The National Interest

Kris Osborn

Security, Americas

This is quite significant, given that the SM-3 has thus far been primarily thought of as a defense against short, medium and long-range ballistic missile threats.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The Pentagon and MDA are now working on a new interceptor expected to be ready by 2028. In the interim, military is working to modernize and sustain its current arsenal of GBIs with software upgrades and the addition of more discriminating seekers. Ultimately, the Pentagon hope to arm GBIs with multiple “kill vehicles” to enable a single interceptor to fire many shots at an enemy ICBM, thereby increasing the likelihood of a successful “kill.” 

The Pentagon is testing new upgraded versions of its SM-3 interceptor missile to see if it can destroy intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

This is quite significant, given that the SM-3 has thus far been primarily thought of as a defense against short, medium and long-range ballistic missile threats. For quite some time, the SM-3 has been regarded as a weapon capable of reaching the outermost areas of the earth’s atmosphere, yet not ideally suited for mid-course or ICBM defense. 

This may change, according to Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans and Capabilities Victorino Mercado, who told reporters that “MDA plans to conduct flight tests of the SM-3 Block IIA interceptor against an ICBM-class target.” 

As discussed by Mercado, this application would bring new tactical possibilities to layered defenses and expand the attack envelope for the SM-3. The SM-3 Block IIA, now in existence for several years, incorporates a software upgrade enabling the integration of more precise and discriminating sensor technology, longer flight times and greater range beyond the earth’s atmosphere. 

The SM-3 is a kinetic energy warhead able to travel at more than 600 miles per hour; it carries no explosive but instead relies on the sheer force of impact and collision to destroy targets. 

ICBM defense would be a game-changer for the Pentagon’s missile defense, given that SM-3s fire from both Navy ships and land-based Aegis Ashore launchers in Poland and Romania. Land-based applications of the SM-3 in Europe have been deployed to defend against long-range ballistic missile threats on the continent. Now, ship-fired SM-3s could bring new “kill” or intercept possibilities over ocean areas potentially less reachable by existing defenses. 

Moreover, an anti-ICBM SM-3 would bring more “shots” or options to strike or destroy an ICBM as it travels just beyond the boundary of the earth’s atmosphere. The SM-3 Block IIA could complement existing Ground Based Interceptors (GBI) and help the Pentagon bridge the time lapse between now and the end of the decade when a new ICBM interceptor becomes available.

The Pentagon and MDA are now working on a new interceptor expected to be ready by 2028. In the interim, military is working to modernize and sustain its current arsenal of GBIs with software upgrades and the addition of more discriminating seekers. Ultimately, the Pentagon hope to arm GBIs with multiple “kill vehicles” to enable a single interceptor to fire many shots at an enemy ICBM, thereby increasing the likelihood of a successful “kill.” 

Kris Osborn is the defense editor for the National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University. This article first appeared earlier this year.

Image: Reuters

Naman Karl-Thomas Habtom

Security, Middle East

The only stable long-term solution for Syria’s Kurds is a rapprochement with the Syrian government.

With the Syrian Arab Army emerging increasingly victorious over its foes, internal and external actors are left with fewer and fewer options. With other non-state actors largely out of the picture, the Kurdish-led forces are now forced to decide how they will align. Though their ties with the United States are still strong, the only stable long-term solution for Syria’s Kurds is a rapprochement with the Syrian government.

Over the course of the nine-year-long conflict, an array of Kurdish and Kurdish-dominated bodies have emerged in Syrian territory along the Turkish border. At the forefront are the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces, the military force of the self-declared Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. The multiparty assembly known as the Syrian Democratic Council, to which the Syrian Democratic Forces answer, is the foundation for the region’s political institutions and leads negotiations with the Syrian government. Rather than operating as a conventional military force, the Syrian Democratic Forces consist of a coalition of ethnic militias, with the People’s Protection Units being the most prominent. Though predominantly Kurdish, the People’s Protection Units and their auxiliaries are increasingly becoming more polyethnic following offensives outside of traditionally Kurdish areas (although this process has not been without difficulty and tensions).

These intertwined groups have largely been successful at balancing their seemingly contradictory relationships: While receiving weapons from the United States, they have been negotiating with Russia. This seemingly strange situation has largely been the consequence of geography. Following the Syrian Arab Army’s withdrawal from northern Syria in the early stages of the war, and with fighting largely concentrated in other parts of the country, neither the Syrian Kurds nor Damascus have been compelled to address the inherent paradox in their tacit alliance against jihadist rebels such as the Islamic State, the al-Nusra Front, and Salafi groups attached to the Free Syrian Army.

This non-conflict has at times manifested itself in various forms of active assistance. In the final stages of the Battle of Aleppo in 2016, while the United States and its allies were condemning the Syrian government’s offensive to retake the rebel-controlled portions of the city, the People’s Protection Units were busy playing their part by cutting off crucial supply routes for the rebels. Conversely, as Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan initiated an invasion of northern Syria, Damascus deployed government-aligned militias to Afrin. The parallels between the two political authorities extend beyond the field of combat. Key in any post-war Syria will be the preservation of the country’s history of secularism, an objective explicitly stated by President Bashar al-Assad and mirrored by the Syrian Democratic Forces.

Its current status as a parastate leaves the Kurdish-led polity in a difficult situation: It has all the burdens of an actual state while lacking the territorial integrity and sovereignty that come with formal statehood. As long as Rojava continues to operate as an independent actor, Turkey will remain restless. Consequently, the only meaningful short-term protection that can be offered to northern Syria, in the absence of the Syrian state, will be under the guise of international brokering—such as the Russo-Turkish agreement in October 2019, which resulted in the withdrawal of Kurdish forces from the Syrian-Turkish border and thereby their survival by the grace of others.

Shortly afterward, Syrian Kurdish forces and the Syrian government reached an agreement, brokered by Russia, that resulted in active military cooperation. Implicit here is the understanding that only the Syrian state can offer any long-term support, whereas countries like the United States or the United Kingdom cannot be wholly relied upon. Joint governance, however, is not a sustainable solution. With the government unlikely to yield exclusive domains to the Syrian Democratic Forces, and with the latter lacking the strength to seize such domains on its own, a negotiated settlement will be required. Should the Kurdish forces not be open to this, Damascus could always turn to Ankara as a last resort to increase pressure.

The Kremlin has been eager to accommodate the Syrian Democratic Forces as part of a political settlement for Syria. In February 2016, a Syrian Kurdish representative office was opened in Moscow. The following year, a Russian-proposed draft constitution for Syria sought to establish an official status for the Kurdish language while simultaneously seeking to create a “decentralized Syria.” Russia has advocated for the inclusion of the Syrian Democratic Forces not only in the United Nations-led Geneva peace talks but also in parallel efforts such as those in Sochi.

However, the Russian government’s objective has been to reconcile the Syrian government with Kurdish forces, not simply to ally with both. Friendly and strategic Russo-Syrian relations predate the presidencies of Vladimir Putin and Assad by decades and are centered around the existence of strong, centralized states. Following Moscow’s intervention in Syria in late 2015, Russia began engaging in a multiyear project of not just rebuilding the Syrian Arab Army but also integrating semi-autonomous militias, a move that they will likely wish to see repeated in the north of the country. Given the signing of a forty-nine-year lease deal for Russian bases in Syria and the expansion of existing ones, along with ongoing negotiations about building more, the Kremlin will not want to see a weakened government and therefore will push for further command and governance integration under a Damascus-led government with long-term incentives to make that happen.

Yet here lies a cause for resistance from the Kurdish leadership. With no sign of the Syrian government abandoning its pursuit of an integrated command structure, the People’s Protection Units will either be forced to disarm or, more likely, be assimilated into Syrian Arab Army units. Once such a path is followed, the primary source of leverage enjoyed by the Syrian Democratic Forces — military strength — will largely disappear. So far, this has largely been a dealbreaker for the Syrian Democratic Forces, with Jihat Omar, co-chair of the Foreign Relations Office of the Syrian Democratic Council, having asked rhetorically, “without defense forces, how should we be able to protect our people and our political vision?”

This remains primarily a question of command. The Syrian government has proven itself willing to reintegrate those who were not explicitly against it. In an October 2018 decree, Assad granted amnesty to deserters and draft dodgers who did not join rebel forces. As such, should Damascus gain greater direct control of northern Syria, some fighters might choose to hedge their bets in case the Syrian Democratic Forces cease to be a de facto independent authority in the region—leaving the issue of whether or not Kurdish commanders will be quick to join the Syrian Arab Army.

The government’s path to victory, however, may prove to its detriment when it comes to winning hearts and minds. The reputation of the state’s security apparatus not only precedes it but also is likely to inspire both fear and opposition to northern Syria’s complete reincorporation. In light of the October 2019 deal, local journalists highlighted concerns about the return of intelligence services to Rojava. Sameyyan, the pseudonym of a Kurdish journalist in northeastern Hasakah province, went so far as to say, “If the Syrian government comes back as it was before, its security apparatus and such, I will certainly leave.” While most inhabitants are unlikely to leave, in the case of a final Kurdish-Damascus settlement, rogue elements opposed to any such deal could emerge—and this could result in an intensification of the conflict in areas that are currently mostly peaceful. If Syrian Democratic Forces dissidents choose to engage in armed confrontation, the Syrian government is likely to revert to similar tactics to those it has pursued successfully throughout the rest of the country, which risks bifurcating society in Rojava and strengthening anti-government segments of the population.

Without the backing of a strong, central state, the Kurdish population is likely to be exposed to continued foreign aggression. In neighboring Iraq, recent incursions by Turkish military forces have resulted not only in the deaths of combatants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party but also in the killing of two Iraqi border guards. Baghdad’s impotence is itself a product of the schism between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Iraqi government, which has resulted in a weakened state.

Territorial integrity can only be actualized through the economic integration of Syria’s various provinces. While some Gulf states have been reestablishing ties with Damascus and are eager to be among early investors in reconstruction efforts, the continued closeness between the Syrian Democratic Forces and the United States is likely to set back not only the former but all of Syria. The decision of the Syrian Democratic Forces to sign an oil deal with an American firm, which is likely motivated by short-term financial needs, has already produced tensions with the Syrian government, which has condemned “in the strongest terms the agreement signed between al-Qasd militia [Syrian government’s name for the Syrian Democratic Forces] and an American oil company to steal Syria's oil under the sponsorship and support of the American administration.” Though the deal might provide the Kurdish forces with what President Donald Trump referred to as “some cash flow,” it will make the Syrian Democratic Forces financially, and consequently politically, dependent on the United States while being cut off from the rest of the country and likely from the rest of the region. Should a complete political reconciliation take place, it would not be surprising were the Syrian Democratic Council to be forced to forfeit any assets abroad as a result of U.S. sanctions on Syria, which have only intensified in recent weeks and months.

Aside from the practical dimensions, there remain hindrances to a complete rapprochement between the two sides. Central to this is the question of ideology. Though Assad’s Syria is not the same as the one ruled by his father, it retains strong political convictions that it is unlikely to abandon easily. The state in its current political form traces its origins to the 1963 coup d’état and the Corrective Movement of 1970, which established and strengthened the role of the Ba’ath Party. Even the modified 2012 constitution, which loosened the party’s exclusive grip on power, begins with a preamble speaking of “Arab civilization” with the first article affirming that the country is located within “the Arab homeland” and that “the people of Syria are part of the Arab nation.”

On the other hand, the Syrian Democratic Council advocates for an explicitly multiethnic state and seeks to fundamentally reorganize the country’s political institutions. The council officially calls for a decentralized state that would empower regional governments while simultaneously highlighting minority interests. Though this prospect has not been embraced by Damascus, it has not been fully rejected either. Salih Muslim, former co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Council’s leading Democratic Union Party, met with senior government officials in 2018 in order to “to get to know each other and establish confidence, develop reciprocal relations”—with Damascus having “accepted to discuss the notion of a decentralized system.”

While ethnic federalization has presented itself as a potential political settlement to the Syrian civil war, the government has reason to be wary. Attempts at secession in neighboring Iraq by the Kurdistan Regional Government, rising ethnic tensions in Ethiopia, and a number of other examples have all provided warning lessons to governments about the risks that weakened central governments face. Not wanting to embolden polities that are likely to demand more power down the line, and with even Lebanese political winds moving away from decades-old sectarian-based politics, the Syrian government has few reasons to feel pressured into accepting a governing structure put forward by the Syrian Democratic Council.

The political viability of a competitor to the Syrian state is to some extent a question of patience and willpower, not between Damascus and Rojava but rather between Damascus and the backers of the Syrian Democratic Forces. Having nowhere to run, the Syrian government will, by its very nature, be able to wait out any foreign actor when it comes to reestablishing control over the country. The failed logic of American military thinking as seen in Vietnam and Iraq, whereby another offensive or limited period of time (say six months, as Thomas Friedman often suggested) will somehow miraculously change the fundamental dynamic, will only set up the Syrian Democratic Forces to fail.

It is precisely at the current moment that the opportunity remains for the Syrian Kurdish forces to push for reincorporation instead of negotiating from a position of weakness or being coerced. With the majority of the country under government or joint government/Kurdish control, the window is slowly closing before self-declared regional rule expires.

Naman Karl-Thomas Habtom is the Senior Vice President of the Cambridge Middle East and North Africa Forum, managing editor of Manara Magazine, and a writer with a focus on security policy and international affairs.

Image: Reuters.

Michael Blake

Politics, Americas

History reveals examples of how presidents must sometimes lie, and how their lies might sometimes be morally defensible.

Michael Cohen, in his recent book, has called President Trump a “fraud,” a “bigot,” a “bully” – and, most emphatically, a “liar”. The Trump administration’s response to this book simply reverses the accusation, calling Cohen someone who attempts to “profit off of lies”.

Nonetheless, the media has often noted the frequency with which President Trump lies. The Washington Post, for instance, maintains a running database of what it terms the President’s “false or misleading claims” – which now number over 20,000, or an average of 12 per day.

Media’s accounts of Trump’s lies would seem to indicate that most people are wholeheartedly opposed to lying – and, in particular, opposed to being lied to by presidents. And yet a recent survey of presidential deception found that all American presidents – from Washington to Trump – have told lies, knowingly, in their public statements.

As a political philosopher, with a focus on how people try to reason together through political disagreement, I argue that not all lies are the same.

History shows examples of presidents who have lied for a larger public purpose – and have been forgiven.

The Morality of Deception

Why, though, are lies thought so wrongful in the first instance?

Immanuel Kant, in the 18th century, provided one powerful account of the wrongness of lying. For Kant, lying was wrong in much the same way that threats and coercion are wrong. All of these override the autonomous will of another person, and treat that person as a mere tool.

For Kant, human beings were morally special precisely because they could use reason to decide what to do. When a gunman uses threats to coerce a person to do a particular act, he disrespects that person’s rational agency. Lies are a similar disrespect to rational agency: One’s decision has been manipulated, so that the act is no longer one’s own.

Kant defended these conclusions without exception. Kant regarded any lie as immoral – even one told to a murderer at the door.

Modern-day philosophers have often accepted Kant’s account, while seeking exceptions from its rigidness. In his book “Ethics for Adversaries,” philosopher Arthur Applbaum explains why citizens might sometimes consent to being deceived, which might be useful in understanding presidential deception.

For example, a political leader who gives honest answers about a forthcoming military operation would likely imperil that operation – and most people would not want that. The key, though, is that people might accept such deception, after the fact, because of what that deception made possible.

To take one example: The British government sought to deceive the Nazi command about its plans for invasion – which entailed lying even to British allies. Applbaum argues that what might seem like simple deception might become justified, if those deceived could eventually consent – after the fact – to being so deceived.

Honorable Lies?

History reveals examples of how presidents must sometimes lie, and how their lies might sometimes be morally defensible.

During the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was convinced that Hitler’s expansionism in Europe was a threat to the liberal democratic project itself, but he faced an electorate without any will to intervene in a European war. Roosevelt chose to insist publicly that he was opposed to any intervention – while doing everything he could to prepare for war and to covertly help the British cause.

As early as 1948, historian Thomas Bailey noted that Roosevelt had made a calculated choice to both prepare for war and insist he was doing no such thing. To be open about his view of Hitler would have led to his defeat in the 1940 election.

Prior to Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln made similar calculations. Lincoln’s lies regarding his negotiations with the Confederacy – described by Meg Mott, a professor of political theory, as being “devious” – may have been instrumental in preserving the United States as a single country.

“Honest Abe” Lincoln was willing to open peace negotiations with the Confederacy – knowing that much of his own party thought that only unconditional surrender by the South would settle the question of slavery. At one point, Lincoln wrote a note to his own party asserting – falsely – that there were “no peace commissioners” being sent to a conference with the Confederacy.

A member of the Congress later noted that, in the absence of that note, the 13th Amendment – which ended the practice of chattel slavery – would not have been passed.

Good Lies and Bad Lies

The problem, of course, is that a great many presidential lies cannot be so easily linked to important purposes.

President Bill Clinton’s lies about his sexual activities were either simply self-serving or told to preserve his presidency.

Similarly, President Richard Nixon’s insistence that he knew nothing about the Watergate break-in was most likely a lie. John Dean, Nixon’s legal counsel, confirmed years later that the president knew about, and approved of, the plan to rob the Democratic National Committee headquarters. This scandal eventually ended Nixon’s presidency.

In both cases, these presidents faced a significant threat to their presidencies - and chose deception to save not the nation, but their own power.

President Trump and Truth

It is likely that President Trump has lied more than previous presidents in public – and, perhaps more significantly, he has also apparently lied about a wider variety of topics than his predecessors.

Soon after being elected he claimed, falsely, that his inaugural crowd was the largest ever. More recently, he insisted that Hurricane Dorian was likely to affect the coast of Alabama – and he seems to have altered a map with a Sharpie to bolster his false claim. The pattern of deception has continued, most recently with his acknowledgment that he deceived the public about the coronavirus – and then his insistence that he had done no such thing.

What is striking about these lies, in contrast to the lies of previous presidents, is that they have generally been told in the absence of a particular and acute threat to either the president’s power or to the preservation of the United States.

