bomb-making expertise to earn hard currency.

Corbett observes that a navy can apply pressure on a foe’s “national life” from day one of a conflict. Over time, he writes, it could exhaust that foe gradually—laying him low. But again, naval forces can only perform their blocking function at sea. They have little way to obstruct overland transit across North Korea’s northern border unless Washington wants to risk tangling with Chinese or Russian forces, and escalating a local conflagration to great-power war. Few relish that prospect. It’s a safe bet, then, that any blockade would leak to one degree or another.

For such reasons Corbett and Wylie caution that purely naval action seldom wins wars; Wylie verges on saying they never win wars. Only groundpounders can. To quote T. R. Fehrenbach’s classic history of the Korean War:

You may fly over a nation forever, you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life. But if you desire to defend it, if you desire to protect it, if you desire to keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground the way the Roman legions did: by putting your young men in the mud.

As it was in the 1950s, so it is now. Sea power furnishes the Trump administration military options in its confrontation with North Korea, but none of them promises easy, quick, or painless results. Thankfully, this is not lost on high-ranking defense officials. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, to name one, is reportedly a fan of Fehrenbach’s treatise. Indeed, General Mattis recently quoted him while holding forth on how a second Korean War would unfold. That’s good. It betokens strategic sobriety and humility—virtues any commander should cultivate.

The greats of strategy are smiling.

James Holmes is the inaugural holder of the J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and contributing coeditor of Strategy in the Second Nuclear Age. The views voiced here are his alone. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

This first appeared in January 2019.

Image: Reuters

Donald Brand

Politics, Americas

The Electoral College must cast its ballots on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December – this year, Dec. 14. If disputed state vote totals are not resolved by six days prior to that date, Congress can step in, under the 1887 Electoral Account Act. This could have happened in 2000, and it is an imaginable outcome in 2020.

If the the 2020 U.S. presidential election is contested, both campaigns are preparing to take the matter to court. But the Founding Fathers meant for Congress to be the backup plan if the Electoral College did not produce a winner.

Generally, the framers sought to avoid congressional involvement in presidential elections. They wanted an independent executive who could resist ill-considered legislation and would not care about currying favor with members of Congress, as James Ceaser explained in his definitive 1980 text, “Presidential Selection.”

That’s why they created the Electoral College, assigning to state legislatures the responsibility for choosing “electors” who then determine the president.

But the framers could foresee circumstances – namely, a fragmented race between little-known politicians – where no presidential candidate would secure an Electoral College majority. Reluctantly, they assigned the House of Representatives to step in if that happened – presumably because as the institution closest to the people, it could bestow some democratic legitimacy on a “contingent election.”

Tied or Contested Election

The founders proved prescient: The elections of 1800 and 1824 did not produce winners in the Electoral College and were decided by the House. Thomas Jefferson was chosen in 1800 and John Quincy Adams in 1824.

Over time, the development of a two-party system with national nominating conventions – which allows parties to broker coalitions and unite behind a single presidential candidate – has basically ensured that the Electoral College produces a winner. Though the Electoral College has changed significantly since the 18th century, it has mostly kept Congress out of presidential selection.

As a professor who has taught courses on presidential elections for two decades, however, I can see scenarios in which Congress gets involved in the 2020 election.

A tie in the Electoral College remains a possibility, however remote. There are 538 electors, so a minimum majority to win is 270. The website 270toWin lists 64 hypothetical scenarios in which both Joe Biden and Donald Trump could get 269 electors. That would throw the election to the House.

Though the House has a Democratic majority, such an outcome would almost certainly benefit Trump.

Here’s why: In a concession to small states concerned their voices would be marginalized if the House was called upon to choose the president, the founders gave only one vote to each state. House delegations from each state meet to decide how to cast their single vote.

That voting procedure gives equal representation to California – population 40 million – and Wyoming, population 600,000.

Currently, this arrangement favors the Republicans. The GOP dominates the delegations from 26 states – exactly the number required to reach a majority under the rules of House presidential selection. But it’s not the current House that would decide a contested 2020 election. It is the newly elected House that would choose the president. So the outcome depends on congressional races.

One more caveat: Split decisions are considered abstentions, so states that cannot reach an agreement would be counted out.

Congressional Commission

Another way Congress could become involved in the 2020 election is if there are disputes about the vote totals in various states. Given the spike in mail-in voting during the pandemic, threats of foreign interference and controversies over voter suppression, uncertainty after Nov. 3 seems likely.