Presidents have lied for good reasons and for bad ones, but very few have chosen to lie without a particularly unusual threat to themselves or their nation. If some presidential lies might be forgivable, it could be only because of the good to the nation those lies bring about; and President Trump’s lies seem unlikely to meet that test.

Michael Blake, Professor of Philosophy, Public Policy and Governance, University of Washington

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

Image: Reuters.

Assal Rad

Politics, Middle East

For any Iranian-American that advocates for democracy in Iran, it is imperative to participate in democracy at home.

One event, more than any other, has shaped the contemporary U.S. political attitude on Iran: the U.S. embassy seizure by Iranian students on November 4, 1979. Images of Americans blindfolded, with their hands tied, were seared into the American psyche. This event continues to color how some Americans see Iran, as evidenced by a tweet earlier this year from President Donald Trump, in which he threatened to attack fifty-two Iranian cultural sites, one for every American held hostage all those years ago. Often missing from the story is the actual fear Iranians felt that the United States would lead a coup from that very embassy—like the one carried out by America and UK in 1953 that ousted Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq and reinstated the Shah—and return the country to the dictatorship of Iran’s toppled king.

Almost forty-one years to the day of that watershed moment, the future of U.S.-Iran relations will be determined in another historical event. The entire world is closely watching and anticipating U.S. elections on November 3. By breaking international norms, agreements, and standards, the Trump administration has threatened to upend the world order that the United States helped create. Nuclear proliferation, climate change and, most recently, the global pandemic, have reminded us just how much impact the leader of the world’s most powerful country has on international relations and the experiences of ordinary people.

For Iranian-Americans this election is especially critical. We have watched in horror while our community has been vilified, treated as second-class citizens, and our families in Iran have experienced shortages of basic goods and medicines in a pandemic due to cruel U.S. sanctions. From the Muslim Ban that prevents us from seeing our families and questions of dual loyalty at our borders, to the persistent threat of war, and feelings of denigration in an atmosphere of rising xenophobia and hostility, Iranian-Americans, as well as other immigrant communities, have a great many reasons for taking to the polls.

However, the myriad problems and upheavals we are currently witnessing in the United States and worldwide indicate a global inflection point. This election will be a defining moment in American history and will indeed have enormous international consequences. In this respect, all Americans bear a responsibility to take part in the most important election of our lifetime. But as an Iranian-American, I feel an extra need to not only vote, but encourage others to do the same, support local candidates, and become more involved to ensure civil liberties for all Americans, including my own. Furthermore, for any Iranian-American that advocates for democracy in Iran, it is imperative to participate in democracy at home.

While the significance of U.S.-Iran relations may seem like a greater concern for Iranians or Iranian-Americans, the Trump administration’s policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran has already brought this nation to the brink of war. Again, a Trump tweet from Monday night threatened Iran with an attack “1,000 times greater,” as retribution for any possible future attack by Iran, reminiscent of his tweet from January that promised war crimes like striking Iranian cultural sites.

The Iranian government has cautiously bided its time, avoiding a full confrontation, also awaiting the results of the U.S. elections. The reelection of Trump would likely keep us on a path to war, a conflict that neither Iranians nor Americans want. If the endless wars we are already fighting in the Middle East are any indication, a war with Iran will have unpredictable and catastrophic ramifications on a global scale, brutalize an Iranian populace already suffering, and needlessly risk the lives of American servicepeople.

Despite the mutual grievances of Iranians and Americans against a historical backdrop of political turmoil, the United States and Iran were able to sit at a negotiating table and find a peaceful path forward with the Iran nuclear deal. That path still exists, but whether or not we choose it will likely be based on the outcome of another fateful day in November. This election will certainly determine the future of U.S.-Iran relations, undoubtedly shape the outlook of the United States, and influence the future of the world.

Assal Rad is a Senior Research Fellow at the National Iranian American Council. She received her PhD. in history at the University of California, Irvine. Follow her on Twitter @assalrad.

Image: Reuters.

Kris Osborn

Security, Asia

We take a look behind China's arsenal.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The Navy is taking the threat very seriously and concerns about a “carrier-killer” attack continue to lead to the possibility of  America building smaller, more mobile and agile carriers platforms. Perhaps of greatest significance, the anti-ship threat has at least in part driven the Navy effort to engineer carrier-launched drones such as the emerging MQ-25 Stingray.

The Chinese military appears to be threatening U.S. carriers now operating in the Pacific by firing off a DF-26 so-called “carrier-killer” missile reportedly capable of hitting moving targets at sea. 

A Chinese government-backed newspaper called the test-firing a “fast-reaction” capability of the Rocket Force troops,” adding that these kinds of exercises will continue for the next several months.

“The latest drills demonstrated that the DF-26 has gained a stronger capability in real combat scenarios, including cross-regional maneuvering,” according to the report in the Global Times.

Significantly, the report also added that the missile is not “dependent upon a pre-launch site.”

The report, and the test firing, raise several pertinent questions regarding the threat presented by the DF-26. 

First, the report claims the missile has a range of 4,500 km, a possibly unprecedented distance for a land-launched anti-ship missile. There may not, at least as of yet, be a way to fully verify that this is in fact the case, however the prospect presents a threat likely being taken quite seriously by Navy commanders and war planners. 

Many of the actual capabilities of the weapon may still remain somewhat mysterious and invite several questions. Is this range accurate? Is it true that it can hit moving targets, as claimed by the report? What kind of sensors and targeting technologies does it have? Is there a precision guidance mechanism? 

One claim that is likely accurate is its reported ability to fire from mobile launchers. For instance, Congressional studies and various reports have for many years maintained that China has mobile launchers capable of firing from various locations. This could, of course, make the launchers themselves more difficult to target. 

However, the test firing is taking place within a broader strategic and tactical context not addressed by the Chinese report, such as the U.S. Navy’s fast-emerging work of an improved layered defense system. These systems are intended to safeguard carriers and other surface ships from any incoming threats. The Navy is making progress with another level of ship defenses, potentially significant to the point that it may explain why Navy leaders consistently say that carriers can operate wherever they need to. 

So, what are the reasons why this might be the case? The first and most obvious explanation is simply that carriers often travel in Carrier Strike Groups where they are surrounded and defended by heavily-armed cruisers and destroyers. Navy destroyers are armed with interceptor missiles and advanced Aegis radars designed to find and take out approaching threats. Destroyers are even armed with a weapon called the Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile Block II which has a “sea-skimming” interceptor mode wherein it can track and take out approaching missiles traveling at lower altitudes parallel to the surface. 

The layers are also by design, with weapons such as SM-3s and SM-6s, able to hit threats at longer and medium range distances. SM-6s are now built with a dual-mode seeker enabling them to make adjustments in flight to intercept moving targets. A dual mode seeker has radar response technology built into the missile itself such that it can quickly adjust to changing threat trajectories. It is not solely reliant upon guidance from a ship-based illuminator. 

Destroyers also have closer-in defenses as well, such as a Rolling Air Frame missiles and guided SeaRAM interceptors. While many of these weapons have been in existence for many years, virtually all of them have been massively upgraded as part of the Navy’s distributed lethality strategy which better arms the entire surface fleet for a major power war. 

What this amounts to is that ship defenses now have better guidance and longer ranges able to discriminate incoming attacks. For instance, the Navy’s now-deployed Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air, provides ships with system which uses an aerial surveillance node such as an F-35 to find approaching threats from beyond the horizon and cue a guided SM-6 missile to destroy enemy missiles at much longer ranges. In addition, longer-range detection affords commander much-needed time to defend their ships.

Finally, an entire chapter could be written about new, yet to be fully integrated ship defenses such as laser weapons, electronic warfare and various kinds of cyber hardening or anti-jamming technologies for ships. After all, lasers are no longer something for the future. They are here already arming destroyers, giving surface ships entirely new tactical defensive options. Lasers travel at the speed of light, bring optics and tactical precision, and are scalable to achieve the desired effect needed.

Therefore, despite many unknowns, several things are self-evident. The Navy is taking the threat very seriously and concerns about a “carrier-killer” attack continue to lead to the possibility of  America building smaller, more mobile and agile carriers platforms. Perhaps of greatest significance, the anti-ship threat has at least in part driven the Navy effort to engineer carrier-launched drones such as the emerging MQ-25 Stingray. These kinds of drones greatly extend the attack range of carrier-launched attack aircraft, therefore enabling carriers to project power at much safer operating distances. One can expect much more drone development in the future.

At the same time, not only are carriers and carrier groups better armed, there may be a large sphere of yet-unknown technical details informing the prevailing consensus that carriers are here to stay.

Kris Osborn is defense editor for the National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University. This article is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

Lyle J. Goldstein

Security, Asia

This 1894 conflict continues to haunt Beijing.

Even as Western strategists spill gobs of ink recalling the Great War that convulsed Europe a century ago, Chinese military thinkers are actually fixated on another anniversary. 120 years ago, Japan shocked the world with a lightning campaign that not only reduced the faltering Qing dynasty to its knees in a matter of months, but more to the point:  put the pride of China’s then ascendant fleet on the bottom of the Yellow Sea.

The war was primarily fought over the Korean Peninsula and featured two sizable naval engagements: the first near the Yalu and the second near the tip of the Shandong Peninsula at Weihai, where an enormous Chinese museum has quite recently been completed to commemorate the war.  The conflict ended with Japan’s conquest of the Liaodong Peninsula, but this was not permitted by the jealous European Powers, which intervened collectively in the so-called “Triple Intervention.”

Tokyo had to be satisfied with China’s recognition of an independent Korea, the not insignificant prize of Taiwan, a huge indemnity paid in silver, the right to navigate the Yangtze, as well as the opening of more treaty ports to Japanese merchants.   This edition of Dragon Eye will not dwell on recent China-Japan tensions, which are presently experiencing a thaw albeit a tepid one.  Instead, this brief analysis endeavors to sample a few of the innumerable Chinese military writings published during 2014 on the subject of that pivotal conflict.

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Reflections on the war during this anniversary year have appeared in just about every military and quasi-military publication in China, for example a piece by the popular and rather hawkish professor-general Luo Yuan that appeared in a special September 2014 issue of 军事文摘 [Military Digest] devoted to the war.  However, for the purposes of this discussion, I will concentrate exclusively on several articles that appeared in the more authoritative 中国军事科学 [China Military Science] in mid-2014.  The lead article in this valuable clutch of writings is by General He Lei, director of the prestigious Chinese Academy of Military Sciences.   General He’s piece does not particularly focus on Japan’s aggressive intent, though he does observe that the war was “not accidental.”  Nor does he dwell on strictly political factors, but he also credits Marx with the idea that “war is the continuation of politics” and suggests that the war illustrated the corruption and decline of the Qing regime.  With evident disgust, he critiques the traditional Chinese cultural and social paradigm prevailing in that period:  “好铁不打钉， 好男不当兵”  [Just as good iron is not used for nails, so good men should not be soldiers].  In a seeming dig at contemporary Chinese society and its rampant materialism, he implores his fellow officers: “不当和平兵” [not to become peace-time soldiers].  To further inspire his forces, he writes that China’s total military failure in the Sino-Japanese War resulted from half-hearted preparation before the conflict and also the paucity of a military doctrine that emphasized vigorous combat tactics and seizing the initiative. 

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It is noteworthy that a major theme of General He’s essay concerns China’s historical mistake of “重陆轻海” [emphasizing land forces, while neglecting naval forces]. He cites the classic misuse of naval funds by the Empress Dowager Ci Xi, and derides the Manchu regime as completely lacking any leaders with naval experience.  That point is especially interesting in light of the prevailing critique of China’s current military leadership as overly representative of ground forces personnel, particularly at the highest levels.  General He, in addition, points out the total failure of harmonization between Chinese ground and sea forces, and how this failure caused defeats in many instances.  As a result of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, it is said that China lost Korea, Taiwan and a wide expanse of maritime territory, thus “vastly compressing China’s maritime strategic space, and also blocking modern China’s historical process of “走向海洋” [going out to the ocean]. Keeping that in mind, General He states that China cannot permit “海上霸权” [the maritime hegemonic power] – obviously referring to the United States – from interrupting the historical march of the Chinese nation to the “deep blue.” Again, the fact that a Chinese Army general is making such points about the contemporary imperative of developing seapower may demonstrate the broad military consensus behind China’s current naval buildup.

Two further essays in this edition of China Military Science are by senior naval officers.  Vice Admiral Jiang Weilie, a vice commander of the critical Guangzhou Military Region, echoes many of the points made in the essay by General He, especially concerning China’s historic neglect of seapower.  Admiral Jiang, moreover, bemoans the fact that contemporary Chinese society still obviously lacks in maritime consciousness.  Using the case of the Sino-Japanese War as a clear illustration of disjointed command structures, Admiral Jiang makes the fascinating point that the recent unification of Chinese maritime law enforcement forces in March 2013 “未得到根本解决” [did not result in a fundamental resolution] with respect to unifying China’s maritime power.  Above all, Admiral Jiang focuses, similarly to General He, on the regrettably “passive disposition” of Chinese forces during the Sino-Japanese War.  In the essay’s conclusion, he calls for “积极长远的力量运用规划” [plans for the active wielding of long range power].  As for the many maritime disputes on China’s flanks, he calls for Beijing to “regularize the demonstration of military forces, developing military deterrence, and gradually consolidating [China’s] advantageous position in these maritime struggles.”

A somewhat more reflective essay is contributed by Senior Captain Yang Xiaodan, director of a PLA Navy maritime studies center.  Unlike the other two essays that are quite dismissive of the late Qing’s efforts at military reform and naval modernization, Captain Yang offers a detailed look at the establishment and initial operations of China’s very first modern naval academy at Fuzhou in 1866. He notes that China’s nascent, modern navy had quite an extensive system of sending young officers abroad, as well as a relatively ambitious training program, focused on “远航训练” [long distance training] in particular.  In a somewhat nuanced conclusion about China’s much-maligned naval reformer, Li Hongzhang, Captain Yang concludes that “Although Li Hongzhang put great emphasis on building up the Beiyang Fleet, there was not sufficient focus on combat operations…”  In the ultimate test against Japan in 1894-95, Chinese naval officer quality was thoroughly outclassed and is described as:  “又慢又旧又有限” [slow, archaic, and totally limiting].  For Captain Yang, the primary lessons of this conflict for China’s current naval modernization are to raise the combat realism of naval exercises, to rotate personnel frequently and, above all, to build a first-rate naval educational and training system.

These writings by senior Chinese military officers on the 120th anniversary are not surprising.  We may even be somewhat reassured, given the recent bitter recriminations flowing between Beijing and Tokyo, that these articles are not ultra-nationalist in tone and tinged with anti-Japanese xenophobic sentiments, but are generally professional and substantive.  It might be said that they even betray a continuing Chinese admiration for Japanese military prowess.  However, this series of articles is, at the same time, revealing of a Chinese military that has a definite chip on its shoulder.  As any sports coach knows, a team that has been humiliated, relentlessly studies its former mistakes, enjoys new access to resources, is hungry for respect, has a laser-like focus, and is fired by no small amount of bitterness as well, is one that may be poised to “roll.”  One interpretation of these Chinese military articles is that the PLA is now in such a state of mind – and this should concern practitioners and students of international security on both sides of the Pacific.

Lyle J. Goldstein is Research Professor in the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) at the United States Naval War College in Newport, RI. In addition to Chinese, he also speaks Russian and he is also an affiliate of the new Russia Maritime Studies Institute (RMSI) at Naval War College.  You can reach him at  goldstel@usnwc.edu. The opinions in his columns are entirely his own and do not reflect the official assessments of the U.S. Navy or any other agency of the U.S. government. (This first appeared in 2014.)

Image: Wikipedia.

Kyle Mizokami

Security, Asia

Pakistan’s nuclear program goes back to the 1950s, during the early days of its rivalry with India.

Here's What You Need To Remember: Pakistan is clearly developing a robust nuclear capability that can not only deter but fight a nuclear war. It is also dealing with internal security issues that could threaten the integrity of its nuclear arsenal.

Sandwiched between Iran, China, India and Afghanistan, Pakistan lives in a complicated neighborhood with a variety of security issues. One of the nine known states known to have nuclear weapons, Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and doctrine are continually evolving to match perceived threats. A nuclear power for decades, Pakistan is now attempting to construct a nuclear triad of its own, making its nuclear arsenal resilient and capable of devastating retaliatory strikes.

Pakistan’s nuclear program goes back to the 1950s, during the early days of its rivalry with India. President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto famously said in 1965, “If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own.”

The program became a higher priority after the country’s 1971 defeat at the hands of India, which caused East Pakistan to break away and become Bangladesh. Experts believe the humiliating loss of territory, much more than reports that India was pursuing nuclear weapons, accelerated the Pakistani nuclear program. India tested its first bomb, codenamed “Smiling Buddha,” in May 1974, putting the subcontinent on the road to nuclearization.

Pakistan began the process of accumulating the necessary fuel for nuclear weapons, enriched uranium and plutonium. The country was particularly helped by one A. Q. Khan, a metallurgist working in the West who returned to his home country in 1975 with centrifuge designs and business contacts necessary to begin the enrichment process. Pakistan’s program was assisted by European countries and a clandestine equipment-acquisition program designed to do an end run on nonproliferation efforts. Outside countries eventually dropped out as the true purpose of the program became clear, but the clandestine effort continued.

Exactly when Pakistan had completed its first nuclear device is murky. Former president Benazir Bhutto, Zulfikar Bhutto’s daughter, claimed that her father told her the first device was ready by 1977. A member of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission said design of the bomb was completed in 1978 and the bomb was “cold tested”—stopping short of an actual explosion—in 1983.

Benazir Bhutto later claimed that Pakistan’s bombs were stored disassembled until 1998, when India tested six bombs in a span of three days. Nearly three weeks later, Pakistan conducted a similar rapid-fire testing schedule, setting off five bombs in a single day and a sixth bomb three days later. The first device, estimated at twenty-five to thirty kilotons, may have been a boosted uranium device. The second was estimated at twelve kilotons, and the next three as sub-kiloton devices.