Perhaps the most relevant precedent for that scenario is the 1876 election between Democrat Samuel Tilden and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. That election saw disputed returns in four states – Florida, South Carolina, Louisiana and Oregon – with a total of 20 electoral votes.

Excluding those 20 disputed electors, Tilden had 184 pledged electors of the 185 needed for victory in the Electoral College; Hayes had 165. Tilden was clearly the front-runner – but Hayes would win if all the contested votes went for him.

Because of a post-Civil War rule allowing Congress – read, Northern Republicans worried about Black voter suppression – to dispute the vote count in Southern states and bypass local courts, Congress established a commission to resolve the disputed 1876 returns.

As Michael Holt writes in his examination of the 1876 election, the 15-member commission had five House representatives, five senators and five Supreme Court justices. Fourteen of the commissioners had identifiable partisan leanings: seven Democrats and seven Republicans. The 15th member was a justice known for his impartiality.

Hope of a nonpartisan outcome was dashed when the one impartial commissioner resigned and was replaced by a Republican judge. The commission voted along party lines to give all 20 disputed electors to Hayes.

To prevent the Democratic-dominated Senate from derailing Hayes’ single-vote triumph over Tilden by refusing to confirm its decision, Republicans were forced to make a deal: Abandon Reconstruction, their policy of Black political and economic inclusion in the post-Civil War South. This paved the way for Jim Crow segregation.

Bush v. Gore

The 2000 election offers the only modern precedent for contested vote returns.

George W. Bush and Al Gore argued for a month over Bush’s slim, 327-vote advantage in Florida’s second machine recount. After a lawsuit in state courts, this political and legal battle was decided by the Supreme Court in December 2000, in Bush v. Gore.

But Bush v. Gore was never intended to set a precedent. In it, the justices explicitly stated “our consideration is limited to the present circumstances.” Indeed, the court could have concluded that the issues presented were political, not legal, and declined to hear the case.

In that case, the House would have decided the 2000 election. The Electoral College must cast its ballots on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December – this year, Dec. 14. If disputed state vote totals are not resolved by six days prior to that date, Congress can step in, under the 1887 Electoral Account Act. This could have happened in 2000, and it is an imaginable outcome in 2020.

The best bet for American democracy, history shows, is a clear and decisive victory in the Electoral College, as the framers intended.

Donald Brand, Professor, College of the Holy Cross

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters.

Karlyn Bowman

Politics, Americas

The simple answer is that we don’t know.

This week, we’ve seen a handful of new polls on the presidential contest. Zogby gave Biden a two-point lead, and Investor’s Business Daily put him ahead by three. The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll has Biden up by 14 points, and the CNN/SSRS poll has it at +16 for Biden. The Economist/YouGov poll has Biden up by eight. Who is right?

The simple answer is that we don’t know. Let’s look at some of the factors that might produce these different results. President Trump announced that he has tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday, October 2 at 1 a.m. The online Zogby Strategies/EMI Research Solutions interviewing of 1,006 likely voters began that Friday night, October 2. The CNN/SSRS poll was a telephone poll (landline and cell), conducted October 1–4, after the debate, but partly before the president’s COVID-19 diagnosis announcement. The results are based on 1,001 likely voters. The NBC News/Wall Street Journal reported results from 800 registered voters and was conducted by phone September 30–October 1. The Economist/YouGov poll interviewed 1,500 registered voters October 4–6. So, the different modes of interviewing (online vs. telephone) could contribute to the differing results, as could the times the polls were conducted or the types of samples the pollsters used (e.g. likely voters or registered voters). Some of these polls asked the vote intention question first, getting people’s instant reaction to the question; others had it after a series of questions about other aspects of the election.

One of the challenges the pollsters have in every election is to decide who will turn out. To account for this, pollsters weight their sample responses to their best projections of the real electorate. Census data provides benchmarks on basic demographic variables such as age and levels of education, and pollsters use the latest Census data which they adapt for actual voters. What the Census can’t tell us, however, is the partisan composition of the electorate. Will many more Democrats vote than usual? Or more Republicans than in the past? In the National Election Pool’s exit poll from the presidential election in 2016, 36 percent self-identified as Democrats, 33 percent as Republicans, and 31 percent as independents. In 2018, those responses were 37 percent Democrat, 33 percent Republican, and 30 percent independent. Using the 2016 benchmark, one could assume that the electorate has not changed its partisan stripes over four years. While the 2018 numbers are more recent, in off-year elections, the party out of power usually has an edge. This summer, Gallup found that Democrats had gained substantial ground. Republicans had a two-point advantage in January; Democrats had an 11-point lead in June. Gallup was surveying adults and not people who were registered to vote, but it does suggest that the ground may be shifting. 