The sixth and final device appears to have also been a twelve-kiloton bomb that was detonated at a different testing range; a U.S. Air Force “Constant Phoenix” nuclear-detection aircraft reportedly detected plutonium afterward. Since Pakistan had been working on a uranium bomb and North Korea—which shared or purchased research with Pakistan through the A. Q. Khan network—had been working on a uranium bomb, some outside observers concluded the sixth test was actually a North Korean test, detonated elsewhere to conceal North Korea’s involvement although. There is no consensus on this conclusion.

Experts believe Pakistan’s nuclear stockpile is steadily growing. In 1998, the stockpile was estimated at five to twenty-five devices, depending on how much enriched uranium each bomb required. Today Pakistan is estimated to have an arsenal of 110 to 130 nuclear bombs. In 2015 the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Stimson Center estimated Pakistan’s bomb-making capability at twenty devices annually, which on top of the existing stockpile meant Pakistan could quickly become the third-largest nuclear power in the world. Other observers, however, believe Pakistan can only develop another forty to fifty warheads in the near future.

Pakistani nuclear weapons are under control of the military’s Strategic Plans Division, and are primarily stored in Punjab Province, far from the northwest frontier and the Taliban. Ten thousand Pakistani troops and intelligence personnel from the SPD guard the weapons. Pakistan claims that the weapons are only armed by the appropriate code at the last moment, preventing a “rogue nuke” scenario.

Pakistani nuclear doctrine appears to be to deter what it considers an economically, politically and militarily stronger India. The nuclear standoff is exacerbated by the traditional animosity between the two countries, the several wars the two countries have fought, and events such as the 2008 terrorist attack on Mumbai, which were directed by Pakistan. Unlike neighboring India and China, Pakistan does not have a “no first use” doctrine, and reserves the right to use nuclear weapons, particularly low-yield tactical nuclear weapons, to offset India’s advantage in conventional forces.

Pakistan currently has a nuclear “triad” of nuclear delivery systems based on land, in the air and at sea. Islamabad is believed to have modified American-built F-16A fighters and possibly French-made Mirage fighters to deliver nuclear bombs by 1995. Since the fighters would have to penetrate India’s air defense network to deliver their payloads against cities and other targets, Pakistani aircraft would likely be deliver tactical nuclear weapons against battlefield targets.

Land-based delivery systems are in the form of missiles, with many designs based on or influenced by Chinese and North Korean designs. The Hatf series of mobile missiles includes the solid-fueled Hatf-III (180 miles), solid-fueled Hatf-IV (466 miles) and liquid-fueled Hatf V, (766 miles). The CSIS Missile Threat Initiative believes that as of 2014, Hatf VI (1242 miles) is likely in service. Pakistan is also developing a Shaheen III intermediate-range missile capable of striking targets out to 1708 miles, in order to strike the Nicobar and Andaman Islands.

The sea component of Pakistan’s nuclear force consists of the Babur class of cruise missiles. The latest version, Babur-2, looks like most modern cruise missiles, with a bullet-like shape, a cluster of four tiny tail wings and two stubby main wings, all powered by a turbofan or turbojet engine. The cruise missile has a range of 434 miles. Instead of GPS guidance, which could be disabled regionally by the U.S. government, Babur-2 uses older Terrain Contour Matching (TERCOM) and Digital Scene Matching and Area Co-relation (DSMAC) navigation technology. Babur-2 is deployed on both land and at sea on ships, where they would be more difficult to neutralize. A submarine-launched version, Babur-3, was tested in January and would be the most survivable of all Pakistani nuclear delivery systems.

Pakistan is clearly developing a robust nuclear capability that can not only deter but fight a nuclear war. It is also dealing with internal security issues that could threaten the integrity of its nuclear arsenal. Pakistan and India are clearly in the midst of a nuclear arms race that could, in relative terms, lead to absurdly high nuclear stockpiles reminiscent of the Cold War. It is clear that an arms-control agreement for the subcontinent is desperately needed.

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

Image: Reuters.

Warfare History Network

History,

U.S. Navy dive-bomber crews flew the unpopular and flawed Curtiss SB2C Helldiver late in World War II.

It sent Japanese warships to the bottom of the ocean. It pulverized fortifications on Japan’s home islands. The Curtiss SB2C Helldiver dive-bomber left a trail of wreckage in its wake, the debris and detritus of a devastated foe. Yet, the Helldiver is remembered today mostly as an unpopular latecomer to the war, a less than stellar performer built by an aircraft company in decline.

A round, blue tube squatting on a tiny tailwheel carrying a pilot and radioman-gunner in tandem behind a 1,900-horsepower Wright R-2600 radial engine, the Helldiver with its 49-foot, 9-inch wing span, was dubbed the “Son of a Bitch Second Class,” the “Beast,” and worse by many a pilot who paid more heed to the rumor mill in the ready room than to the performance gauges on his instrument panel. In fact, the plane was neither as bad as its critics said or as good as its manufacturer hoped.

Design Problems of the Helldiver

The engineer running the Helldiver design team was not plane-maker Curtiss-Wright’s iconic Don R. Berlin, who designed the P-40 Warhawk, but the company’s Raymond C. Blaylock. The Helldiver’s career began with problems. The prototype XSB2C-1 made its maiden flight on December 18, 1940, but the prototype was destroyed just days later.  Curtiss rebuilt the aircraft, and it flew again in October 1941 but crashed a second time after a month. After production moved to Columbus, Ohio, from Buffalo, New York, the first production Helldiver flew in June 1942.

From the start, the blue warplane garnered a reputation for poor stability, structural flaws, and poor handling. Britain rejected the Helldiver after receiving 26 examples. Lengthening the fuselage by one foot and redesigning the fin fixed the aerodynamic problems, and the stability and structural issues were exaggerated—yet more than one Helldiver broke in half when making a hard tailhook landing on a wooden carrier deck.

After several variations in armament appeared with early Helldivers, the Navy settled on two forward-firing, 20mm cannons in the wing (introduced on the SB2C-1C model) plus the enlisted crew-member’s swivel-mounted twin .30-caliber machine guns. The radioman-gunner could deploy his firepower only by lowering the rear deck of the fuselage immediately ahead of the vertical stabilizer.

The Helldiver offered an internal bomb bay that could accommodate a 1,000-pound bomb and be closed by hydraulically operated doors. Hardpoints under the wings accommodated additional ordnance.

Perhaps the most important change came with an improved propeller. After a 12-foot Curtiss Electric three-blade prop proved inadequate, a four-blade propeller from the same manufacturer with the same diameter and with root cuffs was introduced with the SB2C-3 model—the point at which nearly all imperfections in the design had been smoothed out. The SB2C-4 followed, introducing “cheese grate” upper and lower wing flaps that were perforated like a sieve; they enhanced stability.

A Weak Combat Debut

Helldivers flew their first combat mission when Squadron Bombing 17, or VB-17, joined a strike force assaulting the redoubt at Rabaul, New Britain, on November 11, 1943, as part of a larger strike force.

In Target Rabaul, Bruce Gamble tells of the first American to lose his life on a Helldiver combat mission. “One SB2C bellied in off the carrier’s bow [of USS Bunker Hill]. A plane guard destroyer dashed in, but only the rear gunner was recovered. Lieutenant (j.g.) Ralph L. Gunville drowned because his pockets were stuffed with extra rations for the plane’s life raft in the event of a ditching.”

Chuck Downey read a newspaper account of the Helldiver’s combat debut in the New Jersey beach resort town of Wildwood where, in late 1943 and early 1944, the Navy was forming squadron VB-80, or Bombing 80. Some of the pilots in the new squadron (officially formed February 1, 1944) picked up SB2C-1C Helldivers at the Curtiss-Wright factory in Columbus and delivered them to Wildwood. “We knew this aircraft was meant as a replacement for the SBD Dauntless, which won glory at Midway,” Downey said. “Some of the men thought the Dauntless performed better over all, even though the Helldiver was bigger and more powerful.”

George Walsh, another Helldiver pilot in VB-80, initially questioned replacing a proven warplane with a new one. “Early production models of the Helldiver had a lot of defects,” said Walsh. “It was rushed into production at a new factory in Columbus while engineering specifications were constantly being revised.”

Continued Walsh, “The plane weighed eight tons and was a jungle of wires and hydraulic tubes. The latter operated the flaps, folding wings and landing gear. It proved difficult to land on a carrier because of the long nose. This created so many accidents that Admiral ‘Jocko’ Clark rejected the first Helldivers for his squadron on the [carrier] Yorktown and had the SBDs brought back. The ‘Helldiver’ designation was soon replaced. Pilots began referring to the plane as ‘The Beast’ and that pejorative stayed with the plane even after later models proved to be sturdy and reliable.”

When radioman-gunner Jim Samar learned that he would be occupying the back seat of a Helldiver rather than a Dauntless, his initial reaction was disappointment. “Worse than that. I was crestfallen,” Samar said. He, too, was a plank-owner of VB-80, which left Wildwood to go aboard the carrier USS Ticonderoga, made the Panama Canal transit, and stopped briefly in San Diego, where actress Maureen O’Hara, married to a VB-80 officer’s brother, visited the ship. By early summer 1944, VB-80 and Ticonderoga were rehearsing war off the coast of Hawaii and ready to fight.

“Bombed Shipping in Manila Bay”

Ticonderoga joined the Allied invasion of the Philippines. For Helldiver radioman-gunner Samar, the squadron’s first combat mission on November 5, 1944, proved to be the most dramatic. The target was Japanese-held Clark Field near Manila. It was the only time Samar fired at a Japanese warplane—something gunners did rarely in the final year of the war.

A Nakajima Ki-44 Hayabusa fighter, known to the Allies as an Oscar, ambushed the SB2C carrying pilot Lieutenant (j.g.) James W. Newquist and Samar. “I gave him a burst and he left,” Samar said. “I saw my tracers go into his engine. I saw smoke erupt from his engine.” The Oscar fell from view. No one saw whether it went down. Samar did not receive credit for an aerial victory but believes he shot the Oscar down.

Between November 5, 1944, and January 21, 1945, VB-80 launched 26 missions, 11 of which Samar flew, against Japanese targets on Luzon, Formosa (Taiwan), and French Indochina. Samar still has a logbook with cryptic entries such as “bombed shipping in Manila Bay.”

Pilot Chuck Downey remembers this as the period when the front-seater in the SB2C Helldiver mastered the fine art of dive-bombing.  “You pulled the handle to open the bomb bay doors,” Downey said. “You watched the Japanese ship slide under the left center section leading edge of your wing. You slowed to dive-brake deployment speed of 125 knots. You performed a split-S to the left [a half-roll, inverted, going into a descending half loop], using rudder and aileron to put into a vertical dive with a maximum speed of 350 knots.”

All of this, of course, was simply the mechanics for dive-bombing. The purpose was to end up near vertical in position to drop bombs into the stack of a Japanese warship. The maneuvers were significantly more uncomfortable for rearward facing radioman-gunners like Samar and were often undertaken while antiaircraft shells were exploding nearby.

Sinking Kiso

On November 13, 1944, pilots of VB-80 attacked the 5,100-ton Kuma-class light cruiser Kiso in Manila Bay.

Said Walsh, “We launched before dawn and each plane rose to slide into squadron formation by the light of a rose colored rising sun, which became visible over the horizon as we gained altitude. We throttled back to a slow climbing speed to conserve fuel and gain altitude. Flying west toward Manila we had to reach 14,000 feet flying over the snow capped mountains of eastern Luzon. Our flight included 24 SB2Cs, two divisions of 12 each. The divisions included sections of three planes in ‘V’ formation, and I led the last section of three planes. We were loaded with 1,000-pound bombs.”

Kiso was the flagship of the Japanese 5th Fleet, Vice Admiral Kiyohide Shima commanding. Dozens of carrier planes from several squadrons had some role in the attack, but Helldiver pilots Downey, Walsh, and Lieutenant (j.g.) Leslie B. Case were the ones who made direct hits with 1,000-pound bombs.

Said Walsh, “At 300 knots the thirty seconds of the two mile dive passed in what seemed to be slow motion speed as black puffs of exploding antiaircraft shells floated by, punctuated by red tracers from machine guns. The dive brakes hold the speed of the plane from approaching high velocity as it would in a free fall or power dive. The pilot is pressed forward against his shoulder straps because the aircraft is held back as if suspended from a rope. There is time to adjust the aiming point by using the elevators and ailerons as the ship grows bigger and bigger in the windscreen. That day there was no wind factor to be compensated.”

“A cruiser is a narrow target,” Walsh continued. “I stayed in my dive until I was confident of scoring a hit, and released the bomb. At that speed another two seconds would have made me a suicide pilot. I pulled out hard; probably 13 Gs, low over the water, and taking evasive action while I retracted the dive brakes, adjusted the throttle, blower and pitch, closed the bomb bay, and raced south toward the rendezvous. Gordon [Virgil Gordon, Walsh’s radioman-gunner] reported a direct hit but I did not look back. I often wonder why. I guess my instinct was to get the hell out of there, and back to the protection of the group. We were also so low over the water all my attention was occupied in flying the plane, looking where I was headed and watching out for other possible planes in the area, including Japanese fighters.”

Downey’s bomb went straight down the No. 1 stack to the boiler room, detonated, and separated the stack from Kiso’s main hull in a messy clatter of debris. It is unclear whether Shima was aboard, but he survived the war. Some 715 Japanese sailors did not survive the attack that sent the Kiso to the bottom in just 13 feet of water.

Poor Workmanship Until the End of the War

Squadron VB-80 continued bombing in the Philippines and on Formosa until January 21, 1945, when Ticonderoga was put out of action by kamikaze attacks. No one in the Helldiver squadron was among the 144 men killed when two Japanese suicide planes slammed into the carrier, but several were severely burned. Instead of going home with their wounded carrier, VB-80’s Helldiver men transferred to the carrier USS Hancock.

From 1943 to 1945, some 30 Navy bombing squadrons put to sea with Helldivers. Many of the squadrons made only one combat cruise. VB-80 was typical except that it changed ships midway through the final year of the war.

By early 1945, most Helldivers in the Western Pacific were SB2C-4 models. This was the mature Helldiver lacking the poor factory workmanship and many of the minor flaws that plagued earlier versions.

Aboard Hancock, VB-80 began flying missions against the Japanese home islands on February 21, 1945. Now, in addition to a 1,000-pound bomb in its bay and a 500-pound bomb under each wing, many SB2C-4 Helldivers flying against targets in Japan were retrofitted to carry eight 5-inch high-velocity aircraft rockets under their wings. These were rocket-propelled unguided projectiles with explosive warheads. When attacking airfields and industrial sites in Japan, instead of going into their vertical dive-bombing mode, Helldiver crews strafed and fired rockets.

Thanks largely to the superb training of U.S. flyers, the Helldiver racked up a solid record of achievement in the final months of the war. None of this was attributable to Curtiss-Wright, a plane-maker that was in constant trouble with the government. Unlike Grumman and Vought, which were responsible for most of the warplanes on the decks of the Navy’s 102 aircraft carriers on VJ-Day, Curtiss seemed unable to improve aircraft assembly methods or to innovate.

18,808 Sorties

Long after an investigative committee led by then-Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri uncovered major problems at Curtiss plants, Navy leaders were acknowledging that the Helldiver was far from perfect. “When we needed the SB2C Helldiver neither we nor it was ready,” said Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air Artemus L. Gates. Pilots and radioman-gunners felt great affection for their Helldivers, but they were never as accurate in a dive as the Dauntlesses they were intended to replace and never achieved their full potential.  The Helldiver was the last combat aircraft manufactured in significant numbers by Curtiss, which went out of the plane-making business in 1948.

Official records credit the Helldiver with 18,808 combat sorties in the Pacific War. Helldivers are credited with sinking or helping to sink some 301 Japanese ships of all types. Radioman-gunners are credited with shooting down 41 Japanese aircraft, a figure that is almost certainly exaggerated. Some 271 Helldivers were lost to antiaircraft fire and 18 to Japanese fighters. It might be said of the Helldiver that it only reached full maturity, and was only fully finding its way, when the war ended. Helldivers were among the hundreds of warplanes that overflew the surrender ceremony on the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945.

Industry turned out 7,141 Helldivers, including SBF versions assembled by Fairchild and SBWs from Canadian Car & Foundry. The versions built in the largest numbers were the SB2C-1 (978), SB2C-2 (1,112), SB2C-4 (2,045), and SB2C-5 (970). The SB2C-5 model did not see combat.

Originally Published December 21, 2016

This article first appeared at the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikipedia.

Trevor Filseth

Security, Africa

In less than ten years, Sudan has gone from being a human righs abusing dictatorship to democratic society pursuing peace and reconciliation.

The past month’s normalization of relations between Israel and both the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are the first peace deals between Israel and any Arab country in almost thirty years. They were immediately heralded as major steps forward for peace and stability throughout the Middle East, and in the days that followed, rumors spread that a deal with Sudan might be next

 In 2019, massive changes swept through the country; following a series of protests, a group of military officers overthrew Sudan’s longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir and replaced him with a transitional government. Atypically, the coup’s plotters reached out to protest leaders and brought them into the government, with the eventual goal of fully democratic elections in 2022. Given this, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hoped that Sudan would be willing to break from the past with Israel. To this end, he visited Khartoum, Sudan’s capital and the location of the infamous 1967 conference where the policy of “three nos”—no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel—was established.

Pompeo was rebuffed. Sudanese prime minister Abdalla Hamdok informed the secretary of state that the Sudanese government had “no mandate” to make such a move before elections took place. Despite this, the one-year-old government of Sudan has shown a clear willingness to make large moves on its internal affairs. At the same time Israel’s two peace deals dominate world headlines, Sudan quietly made two of its own, with rebel groups in the country’s tumultuous western Darfur region.

Darfur—“Land of the Fur” in Arabic—is a set of three provinces in western Sudan inhabited by the Fur, a non-Arab ethnic group. In 2003, following decades of state-sanctioned discrimination against the region’s non-Arab tribes, they began an insurgency that decisively defeated the Sudanese Army. In response, then President al-Bashir began to train and arm local Arab militias—the infamous “Janjaweed”—who became known for widespread atrocities targeting Fur villages, a campaign that then-Secretary of State Colin Powell described as a “genocide.” Although its worst horrors subsided as conflicts elsewhere in the region intensified, a low-level war has continued up to the present.