Pollsters also work to correct problems they have had in the past. In some key Midwestern industrial states in 2016, more people with a college degree took pollsters’ surveys than those with no college, and adjustments were not made in some cases to match the state’s actual college-non-college population, throwing off the results. Pew Research Center research analyst Nick Hatley and director of survey research Courtney Kennedy have a thorough discussion of this issue here.

Each of the polls mentioned above was conducted a month before an election in which every day seems to bring some momentous new development. Voters seem very firm in their choices, and today’s hazy snapshots will clear up on Election Day.

This article first appeared at the American Enterprise Institute.

Image: Reuters.

James Holmes

History, World

All militaries suffer defeats. The question whether they learn and get better.

Key Point: America has won many wars. However, it does not emerge victories from every conflict.

It’s crucial to remember and learn from defeat. People and the institutions they comprise commonly tout past triumphs while soft pedaling setbacks. That’s natural, isn’t it? Winning is the hallmark of a successful team, losing a hateful thing. And yet debacles oftentimes have their uses. They supply a better reality check than victories. Defeat clears the mind, putting the institution on “death ground”—in other words, compelling it to either adapt or die. Nimble institutions prosper.

Winning, on the other hand, can dull the mind—reaffirming habits and methods that may prove ill-suited when the world changes around us. As philosophers say, past success and the timber of humanity predispose individuals and groups to keep doing what worked last time. Or as the old adage goes: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Problem is, we have a habit of discovering it is broke at the worst possible time—when fixing things gets dicey.

Despite its record of victory, the America’s navy is far from exempt from the universal proclivity to celebrate success. Failure? Fuggedaboutit. Now, we shouldn’t wallow in long-ago defeats: strategist Bernard Brodie cautions that major fleet duels are “few and far between even as centuries are reckoned.” When sample size = small, it’s best not to read too much into the results of any individual encounter. Change a variable or two and you may get an entirely different outcome.

Nevertheless, it’s important to remain mindful of the low points—if only to ward off hubris while reminding seafarers that institutions must keep up with changing times or find themselves irrelevant. In that spirit, what follows is my list of America’s Five Worst Naval Defeats. These being the dog days of summer, with the Narragansett Bay bathed in hazy sunshine, I’m casual about what constitutes defeat. Strategic, operational, tactical: all losses are fair game.

Now, losing a war is worse than losing a tactical action. The former ranks higher, but both varieties of ignominy make the list. The tactical defeats presented here, however, meet Carl von Clausewitz’s standard for “operations that have direct political repercussions”—namely outsized, negative, self-defeating repercussions. Such thrashings brought disrepute on the navy or the flag, damaged America’s diplomatic standing vis-à-vis other nations, or biased the political scene toward future conflict.

Or all of the above. One defeat that’s conspicuously absent from this list is Pearl Harbor. The battle line was moored around Ford Island on December 7, not underway. Stationary fleets accomplish little in combat. Pearl Harbor qualifies as a naval victory for Japan. Indeed, it was a masterwork. From the American standpoint, though, it was less a naval defeat than a failure to mount a joint offshore defense of military installations on Oahu. Plenty of blame to share.

December 7 will live in infamy, to be sure. But it constituted an across-the-board collapse for the U.S. Navy … and Army, and Army Air Forces. These forces were all entrusted with holding Oahu. That puts Pearl Harbor in an altogether different category. With that proviso, onward.

Bainbridge at Algiers:

Minor tactical failures can beget major humiliations for the individual, the service, and the flag. Take for instance the strange case of Captain William Bainbridge. In 1800 the skipper of the frigate George Washington neglected a time-honored axiom of naval warfare, namely that a ship’s a fool to fight a fort. Fortresses have lots of space, and thus heavier guns, greater striking range, and bigger ammunition magazines. Seldom do ships match up well.

Ordered to carry tribute to the dey of Algiers, George Washington stood in under the guns of the fort. Outgunned, Bainbridge was ordered to carry gifts, an ambassador, slaves, harem women, and a menagerie of animals to the Ottoman Porte in Constantinople—and to do all of this while flying the flag of Algiers. Otherwise, the dey’s emissaries let it be known, the frigate would be smashed to splinters, its crew enslaved.