The first of Sudan’s two new agreements will, in principle, end this war. The agreement, concluded in Juba, South Sudan, on August 31, was conducted between the Sudanese transitional government and the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF), a broad alliance of smaller rebel groups. As part of the settlement, the rebels agreed to renounce violence and participate in civil politics, and the transitional government allotted them a significant fraction of parliament seats. Two rebel commanders refused to participate in the Juba negotiations, but both agreed to a ceasefire. For the time being, at least, the seventeen-year conflict seems to be over.

The second deal, inked three days later in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, did something possibly even more remarkable. Conducted between the government and Abdelaziz al-Hilu, one of the commanders who boycotted the Juba Agreement, the second deal mostly resembles the first. However, it included one major addition—it formally committed Sudan to secular government, separating Islam from political practice.

This is a sea change for Sudan, which has a long and colorful history of mixing religion and politics. In 1881, a tribal leader proclaimed himself the Mahdi, the prophesied redeemer of Islam, and drove British and Egyptian forces from the desert; his followers kept them at bay for nearly twenty years. Though the country became independent along secular lines in 1956, its longtime president Gaafar Nimeiry implemented shari’a law in 1983, and when he was overthrown in a military coup two years later, the new administration kept it. Sudanese fundamentalism reached its apex in 1989, when Omar al-Bashir came to power and turned Sudan into one of the most puritanical countries on Earth. Al-Bashir also supported jihadist organizations and hosted Osama bin Laden, earning the ire of the United States and, in 1993, a place on its State Sponsors of Terror list. Moreover, state fundamentalism helped to cause a devastating war with the predominantly Christian south, which secured its independence from the north in 2011. Though Sudan’s Islamism was significantly scaled back by 1996, and bin Laden departed to Afghanistan, controversies still periodically erupted thereafter. In one widely publicized 2007 incident, a British schoolteacher named her class’ teddy bear “Muhammad” and was subsequently convicted of religious hatred. The teacher was released after a week and returned to Britain, but not before ten thousand Sudanese marched through Khartoum demanding her execution. The Muslim Council of Britain said it was “appalled” by the incident.

Two previous peace agreements have been negotiated in Darfur, one in 2006 and the other in 2011; both deals eventually fell apart. But the third time might be the charm. President al-Bashir, long an opponent of reform, has been imprisoned, and his political party dissolved. The transitional government has stated publicly that it will to take the country in a different direction, and it has taken several actions that reflect this trend; it outlawed female genital mutilation, removed the death penalty for apostasy, and forbade the execution of minors, earning it plaudits from human-rights observers. The past month’s commitment to secularism at the national level and forbidding religious discrimination is another welcome step. A further step, as Pompeo observed, would be to negotiate an end to the ongoing conflict with Israel, as the UAE and Bahrain have done. A stable relationship with Israel could benefit Sudan greatly; Israel could serve as a trade partner, a customer for Sudanese oil, and perhaps a source of aid for natural disasters such as the floods currently ravaging the country. Although the transitional government refused Pompeo, they do not seem to have done so out of reflexive adherence to the Khartoum Resolution, and their refusal left open the possibility of a future agreement.

When the Arab Spring began in 2011, President al-Bashir was firmly in control of his country, the authorities cared little for human rights, and the Darfur war continued. Today, the new government has embarked on a course of democratic and secular reform, human rights abuses are being curtailed, and a crucial step has been taken towards ending the war. To continue the metaphor of seasons, Sudan is in autumn. The international community should take whatever actions are necessary to ensure that it does not slip into winter.

Trevor Filseth is an editorial intern for The National Interest.

Image: Reuters.

Giuseppe Maria Del Rosa

Security, Middle East

This surge in targeting U.S. interests in Iraq is part of a clear strategy of Tehran to step up pressure on U.S. troops to force them out of the country and take credit.

The United States Central Command (CENTCOM) announced on September 9 that it would formally withdraw 2,200 troops in Iraq. The decision will bring the number of troops deployed from 5,200 to 3,000. According to the CENTCOM commander Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie the decision comes due to “the great progress the Iraqi forces have made and in consultation and coordination with the government of Iraq and our coalition partners.”

While the drawdown announcement does not sound like something new, the timing could be quite considerable. Indeed, the decision comes a few weeks after Iraqi prime minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi paid a visit in Washington to discuss bilateral security and economic relations with U.S. president Donald Trump, in the light of the Islamic State’s (ISIS) reduction to disbanded cells. But the announcement also follows the U.S.-led coalition troops’ departure from Iraqi’s Taji military base on August 23, which marked the eighth military base to be handed over by U.S. troops to the Iraqi military.

The U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and the handover of military bases to the Iraqi troops stem from both domestic and international reasons. At the domestic level, the Trump administration is willing to reduce its military footprint in the Middle East to gain some leverage within its electoral base, due to the upcoming presidential elections. By doing so, President Trump is likely seeking to show that he is “bringing troops home” as he also mentioned during his nomination speech. Otherwise, given that ISIS has been reduced to a few scattered cells within Iraqi territory, should the U.S. administration continue to keep a large military presence in the country, it may turn out to be politically costly for the Trump administration. Besides, this underscores efforts by the administration to support al-Kadhimi and his commitment to restoring Iraq’s sovereignty.

At the international level, the recent surge in attacks against U.S. convoys and military bases by Iran-aligned militias in Iraq can be not overlooked. The spike in attacks had started in the aftermath of the U.S.-drone strike that killed Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the deputy chief of the Popular Mobilization Forces—an Iran-aligned umbrella organization mainly composed by Shia militias that is also officially part of Iraq’s security forces—at the beginning of January 2020.

The attacks grew dramatically over the months, especially between March 11 and August 18, with at least four attacks on convoys and up to twenty-eight attacks reported on bases housing U.S. forces, increasing further to almost daily occurrences in mid-August. With the spike in attacks steadily rising, several militant groups emerged to claim responsibility: Usbat al-Thairen in March, Ashab al-Kahf in July, and then the Saraya Thawrat Al-Eshreen Al-Thaniya. Regardless of the liability—sometimes totally absent—both the improvised explosive device (IED) and rockets’ attacks have been attributed to Iran-backed militias. This surge in targeting U.S. interests in Iraq is part of a clear strategy of Tehran to step up pressure on U.S. troops to force them out of the country and take credit for the withdrawal. Indeed, while frequently and directly targeting U.S. personnel and bases throughout the country, all the attacks rarely injured or killed U.S. soldiers. This further highlights how the main goal is trying to avoid any direct escalation in violence, while still maintaining an amount of pressure to show the door to the United States.

Therefore, while considerably reducing its military footprint within Iraq, further attacks against U.S. troops and interests in the country will likely continue to take place in the short term. Indeed, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, Washington is “committed to supporting Iraq’s security forces, including through the NATO Mission and the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, to curb the power of militias.” Even more, consider that curtailing militias’ power would also imply to reduce Tehran’s influence within the country.

However, a potential watershed could be represented by the U.S. presidential election next November. If President Trump should not be re-elected, the victory of the democratic candidate Joe Biden may lay the groundwork for a change in the U.S.-Iran relations, by also easing tensions within Iraq.

Giuseppe Maria De Rosa is a Regional Security Analyst for Le Beck, a geopolitical security consultancy based in the Middle East.

Image: Reuters.

Suresh Mahalingam, Adam Taylor

Society,

Not all vaccines currently being developed to prevent COVID-19 will be successful. Safety issues or a lack of protection will halt some. So, a broad portfolio of vaccine approaches and technologies is progressing through human trials is reassuring. 

The World Health Organisation lists about 180 COVID-19 vaccines being developed around the world.

Each vaccine aims to use a slightly different approach to prepare your immune system to recognise and fight SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

However, we can group these technologies into five main types. Some technology is tried and trusted. Some technology has never before been used in a commercial vaccine for humans.

As we outline in our recent paper, each technology has its pros and cons.

1. DNA/RNA-based

DNA and RNA vaccines use fragments of genetic material made in the lab. These fragments code for a part of the virus (such as its spike protein). After the vaccine is injected, your body uses instructions in the DNA/RNA to make copies of this virus part (or antigen). Your body recognises these and mounts an immune response, ready to protect you the next time you encounter the virus.

Pros

• these vaccines can be quickly designed based on genetic sequencing alone

• they can be easily manufactured, meaning they can potentially be produced cheaply

• the DNA/RNA fragments do not cause COVID-19.

Cons

• there are no approved DNA/RNA vaccines for medical use in humans, hence their alternative name: next-generation vaccines. So they are likely to face considerable regulatory hurdles before being approved for use

• as they only allow a fragment of the virus to be made, they may prompt a poor protective immune response, meaning multiple boosters may be needed

• there’s a theoretical probability vaccine DNA can integrate into your genome.

The speed at which these vaccines can be designed, needing only the genetic sequence of the virus, is why these vaccines were among the first to enter clinical trials.

An RNA vaccine, mRNA-1273, being developed by Moderna and the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, advanced to clinical testing just two months after the virus was sequenced.

2. Virus vectors

These vaccines use a virus, often weakened and incapable of causing disease itself, to deliver a virus antigen into the body. The virus’ ability to infect cells, express large amount of antigen and in turn trigger a strong immune response make these vaccines promising.

Examples of viruses used as vectors include vaccinia virus (used in the first ever vaccine, against smallpox) and adenovirus (a common cold virus).

Pros

• highly specific delivery of antigens to target cells and high expression of antigen after vaccination

• often a single dose is enough to stimulate long-term protection.

Cons

• people may have existing levels of immune protection to the virus vector, reducing the effectiveness of the vaccine. In other words, the body raises an immune response to the vector rather than to the antigen

• low-scale production of some virus-vectored vaccines means they are less cost-effective.

One high-profile example is the University of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine AZD1222 (formerly known as ChAdOx1), one of the two vaccines the Australian government wishes to use should phase 3 clinical trials prove successful. This vaccine is based on a modified chimpanzee adenovirus.

Read more: The Oxford deal is welcome, but remember the vaccine hasn't been proven to work yet

Two adenovirus based COVID-19 vaccines have been approved for early or limited use internationally. These were developed by the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences with CanSino Biologics and the Gamaleya Research Institute, part of Russia’s health ministry.

Read more: Russian coronavirus vaccine results have been published – here's what they reveal

3. Inactivated

Inactivated vaccines are a tried and trusted method of vaccination. It’s the technology used in the vaccine against poliovirus and in some types of flu vaccines. Inactivated vaccines contain viruses treated with heat, chemicals, or radiation so they cannot replicate, but can still trigger an immune response.

Pros

• a known technology, generally considered safe

• can be used in people with weakened immune systems.

Cons

• low immunogenicity, so requires multiple boosters.

The Chinese government has granted emergency approval for limited use of an inactivated COVID-19 vaccine developed by Sinovac Biotech.

 

4. Live-attenuated virus

Live-attenuated vaccines are among the most successful existing vaccine strategies, already used to protect against measles and polio. These contain virus weakened in the lab. The virus is still viable (live) but cannot cause disease. After vaccination, the viruses in these vaccines grow and replicate, stimulating an excellent immune response.

Pros

• strong protection as vaccine mimics the natural infection process

• cost effective for large-scale manufacturing with a familiar regulatory approval pathway

• single immunisation without needing extra molecules (adjuvants) to stimulate the immune system.

Cons

• very rare potential to revert to a disease-causing state

• limited use in people with weakened immune systems due to potential safety concerns

• can require cold storage, which may limit potential for distribution.

Several live-attenuated COVID-19 vaccine candidates are currently in preclinical trials.

Our group, at Griffith University, has partnered with vaccine manufacturer Indian Immunologicals Ltd to develop a live-attenuated COVID-19 vaccine.

Read more: Could BCG, a 100-year-old vaccine for tuberculosis, protect against coronavirus?

5. Protein subunit

Subunit vaccines do not contain live components of the virus, but are made from purified pieces of the virus (protein antigens) that trigger an immune response. Again, this is an existing technology, used for instance in hepatitis B vaccines.

Pros

• with no live components, subunit vaccines are generally thought to be safe

• can be used in people with weakened immune systems and other vulnerable populations.

Cons

• the protein antigens that best elicit an immune response must be investigated in detail

• can stimulate an insufficient immune response meaning that protection is likely to require multiple boosters or for the vaccine to be given with an immune system stimulant.

The University of Queensland has developed a protein subunit vaccine for COVID-19 that is being combined with an immune stimulant made by CSL. It is another one of the vaccines Australia wishes to use, should phase 3 clinical trials prove successful.

Read more: Putting our money on two COVID vaccines is better than one: why Australia's latest vaccine deal makes sense

In a nutshell

Not all vaccines currently being developed to prevent COVID-19 will be successful. Safety issues or a lack of protection will halt some.

So, a broad portfolio of vaccine approaches and technologies is progressing through human trials is reassuring. We don’t want to put all our eggs in one basket.

Ultimately, it is likely we’ll need a repertoire of COVID-19 vaccines to offer widespread protection. Different vaccine formulations will ensure vaccination is safe and effective for all members of society, including infants, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems.

Read more: 5 ways our immune responses to COVID vaccines are unique

Suresh Mahalingam, Principal Research Leader, Emerging Viruses, Inflammation and Therapeutics Group, Menzies Health Institute Queensland, Griffith University and Adam Taylor, Early Career Research Leader, Emerging Viruses, Inflammation and Therapeutics Group, Menzies Health Institute Queensland, Griffith University

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

Image: Reuters

Michelle O'Shea, Daryl Adair, Hazel Maxwell, Megan Stronach

Sports, World

While the IOC advocates for political neutrality, the Olympics are inherently contested terrain — a celebration of athleticism and, by virtue of national teams, a stage for geopolitical triumphs and tensions.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has long tried to insulate itself from politics in society, but wider issues have always been a part of sport - including the Olympics.

Sometimes political statements have been subtle and accommodated by the IOC, such as Cathy Freeman’s victory lap at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, with the Aboriginal and Australian flags draped on her shoulders — a symbol of hope for reconciliation.

The Olympics have, of course, also been subject to more confronting actions: Nazi salutes at the 1936 Berlin Games, political boycotts of the 1980 and 1984 Games and a terrorist attack at the 1972 Munich Games.

While the IOC advocates for political neutrality, the Olympics are inherently contested terrain — a celebration of athleticism and, by virtue of national teams, a stage for geopolitical triumphs and tensions.

Athletes are obviously individuals and, increasingly, many are seeking a voice on matters that transcend sport, such as racism and sexism. Last month, athletes used their collective power to bring every US professional league to a standstill for a day to protest the police shooting of a Black man.

In this new era of political activism, the IOC is being provoked to reevaluate its staunchly apolitical stance. Just how the movement will allow activism — in what forms and what types — remains a big question.

Proposed guidelines on political expression

At the centre of the debate is Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter, which purports to “protect the neutrality of sport and the Olympic Games”, stating

no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in the Olympic areas.

Protests and demonstrations are therefore forbidden at all Olympic venues and ceremonies.

As athlete activism has become more visible in recent years, the IOC sought to revise its guidelines around protests for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Read more: Sit on hands or take a stand: why athletes have always been political players

This followed several medal podium protests by athletes outside the games, including Australian swimmer Mack Horton refusing to stand beside China’s Sun Yang at the world championships.

The new guidelines are intended to set parameters for what is allowed and what isn’t. Olympic athletes are entitled to “express their opinions”, but not during competitions or at the Olympic Village, medal ceremonies and other official ceremonies. This is allowed elsewhere: press conferences, team meetings and social media.

So, on the face of it, athletes have more liberties: their use of social media, for example, is less constrained than in the past.

No clear line in the sand

As ever, though, the devil is in the detail. The new guidelines also outline what constitutes unacceptable dissent: displaying political messaging (such as signs or armbands), gestures of a political nature (hand gestures or kneeling) and refusing to follow ceremony protocol.

From the perspective of the IOC, there is a clear demarcation between what constitutes a protest and expressing one’s views.

But athletes have been left confused — and continue to feel constrained by the new rules. For example, the rule would seem to allow an athlete to express support for Black Lives Matter at a press conference — but not wear a BLM t-shirt. Is one considered an expression of solidarity against racism, the other a political protest?

And what if athletes kneel or raise a fist during a medal ceremony — a very common form of protest in sports today? The IOC is asserting that actions like these will be punished.

Frustratingly, the revised guidelines are not only imprecise, the penalties arising from breaches are vague - to be decided on a “case-by-case basis as necessary”.

Of course, one must also consider the flip side. Freedom to speak on a global stage may also mean athletes advocating for causes that do not align with themes the IOC endorses, such as racial or gender equality.

As Chelsey Gotell, chairperson of the International Paralympic Committee’s athletes’ council, put it,

We all know that athlete protests at the games is something of a Pandora’s box. The last thing we want to do is create a free-for-all at the games where [Paralympic] athletes are free to protest on any subject they like, including ones the wider world will find repulsive.

Punishing or removing athletes who speak up

Perhaps not surprisingly, the revised guidelines have received a mixed reaction from athletes. Global Athlete, an alliance advocating for athletes’ rights, claims Rule 50 breaches article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference.

Taking this cue, Canadian human rights lawyer and Olympian Nikki Dryden argues bans on protest constitute an unreasonable denial of freedoms, which should be vigorously resisted.

US Olympians have been especially outspoken, saying in a letter

The IOC … cannot continue on the path of punishing or removing athletes who speak up for what they believe in, especially when those beliefs exemplify the goals of Olympism.

In a slight departure from that view, an Australian Olympic Committee survey of athletes revealed most agreed with barring protests from competition and the podium, but there was an appetite for political expression beyond that.

The Olympics as a force for positive change

The IOC Athletes’ Commission is now consulting with athletes globally on different ways Olympians can express themselves in a “dignified way”, with a recommendation on Rule 50 expected in early 2021.

Whatever the IOC decides, one thing is clear: the “athlete voice” is more potent than ever. The recent athlete support for Black Lives Matter is a case in point. Sport should be aligned with causes like the fight against racism.

The Olympics — like sport generally — can also be a place where advocacy actually leads to positive change.

For example, under Saudi Arabian law, women were once not permitted to participate at the Olympics. However, the IOC pressured the Saudi Olympic Committee to send female athletes to the Olympics, and in 2012 its ban on women competitors was lifted.

We only need to think back to Freeman’s victory lap at the 2000 Sydney Olympics as an example of the power of the Olympic stage to make a positive statement. Without this type of wider community engagement, sport has limited meaning. Freeman gave premium value to that Olympic moment — and other athletes can, too.

Michelle O'Shea, Senior Lecturer Management, Western Sydney University; Daryl Adair, Associate Professor of Sport Management, University of Technology Sydney; Hazel Maxwell, Senior Lecturer - Health, University of Tasmania, and Megan Stronach, Post Doctoral Research Fellow, University of Technology Sydney

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

Image: Reuters

Warfare History Network

History, Europe

Scandinavian volunteers took part in Nazi Germany’s 1942 summer offensive against the Soviets—and paid a heavy price at the Demyansk Pocket.

On the surface, it may seem odd that men of conquered nations would eagerly sign up to fight for their masters, but that is exactly what happened in Scandinavia in the 1940s.

Although a small number of Scandinavians served in the German armed forces before 1940, it was not until after the invasion of Denmark and Norway in April 1940 that Waffen-SS recruiting offices were opened in Copenhagen and Oslo.

This was a result of Himmler’s order to establish a Waffen-SS unit composed of volunteers from the two countries and the Netherlands: SS Wiking—which was to be filled by what was referred to as “Germanic recruits.”

The plan called for one regiment of Germans, one regiment of Dutch (Westland), one regiment of Scandinavians (Nordland), and a Finnish battalion. However, recruitment was not a roaring success as only 3,000 Scandinavians, including Finns, signed up.

The Germans tried again in 1941, hoping that the war between the Soviet Union and Finland would spur the recruitment effort. However, now the Danes and Norwegians were organized in national legions—the Norwegian Legion (DNL) and Frikorps Danmark.

The German attack on the Soviet Union, and Finland’s participation in that attack, made potential volunteers of right-wing nationalist groups who were not National Socialists and had, up to then, been skeptical. Anti-communism became the dominant recruitment theme. Potential recruits were encouraged to enlist in a war described as a crusade to protect Europe against Bolshevism. Furthermore, physical requirements for volunteers diminished in subsequent years as the war on the Eastern Front resulted in heavy casualties.

Many nationalities served in Germany’s elite Waffen-SS during World War II, including Scandinavians, and particularly Danes. The recruitment of foreigners was designed to overcome the strict limits imposed on the growth of the Waffen-SS by the Wehrmacht, which had established a virtual monopoly on recruiting in Germany. This forced the Waffen-SS to look outside Germany for manpower.

Prior to 1940 there were only a few volunteers, but after the invasions of Norway and Denmark in the spring of 1940, their numbers increased considerably. The Scandinavians in German service were primarily Norwegians and Danes although there was also a smattering of Swedes and one battalion of Finns.

There is general agreement in the sources that over 20,000 Norwegians and Danes joined the Waffen-SS during the war. These break down to around 13,000 Danes, 7,000 Norwegians, 1,500 Finns, and a few hundred Swedes. Of approximately 13,000 Danish citizens who volunteered for German armed service during World War II, some 7,000 were accepted.

The vast majority—around 12,000—volunteered for the Waffen-SS, and that organization admitted around 6,000. In looking at the number of Danes, it should be remembered that the size of the prewar Danish Army was only 6,600. The Finns spent most of their time in SS Division Wiking but were withdrawn to Finland in 1943. The Swedes served for the most part in Army Group North’s sector.

At any one time, about 3,000 Scandinavians served at the front and acquitted themselves well. The SS Division Nordland, for example, won the fifth highest number of Knight’s Crosses of all the Waffen-SS divisions. However, the Scandinavian volunteers never reached the large numbers envisioned by SS chief Heinrich Himmler.

The greatest number of Danes served in three different formations: Frikorps Danmark (Danish Legion), SS Division Wiking, and, after the disbandment of the so-called legions in 1943, the SS Division Nordland. Approximately 1,500 Danish volunteers came from the German minority in southern Jutland, and they served mainly in SS Division Totenkopf and to some extent in that division’s infamous 1st SS Brigade.

The first group of Danish volunteers was deployed in the summer of 1941 when SS Division Wiking participated in the attack on the Soviet Union; only a few hundred Danes served in this division at any one time. The majority of them were transferred to SS Division Nordland after two years of serving in Wiking; most Danish volunteers were still undergoing training in Frikorps Danmark when Wiking fought in the Ukraine.

Frikorps Danmark was created on June 25, 1941, within a few days following the German invasion of the Soviet Union. About 500 volunteers signed up in the first couple of weeks, but the unit grew to about 1,000-1,200 in the following months. The creation of the Frikorps was accepted by the Danish government and the Danish Army, and officers who wished to serve in the Frikorps were given a leave to do so from the Danish Army. Both the government and the army sent representatives to the departure ceremony of the Frikorps as the troops left Denmark and marched off to war.

Many of the Scandinavian volunteers were veterans from the Finnish Winter War against the Soviets or had seen service in the Norwegian and Danish Armies; similar legions were recruited in the Netherlands and Flanders and were organized in cooperation with SS headquarters in Berlin and the various national Nazi parties.

This arrangement with the various Nazi parties in occupied Europe served to underline the national character of the legions and gave them some autonomy by appointing officers from within their ranks rather than Germans. It was also designed to foster the anti-communist theme and counter the belief in the occupied countries that the volunteers were composed only of people who were pro-German. However, recruits continued to come mainly from Nazi circles in the occupied countries.

The legions never reached full regimental strength in the early years. Their training and equipment were not the best, they had no armor, and there was a shortage of heavy weapons.

In early 1942, the Norwegian Legion (Den Norske Legion) was sent to the siege lines around Oranienburg and Leningrad, where they spent a frustrating 18 months slugging it out with the Russians in almost World War I-like conditions as their strength dwindled and reinforcements dried up. The Danes faced equally dismal or worse conditions when they were sent into the Demyansk Salient to reinforce the SS Totenkopf Division in the summer of 1942.

Some of the general histories of World War II on the Eastern Front make only brief reference to the epic struggle that took place over the Demyansk Salient during the spring and summer of 1942. Consequently, the reader will find it useful to learn what this struggle was all about and how it factored into the strategic plans of both the Soviets and Germans.

At times Demyansk is described as a salient extending eastward from the main German defensive lines, and at other times, when totally encircled, as a pocket. Depending on the situation, it will be referred to here as one or the other.

While the role of the Danish Waffen-SS was, in many respects, minor in the overall scope of the conflict on the Eastern Front, it resulted in the worst single bloodletting suffered by Danish volunteers in Word War II. Since little has been written in English about the Scandinavian volunteers in the Waffen-SS, here is a summary that attempts to fill that void.

The Strategic Setting

The primary purpose of the Soviet winter offensive that began in December 1941 was to eliminate the German threat to Moscow posed by Generalfeldmarschall Fedor von Bock’s Army Group Center. The Soviet success in the battle for Moscow delivered a serious blow to the mantle of German invincibility and caused Stalin and the Soviet High Command (Stavka) to become overly optimistic and ambitious. The result was that Stavka extended the offensive the whole length of the Eastern Front—from northern Finland in the north to the Black Sea in the south. The hoped-for results were the destruction of Army Group Center, the relief of Leningrad, and driving the Germans out of the Crimea and the Donets Basin.

In retrospect it is obvious that Soviet objectives were too ambitious. While the battle for Moscow had been a serious setback for the Germans, they were by no means as shattered and exhausted as the Soviets seem to have assumed. By attacking everywhere, the Soviets diluted their efforts. Also, by extending the conflict through the spring thaw, they created a condition favoring the defenders.

This allowed the Germans to mount an extraordinary defense in a climate characterized by bitter cold and deep snow—conditions for which the German soldiers were neither prepared nor equipped. The Soviets also suffered; a look at the casualty figures tells the story. The Soviets suffered a staggering 620,000 killed between January and March 1942 while, at the same time, the German death toll was roughly 136,000.

This ratio remains essentially the same when total casualties (killed, wounded, captured, and missing) are considered. Furthermore, the Soviet mobility, operational effectiveness, and supply apparatus were not yet capable of supporting these massive offensives over extended distances. In his memoirs Soviet Marshal Georgi Zhukov notes angrily, “If you consider our losses and what results were achieved, it will be clear that it was a Pyrrhic victory.”

The Soviet strategy of wearing the Germans down did not work, and, in return for huge losses, the Soviets gained little territory and were faced with having to rebuild their weakened forces before an expected German summer offensive, which the Soviets assumed would have Moscow as its main objective. When the Germans struck with the main effort in the south, they found the Soviet military in a precarious posture similar to that of the previous year. This was to a large extent the result of the widely dispersed Soviet efforts in the winter and spring.

Army Group North’s Southern Sector and Demyansk

On both sides of the boundary between Army Groups Center and North, the Russians had managed to drive deep into the German front. At one point it appeared that they would be able to encircle the Ninth Army and the Third Panzer Army. This possible calamity was averted, however, and Feldmarschall Günther von Kluge, commanding Army Group Center after Bock was relieved in early 1942, was even able to push the Soviets back in some areas.

The Russians did control a huge bulge extending into German lines around Toropets, in the northern part of Army Group Center’s sector. The northern part of the bulge actually extended into Army Group North’s sector as well, from Kholm in the southwest to Demyansk, a city located approximately 100 miles south of Leningrad, in the northeast.

Army Group North, commanded by Feldmarschall Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb, consisted of two armies, the Eighteenth under General Georg von Küchler and the Sixteenth under General Ernst Busch. The Eighteenth Army was in the north, around Leningrad, and its front extended south as far as the northern shore of Lake Ilmen. Busch’s Sixteenth held the southern part of the army group’s sector from Lake Ilmen to a point near the town of Kholm.

The Soviets hurled nine armies against Army Group North in their winter offensive, trying to break the siege of Leningrad and push the German front away from Moscow by levering it away from the strategic Valday Hills. It was even hoped that Küchler’s and Busch’s armies could be encircled and destroyed.

Sixteenth Army tied into the LIX Corps of Army Group Center in the vicinity of Kholm. Its front was long because it incorporated a large salient extending toward the Valday Hills and ran northeastward from Kholm, then east past the city of Demyansk, and then back in a west-northwest direction to the city of Staraya Russa, south of Lake Ilmen.

During the German drive to the east in 1941, II Corps of the Sixteenth Army, under Lt. Gen. Walter Graf Brockdorff-Ahlenfeldt, had captured Demyansk, reached the strategically important Valday Hills, and cut the railway line between Moscow and Leningrad. But here the corps became stuck. They held out in these forward positions throughout the early winter, although the Soviets gave this salient, sticking out like a finger eastward for over 60 miles from the main German line of resistance, special attention.

The elongated salient was important to both the Germans and the Soviets, and for much the same reasons. Hitler and the OKH (Oberkommando des Heeres) viewed the salient as an ideal jumping-off point for a possible resumed offensive against Moscow. Stavka was well aware of this, and the salient took on added importance in its calculations as the Soviets misread the enemy intentions in the expected German offensive: Stavka referred to the Demyansk Salient as a dagger pointed at Moscow.

The salient also posed a serious flank threat against the gigantic bulge the Soviets had driven into Army Group Center in the Toropets-Velikiye Luki area. If the Germans could mount a southward offensive from the Demyansk Salient in conjunction with a northward offensive by Army Group Center, a large pocket of Soviet forces would be encircled.

While the Germans were aware of the opportunities presented by the Toropets bulge and the overextension of their enemy, they were unable to do anything about it. The German armies were bled white in the offensive of 1941 and the subsequent Soviet winter offensive. The bloodletting could not be offset by replacements that were slow in arriving, and there were virtually no reserves. The observations of General Gotthard Heinrici, commander of the Ninth Army, show how drastic the personnel situation was. He reported that his battalions were down to about 70 men in strength, with an average of seven light and heavy machine guns each.

Because of its importance to both sides, the Demyansk Salient became one of the most hotly contested areas of the Eastern Front, and both sides fought over it bitterly. Brockdorff-Ahlenfeldt, commanding II Corps assigned to the Sixteenth Army, was given the mission of defending the Demyansk Salient. He was a 54-year-old aristocrat who had entered the German Army in 1907 and had distinguished himself as a corps commander in the French Campaign of 1940.

When the Soviet offensive began in Army Group North’s sector in January 1942, Brockdorff-Ahlenfeldt’s II Corps had three divisions: the 12th Infantry Division from Mecklenburg, the 32nd Infantry Division from Pomerania and Prussia, and the 123rd Infantry Division from Brandenburg. These divisions from northern Germany had taken part in the German invasion of Russia in 1941, and, as a result of the eastward drive and subsequent fighting, they were, as other German units, well below their authorized strength.

In addition, the men were fighting in summer uniforms with the temperature at times falling to below minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit, virtually immobilizing both men and machinery. While frontline troops were given additional clothing by rear area personnel, it was of little help since those personnel also had only summer uniforms.

The Soviet Northwest Front was commanded by Lt. Gen. Pavel Kurochkin. Its mission was to encircle the northern flank of the Sixteenth Army—a goal to be accomplished by two large drives by troops from both the Northwest Front and the Kalinin Front.

Three armies made up the northern drive. The 11th Army, under Lt. Gen. V.I. Morosov, attacked in the Lake Ilmen area; the 34th Army, under Maj. Gen. Nikolai Bersarin, concentrated on the Valday Hills area; and the 1st Shock Army.

The southern drive was made up of the 53rd Army, under Maj. Gen. Aleksandr Ksenofontov, the 22nd Army under Lt. Gen. V.A. Yashkevich, and the 3rd Shock Army. These units were to make the breakthrough to Kholm and constituted the southern force that was to encircle Demyansk. These attacks were supported by large-scale partisan activities in the German rear, particularly in the Staraya Russa area.

The attack in the north was initiated on January 7, 1942, by the 11th Soviet Army, elements of the 1st Shock Army, and two Guards Rifle Corps (1st and 2nd) released from Stavka’s strategic reserve. Two days later the 3rd Shock Army from the Kalinin Front, along with the 53rd and 22nd Armies, attacked westward against Kholm and Lake Seeliger on the boundary between Army Group Center and Army Group North. A successful breakthrough in this area would leave the Soviets in a position to drive into the rear areas of both German army groups.

The German X Corps, commanded by General Christian Hansen, on II Corps’ left flank, was also driven back by relentless Soviet pressure. The X Corps, like II Corps, had three divisions, and these all ended up in the Demyansk Salient. These were the 30th Infantry Division from Schleswig-Holstein under General Kurt von Tippelskirch, the 290th Infantry Division from Hanover and Schleswig-Holstein under General Theodor Freiherr von Wrede, and the 3rd SS Totenkopf Division under the ruthless SS Obergrupenführer (equivalent to General der Infanterie) Theodor Eicke, who had once been in charge of all concentration camp guards.

The Soviets infiltrated between the strongpoints of the 290th Infantry Division and the 30th Infantry Division on the night of 7/8 January. Dawn on the 8th found strong Soviet infantry and tank formations already behind the 290th Infantry Division, and Soviet transport gliders also brought in troops and tanks onto frozen Lake Ilmen.

These infantry and tank forces crossed the ice and reached the junction of the Lovati, Redya, and Polisti Rivers, 25 miles to the rear of the 290th Division. A total of 19 Soviet infantry divisions, nine brigades, and several independent ski and tank battalions were meanwhile attacking the fronts of X and II Corps.

The main effort of the 11th Soviet Army was against the front of the 290th Division near Tutilovo. To the north, the Germans mounted a desperate defense but were overrun in vicious fighting. The right flank of the division held for another day, and then it collapsed. Withdrawing to the west to avoid encirclement, the 290th ran into fierce battles around various towns and strongpoints on its way.

The 1st and 2nd Soviet Guards Corps drove southward behind the 290th Infantry Division. The 2nd Guards attacked Parfino while the 1st Guards attacked toward Salueje; Soviet ski troops were approaching Staraya Russa. The Germans scraped together a motley array of rear area troops to try and hold them back while the 51st Infantry Regiment of the 18th Motorized Infantry Division was brought in from Simsk in an effort to stabilize the situation.

But the 290th Division became encircled and could only be supplied by air after January 25. The division repulsed a total of 146 enemy attacks between January 8 and February 13, the day it, with superhuman effort, finally was able to break out of the encirclement.

The II Corps front was also collapsing. The Soviets placed the main effort of their offensive on the boundary between Army Groups North and Center. Here they attacked on January 9 after a two-hour artillery preparation. Six rifle divisions along with several tank and ski battalions attacked on either side of Ostaskhov on Lake Seeliger.

The 53rd Army and elements of the 22nd Army and 3rd Shock Army smashed into and virtually annihilated two regiments of the 123rd Infantry Division, creating a large gap through which Soviet troops poured.

The 34th Soviet Army, reinforced by two Soviet airborne brigades, was meanwhile pressing against the salient from the east. By January 12, General Brockdorff-Ahlenfeldt had received permission to withdraw the easternmost part of his front.

When Brockdorff-Ahlenfeldt was appointed commander of all German forces in the pocket, X Corps commander Hansen, minus his divisions, was transferred to Staraya Russa to command German forces in this area.

The salient held by the Germans around Demyansk looked like a “misplaced thumb” on the map, in the words of U.S. Army historian Earl F. Ziemke. The pocket was threatened from the east by the Soviet 34th Army while the base of the salient was threatened by the First Shock Army from the north and the Third Shock Army and the 53rd Army from the south.

Operationally, OKH thought, the pocket performed two services: it kept Russian troops tied down, and it might be used as one arm of an encircling operation against the Toropets bulge, but the question was whether anything of the sort was intended or could be executed. If not, Feldmarschall Ritter von Leeb maintained, the pocket was valueless.