The upside to this outrage: President Thomas Jefferson resolved to act against the Barbary States by naval force rather than pay tribute for temporary maritime freedom. Lesson: minor tactical miscues can spawn major diplomatic headaches. Mariners, then, must think of themselves as naval diplomats as well as sea warriors—and try to foresee the strategic and political import of their actions, missteps, and foibles.

Ironbottom Sound:

The Battle of Savo Island (August 9, 1942) was—as Samuel Eliot Morison puts it—“probably the worst defeat ever inflicted on the United States Navy in a fair fight.” In brief, U.S. Marine expeditionary forces had landed safely on Guadalcanal and Tulagi, in the Solomon Islands, in order to evict Japanese forces that were constructing an airfield from which warbirds could cut the sea and air lanes connecting North America with Australia.

Unlike the U.S. Navy of 1942, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) excelled at nighttime fighting. Admiral Gunichi Mikawa brought a surface task group down the “Slot” from Rabaul, at the far end of the Solomons chain, on the night of August 8 to attack the American ships unloading on Guadalcanal. U.S. commanders had dispersed their cruisers and destroyers into four detachments in an effort to guard the entryways into the Sound that lay between Guadalcanal, Savo, and Florida islands.

Though perhaps strong in the aggregate, fragmenting a force along a picket line leaves it weak at any given point along the line. Accordingly, Mikawa’s concentrated squadron rampaged through the Allied fleet that night, leaving the wreckage of four heavy cruisers (of six present) strewn across the seafloor, not to mention two destroyers damaged and 1,077 sailors dead. Hence the nickname Ironbottom Sound.

Morison observes that Savo Island had a silver lining. Fate intervened. The transports remained unscathed after Mikawa failed to press his attack, for fear of suffering a daytime air attack from U.S. carriers. The IJN fleet hightailed it for home after pummeling the Allied combatants. The U.S. Navy learned to take its opponent seriously, especially at night; reformed its communications and air-surveillance methods to supply early warning of future assaults; and refined its firefighting equipment and techniques to keep battle damage in check.

Still, losing that many ships and lives—and placing the U.S. Marines’ mission in jeopardy—constituted a painful way to learn to respect a serious enemy while remaining cognizant of the surroundings.

Confederate Raiding in Civil War:

Yes, the Union Navy imposed a stifling blockade on the Confederacy, and yes, wresting control of rivers from the Confederates helped slice-and-dice the breakaway republic. As Alfred Thayer Mahan notes, Southerners “admitted their enemies to their hearts” by allowing the Union to wrest away control of internal waterways like the Mississippi. “Never,” adds Mahan, “did sea power play a greater or a more decisive part” than in the struggle for North America.

That doesn’t mean the Confederacy was impotent at sea. Raiders fitted out in Great Britain and armed in the Azores wrought enormous damage to the Union merchant and whaling fleets. Raiders like CSS Alabama, Florida, and Shenandoah burned or captured and ransomed 225 merchantmen and whalers during the war, along with another 27 dispatched by privateers. Their exploits diverted Union men-of-war from blockade duty, drove up insurance rates, and prompted shippers to move most American-flagged vessels into foreign registry to escape the Southern predators.

In short, Florida, Alabama, and their sisters did lasting damage to U.S. commercial shipping—and thus to one of Mahan’s three “pillars” of sea power. The havoc they sowed vindicates Mahan’s observation that guerre de course constitutes “a most important secondary operation” in sea warfare. Raiding enemy shipping may not decide the outcomes of wars, but it contributes at the margins. And as the Civil War shows, the weak can impose frightful costs on the strong—even in a losing cause.

The damage to the U.S. marine industry, one of the lineaments of American sea power, entitles Civil War guerre de course to a place in the United States’ annals of naval defeat.

War of Independence:

If Savo Island was America’s worst pasting in a fair fight, the Revolutionary War was its worst loss in an unfair fight. That it was unfair is excusable. After all, the Continental armed forces were invented under fire—stressful circumstances for raising, training, and equipping any institution. The struggle for independence demonstrates that a combatant needs a navy of its own to beat an enemy that possesses a great fleet. It also demonstrates that it’s easier to improvise an army than a navy.

Sure, Continental seamen had their moments. John Paul Jones remains a folk hero to the U.S. Navy, interred beneath the Naval Academy chapel. Jones, furthermore, is celebrated in such oddball locales as the battleship Mikasa museum in Yokosuka, whose curators style him the equal of Lord Horatio Nelson and Admiral Heihachirō Tōgō, Japan’s greatest naval hero. But individual derring-do shouldn’t obscure the fact that the American colonies had to borrow a fleet, that of France, to prevail in the endgame at Yorktown—and thus achieve their independence.

That’s why no less an authority than George Washington testified to the importance of decisive naval superiority when fighting an amphibian power like Great Britain. Deft alliance diplomacy made the difference for Washington & Co. Still, the lesson of the War of Independence must be that a power that wants to pursue an independent foreign policy must maintain a navy commensurate with its national purposes. You can’t always count on a loaner fleet—or an alliance of strange bedfellows—to make up the deficit. Self-sufficiency is prudent.

War of 1812—Oceanic Theater:

Which leads to America’s worst naval defeat, an unfair fight that should’ve been fairer than it was. Flouting the wisdom of Washington and the entreaties of navy-minded Founders like John Adams, Congress declined to fund a U.S. Navy adequate to its purposes—notably shielding American coasts from seaborne attack, fending off enemy blockades, and amassing diplomatic capital for U.S. policymakers and diplomats. Lawmakers chose the false economy of low naval expenditures over the insurance policy furnished by a vibrant fleet—and were taken to task by posterity for it.

A shameful tactical defeat—of frigate USS Chesapeake at the hands of HMS Leopard, in 1807—helped bring about the War of 1812. Captain James Barron surrendered to Leopard after firing a single shot when apprehended off Norfolk, Virginia—and the ensuing popular outcry helped precipitate an American embargo on British trade. So much for the battle cry of a subsequent skipper of Chesapeake, James Lawrence: don’t give up the ship! Indeed, the Chesapeake-Leopard affair could merit its own entry on this list.

As Mahan and Theodore Roosevelt contended in their histories of the conflict, the early republic erred grievously by failing to construct a battle fleet of, say, twenty 74-gun capital ships able to command America’s near seas. Though inferior in numbers to the Royal Navy in overall numbers, such a fleet could have cut ties between the British Isles and the Caribbean—imperiling British interests there, and thus perhaps deterring war altogether. Globally inferior—locally superior.

At a minimum, moreover, a muscular U.S. Navy could have precluded the sort of smothering British blockade that shut down American seagoing and coastwise trade by 1814. Forget the single-ship victories on the high seas during the war’s early going, and forget the navy’s exploits on the Great Lakes. For eminent Americans the War of 1812 constituted a woeful strategic defeat on the open sea. It was an example of what not to do in the realm of maritime strategy.

And that earns it top—or bottom, depending on how you look at it—billing on this list. The worst of the worst.

James Holmes is Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College. The views voiced here are his alone.

This first appeared in 2018 and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

Richard Douglas

Technology,

The idea of the ARAK-21 XRS sounds gimmicky. Combining two very different gun design philosophies into a single system seems like a surefire way of making a bad gun. Nevertheless, the result is impressive.

The AR-15 and the AK-47 are the two most iconic rifles of the last fifty years. Both represent two systems of thought with gun design philosophy. The ARAK-21 XRS seeks to combine the benefits of both weapon systems into one gun. The original ARAK was an upper receiver, bolt system, and barrel that allowed a shooter to fire the AK-47’s iconic 7.62x39 millimeter ammunition with any standard AR-15 lower receiver. Faxon has released a lower to go with its nifty upper. Let’s break down the specifics of this complete weapon system.

Accuracy 

The ARAK-21 XRS demonstrates remarkable accuracy. When firing 5.56 ammunition, the ARAK-21 shoots better than the average AR-15. Depending on the ammunition, the ARAK shot around one-inch groups at 100 yards. The ARAK-21 performed well with 7.62 x 39 millimeter, though not as impressively as with the 5.56-millimeter ammunition. Using 7.62 ammunition, I hit five-shot groups at 100 yards with 1.68-inch groups with commercial ammunition and 2.73-inches with military surplus ammunition. The ARAK-21 can also shoot .300 AAC Blackout rounds, and hit a 1.5-inch 5 shot group at 100 yards. And if you want to increase the accuracy further, I’d recommend attaching an LPVO optic. The ARAK definitely takes and improves on the accuracy of the AR-15.

Reliability 

During my testing with the XRS complete rifle, I encountered no jams or weapon malfunctions with any ammunition or magazines. Some other reviewers encountered jams when switching ammunition types. These issues were resolved by using the adjustable gas block. You’ll want to see which gas configuration works best with each type of ammunition. The ARAK-21 is sturdily constructed, with a 6061-T6 aluminum upper receiver and a bolt made out of hardened 4140 steel. After a few months of testing with several hundred rounds put through it, I observed lots of carbon build-up in the bore. Fortunately, I could clean the carbon. The ARAK-21’s demonstrated solid reliability.

Handling 

The ARAK-21 boasts a wide variety of features that offer lots of options for customization. The ARAK-21 comes with a quad rail forend, allowing attachments on all sides. The side and bottom rails are easily removable, and I found the naked forend more comfortable to grip. A Picatinny rail runs the full length of the top of the gun. Because the recoil system is different from a traditional AR-15, you can use almost any stock you want with this gun. The ARAK-21 comes with a dual ejector, allowing you to eject your spent shell casings to the left or right. This feature is a godsend for lefty shooters who often have to contend with casings being ejected to the right. The ARAK’s safety is also ambidextrous. The ARAK also comes with an adjustable gas block with four positions. Each position is good for different kinds of ammunition. If you’re used to an AR-15, you may find that the sight sits a little higher on the gun than you’re used to. This means you’ll have to rest your cheek on the buttstock a little differently from what you’re used to. The many features of the ARAK-21 make it great to handle for every kind of shooter.

Trigger 

The trigger is a mil-spec trigger. It’s not match-grade, but not terrible either. Faxon recommends HiperFire triggers for an improved trigger pull that will still reliably ignite military surplus 7.62 ammunition. Getting super light triggers designed for an AR-15 can cause problems with cheaper 7.62 ammunition.

Magazine & Reloading 

The ARAK-21 can be converted to fire 5.56 x 223 Rem., .300 AAC Blackout, and 7.62 x 39 millimeter. You’re not going to find a weapon able to shoot bullets more suited to self-defense and combat scenarios than this one. The gun can be switched in three minutes from 7.62 millimeters to 5.56 or .300 Blackout. It takes less than two to switch from .300 Blackout to 5.56 or vice versa. It also accepts a wide variety of magazines, including Generation 1 and 3 Magpul PMAG’s, Thermold 20 round magazine, Troy Battlemags, and US GI magazines. While some prefer the mobility of pistols for home defense, many prefer the larger ammunition capacity and drop-your-target rounds of a rifle. If you want to specialize in the ammunition you shoot, this is the gun for you.

Length & Weight 

The gun comes with both 16- and 20-inch barrels and weighs in at a light 5.5 pounds. The gun was light and easy to hold, even one-handed.

Recoil Management 

The muzzle brake did a great job at reducing recoil and barrel rise when shooting. The recoil was much less than a typical AK, and felt more like a .22 LR when shooting 5.56. 

Ammo Recommendations 

I recommend using commercial .223 Remington and M855 surplus ammunition. I also used Wolf military surplus for my 7.62x39-millimeter rounds.

Price 

The gun comes at $1,899. This is not a cheap gun, but it allows you to shoot rounds that normally require you to own separate weapons. Combine that with the wide variety of features (adjustable gas block, ambidextrous ejector and safety, rails, accuracy), and this is a great value for a gun.

ARAK-21 XRS Complete Rifle Review: Is It Worth It?  

The idea of the ARAK-21 XRS sounds gimmicky. Combining two very different gun design philosophies into a single system seems like a surefire way of making a bad gun. Nevertheless, the result is impressive. The ARAK is modular, ambidextrous, accurate, and boasts an adjustable gas block. It shoots automatic, suppressed, un-suppressed, supersonic, and subsonic ammunition. If you want to change barrels quickly and shoot lots of ammunition types, this is a great weapon system. Here are some of the features that made this such a special gun:

-Accurate 

-Ambidextrous 

-Adjustable gas block makes shooting diff ammunition safe and easy 

If you’re looking for the ultimate combination of power, accuracy, and fun, check out the ARAK-21 XRS Complete Rifle. 

Richard Douglas is a long time shooter, outdoor enthusiast and technologist. He is the founder and editor of Scopes Field. Columnist at The National Interest, Cheaper Than Dirt, Daily Caller and other publications.

Image: Creative Commons.

Christian Whiton

Politics,

It may well turn out that Trump will be on hand to continue a trade-reform process that looks chaotic on the surface, but which amounts to significant, measured evolution in practice.   

A conventional analysis of the U.S. presidential race would predict challenger Joe Biden will defeat incumbent Donald Trump. Most polls have Joe Biden far ahead, and a much-cited recent survey showed him fourteen points ahead of Trump. However, the same poll in 2016 showed Hillary Clinton with the same lead.

Furthermore, Trump is once again connecting energetically with the disaffected voters who gave him an electoral college victory four years ago. In contrast, Biden has run a mostly virtual campaign, relying primarily on the media to challenge Trump.

The possibility of an upset second victory for Trump raises the question of what his administration would do with trade policy following his first-term replacement of NAFTA with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), imposition of tariffs on steel and aluminum, negotiation of a trade deal with Beijing that left in place higher tariffs on more than half of Chinese imports, and completion of modest deals with Japan and South Korea.

It is usually a safe bet that second presidential terms are lackluster when it comes to bold new initiatives. Often, administrations focus on consolidating and touting the accomplishments of the first term.

With Trump, it may be different. A Trump reelection would demonstrate further to Congress that the public supports his tougher approach to trade.

The most immediate second-term development would likely be the continued expansion of export controls targeting China. What started as a U.S. effort to ban the use of Huawei equipment in U.S. telecom networks has grown to a global effort to prevent the sale of topline semiconductors and other components to Huawei, its subsidiaries, and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation. This White House-led effort would continue with worldwide measures to deny China advanced inputs for telecom, semiconductor, and artificial intelligence applications. The Phase One trade deal with China will likely last only as long as Beijing needs to buy significant quantities of U.S. agriculture.

A trade agreement with the United Kingdom could land early in a second Trump term. American and British negotiators have already completed some thirty chapters of an agreement.

Pacts with India and Vietnam would also be likely in a second Trump term, despite the recent opening of a “Section 301” investigation of Vietnam for currency manipulation and illegal timber harvesting. The same tough approach preceded Trump’s deal with China.

A Taiwan deal is also a possibility. Signing these pacts would be seen as encircling China economically. Washington would seek to limit agreements to easier-to-accomplish topics like the intellectual property and digital trade elements of USMCA. 

Despite pro forma talking points to the contrary, Washington likely would not press Japan seriously for a second, more comprehensive trade deal than the one the administration secured in 2019. That is actually good news for overall relations between Tokyo and Washington and an alliance that remains the world’s most important in deterring China.  

East Asia may also benefit from the likelihood that Trump will focus his ire on Europe. Trump remains irritated at the European Union’s 10 percent tariff on U.S. cars since the reciprocal American tariff is 2.5 percent. Like other presidents before him, he is also disappointed by French agricultural protectionism, which hurts American farmers.  

Trump was close to imposing 25 percent tariffs on German cars in 2019 but decided to wait until after the election. He may either impose these early in a second term or try again to use the threat of them to get Germany to apply pressure on Paris and Brussels to reform. While some voices in the administration would counsel caution, few expect Robert Lighthizer, the seventy-three-year-old U.S. trade representative, to stay more than a year into a second term. Higher tariffs on Europe are more likely than not. 

Trump’s approach contrasts with that proposed by his opponent. Biden supported NAFTA, China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. His advisors have suggested he would rejoin the latter with some modest adjustments. Biden also opposed the tariffs on China that brought Beijing to the negotiating table. The safe bet is that he would likely ease those levies in exchange for a climate change deal from Chinese leader Xi Jinping—which Xi would sign and then ignore. Biden’s likely trade representative, Jennifer Hillman, favors ending U.S. steps that have disabled the World Trade Organization’s dispute-resolution mechanism, which many analysts believe ruled against the United States too often. She is a standard Clinton-Obama era globalist. Biden’s vow “to work more closely with allies” is a euphemism for acceding to European wishes in Geneva.  

While some might welcome Biden’s efforts to turn back the clock to before the disputes and trade wars of recent years, implementing his plans could further convince average Americans that the international trading system works against them, leading to even greater disruption in the future. It may well turn out that Trump will be on hand to continue a trade-reform process that looks chaotic on the surface, but which amounts to significant, measured evolution in practice.   

Christian Whiton was a senior advisor in the Trump and George W. Bush administrations. He is a senior fellow at the Center for the National Interest. 

Image: Reuters