Leeb was greatly concerned about the situation on his front and called Führer Headquarters on January 12, proposing that his armies be withdrawn behind the Lovati River. Not surprisingly, Hitler immediately turned down the proposal. Leeb thereupon flew to East Prussia to personally argue his case; Hitler again refused. Leeb then requested to be relieved of his command, and Hitler agreed. General Georg Karl Friedrich Wilhelm von Küchler was given command of the army group; his place as commander of the Eighteenth Army was taken by General Georg Lindemann.

By mid-January the southern front of the Sixteenth Army had ceased to exist. The battered 123rd Infantry Division was reduced to defending strongpoints in the vicinity of Molvotisyn, and the division’s 415th and 416th Infantry Regiments were separated from the rest of the front. In 10 days of vicious fighting these two regiments made their way through enemy lines and back to their own front. When they arrived, their combined strength was a mere 900 men.

The 32nd Infantry Division (Maj. Gen. Wilhelm Bohnstedt) and the 123rd Infantry Division (Maj. Gen. Erwin Rauch) from Brandenburg managed eventually to construct a temporary southern front—a front 118 miles wide. However, the combined strength of the two divisions had fallen drastically to about 12,000 men.

The Russians could not fully exploit their initial successes because isolated German units formed strongpoints in villages that were bypassed by the initial Soviet assaults, and follow-on Russian units had to divert forces to try to overcome them. Some of the strongpoints fell, while others held out for weeks. The desperate resistance by these strongpoints helped to stabilize the front.

However, the situation became critical as II Corps was in danger of being encircled. Fresh Soviet divisions poured into the 56-mile-wide gap in the south, forcing Bohn-
stedt’s and Rauch’s divisions to fall back. A message from II Corps to the Sixteenth Army stated that they would withdraw behind the Lovati River as soon as an opportunity presented itself. The answer, from OKH, was short and curt: Demyansk was to be defended to the last man.

The II Corps withdrew all battalions that were under the control of SS Obergruppenführer Eicke and hastily transported them to the Salueje area to block the western front where these combat groups occupied a baseline in case the Soviets cut the salient near its base. They managed to do this just in time since the troops of the 34th Soviet Army and the 1st Guards Corps met on February 8 near Rambushevo on the Lovati River. The Demyansk Salient had become the Demyansk Pocket, containing approximately 100,000 German troops ready to be slaughtered.

By January 23 the city of Kholm, about 56 miles southwest of Demyansk, was encircled by the 3rd Shock Army. The Germans’ 81st Silesian Infantry Division had just arrived in Army Group Center’s sector and was immediately sent north toward Kholm. The troops had no winter clothing or winter equipment, but they repulsed the attack of four Soviet divisions in minus 46-degree cold. Although this action disrupted the attack of the 4th Shock Army, the situation remained critical.

Kholm served to break the force of the Soviet flood. If the Germans lost this city, the Soviets would be able to drive into the rear of both Army Group Center and the Sixteenth Army. Maj. Gen. Theodor Scherer, commander of the lightly armed 281st Security Division, was appointed commandant of Fortress Kholm. He scraped together whatever troops he could lay his hands on, which eventually numbered about 5,000.

Contact between the troops in Kholm and their neighbors was lost at the end of January. Kholm, like Demyansk, had become a pocket that could only be supplied by air.

The six divisions available to Brockdorff-Ahlenfeldt in the Demyansk Pocket were disposed as follows: The 12th Mecklenburg and the 32nd Pomeranian Infantry Divisions were located east and south of Demyansk, while the remnants of the 123rd Division were fighting in the southwest part of the pocket. The two infantry divisions from northern Germany—30th and 290th—defended north of Demyansk, while part of the SS Totenkopf Division [under SS Standartenführer (colonel) Max Simon] was in the northeast. The combat groups under Eicke held positions in the west. The size of the pocket was 1.865 square miles, the length of the front that had to be defended was about 186 miles, and the distance across the pocket was some 30-45 miles.

In his first order of the day after the pocket was formed, Brockdorff-Ahlenfeldt defiantly stated, “There are 96,000 of us. The German soldier is superior to the Russian; this has been proven. So, let the difficult times come; we are ready.”

Unlike the earlier pocket at Sukhinichi, Hitler refused to abandon either Kholm or Demyansk. After being assured by the Luftwaffe that the reinforced 1st Air Fleet could deliver the required 240-265 tons of daily supplies to the two pockets, Hitler ordered that the pockets be defended until relieved.

Successful Resupply

On February 18, the OKH ordered the redeployment of the air transport command out of the Smolensk area and into Luftflotte 1’s area of operation—an operation that used almost all of the Luftwaffe’s transport capability, as well as elements of its bomber force. Since the Demyansk Pocket contained two usable airfields at Demyansk and Peski, the supply effort involved both airdrop and air-landing (glider) operations.

The weather improved in the middle of February, but there was still considerable snow on the ground. Supply operations were generally successful, due primarily to the weakness of the Soviet air forces in the area.

The Luftwaffe flew 33,086 sorties until the Demyansk Pocket was evacuated in March 1943. The two pockets—Demyansk and Kholm—received 59,000 tons of supplies by both ground and air. A total of 31,000 replacement troops were brought in and 36,000 wounded evacuated. But the cost to the Luftwaffe was significant. It not only lost 265 aircraft, but the loss of 387 experienced airmen was even more serious. For their part, the Soviet Air Force reportedly lost 408 aircraft, including 243 fighters.

Author Werner Haupt incorrectly writes that this was the first air bridge in history, while Paul Carell notes that in 14,500 missions—apparently when the pocket was encircled—the Ju-52 transport planes of the Luftwaffe established the first airlift in history; other writers have made similar incorrect statements. In the 1940 German invasion of Norway, an air bridge was established from Germany and Denmark to Norway. Five hundred eighty-two transport aircraft flew 13,018 sorties and brought in 29,280 troops and 2,376 tons of supplies. In addition, smaller air bridge operations took place from Oslo to the other isolated landing sites on the long Norwegian coast.

But the success of the Luftwaffe in bringing in supplies and replacements in Russia, as well as evacuating casualties, convinced Hitler and Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring that they could conduct effective airlift operations in other places on the Eastern Front. Later, when the Sixth German Army was encircled at Stalingrad, Göring proposed that it be supplied by air. He and Hitler theorized that the outcome would be similar to Demyansk and Kholm since the Sixth Army was in fighting condition.

They went on to posit that with the Luftwaffe supplying the army, the Soviets would expand their strength to contain the encirclement and this would allow the time needed by the German forces to regroup and counterattack.

However, the conditions under which the two operations (Demyansk and Stalingrad) had to be conducted differed greatly. While a single corps with about six understrength divisions was encircled in Demyansk, a heavily reinforced army was trapped in Stalingrad. Whereas the Demyansk and Kholm Pockets together needed around 265 tons of supplies by air each day, the Sixth Army required an estimated daily supply of 800 tons, which had to be delivered over much greater distances. The Stalingrad airlift also faced much better organized Soviet air forces.

By the winter of 1942-1943, then, the German air transport forces had already suffered heavy losses, and the distances to good airfields with maintenance and repair facilities were much greater. The Luftwaffe simply lacked the resources needed to supply Stalingrad.

The Last Stand

Ernst Busch’s Sixteenth Army began planning to break into the Demyansk Pocket from the west after Hitler’s refusal to allow a withdrawal behind the Lovati River. A group was formed under the command of General Walther Kurt von Seydlitz-Kurzback, the commander of the 12th Infantry Division. (This was the same Seydlitz who was captured at Stalingrad and became a key figure in a Soviet-sponsored anti-Nazi faction.)

Seydlitz’s group was substantial and included two infantry divisions, two light infantry divisions, a motorized infantry division, a security regiment, a panzer regiment, a Luftwaffe field regiment, and various construction units, assault gun batteries, and air defense battalions. The plan called for a simultaneous westward attack by forces in the pocket; it was hoped that the two attacks would link up on the Lovati River.

Group Seydlitz-Kurzback and the attackers from within the pocket reached the Lovati River near the destroyed village of Rambushevo on April 21, 1942. The men of the SS Totenkopf Division and the spearhead of Group Seydlitz-Kurzback were still separated by a 1,000-foot-wide swollen and turbulent river.

As soon as bridges were built, a corridor existed again between the main German front of Sixteenth Army from Staraya Russa to Kholm and the divisions in the Demyansk area. The Demyansk Pocket had again become the Demyansk Salient, as the corridor barred to the Soviets the way across the land bridge between Lakes Ilmen and Seelinger.

The Rambuschevo Corridor was worryingly narrow in the beginning, though, and the Germans set out to widen it. There was a serious danger that the Soviets could cut the salient off at its base. That would have annulled the fighting for the corridor, which had cost the Germans 3,335 killed and over 10,000 wounded.

The Russians, increasingly anxious to wipe out the Demyansk Salient, made a number of desperate assaults on the thin Rambuschevo Corridor; Obergruppenfüher Eicke had the primary responsibility for keeping the corridor open. The Germans were fighting desperately in subzero temperatures and in three feet of snow to prevent the Russians from severing the connection to Staraya Russa and the rest of Army Group North.

The influential Eicke demanded reinforcements to keep his forces alive, but there were none available from either the Sixteenth Army or Army Group North. OKH, in looking around for available forces, decided to send Frikorps Danmark into the salient.

Frikorps Danmark at Demyansk

Frikorps Danmark was located in Posen-Treskau where its Danish commander, the charismatic Danish/Russian aristocrat Christian von Schalburg, was training his organization, which had been plagued by internal dissent, and had transformed it into a solid and well-trained reinforced battalion after integrating 10 German officer instructors with combat experience into key posts to stiffen the unit. But, as with its sister formation, the DNL, the majority of the Frikorps commanders were Scandinavian, not German.

Frikorps Danmark had three infantry companies and one heavy weapons company. The latter consisted of two platoons of 75mm infantry guns, one platoon of 50mm antitank guns, and a combat engineer platoon, all at full strength. Most of the troops lacked combat experience, but the majority of the officers and noncommissioned officers had some, either from the Finnish Winter War, from service in the Wiking Division, or against the Germans in 1940. Although the unit was at full strength, it had only seven heavy-caliber weapons.

Frikorps Danmark was declared combat ready in May 1942. In the early days the volunteer legions were considered second rate compared to German units and were judged unsuited for anything but static warfare and antipartisan fighting—a fact that goes a long way to explain their lack of heavy-caliber weapons.

This perception was about to change. After receiving its deployment order, the Frikorps was flown into the Demyansk Salient from Heilingenbeil near Köningsberg on May 8, 1942. Historian Claus Bundgård Christensen and others have written that 1,200 Danes were flown into the pocket, but other sources mention a lower number. Christensen may have meant the total number in Frikorps Danmark or included a number of Danes already serving in the 3rd SS Totenkopf Division.

The Danes were attached to Eicke’s SS Totenkopf Division and immediately thrown into the fighting where they took up positions along the Robja River with the mission of keeping the Russians from expanding a bridgehead they had in the area of Ssutoki. The Soviets were on the far bank but had managed to get some troops over to the German-occupied side where they formed a small bridgehead. If they could expand the bridgehead and ferry across some tanks, the Reds would be in a position to launch a full-scale attack that would spell trouble for the hard-pressed defenders of the Rambushevo Corridor.

The Danish commander Schalburg knew that the Soviet bridgehead had to be destroyed. He ordered Johannes Just Nielsen, a veteran of the Winter War and considered one of the best officers in the Frikorps, to carry out an attack on the small bridgehead on the night of May 27/28. Nielsen divided his force into two groups that approached the Soviets from different directions. The attackers managed to get close to the Russians in the darkness without being detected, and Nielsen threw a grenade into the enemy positions as a signal to start the attack.

The Danes rushed the Russian trenches and, although the Reds had a considerable superiority in numbers, the shock of the sudden attack threw them into a panic. Some were killed while the survivors jumped into the river and swam for safety.

While the operation was a complete success, the Russians on the far bank opened up with mortars and artillery. One barrage killed Nielsen, who fell into the river and disappeared. Instead of occupying and remaining in the Russian positions, the Danes made the mistake of withdrawing to their own lines.

Nielsen’s death at Ssutoki was only the first blow to the Frikorps leadership. A few days after Nielsen’s death, the Soviets attacked across the river and reestablished their old bridgehead. The earlier withdrawal now forced the Danes to make another, more costly, attack on June 2, 1942, to try to eliminate the Russian bridgehead. The element of surprise did not work a second time as the Soviets knew the Danes were coming; they blanketed the area with artillery and mortar fire while the Frikorps was still in its assembly areas.

Schalburg went forward to encourage his men and get the attack going, but he was badly wounded when his leg was shattered as he stepped on a mine. His men tried to bring him back, but another Soviet barrage instantly killed him and the two men trying to carry him to safety.

Despite the heavy enemy fire, Alfred Jonstrup, another veteran from the Winter War, managed to recover his commander’s body. The Soviet indirect fire and the loss of the Frikorps commander brought the Danish attack to a standstill despite merciless fighting that resulted in 21 Danes killed and another 58 wounded. The Soviets held their bridgehead.

Schalburg’s body was brought back to Denmark, where he was given a hero’s funeral with full military honors. He became a martyr for the Danish Nazis, and his example encouraged a fresh wave of volunteers for the Frikorps, which needed new reinforcements badly as a result of the continuous fighting at Demyansk.

A friend of Schalburg from Finnish Winter War days, SS Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) Knud Börge Martinsen took temporary command of Frikorps Danmark and stabilized the situation over the next few days while the Danes waited for a new commander to be appointed.

The new commander, who was appointed by the Germans within a week, was an aristocrat named Hans Albert von Lettow-Vorbeck, who had served in SS-Division Wiking and had been on his way to take command of SS-Legion Flanders when he was diverted to Demyansk.

In the meantime, parts of the SS Totenkopf Division were preparing to launch an operation code named Danebrog to secure the area up to the Pola River and establish a defensible line. The Frikorps had an important role in this operation: the capture of the town of Bolschoje Dubowizy.

Von Lettow-Vorbeck arrived on June 10 and was briefed on the operation scheduled for the next morning. The Danes made a frontal assault on the town at dawn, supported by German artillery, but had to struggle through flooded meadows and swamps before reaching their objective. The Danes entered Dubowizy in the face of bitter enemy resistance and started clearing the town house by house, but their attack was interrupted by a strong Russian counterattack. Two Frikorps company commanders, Boyd Hansen and Alfred Nielsen, were killed in the battle.

By 11 am on June 11, the Russians were on the verge of surrounding the 1st Company, commanded by Per Sörensen, a former officer in the prewar Danish Army and one of the original cadres in Frikorps Danmark. Sörensen eventually rose to head the Danish Waffen-SS before he and many other Danes and Norwegians died in the ruins of Berlin in 1945.

Lettow-Vorbeck decided to move to the front and personally order Sörensen to withdraw before the unit was encircled, but he was killed in a burst of Soviet machine-gun fire. Losing its second commander in a little more than a week had a serious impact on the Frikorps, and, not surprisingly, the Danish attack faltered and collapsed. The Soviets remained in control of Dubowizy. The Danes had 25 of their men killed in the fight for the town in addition to over 100 killed and wounded in the fighting at Ssutoki and the Pola River.

Obersturmbannführer Martinsen again took command of the Frikorps. This time the Germans did not appoint a new commander from the outside but confirmed Martinsen as the commander for the rest of the Frikorps’ existence. Martinsen survived the war but was tried and executed in Denmark for having murdered a fellow Danish SS officer whom he accused of having an affair with his wife.

In early July 1942, the depleted Danes defended a long front between Biakowo and Vassilievschtshina as the Soviets launched repeated attacks against their lines with the objective of cutting the Rambushevo Corridor, which was the only overland connection existing between Demyansk and the main German lines.

July 16, 1942, started out as a quiet day. The Danish soldiers at the front were waiting for a hot meal to be brought forward from the field kitchens behind the lines, but before the food could be delivered or consumed the Danes were subjected to an exceptionally heavy Russian artillery barrage that lasted for over an hour.

In typical fashion, masses of Soviet infantry then rushed toward the Danish defensive positions as soon as the shelling stopped. The Danes, stunned by the heavy barrage, fought back, but they quickly lost contact with the German unit on their right flank and were in imminent danger of being overrun.

Every man in the rear area—cooks, clerks, engineers, and communicators—was sent forward to try to stop the Soviet attack; Luftwaffe Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers were also called in to provide support. Sörensen’s 1st Company was again in the thick of things but was soon decimated and down to only 40 men from its earlier complement of 200. Sörensen called Martinsen and told him that his men would probably not be able to withstand another Soviet assault but that they would not abandon their trenches no matter what happened.

The fighting continued throughout the night. An entire Soviet infantry battalion supported by tanks drove directly into the remaining positions of the 1st Company. The Russians poured into the Danish trenches, resulting in several hours of hand-to-hand fighting as the combatants tried to kill each other with knives, grenades, and entrenching tools. The Russians finally gave up trying to overrun the Danes and withdrew after midnight. They had sustained heavy losses and simply did not have the power to capture the Danish defensive line. The Danes, too, were badly battered.

However, the battle was not yet over as the Russians brought in fresh reinforcements and the Germans also provided reinforcements in the morning in the form of two Jäger battalions—the 28th Jäger Battalion from Silesia and a battalion from the 38th Jäger Regiment. These two units attacked along the road in an attempt to link up with their comrades near Vassilievschtshina. The Russians repulsed the attack and threw the Germans back with heavy losses.

The Soviets attacked again the following morning with waves of fresh infantry supported by numerous T-34 tanks and fighter-bombers. As with the Norwegian Legion, the Danes had no armor or assault guns of their own and had to rely on the few antitank weapons and infantry guns in their heavy weapons company. For the most part they were rather helpless against the T-34s and could only crouch in their trenches as casualties mounted.

Incredibly, despite their losses, the Danes and the German Jägers managed to repel the Russians and stabilize the front line over the next few days. By July 21 the crisis was over. Stavka now appears to have concluded that the main German summer offensive was in the south and not against Moscow as in 1941 and began to withdraw forces from the northern front already in June after reportedly suffering 89,000 killed.

It is not surprising that the Frikorps casualties were heavy. Over 300 Danes were dead by early August, and only about 150 of the original force that was thrown into the fighting at Demyansk remained in the line in the form of two weak companies. The Frikorps had become combat ineffective, and in early August the decision was made to withdraw it for rest, refit, and to receive replacements.

The accomplishment of the Danes had not gone unnoticed, and General Walther von Bockdorff-Ahlefeldt wrote and thanked them for their courage: “Since the 8th of May the Danmark Legion has been positioned in the fortress. True to your oath, and mindful of the heroic death of your first commander, SS-Sturmbannführer Christian von Schalburg, you, the officers and men of the Legion, have always shown the greatest bravery and readiness to make sacrifices, as well as exhibiting exemplary toughness and endurance.

“Your comrades of the Army and Waffen-SS are proud of being able to fight shoulder to shoulder with you in the truest armed brotherhood. I thank you for your loyalty and bravery.”

After this endorsement, the Danes were withdrawn to Latvia at the beginning of August before heading home to Denmark for a homecoming parade through Copenhagen and three weeks of leave. The Frikorps had been in combat for three months without a break, and in that time they had lost two commanders, a sizable number of junior officers and NCOs, and hundreds of men.

According to the latest source on the subject, they had flown into the pocket with a fighting strength of 24 officers, 80 NCOs, and 598 men back on May 8. Only 10 officers, 28 NCOs, and 171 men were able to take part in the Copenhagen homecoming parade. Some of those who were missing from the parade were wounded and still in hospitals. There is no doubt, however, that the Frikorps was decimated in the Demyansk Pocket.

They had acquitted themselves well. The SS Totenkopf’s Order of the Day on August 3, 1942, credited them with killing 1,376 Russians and capturing 103 others along with over 600 heavy weapons. While this recognition was gratifying, it did little to raise the morale of the survivors, who were heckled and mocked by some of the anti-German crowd watching them march through Copenhagen.

Postscript for the Demyansk Pocket

The Demyansk Pocket was a source of constant concern for Army Group North. In a personal letter on September 14, 1942, Küchler attempted to persuade OKH that continuing to hold the pocket was useless. The II Corps, he wrote, had been fighting under adverse conditions since the previous winter. He worried about what might happen as winter was again approaching, and he desperately needed divisions in the salient to form reserves for both the Sixteenth Army and the army group.

General Franz Halder, OKH’s Chief of Staff, answered a week later. He recognized that the army group would gain 12 divisions by abandoning Demyansk but pointed out to Küchler that such a withdrawal would also free 26 Russian infantry divisions and seven tank brigades. In any case, it was all academic since Hitler’s Haltenbefehl (hold order) remained unchanged.

The Russians continued to attack the corridor linking the pocket to the main German defensive lines. The whole pocket was under continuous attack from November 1942 and, by mid-January 1943, the fighting had drained off the last army group reserves. General Kurt Zeitzler, the new OKH Chief of Staff, told Küchler on January 19, 1943, that he intended to raise the issue of evacuating the Demyansk Pocket with Hitler.

Army Group North had just suffered a serious setback south of Lake Ladoga, and Zeitzler and Küchler agreed that the principal reason for the setback was the shortage of troops; the only way to avoid similar mishaps in the future was to create reserves by giving up the Demyansk Pocket. To both officers it was a foregone conclusion that Hitler would adamantly resist such a proposal.

However, on the night of January 31, 1943, after a weeklong debate, Hitler finally accepted Zeitzler’s arguments. The earlier setback around Leningrad may have influenced Hitler’s change of mind since he was anxiously trying to keep Finland in the war and this involved holding around Leningrad.

OKH informed Küchler that it had been very difficult to get this decision and asked Küchler to withdraw quickly before Hitler changed his mind, but a quick withdrawal risked losing the vast quantities of equipment and supplies brought into the pocket over the past 13 months. Küchler decided to conduct a slow withdrawal that began on February 20, after three weeks preparation. He then collapsed the pocket in stages, completing the last on March 18, 1943.

Postscript for the Danish SS

After a month’s leave in Denmark, the Frikorps returned to the front in November 1941. It was originally intended that it join the 1st SS Brigade in Byelorussia, a unit infamous for its indiscriminate killing of civilians in areas associated with Soviet partisans. However, the deteriorating situation on the Eastern Front caused both the 1st SS Brigade and the Frikorps to be sent to the front at the Russian town of Nevel, some 250 miles west of Moscow. By the spring of 1943 the Frikorps had suffered so many combat losses that it was down to just over 630 men. It was withdrawn from the front line.

In the summer of 1943 the Danes from the Frikorps and SS Division Wiking were united in the new 24th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment Danmark of SS Panzergrenadier Division Nordland. Most Norwegians who had served in Wiking and other units were likewise united—in May, before the Danes joined them—into the 23rd SS Panzergrenadier Regiment Norge and also in SS Panzergrenadier Division Nordland. The third regiment was SS Panzergrenadier Regiment Nederland.

At the end of August 1943, most of the 3rd SS Panzerkorps, to which SS Division Nordland was assigned, was moved to Croatia to take part in antipartisan warfare. In December 1943, the unit was again moved north to the Oranienbaum Pocket southwest of Leningrad.

From there the division participated in the German retreat to Estonia and later to the Courland Pocket in Latvia. In January 1945, it was evacuated from Courland to Pomerania and, the next month, participated in the Sonnenwende Offensive before retreating to the Oder River north of Berlin. Already heavily decimated, SS Division Nordland retreated toward Berlin.

The remnants of Norge and Danmark, in a mixed battle group, fought in Berlin in late April and May 1945 alongside volunteers from the rest of Europe. The group was obliterated in the fighting for the German capital.

Most writers hold that about 2,000 Danes lost their lives on the Eastern Front. As a comparison, a recent book by Eirik Veum identifies 877 Norwegians who were killed on the Eastern Front. This number includes 21 frontline female nurses. But both the numbers for Danes and Norwegians are open to question. For example, a controversial memorial recently erected in Denmark—in central Jutland between the cities of Randers and Viborg—asserts that 4,000 Danish lives were lost on the Eastern Front.

Despite having authorized the Danes to serve in the Waffen-SS, the Danish government on June 1, 1945, a month after the war, adopted retroactive laws criminalizing various forms of collaboration and made armed service for Germany punishable. About 3,300 former soldiers were sentenced under this new law and served an average of two years in prison.

This article first appeared at the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikipedia.

 

Richard Douglas

Security,

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Durability 

When it comes to my optics, I want them to work no matter what. Rain and bumps don’t bother this water and shockproof scope. It’s also built with Smart Spherical Structure (SSS), making it steady and reliable. It’ll take the abuse from break barrel airguns to large caliber rifles.

I don’t know about you but I like clean, scratch-free glass. And that is why I am a fan of the flip-up lens caps that come with the scope. This reliability all comes at a heavy cost… literally heavy. The UTG Compact Scope weighs in at about 2 lbs. This isn’t ideal for hunters or anyone that is shooting on the go.

Elevation and Windage Turrets 

I have found that the turrets are crisp and precise with their 1/4 MOA adjustments. Although they don’t have caps, they lock and are resettable. I was able to make a few quick changes and the turrets were solid. Whenever I mounted the UTG on my .223 rifle, I had no problems zeroing in. And it also held zero after firing tens of rounds through it.

Parallax & Magnification 

With 3-12 magnification, I have plenty of power to reach out to 200 yards. The parallax is adjusted with a Side Wheel Adjustment System (SWAT). This crisp turret adjusts parallax from 10 yards to infinity. Adjustable zoom and parallax makes this scope even more adaptable to its environment.

Mounting and Rings 

I am surprised that this cost-effective scope comes with rings. They can fit onto picatinny or weaver rails, giving you lots of options. These rings also have quick release. You can just twist 2 latches and pop the scope off quick and easy.

My Verdict? 

The UTG Compact Scope is absolutely worth it. On top of being reliable and precise, it’s friendly to your wallet and backed by a lifetime warranty.

The weight is a bit much and the crosshairs are a little thick. Despite this, I still say this scope is excellent for the price point and performance.

Richard Douglas is a firearms expert and educator. His work has appeared in large publications like The Armory Life, Daily Caller, American Shooting Journal, and more. In his free time, he reviews optics on his Scopes Field blog.

Image: Richard Douglas 

Stratfor Worldview

Health, Middle East

The coronavirus has surged enough that previous restrictions have been reinstated for three weeks.

The Israeli Cabinet has ordered a national three-week lockdown starting Sept. 18 in an attempt to regain control over surging COVID-19 cases. The new strict three-week lockdown will bar Israelis from traveling more than 500 meters from their home except for essentials, closing schools and limiting the private sector. The lockdown will begin at 2 p.m., just as the country begins to observe Rosh Hashanah. The Israeli Health Ministry said it plans to lift the lockdown when the country's daily case rate drops below 1,000 a day. More than 4,000 cases were reported Sept. 15, with some hospitals and clinics indicating they might soon be overwhelmed should trends continue. 

The trajectory of Israel's COVID-19 caseload suggests that its post-spring lockdown normalization strategy moved too quickly, resulting in increased social contact that precipitated spiking infection rates by early July. As of mid-May, Israel had brought new daily cases down to fewer than 20 after a strict lockdown in April. Having succeeded in controlling the virus' spread, Israel quickly began to normalize its economy and society, going so far as to reopen schools without restrictions and allowing Israelis back into bars and restaurants.

-By late June, the lifted restrictions had caused virus rates to spike again. With over 1,000 cases recorded July 1, the government began to roll back normalization, closing schools, limiting restaurant access and shuttering bars by mid-July. 

Six months into the pandemic, the Israeli public is deeply wary of social distancing restrictions. A resumption of stringent restrictions will test the viability of the unity government put together to overcome internal political paralysis, and leave Israel in even worse economic shape.

-The previous lockdown sparked protests from ultra-Orthodox communities who felt targeted. Already, some ultra-Orthodox are protesting the new orders because they fall on the High Holy Day of Rosh Hashanah. Housing Minister Yaakov Litzman, part of the United Torah Judaism party that holds together the unity government, has resigned over the lockdown. 

-Israel's gross domestic product declined 28.7 percent in Q2 2020, a historic decline, during its monthlong strict lockdown. A second lockdown may lead to a repeat of those numbers.

The lockdown will have lessons for other countries now facing new outbreaks considering potential restrictions, especially as most countries now face similarly resistant publics that don't favor a return to the springtime lockdowns. Other countries that are also politically polarized will see if Israel's unity government can survive a second lockdown, gauging their own political risk by comparing their domestic situations to Israel's dynamic parliamentary system. 

-Israel's school reopening experience helped inform debates about school reopenings in the United States and Europe, as Israeli health data pointed to schools as a key vector for infection. 

-Israel's spring lockdown was largely successful in curbing the spread, but it also faced lower infection rates when it began. The new lockdown will come during a new all-time peak in cases.

-The unity government has been plagued by rumors of collapse, most recently over the budget. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to find a way to avoid handing power over to his rival, Defense Minister Benny Gantz, under the terms of their deal in 2021.

Israel's Second Lockdown to Stop COVID-19 Will Test the Government is republished with the permission of Stratfor Worldview, a geopolitical forecasting and intelligence publication from RANE, the Risk Assistance Network + Exchange. As the world's leading geopolitical intelligence platform, Stratfor Worldview brings global events into valuable perspective, empowering businesses, governments and individuals to more confidently navigate their way through an increasingly complex international environment. Stratfor is a RANE (Risk Assistance Network + Exchange) company.

Image: Reuters.

Kris Osborn

Security, Americas

Perhaps new missions and a lot of upgrades will make the LCS an actually formidable warship.

Key point: The LCS originally was a boondoggle that had many problems. However, it looks like over time and with fixes the platform is finally maturing.

The U.S. Navy is adding more Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) to the fleet to further strengthen its submarine-hunting capabilities. The LCS are also being equipped with upgraded weapons for countermine, surface warfare and surveillance missions needed for major, great power warfare. 

The Navy has now commissioned its 22nd Littoral Combat Ship, the USS St. Louis, as part of a broader move to further strengthen the warfare technologies of the surface fleet. 

“St. Louis is the 22nd LCS to be delivered to the Navy, and the tenth of the Freedom-variant to join the fleet,” a Navy statement said. 

Plans for the ship have evolved over the years as it was initially conceived of as purely a shallow-draft ship intended for coastal or littoral regions. With the advent of a great-power warfare competition era, Navy strategists have reconfigured the mission scope for the ship and armed it with over-the-horizon missiles and emerging submarine and mine hunting systems. 

The ship’s shallow draft allows it to hunt submarines, mines and enemy targets in areas not deep enough for deeper draft ships. This enables coastal patrol and reconnaissance missions as well as a close-in mine-hunting ability. 

As part of this mission set, the LCS is increasingly being engineered with surface and undersea drones to hunt mines, conduct surveillance and lower submarine-hunting sonar into the water. 

“When the USS St. Louis is paired with world’s most advanced maritime helicopter, the MH-60R, it will have a robust anti-submarine mission capability,” the Navy report says. 

The ship’s forty-knot speed, advanced submarine hunting technology and additional weapons are variables expected to greatly improve the ship’s ability to perform deep-water missions.

Several years ago, some observers, critics and members of Congress made the argument that the ship was not survivable enough for major-power, “blue-water” warfare, inspiring a Pentagon effort to reduce the fleet of planned LCS ships and engineer a new, more heavily armed Frigate ship. 

However, despite some of these movements, the Navy has continued to pursue its fleet of emerging LCS ships and worked to preserve and evolve its combat efficacy. These efforts have included arming the ship with deck-launched Hellfire missiles and integrating longer-range strike missiles into the ship. 

The Navy has made particular efforts, in fact, to integrate Hellfire technology, sensors and fire control with other assets woven into the LCS. Not only could an MH-60R offer a laser spot for the ship-launched weapon, but the helicopter can fire Hellfire missiles itself.

A ship-launched variant, however, would need to further integrate with ship-based layered defense technologies to optimize its attack options against enemy aircraft and ships, particularly in a maritime combat environment potentially more difficult for helicopters to operate in. 

This would include engineering the ship to operate as part of a broader ship-wide technical system connecting things like variable-depth sonar, deck guns, vertical take-off drones such as the Fire Scout and small boat mission capabilities such as eleven-meter Rigid Inflatable Boats (RIBs). The Surface Warfare Mission Package also includes the Gun Mission Module, containing 30mm guns, Navy statements say. As part of this, the LCS is equipped with a 57mm gun, .50-cal Machine Guns and a defensive interceptor missile called SeaRAM.

Kris Osborn is defense editor for the National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University. This first appeared in 2018 and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

Ethen Kim Lieser

Security, Americas

The risks are real.

Children in general aren’t likely to die from the novel coronavirus, but the mortality risk is still relatively high for children and teens from minority groups, according to a new report released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Among the 190,000 confirmed coronavirus-related deaths in the United States, only 121, or 0.08 percent, were reported in those under twenty-one. The most updated CDC report has revealed that roughly 380 children, teenagers, and young adults aged up to twenty-four have died from the virus.

The researchers noted that among the 6.5 million coronavirus cases in the country, 391,814 infections were identified to be individuals under twenty-one. Although those under twenty-one make up 26 percent of the population, they’re responsible for only 8 percent of all reported cases.

Ethnic and racial minority groups were found to be disproportionately affected. Forty-four percent of the 121 who have died from the virus were Hispanic, 29 percent were Black, 4 percent were American Indian/Alaska Natives, and 4 percent were Asian-American or Pacific Islander.

These groups represent 41 percent of the U.S. population under age twenty-one, but they account for about 75 percent of all fatalities in that age range. White children made up 14 percent of the deaths.

“Infants, children, adolescents, and young adults, particularly those from racial and ethnic minority groups at higher risk, those with underlying medical conditions, and their caregivers, need clear, consistent, and developmentally, linguistically, and culturally appropriate COVID-19 prevention messages,” the researchers wrote.

About 75 percent of the deaths were discovered to be in children who had at least one underlying health condition, and 45 percent of them had two or more. The most frequently reported health conditions were chronic lung disease, obesity, and cardiovascular, neurological, and developmental conditions.

“Although infants, children, and adolescents are more likely to have milder COVID-19 illness than are adults, complications, including MIS-C and respiratory failure, do occur in these populations. Persons infected with or exposed to SARS-CoV-2 should be followed closely so that clinical deterioration can be detected early,” the researchers wrote.

MIS-C, or multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, is a condition in which different body parts can become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, and gastrointestinal organs, according to the CDC.

Recently released data has revealed that more than 500,000 children in the United States have already tested positive for the novel coronavirus since the pandemic started, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

That number seems to be trending upward, as 70,630 new child cases were registered from August 20 through September 3—a 16-percent increase over the span of two weeks.

Now more than eight months into the pandemic, there are roughly thirty million confirmed cases of coronavirus worldwide, including at least 943,000 related deaths, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Minneapolis-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.

Image: Reuters.

Sean Mirski

Security,

It won't be so easy.

Here's What You Need To Remember: It is worth recognizing that even the most effective blockade would not completely interdict Chinese trade, because even under ideal conditions, China would still be able to acquire the vital goods and resources courtesy of the inescapable laws of supply and demand. The more effectively the United States established a regional embargo, the higher the profit margins on selling imports to China. Even if all of China’s neighbors agreed to embargo, the United States would still have to resign itself to rampant smuggling at the substate level.

The mounting challenge presented by China’s military modernization has led the United States to review existing military strategies and to conceptualize new ones, as illustrated by the ongoing debate over AirSea Battle (ASB), a new concept of operations put forward by the Department of Defense. But in the universe of possible strategies, the idea of a naval blockade deserves greater scrutiny. By prosecuting a naval blockade, the United States would leverage China’s intense dependence on foreign trade—particularly oil—to debilitate the Chinese state. A carefully organized blockade could thus serve as a powerful instrument of American military power that contributes to overcoming the pressing challenge of China’s formidable anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) system. A blockade could also be easily paired with alternate military strategies, including those based on ASB.

In the context of a Sino-American war, the United States could try to take China’s greatest national strength—its export-oriented, booming economic-growth model—and transform it into a major military weakness. To do so, the United States would implement a naval blockade of China that attempted to choke off most of China’s maritime trade. Under the right conditions, the United States might be able to secure victory by debilitating China’s economy severely enough to bring it to the negotiating table.

Yet until recently, a blockade strategy was largely overlooked, perhaps because economic warfare strategies seem inherently misguided given the close commercial ties between China and the United States. But if a serious conflict between the two nations erupted, then their immediate security interests would quickly override their trade interdependence and wreak enormous economic damage on both sides, regardless of whether a blockade were employed.

Even if a blockade is never executed, its viability would still impact American and Chinese policies for deterrence reasons. The United States’ regional strategy is predicated on the belief that a favorable military balance deters attempts to change the status quo by force, thus reassuring allies and upholding strategic stability. The viability of a blockade influences this calculus, and can accordingly affect American and Chinese actions—both military and nonmilitary—that are based on perceptions of it. If a naval blockade is a feasible strategy, it strengthens the American system of deterrence and dilutes any potential attempts by China to coerce the United States or its allies. Moreover, if a blockade’s viability can be clearly enunciated, it would also enhance crisis stability and dampen the prospects of escalation due to misunderstandings—on either side—about the regional balance of power. In short, as Elbridge Colby put it: “the old saw remains true, that the best way to avoid war is to prepare for it.”

While a blockade is not a priori impossible or irrelevant in any situation, it is also not a ready tool in the American arsenal and would be feasible mainly within certain boundaries. Most importantly, many commentators miss the fact that a blockade is a context-dependent strategy, one that crucially depends on the regional environment.

The Strategic Context

A blockade would not be employed lightly by the United States, given its significant potential costs. Accordingly, Washington would likely only consider employing a blockade in a protracted conflict over vital interests; anything less would simply fail a basic cost-benefit analysis.

More importantly, though, a blockade strategy would depend on the cooperation of several third parties in the region. After all, China’s trade is borne on the seas largely as a result of economic considerations rather than physical limitations; if China were blockaded, it would turn to the countries on its borders for help.

While many of its neighbors would be unable to make a strategic difference because of their rugged geography or their small size, three could prove vital: India, Japan, and Russia. The latter two would be important in helping the United States by cutting off China’s trade routes in its south and east, respectively, through implementing national embargoes on China and pressuring their smaller neighbors to do the same. Without their cooperation, the United States’ task would become much more difficult.

The last of the three neighbors—Russia—would be the lynchpin of a successful blockade, and could tip the balance of a blockade in favor of either China or the United States. On the one hand, Russia is remarkably well-positioned to alleviate the blockade’s effects on China. Russian trade would be immune to American interdiction, since Russia’s nuclear arsenal and significant conventional assets preclude any serious American attempts at military coercion. But on the other hand, China’s northern neighbor could also sound the death knell for China’s ability to resist a blockade. On the political level, Moscow continues to exert sway over the decisions made in the capitals of China’s Central Asian neighbors and could convince them to refuse Chinese entreaties to act as transit states. It could also guarantee that China’s two neighboring oil producers would no longer supply it with petroleum.

Accordingly, for the United States to implement a strategically effective blockade of China, it would strive to build a “minimum coalition” with India, Japan, and Russia. If all three states made common cause with the American blockade, then China would be placed in both an economic and a political stranglehold. If not, however, a blockade strategy would regionalize a Sino-American war in a way that would be fundamentally unfavorable to American interests.

Such a minimum coalition could only arise in one way: on the heels of an assertive Chinese push for regional hegemony that precipitates local support for a drastic American response. Short of anything but an aggressive China, collective embargo action will be deterred by the potential consequences of a blockade, not least of which is the possibility of a larger regional conflict with China. The four states are unlikely to coalesce together around an implicit containment policy until each feels that its national interests may be threatened by China in the future.

While such a possibility may appear distant at present, the United States, Japan, India and Russia all fear that Beijing might someday conclude that it must use force in order to protect its interests and to resolve its security dilemma on favorable terms. All four powers have increasingly hedged their bets against this possibility. If China’s power and influence in Asia continues to increase, then the bonds between all four states will strengthen, not out of any conviction about China’s belligerent intentions, but rather because of a profound uncertainty as to their future disposition.

The Central Operational Challenge

Even assuming that the United States can rally the necessary coalition together, it would squarely face an operational challenge that bedevils all modern-day blockade strategies.

Operationally, blockades are characterized by their distance from the coast of the blockaded state, and they come in two forms: close and distant. A close blockade is typically enforced by stationing a cordon of warships off an enemy’s shores to search all incoming or outgoing merchant ships and to impound those carrying contraband. Over the last century and a half, though, close blockades have become increasingly dangerous as belligerents developed the technology to project power from their coasts. In response, blockading powers have turned to distant blockades. A distant blockade avoids the military hazards of being located near the enemy’s shores by stationing itself at a distance, albeit still astride the enemy’s sea lanes, and it then chokes off the enemy’s trade in a similar manner to the close blockade.

Neither a close nor a distant blockade of China alone would be successful thanks to the constraints imposed by military requirements and the nature of maritime commerce. On the one hand, a conventional close blockade would be severely complicated by the United States’ desire to minimize the military risk to American warships. As American forces came closer to China, they would increasingly place themselves within range of China’s A2/AD complex, possibly limiting their operational freedom and resulting in heavy losses. American forces could avoid the perils of China’s A2/AD system by implementing a close blockade enforced by submarines, long-range air power, and mines; but by so doing, the blockade would also lose much of its ability to differentiate between neutral and enemy commerce.

On the other hand, the logic behind conventional distant blockades has similarly been undermined by the exigencies of modern commerce. Today’s cargoes of raw materials and merchandise can be sold and re-sold many times in the course of a voyage, so the ultimate ownership and destination of a ship’s cargo is often unknowable until the moment it docks. Although the United States might be able to set up a conventional distant blockade that quarantined all Chinese-owned or -flagged vessels, China could still simply buy neutral vessels’ cargoes after they had passed through the blockade, defeating its entire purpose.

The Solution: A Two-Ring Blockade

To remedy the infirmities of the two blockades, the United States would take the best of both worlds and implement a “two-ring” blockade made up of two concentric rings around China’s shores.

The heart of the two-ring blockade would be its “inner ring,” which would be an unconventional close blockade primarily aimed at neutralizing vessels bound for China without having to board them first. This ring would establish an exclusion zone around China’s coast—an area that is declared off-limits to commercial shipping, and enforced by a “sink-on-sight” policy—through the use of attack submarines, long-distance airpower, and mines. Unlike other military assets, these three capabilities could operate with relative impunity within the range of China’s A2/AD complex by taking advantage of China’s feeble anti-submarine warfare capabilities and attenuated mine-countermeasure forces. While this trifecta of military assets would not guarantee total impassibility, the exclusion zone could still achieve the blockade’s aims because the fulcrum of the United States’ campaign would be grounded in deterrence rather than in force. As soon as American forces conspicuously sank several large merchant vessels, the majority of other shipping would be deterred from trying to run the blockade and much of the regular flow of China’s maritime commerce would quickly dry up.

But while submarines, long-distance airpower and mines could effectively enforce an exclusion zone as part of the inner ring blockade, they are all blunt instruments that can neither tell the difference between a ship carrying Chinese cargo and one carrying Japanese cargo, nor stop, board, and search suspicious vessels. As a result, an inner ring blockade on its own would likely spawn considerable political problems as the United States unintentionally destroyed neutral vessels, and Washington could face further political consequences from the exclusion zone’s inability to allow medical care and basic necessities through to China.

To combat these political consequences, the United States would implement a second, “outer ring” that would allow greater selectivity in applying force while also acting as a winnowing device. In contrast to the inner ring, the outer ring would be comprised largely of warships focused on both differentiating between different regional commerce with greater precision and adding a non-lethal component to the inner ring’s neutralization efforts. The outer ring would not be a prerequisite for the blockade’s operational success—although it would greatly help—but it would be vital in guaranteeing its strategic viability.

The outer ring would be positioned at the periphery of China’s near seas—outside the range of its A2/AD complex—and would be concentrated around key passageways in Southeast and East Asia, including the Straits of Malacca. The United States would establish blockade checkpoints at those passageways (like Malacca) that are most important to international shipping, while the smaller passageways would be closed off to international shipping completely.

At the outer ring’s checkpoints, the United States would need to set up and streamline a rigorous inspection regime. If the United States discovered that a vessel was destined for, owned by, or registered in China, then it could impound it.

The United States could also implement a system similar to the British navicert system in World War II, which would give the United States a fairly accurate spatial map of the positions and trajectories of all commercial vessels in the region. The United States would then integrate the navicert spatial map with the inner ring’s firepower to exert deadly force against blockade runners while also decreasing the rate of accidental sinkings—especially of humanitarian vessels. While an imperfect process, the navicert system would nevertheless substantially raise the risks of deviation for vessels to the point where running the blockade was so sufficiently perilous that it was no longer attempted, except by the most risk-loving vessels. Perhaps more importantly, though, it would help mollify the political repercussions that would flow from the inner ring blockade’s non-discriminatory and lethal neutralizations.

A Blockade’s Consequences

Although the consequences of a blockade would be exceedingly complex, manifold, and interdependent, a blockade would likely prove to be a cogent instrument of exhaustion as part of the United States’ overall campaign.

In the first place, however, it is worth recognizing that even the most effective blockade would not completely interdict Chinese trade, because even under ideal conditions, China would still be able to acquire the vital goods and resources courtesy of the inescapable laws of supply and demand. The more effectively the United States established a regional embargo, the higher the profit margins on selling imports to China. Even if all of China’s neighbors agreed to embargo, the United States would still have to resign itself to rampant smuggling at the substate level.

A blockade would also not be able to directly debilitate the Chinese military. Simply put, China could use its reserves and stockpiles, along with a limited degree of imports and domestic production, to fuel its military machine for the length of the conflict.

Therefore, the real value of a blockade would be its ability to exact an incredibly high financial toll on Beijing. In particular, a blockade would send the Chinese economy into a tailspin by hitting three distinct pressure points: China’s dual dependency on both intermediate and raw material imports and its low levels of domestic innovation. China has structured much of its export-oriented economy around the importation of intermediate goods, a phenomenon particularly evident in its high-technology sectors. This vulnerability is further compounded by its incredible dependence on raw materials (including oil) and foreign innovation as the basis of its production processes.

Because a blockade targets all three areas, it would exact a staggering cost. Of course, China might discover ways as time passed to substitute for its inability to trade and it might rebuild its economy from the ground up, but an ongoing conflict could nevertheless impose a devastating rate of economic attrition that exceeds Beijing’s compensating abilities.

Conclusion

The context, conduct, and consequences of an American blockade of China would be deeply embedded in the mire of global politics. To overcome the blockade’s various challenges successfully, the United States and its allies would have to carefully balance the strategic repercussions of their actions with their contribution to the efficacy of the overall blockade. In almost any context, this trade-off would be extremely difficult politically, and would require a high degree of flexibility and innovation on the United States’ part. The exact trade-offs would be made with a variety of considerations in mind, above all the value of the American interests implicated in the conflict.

Nevertheless, despite considerable challenges, a naval blockade is both operationally and strategically possible, albeit only within certain limits. Even against a maximally effective blockade, China would be able to meet its military needs indefinitely, and it could survive on its strategic petroleum reserves, stockpiles, and massive foreign-exchange reserves for an extended period of time. As a result, the effectiveness of a blockade would turn on its ability to impose debilitating economic costs on China.

If the United States were able to assemble its minimum coalition of India, Japan and Russia—a task that would hinge on China’s aggressive behavior—then China’s rate of economic exhaustion would sharply accelerate even as the United States gained the political support it would need to continue a blockading strategy indefinitely. In this context, while the United States would not be able to use Beijing’s dependence on maritime trade to defeat China decisively in one short blow, it would still be able to help sap Chinese strength until Beijing eventually submitted.

This article first appeared in October 2014.

Image: Flickr.

David Axe

Security, Asia

Could all of their missiles take out America's warships from a distance?

Key point: Beijing is working to mirror U.S. capabilties. But China also likes to rely on its own domestically-made long-range anti-ship missiles.

The Chinese navy’s new guided-missile cruisers can launch land-attack cruise missiles, the Chinese navy confirmed.

That capability places the Type 055 cruisers in the same class as the U.S. Navy’s own large surface combatants.

While experts long have suspected that the Type 055s would carry land-attack missiles, the weapons-fit remained unconfirmed until the Chinese navy announced it on social media in late December 2019.

 This first appeared in 2019 and is being reposted due to reader interest.

The state-owned Global Times newspaper first reported the social-media announcement.

“Introducing the vast and complicated arsenal at its disposal, the [People’s Liberation Army] Navy said on China's Twitter-like social platform Sina Weibo that the service operates not only vessels, but also submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles with strategic missile submarines and long-range land-attack cruise missiles with 10,000-ton-class guided-missile destroyer,” Global Times reported.

The Type 055 is the only 10,000-ton-displacement destroyer or cruiser in service in the Asia-Pacific region. The Chinese navy commissioned the first Type 055, Nanchang, in April 2019. Seven more Type 055s are under construction, fitting out or awaiting trials.

The Type 055 packs 112 vertical-launch missile cells plus 130-millimeter guns and space for two helicopters. Its weapons-loadout reportedly includes HHQ-9 surface-to-air missiles and YJ-18 and CJ-10 cruise missiles.

The YJ-18 has a range of around 300 miles. The CJ-10, a copy of Russia’s Kh-55, reportedly can travel as far as 800 miles. It’s unclear which of the cruise missiles the navy considers to be the land-attack weapon. It’s possible both possess land-attack capability.

With a full suite of anti-air, anti-ship and land-attack weapons, the Type-055 possesses roughly the same capabilities as an American Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, Ticonderoga-class cruiser or Zumwalt-class stealth destroyer.

The Chinese fleet reportedly intends to assign the Type 055s to its newly-forming carrier battle groups. The Chinese navy has two carriers in commission, Liaoning and Shandong. A third, larger carrier is under construction and a fourth reportedly is in the planning stage.

If the Chinese fleet follows the American model of force-generation, it could assign a single Type 055 to each carrier battle group. The cruiser would function as the air-defense commander for the group, coordinating air- and missile-defense on behalf of the carrier and other escort ships.

But the Chinese navy reportedly plans to pause carrier-construction after the fourth vessel, leaving it with at most four carrier battle groups by the late 2020s. The remaining four Type 055s that aren’t in carrier groups could function as the lead vessels in powerful surface action groups.

It’s worth noting that while China is growing its force of land-attack-capable large warships, the U.S. Navy actually has proposed to reduce its own force of similar vessels. Despite a legal requirement to grow to 350 ships, the U.S. Navy has proposed to slow ship construction and also accelerate decommissionings after 2020, potentially shrinking the front-line fleet from 290 ships in 2019 to as few as 287 in 2025.

The cuts to new production would include several of the latest Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. Four Ticonderoga-class cruisers would leave the fleet years earlier than the Navy originally planned on. The budget-driven cuts are likely to face stiff opposition in Congress, which ultimately decides the shape and size of the fleet.

Of course, the Chinese fleet doesn’t just compete with the American fleet. It also faces off against the navies of America’s Pacific allies. “Type 055 also has been compared to other warships deployed in the region, notably South Korea’s Sejong the Great class and Japan’s Atago class and its newly launched Maya subclass,” South China Morning Post reported. “Both the Sejong- and Atago-class destroyers have full displacements of around [8,500 tons] and Aegis combat systems, with the Sejong the Great class boasting a 128-cell [vertical launch system].”

“But analysts said they believe Type 055 surpasses the Korean and Japanese vessels in size, radar system performance, missile capacity and multifunctionality,” South China Morning Post claimed.

David Axe serves 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 2019 and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

Warfare History Network

History, Europe

Americans from the 30th Infantry Division took a heavy toll on German panzers at a French crossroads near Mortain during World War II.

A column of German Mark V Panther tanks advanced through a thick fog north of the French town of Mortain, blindly firing their machine guns. Suddenly, the lead panzer took a hit from an unseen American antitank round, penetrating the frontal armor and stopping it. A tank retriever approached the smoking tank only to come under fire. Then, crews of three tanks dismounted and gathered to discuss options. As they spoke, an American bazooka man fired a round into the group, killing some and scattering the rest. The bazooka man then dispatched two of the three stationary tanks. The 1st SS Panzer Division’s attack ground to a halt. What was supposed to be Adolf Hitler’s master stroke to cut off the American drive across France met an unexpected powerful resistance from the men of the American 30th Infantry Division—the “Old Hickory” division.

The German attack successfully encircled Mortain on August 7, 1944, but resistance at places like the crossroads town of St. Barthelemy bled the Germans dry. Some 700 Old Hickory Americans of Lt. Col. Robert Ernest Frankland’s 1st Battalion, 117th Infantry Regiment, and 200 more of the 823rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, armed with rifles, machine guns, bazookas, and four M5 three-inch antitank guns, exacted a heavy toll on the panzers.

The Germans tried again. This time the 2nd Panzer Division joined the 1st SS in a two-pronged attack, but the Americans managed to knock out one of the lead tanks with a single shot. As the German infantry attacked, an American bazooka man kept his cool, throwing away his faulty bazooka and finding another to dispatch a tank. The Germans, however, wiped out 100 men and flanked the position, entering St. Barthelmy.

Most of the Americans pulled back north of the town and continued to fight. Lt. Col. Robert E. Frankland, the battalion commander, used his .45 pistol to shoot a German commander standing in a turret hatch. He then jumped onto the tank and shot down into it, killing the entire crew. South of St. Barthelmy, two anti-tank gun teams knocked out two more Panthers, one only 50 yards away. A late arriving gun team was able to knock out one German tank before being overrun by supporting infantry. The Germans then knocked out two of the Americans’ antitank guns, scoring a direct hit on one. The two remaining guns destroyed two more tanks before one was captured and the other withdrawn. Before the firing ended, two bazooka men dispatched two more tanks.

The Germans took the crossroads but at a terrible price. The American bazooka men and antitank gun teams had destroyed at least 13 German tanks. When American relief troops reached the area seven days later they discovered a panzer graveyard. It’s where part of Hitler’s grand offensive died.

This article first appeared at the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikipedia.