The National Interest

Kris Osborn

Chinese Army, Asia

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army is now deploying a new kind of weapon.

Here's What You Need to Know: Beijing may be building new weapons, but America has recently improved its well-known and lethal javelin anti-tank missile.

New Chinese-built, vehicle-mounted anti-tank missiles are being engineered to attack U.S. tanks “from above,” meaning at higher altitudes that cause more destruction with a top-down attack.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army is now deploying this new kind of weapon reported to be more powerful and more mobile than existing weapons for mounted off-road attack missions against armored vehicles.

Quoting an unnamed “military expert,” the Chinese government-backed Global Times newspaper says the top-down attack is in part intended to exploit the top of a tank where soldiers might be exposed. The new missile can be mounted on China’s Mengshi series off-road assault vehicle or infantry fighting vehicles. The concept of a higher-altitude top-down attack is interesting in that it could be of particular relevance in the mountainous plateau regions of Western China and places where air support is not available.

“China operates a wide selection of anti-tank missiles, including portable ones and those launched by attack helicopters, drones, armored vehicles and assault vehicles, military observers said, noting that the new missile could be mass produced and be widely used by the PLA in the near future,” the Global Times writes.

There are not a lot of details available regarding the weapon available in the report, however its existence brings some interesting parallels to mind, such as the U.S. Army’s TOW missile, Javelin anti-tank weapon or even ground-launched Hellfire missile. But there are several key respects in which the Chinese weapon may not parallel a number of more recent U.S. anti-tank weapons innovations.

The Army’s ongoing upgrades to the Javelin anti-tank missile offer an interesting point of reference, as a new Raytheon-built Lightweight Command Launch Unit for the weapon actually doubles the attack range from 2.5km to 4.5km. The more recent innovations, slated to enter production in 2022, also incorporate improved sensor fidelity and a “fast lock” for improving attacks on the move. Army officials told The National Interest last year that the service is also engineering a new warhead for the Javelin as well.

The Javelin’s on-the-move targeting ability is also of great relevance as it seems to rival, if not outmatch the Chinese claim that its new vehicle-mounted weapon can attack while off-road. The Javelin can dismount and operate as a shoulder-fired weapon used by small groups of soldiers on the move or also mount and fire from tactical vehicles as well, such as those that go off road. The concept of a top-down attack certainly makes sense as something of tactical relevance, but apart from being deployable on mobile, off-road vehicles, there is nothing mentioned about what might better enable that kind of attack? Any weapon, if fired from an advantaged point at higher altitudes, should it be able to go off road, can exploit a tactical advantage and strike from the top down.

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 Master’s Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

This article first appeared in March 2021.

Image: REUTERS/David Gray

Dan Goure

Air Defense, Asia

The Japanese government needs to rethink its decision to halt work on the Aegis Ashore program.

Here's what you need to know: In light of the growing missile threats posed by China and North Korea, Japan needs to field a multi-layer missile defense.

This week, Japan’s Defense Minister, Taro Kono, surprised the world by announcing the decision to suspend construction in his country of two missile defense sites. This decision could not have come at a worse time for both the security of Japan and its strategic relationship with the United States. Both China and North Korea continue to build up their inventories of theater ballistic missiles. The suspension decision came right on the heels of Pyongyang, ramping up its bellicose rhetoric and even blowing up a building that housed a liaison office for North-South talks. Japan needs to reconsider its decision to suspend the Aegis Ashore program. Instead, in consultation with the United States, the Japanese government should devise a new plan that will address any concerns while ensuring that its people are protected by the best missile defense capability currently available.

Today, U.S. allies, facilities, and forces in the Western Pacific face a missile threat that is expanding quantitatively and becoming ever-more sophisticated and capable. In the event of a conflict with China, Japan can expect to face an intensive barrage of Chinese theater-range ballistic and cruise missiles intended to devastate military facilities, mobile forces, critical infrastructure, and command and control nodes both along the so-called First Island Chain and in the Home Islands.

Although the Japanese government now rates China as its number one security challenge, it cannot dismiss the North Korean ballistic missile threat. According to Japan’s 2019 annual Defense White Paper, North Korea has achieved the ability to put a nuclear warhead atop a ballistic missile. In addition, its ballistic missiles are becoming more sophisticated with improved guidance systems and greater reliability.

To counter the growing worldwide threat from ballistic missiles, the United States and its allies are deploying ballistic missile defenses. The U.S. is building a layered missile defense system to protect the homeland as well as forward-deployed forces and allies. A key pillar of U.S. and allied missile defenses is the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system. The Aegis BMD currently consists of the AN/SPY radar, the Standard Missile (SM), and the Aegis Combat System. Both the U.S. Navy and Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) operate Aegis-equipped ships.

The Aegis Ashore system is a land-based variant of the extremely mature and proven sea-based Aegis BMD system. In essence, the Aegis Ashore is the three elements of the Aegis BMD system placed on land. The AN/SPY radar is located in a deckhouse that also supports the system’s command and control capabilities. Co-located with the deckhouse are fixed launchers for the current version of the SM-3 ballistic missile interceptor, the Block IB, as well as SM-6 air defense missiles. Aegis Ashore was initially conceived as the central part of the European Phased Adaptive Approach designed to protect Europe from missiles launched from the Middle East. The first Aegis Ashore site in Romania was declared operational in 2016. A second site, being constructed in Poland, is expected to become operational in 2022.

The Japanese government decided in December 2017 to purchase two Aegis Ashore systems. In addition, the U.S. and Japan are partnered in the SM-3 Cooperative Development Program to build a larger, 21-inch diameter variant of the SM-3 missile, the SM-3 Block IIA. This variant will be able to reach out farther, providing a defense against longer-range ballistic missiles. The new missile is expected to be deployed with the U.S. Navy and Japanese MSDF, as well as all Aegis Ashore sites.

One reason Japan decided to acquire the Aegis Ashore was to reduce the burden on its destroyer fleet associated with serving as that country’s primary missile defense capability. A missile defense based entirely on sea-based capabilities is not always optimally located to protect land areas. In addition, destroyers assigned the missile defense mission for the Japanese homeland are generally restricted to a small ocean area, close to land. As a result, ships on missile defense patrols are unavailable for other critical missions.

Given the growing ballistic missile threat to Japan, the decision to suspend its Aegis Ashore program came as something of a surprise. According to Minister Kono, the suspension decision was based on both technical and cost issues with the program. The principal technical concern is the danger that from the currently planned sites, the SM-3 Block IIA booster might fall into populated areas. Modifications will be required to the missile’s software and, possibly, hardware to solve this problem. There was also local opposition to the placement of the AN/SPY radar near populated areas. There are reports that the Japanese Government had decided to halt the planned deployment at the Akita Prefecture site in the northwest of Honshu, Japan's main island, and to explore alternative locations.

With respect to cost, it is true that the price for completing each of the two sites had increased by some 25 percent to around $900 million. However, it should be pointed out that the cost of a single Japanese missile defense-capable destroyer is now approximately $1.5 billion, exclusive of expendables such as the SM-3 Block II missiles. For defense of the Japanese homeland, Aegis Ashore is the cost-effective solution.

To be clear, the suspension does not suggest that Japan has lost confidence in the effectiveness of missile defenses, in general, or the Aegis system and the Standard Missile, in particular. Today, the Japanese MSDF operates seven Aegis destroyers with another one under construction. These ships, as well as U.S. Aegis-capable cruisers and destroyers, will eventually carry the SM-3 Block IIA. In addition, Japan has deployed four batteries of the advanced version Patriot missile defense system to provide a terminal layer.

The Japanese government needs to rethink its decision to halt work on the Aegis Ashore program. In light of the growing missile threats posed by China and North Korea, Japan needs to field a multi-layer missile defense. Such a defense is essential to maintaining a credible deterrent. In addition, in the case of North Korea, it is a hedge against a potential accidental or unauthorized launch. Seven or eight Aegis-capable destroyers are not sufficient to manage the threat. The most sensible and cost-effective solution is to move forward with Aegis Ashore deployments, modified as necessary to meet credible concerns.

Dan Gouré, Ph.D., is a vice president at the public-policy research think tank Lexington Institute. Goure has a background in the public sector and U.S. federal government, most recently serving as a member of the 2001 Department of Defense Transition Team. You can follow him on Twitter at @dgoure and the Lexington Institute @LexNextDC. Read his full bio here.

This article was first published by RealClearDefense.

Image: Reuters

Kris Osborn

military, Americas

EPFs enable combat operations and potential war operations in ways that might not otherwise be possible.

The Navy’s fleet of Expeditionary Fast Transport (EPF) vessels is continuing to take on a growing number of humanitarian and medical support missions, given the speed, versatility and cargo-carrying capacity of the ships.

However, alongside the expanding mission scope and growing combatant commander requests for the fleet, the ships bring some perhaps lesser recognized advantages to maritime warfare.

While perhaps operating with less firepower than many other deeper draft, heavily armed warships, EPFs enable combat operations and potential war operations in ways that might not otherwise be possible.

“Each vessel includes a flight deck to support day and night aircraft launch and recovery operations,” according to a press statement by Naval Sea Systems Command that was issued on Sept. 3, 2020.

This means that armed warships can patrol the area and quickly transport combat vehicles, equipment and troops to land sites along the coast. EPFs can support amphibious operations, a tactical circumstance that introduces new dimensions to deterrence should Russia or China be contemplating offensive actions. 

The Navy has received twelve EPFs from Austal USA, a Gulf Coast shipbuilder that is already working on the thirteenth ship. All EPFs are operated by Military Sealift Command. Interestingly, the thirteenth ship will set a new precedent for future ships in its class by being able to launch, land and operate V-22 Ospreys. Its ability to conduct high-speed maneuvers coupled with heavy equipment transport technology creates combat-tactic advantages. Also, its range of twelve hundred miles can enable crucial transport without having to operate large, deep-draft or big-deck ships in high-risk areas. 

Additionally, the speed of the vessels can help support the Navy’s Distributed Maritime Operations concept, which is a strategy aimed at leveraging long-range sensors, networking, and new weapons applications to optimize combat effectiveness. This strategy can be achieved by operating with less congested—and therefore potentially more vulnerable—aggregated forces on the ocean. For example, once a beachhead is secured through an amphibious attack, arriving forces will be in great need of reinforcements to expand and build upon mission objectives. These ships also help sea-basing objectives by enabling transport from the ocean, thereby removing the need for land deployments in high-risk, difficult-to-reach areas. Larger, deeper-draft ships will be able to operate at much safer distances, while EPFs approach enemy areas as smaller, faster and potentially less vulnerable targets. 

The ability to operate at sea gives attacking forces better protection and increased airpower support. Big-deck amphibious ships or even aircraft carriers could be well-positioned to better support advancing attack forces moving on land. This is mainly possible if deck-launched air-attack platforms, such as F-35 fighter jets, V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft or F/A-18 supersonic jets have targeting and logistics support from the shore. 

Special operations forces also need to move quickly in smaller groups. Equally important, they may need supplies, weapons, equipment and possibly fast-moving tactical vehicles. Thus, there are mission objectives that small groups of special operations forces may not be able to accomplish with an eleven-meter Rigid Inflatable Boat which naturally cannot transport equipment. For example, a V-22 Osprey launched from an amphibious ship or offshore sea base may wish to conduct Mounted Vertical Maneuver operations wherein Marines drop in behind enemy lines to gather intelligence, support friendly troops or launch targeted, covert attacks. These types of missions would benefit from a fast transport vehicle like the EPF.

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 Master's Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

Image: Flickr / Official U.S. Navy Page

Caleb Larson

Guns, Americas

The iconic M1911 design is still manufactured by Colt 100 years later.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Despite no longer enjoying the widespread success that it once did as the United States’ standard-issue service pistol, the iconic M1911 design is still manufactured by Colt, as well as by a number of other firearm manufacturers in the United States and elsewhere abroad—not too bad for a pistol originally designed at the beginning of the last century.

John Browning, arguably one of the United States’ most iconic and talented weapon designers, designed what would become one of the most widely-produced, copied, and recognizable pistols in history, now known today as the M1911.

Post-World War II

Though the M1911 made its combat debut during World War I, the design really came into its own during World War II. During that conflict, the design’s worth was solidified—millions of M1911s were produced for not only the United States but for other allied countries as well.

Post-war, the United States relied on the M1911 design during the Korean war and during Vietnam, though by the 1980s, the design was beginning to show its age. A replacement was found in Beretta’s M9 pistol, chambered in the smaller 9x19-millimeter Parabellum.

A Marine Corps & SOCOM Favorite

Despite the widespread adoption of Beretta’s small, higher-capacity pistol, the M1911 remained a mainstay in the Marine Corps among certain specialized groups like some reconnaissance units as well as among some MEU(SOC) personnel.

And, despite the wide-spread adoption of tens of thousands of Beretta M9 pistols, the United States Special Operations Command felt the need for a pistol that retained the stopping power of the large .45 ACP cartridge, while updating the M1911 platform.

To that end, USSOCOM initiated the Offensive Handgun Weapon System competition in order to find a suitable, .45 ACP replacement service pistol. Though Colt had high hopes for their own M1911-replacement, the Colt Colt OHWS, the design was ultimately unsuccessful. The German Heckler & Koch ultimately won the competition with their MK23 Mod 0 pistol. The MK23 Mod 0 was intended to be an offensive weapon, rather than as a back-up, secondary weapon like the M9 and remains in service with some Special Operations Command soldiers.

Farewell

Despite the retention of updated and modified M1911, the Colt M45A1, by the Marine Corps, the M1911 and derivative designs are on the out, with the United States military shifting from lower capacity, harder-hitting ammunition, to increased capacity designs with less stopping power. Most recently, the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps adapted the M17 and M18 service pistols, chambered in 9x19mm Parabellum as their standard-issue service pistols.

Postscript

And, despite no longer enjoying the widespread success that it once did as the United States’ standard-issue service pistol, the iconic M1911 design is still manufactured by Colt, as well as by a number of other firearm manufacturers in the United States and elsewhere abroad—not too bad for a pistol originally designed at the beginning of the last century.

Caleb Larson is a multimedia journalist and Defense Writer with The National Interest. He lives in Berlin and covers the intersection of conflict, security, and technology, focusing on American foreign policy, European security, and German society.

This article is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Mark Episkopos

Nuclear Weapons, North Korea

The international sanctions regime has proven largely toothless, if not counterproductive, as a means of starving DPRK’s military-industrial complex.

Here's What You Need To Remember: According to a 2019 UN report, North Korea has developed a sophisticated criminal network to continue selling arms through a diverse cast of proxies, front companies, and foreign middlemen.

North Korea (DPRK) is sometimes described as an ‘autarky,’ or economically self-reliant state, but this label belies some of the core workings of the North Korean economy: among them, a vast, illicit arms trade that continues to thrive in spite of the international sanctions regime arrayed against Pyongyang.

In the early 1980s, Premier Kim Il-Sung’s DPRK found a lucrative niche as a small arms exporter to dozens of warring and unstable third world nations; these included Libya, Yemen, Uganda, Madagascar, Iraq, Syria, Iran. The crown jewel of North Korea’s arms export ambitions became Zimbabwe, newly independent from British colonial rule; a warm personal relationship between Il-Sung and Prime Minister Robert Mugabe made Zimbabwe one of DPRK’s most loyal customers over the 1980’s, importing a wide array of heavy military hardware including T-14 tanks, armored vehicles, missile defense systems, and artillery installations. According to a 1991 Defense Intelligence Agency report, arms sales grossed for a considerable $4 billion from 1981 to 1989 and comprised over one-third of DPRK’s total export volume in 1982.

In the following decade, DPRK branched out into the missile and nuclear technology business. It is difficult to ascertain the full scale of North Korea’s 1990’s export activities, but defectors and declassified intelligence reports name Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, and Vietnam as among the dozens of prospective clients expressing interest in North Korean missiles or missile technology well into the early 2000’s.

The growing cascade of UN and EU-imposed sanctions in the wake of Pyongyang’s 2003 withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has certainly cut into North Korea’s arms export bottom line, but Pyongyang has proven remarkably adept at discovering new ways to skirt the sanctions regime. Though legally binding, none of the nine U.N Security Council Resolutions that make up the bulk of North Korea’s sanctions burden are self-enforcing. It falls on every individual member state to take adequate action against financial dealings with Pyongyang—a mandate that is being met with mixed success across the third and developing world.

According to a 2019 UN report, North Korea has developed a sophisticated criminal network to continue selling arms through a diverse cast of proxies, front companies, and foreign middlemen. In recent years, North Korea became a leading arms supplier to the Houthi movement in Yemen, as well as militant groups in Uganda and Sudan, mainly by funneling its merchandise through a Syrian company registered to arms trafficker Hussein al-Ali. Pyongyang has likewise succeeded in cultivating valuable ties at the highest echelons of the Libyan Defense Ministry, resulting in an arms contract that O Chol Su, the Deputy Minister of DPRK’s Ministry of Military Equipment, described as necessary “for the required defence systems and ammunition needed to maintain stability of Libya.”

North Korea also heads a robust maritime smuggling ring. In what the UN described as the "largest seizure of ammunition in the history of sanctions against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea,” customs officials found a cache with 30,000 rocket-propelled grenades aboard a North Korean vessel en route to Egypt. As it later turned out, the client was none other than the Egyptian Armed Forces themselves; Egypt’s military ordered the North Korean munitions through a complex web of Egyptian business proxies.

North Korea’s continued success in growing and expanding its illicit arms trade is perhaps the starkest illustration of a trend that has long drawn the alarm of Korea experts: the international sanctions regime has proven largely toothless, if not counterproductive, as a means of starving DPRK’s military-industrial complex.

Mark Episkopos is a frequent contributor to The National Interest and served as a research assistant at the Center for the National Interest. Mark is also a PhD student in History at American University.

This piece first appeared last year and is being reprinted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Mark Episkopos

Russian Navy, Russia

Plagued by an increasingly complex and costly set of problems, Russia’s only aircraft carrier is hanging on by a thread.

Here's What You Need To Remember: So vast is the extent of the work that needs to be done on Admiral Kuznetsov that it may prove more cost-effective in the long run to simply procure a new carrier, or—as an increasing number of Russian defense experts are already doing—to ask whether or not the Russian Navy really needs an aircraft carrier in the first place.

Plagued by an increasingly complex and costly set of problems, Russia’s only aircraft carrier is hanging on by a thread.

Classified by the Soviets as a “heavy aviation cruiser,” Admiral Kuznetsov was conceived in the 1980s with a fundamentally different mission from its U.S. counterparts. Kuznetsov was intended as a hybrid mix between a heavy missile cruiser and a dedicated carrier, housing some fixed-wing aircraft whilst acting as a powerful combat platform against American carrier battle groups with its salvo-launched P-700 Granit anti-ship cruise missiles.

Kuznetsov was introduced in 1991 but did not become fully operational until the mid-1990s. Despite suffering several problems involving arguable degrees of human error, the carrier served largely uneventfully through the mid-2010s. It was not until Russia’s 2016 Syrian campaign that the Western world was offered its first glimpse into Kuznetsov’s numerous problems, with the carrier crashing two fighters within less than three weeks of one another.

Russia’s Defense Ministry signed a refit and modernization contract for Kuznetsov in late 2017, but those plans were cut short in the following year when a seventy-ton crane smashed through the ship’s hull and caused its PD-50 drydock to sink. It was estimated that the damage to the ship’s hull would cost as much as one billion dollars to repair, and that’s not considering the price tag of the deep refit and modernization for which Admiral Kuznetsov is long overdue. Then there is the PD-50 itself, which reportedly sustained catastrophic damage during the incident. There were several options available to the military following the drydock disaster, none of them cheap or fast. Moscow initially announced its intent to recover the PD-50 regardless of the colossal costs involved, but those efforts are reportedly being hampered by local corruption and gross industrial mismanagement. 

By itself, this sequence of events is more than enough to qualify the Admiral Kuznetsov as one of the world’s unluckiest carriers. But then, things took a truly vaudevillian turn: Kuznetsov caught fire. In December 2019, a fire broke out aboard the ship after a power cable reportedly exploded during routine welding work. Fourteen personnel suffered injuries, and two more died, from the fire and smoke inhalation. Though estimates vary, most sources agree that the fire caused upwards of one billion dollars’ worth of damage. The 2019 fire amplified the worries of some over the mounting costs and questionable benefits of repairing, maintaining, and refitting the carrier. So vast is the extent of the work that needs to be done on Admiral Kuznetsov that it may prove more cost-effective in the long run to simply procure a new carrier, or—as an increasing number of Russian defense experts are already doing—to ask whether or not the Russian Navy really needs an aircraft carrier in the first place.

One might assume that the combined weight of these mishaps would place Admiral Kuznetsov a hair’s breadth away from the scrap heap, but the Kremlin apparently has other plans.  Russian officials insist that Kuznetsov will re-enter service by the first half of 2023, replete with electronics, structural, and landing control upgrades, as well as a revamped weapons suite. Russia’s military and civilian leadership appear to have decided that Admiral Kuznetsov is, in a sense, too big to fail, and is willing to make massive investments in order to ensure the ship’s survival into the coming decades.

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

This article is being reprinted due to readers' interest.

Image: Reuters

Caleb Larson

Submarines, Asia

Enemies beware.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The ability to launch nuclear warheads from sea in addition to positions on land would do much to preserve North Korea’s nuclear deterrence in case of a regional conflict with the United States or South Korea, despite the North’s significantly less-capable missile threat.

Also sometimes called the Sinpo-class, after the North Korean shipyard where the class was built, the Gorae-class is the Hermit Kingdom‘s first indigenously built ballistic missile submarine. The Gorae-class is currently considered by some naval experts as a test and research platform rather than a fully-fledged class.

A crew of about 70 or 80 sailors likely man the submarine’s stations. The class uses diesel-electric propulsion, and in addition to its solitary ballistic missile, it probably sports either two or four torpedo missile tubes for defense against other submarines or surface ships. Though North Korea no doubt would like to eventually christen more of the submarines, the class is likely represented by just one or two hulls.

Similar to the scrap Golf and Hotel-class hulls North Korea received in the 1990s, the Gorae-class launches its single missile from the submarine’s sail. After launch, the missile silo space would likely be flooded with seawater ballast to maintain the submarine’s sailing characteristics after ejecting the missile.

Pukguksong-3 Ballistic Missile

The little class of submarine carries just a single launch tube. Likewise, not terribly much is known about the missile it launches. The missile in question is thought by some to be the Pukguksong-3 ballistic missile. Using solid fuel propellant, the Pukguksong-3 has an estimated 1,900 kilometer, or about 1,200 mile range and was likely first tested sometime in 2019.

Though modest, the range is more than sufficient to put the entire Korean Peninsula and Japan in the Pukguksong-3’s crosshairs. More remote American installations like Guam are beyond the reach of the Pukguksong-3, though the island could be threatened if the Gorae-class positioned itself a few day’s journey west. The American West Coast is considered safe from both the Gorae-class submarine and the Pukguksong-3 missile. However, though difficult, Hawaii could possibly be threatened after a long journey and a lot of luck on the part of North Korean sailors. 

Postscript

Nuclear ballistic missile submarines are one of the world’s most exclusive clubs to be a part of. The few countries in the club—the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China, Russia, and India—have nuclear capabilities that are orders of magnitude greater than that of North Korea.

That being said, the ability to launch nuclear warheads from sea in addition to positions on land would do much to preserve North Korea’s nuclear deterrence in case of a regional conflict with the United States or South Korea, despite the North’s significantly less-capable missile threat. Enemies beware.

Caleb Larson is a multimedia journalist and Defense Writer with The National Interest. He lives in Berlin and covers the intersection of conflict, security, and technology, focusing on American foreign policy, European security, and German society.

This article is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Mark Episkopos

Russian Military, Africa

As of 2020, Rosoboronexport—Russia’s state arms export agency—accounts for a whopping 49 percent of Africa’s arms imports

Here's What You Need to Remember: Although military helicopters, strike fighter aircraft, tanks, and various types of anti-tank missiles continue to comprise the vast chunk of Russia’s arms exports to Africa, the Kremlin has been looking to diversify its portfolio into amphibious warfare systems.

Russia’s defense industry is preparing to unveil the new Strela amphibious armored vehicle at ShieldAfrica 2021 exposition, the latest in its ongoing attempts to expand its presence in the lucrative and rapidly growing African arms market.

“Live samples of VPK-Ural armored vehicle, Tigr special armored vehicle in the ‘Raid’ variant, and Strela amphibious vehicle have already been dispatched [for the expo]," announced Russian defense manufacturer Military Industrial Company (MIC). ShieldAfrica 2021 will be held from June 8–10 in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, with the organizers reporting as many as 145 exhibitors and 74 official delegations.

First displayed at the Army 2020 exhibition near Moscow, the amphibious Strela is part of a family of six multi-purpose, maneuverable, light armored vehicles. The Strela amphibious variant boasts a payload capacity of 800 kilograms, top speed of 120 kilometers per hour, maximum swimming speed of 7 kilometers per hour, and range of up to 1000 kilometers. Strela models offer partial parts interchangeability with the other vehicles in MIC’s catalog, such as the VPK-Ural. The MIC—Russia’s largest manufacturer of wheeled armored vehicles—maintains that Strela is not only cheap to produce by virtue of its modularity, but has no equal among Russia’s current roster of amphibious vehicles. The Strela family’s utility extends to ease of maintenance. “Due to wide use of parts from commercial cars, the Strela vehicles could be services and repaired at the vast car service station network,” noted an MIC executive. With its cost-efficiency, modularity, and simplified repair process, MIC intends for the Strela amphibious vehicle to make a splash in African arms import markets. The Strela vehicle can reportedly be transported by certain military helicopter models, including the prolific Soviet and now Russian Mil Mi-8 helicopter that continues to be widely used across Africa.

Although military helicopters, strike fighter aircraft, tanks, and various types of anti-tank missiles continue to comprise the vast chunk of Russia’s arms exports to Africa, the Kremlin has been looking to diversify its portfolio into amphibious warfare systems. In 2020, Russia’s Kalashnikov Concern sold a number of BK-10 assault boats to a country in Sub-Saharan Africa. MIC is seeking to make up for lost ground following a drop in transactions amid the coronavirus pandemic. “Such aggressive policy on conquering the African market is caused by a significant decrease in business activity last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, so we are catching up,” MIC CEO Alexander Krasovitsky told reporters.

As of 2020, Rosoboronexport—Russia’s state arms export agency—accounts for a whopping 49 percent of Africa’s arms imports. Algeria and Egypt are historically Moscow’s two biggest clients, but Russian exporters have pushed in recent years to expand their presence in states including Nigeria, Tanzania, and Cameroon. Beyond direct import contracts, Moscow is exploring a local production and distribution arrangement with Angola. Russia has considerably widened its export lead over the next two biggest players in the African market, France and the United States, over the past two decades.

Mark Episkopos is a national security reporter for the National Interest. This article first appeared earlier this year.

Image: Reuters.

Caleb Larson

History, Eurasia

Before Fedor Tokarev's iconic guns left the drawing board, he tried his hand at a submachine gun.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Ultimately, the Tokarev Model 1927 was rejected by Soviet leadership in favor of the PPD submachine gun design.

In an effort to wean the Soviet Union away from a reliance on foreign ammunition calibers and foster self-sufficiency in weapon design, Soviet leadership turned to one of the heavyweight weapon designers: Fedor Tokarev.

Some of Tokarev’s most important weapon designs came to fruition in the 1930s or early 1940s, including the iconic TT pistol and SVT-38 and SVT-40. But before those two influential designs left the drawing board, Tokarev tried his hand at a submachine gun.

Model 1927

Great effort was made to ensure that the Tokarev Model 1927 was simple and inexpensive to manufacture. The Model 1927 was chambered in the widely-available 7.62×38mmR cartridge, a unique and fairly stout pistol cartridge for its time that was originally designed for the Nagant M1895 revolver.

Both the M1895 and the Mosin-Nagant rifle have an identical bore diameter, a commonality that was of benefit to the USSR, as some machine tooling could be used to manufacture both the revolver and the rifle. Had the Model 1927 been accepted into service, the Soviet Union would have had a full-length rifle, submachine gun, and revolver that all featured the same .30 bore diameter, with ammunition commonality between the revolver and submachine gun.

One of the Model 1927’s most prominent features is its forward grip, which also partially houses the magazine for better control during automatic fire by preventing “muzzle rise.” Though rather small, the grip would likely have afforded the Model 1927 good controllability.

Another of the Model 1927’s more unique features was the submachine gun’s trigger group. Two triggers, one for fully automatic fire, and another for semi-automatic shooting were housed within a rather large trigger guard.

The Model 1927’s magazines held 21 rounds, making their capacity rather small. In another interesting design choice, a spare magazine could be stored within the gun’s buttstock, in reserve as a last magazine when necessary.

At least one variant of the Model 1927 exists. In addition to a single trigger, likely for semi-automatic fire only, the variant also has a longer barrel, and a modified rear sight assembly marked to 800 meters, though the 7.62×38mmR cartridge would have been unable to accurately hit even area targets at those ranges.

Postscript

Before submachine gun trials, the Soviet Army specified that all entrants should be chambered in the more modern 7.62×25mm Tokarev pistol cartridge, necessitating changes to the Model 1927 design. Ultimately the design was rejected by Soviet leadership in favor of the PPD submachine gun design.

Caleb Larson is a multimedia journalist and Defense Writer with The National Interest. He lives in Berlin and covers the intersection of conflict, security, and technology, focusing on American foreign policy, European security, and German society.

This article is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Caleb Larson

Taiwanese Air Force, Asia

Getting anti-ship missiles in the air is a strong message to Beijing.

Here's What You Need to Remember: If a China-Taiwan conflict were to break out, Taiwan's Harpoon missiles could factor heavily in hampering the People’s Liberation Army Navy.

Living on China’s doorstep is an exercise in patience. As the country with the second-largest military budget in the world, China is well positioned to eventually invade Taiwan, which China sees as a rogue province rather than an independent country.

And Taiwan is in an unenviable position—the island of democracy in the South China Sea is a mere 100 or so miles—about 160 kilometers—from mainland China. The tiny republic has neither the military budget nor the manpower to guarantee a win in a potential fight against China. But, Taipei might just be able to make the cost of winning so great for Beijing, that a Chinese invasion never comes.

Taiwan Strait

Any attack by China on Taiwan is sure at some stage to include hundreds of ships sailing across the Taiwan Strait. This is where Taiwan could excel—repelling an amphibious Chinese invasion. Taiwan boasts a large assortment of missiles that have a modest 100-150 mile range and are intended to take out Chinese ships. 

Photos recently surfaced online that show Taiwanese F-16s equipped with the American-designed Harpoon anti-ship missile. The photos, published in the Taiwanese Liberty Times, showed that the Taiwanese planes were also armed with AIM-120 a beyond visual range air-to-air missile, as well as smaller Sidewinder missile. The display was considered by some as a pointed show of force for an island country that has typically tried to keep the waters between the two countries calm.

Territorial Dispute

A long-standing dispute between China and Taiwan over the Dongsha Islands may have prompted the recent Taiwanese Harpoon missile display. The islands, actually three small atolls, lie in the South China Sea and could become strategically important if they were to be fortified or militarized.

Earlier this year, reports surfaced that claimed PLA troops were preparing drills and military exercises that simulated the takeover of the Dongsha Islands. If China were to take over the islands, Beijing could better access the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean. 

Postscript

If a China-Taiwan conflict were to break out, the island republic’s Harpoon missiles could factor heavily in hampering the People’s Liberation Army Navy. Getting the missile in the air is a strong message to Beijing—Taiwan may have a smaller military and by comparison a miniscule defense budget—but the island republic could nevertheless send Chinese ships to the bottom of the Taiwan Strait.

Caleb Larson is a multimedia journalist and Defense Writer with The National Interest. He lives in Berlin and covers the intersection of conflict, security, and technology, focusing on American foreign policy, European security, and German society.

This article is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Stephen Silver

economy, Americas

The expanded child tax credit that passed as part of Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act could serve as a “pilot program” for a future universal basic income.

The United States does not offer its citizens a universal basic income, although that idea has been out in the ether a bit more in recent years than it had been for a while. 

Democrat Andrew Yang’s signature proposal when he ran for president in the 2020 cycle was for a “Freedom Dividend,” which would have entailed $1,000 a month in direct cash payments to every adult in the country. 

“This is independent of one’s work status or any other factor,” Yang’s campaign website said of that proposal. “This would enable all Americans to pay their bills, educate themselves, start businesses, be more creative, stay healthy, relocate for work, spend time with their children, take care of loved ones, and have a real stake in the future.”

Yang did not win the presidency nor did he prevail in his subsequent bid for the mayoralty of New York. Once Joe Biden was elected, he did not make a universal basic income part of his platform. 

Earlier this summer, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota introduced legislation meant to create a universal basic income known as The Sending Unconditional Payments to People Overcoming Resistances to Triumph (SUPPORT) Act and the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) Act. That legislation does not appear to have advanced through Congress. 

However, some people have noted that the expanded child tax credit that passed as part of Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act could serve as a “pilot program” for a future universal basic income. That idea has been the basis for an episode of The New Yorker’s “Politics and More” podcast. 

The editor of The New Yorker, David Remnick, spoke with a U.S. Senator, Michael Bennet, about that connection. Bennet, like Yang, had campaigned for president in 2020 while pushing for recurring payments for all Americans, although his campaign didn’t last nearly as long. 

“The child tax credit, received by more than thirty-five million families, isn’t entirely new,” according to the description of the episode on the magazine’s website. “But the way it’s distributed is almost a revolution in American politics: instead of having it show up once a year, at tax time, the government also provides money ahead of time, in predictable monthly payments. Wide-scale, direct cash payments are anathema to Reagan-era austerity economics. Is this policy the first sign that that consensus may be coming to an end?”

The podcast also featured a debate between the University of Pennsylvania’s Amy Castro and the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Strain, over the worthiness of the universal basic income idea. 

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

Image: Reuters

Mark Episkopos

Hypersonic Missile, Americas

Russian commentators are mocking the Biden administration over the U.S. Air Force’s failed hypersonic weapons test.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The U.S. military is deploying a slew of hypersonic systems that are expected to reach operational maturity by the turn of the decade. Unfortunately, both China and Russia have already fielded hypersonic weapons.  

Russian commentators are mocking the Biden administration over the U.S. Air Force’s failed hypersonic weapons test.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) conducted the first booster flight of the long-range hypersonic AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW). USAF noted in a statement that the missile did not “complete its launch sequence” from a B-52H Stratofortress bomber, and was subsequently returned to Edwards Air Force Base in California.  

The ARRW setback made a big splash among foreign defense observers, but none took as keen an interest in the failed launch as Russian commentators. The news was picked up by a slew of major Russian media outlets and reported on cable TV. Dmitry Kiselyev, one of Russia’s most prominent news anchors, devoted an entire segment of his weekend show to highlighting Russia’s military might vis-à-vis the United States. “If we were to reconstruct Biden’s thoughts, the failed test of America’s hypersonic airborne missile must have been chilling for him. The missile has not yet flown once. For all intents and purposes, it does not exist,” he said. “The first mock-ups were taken to the air by planes. When they decided to finally launch this missile from a B-52 on April 6 . . . the product didn’t even turn on, let alone detach. Disgraceful. Biden was upset. He grieved for a week. And maybe he remembered how his mentor Barack Obama refused to go to war with Russia even over Crimea,” Kiselyev added, referencing ongoing tensions between Russia and Washington over the Donbass conflict in Ukraine.

“Biden, as a way of putting it, blinked first,” Kieseliev continued. “At some point, even Joe Biden understood that America’s security guarantee to Ukraine is essentially a bluff. America will not go to war over Donbass. And if it does, [it will suffer a] defeat so shameful that it will lose face even before its allies in NATO and across the world. What would the U.S. security guarantee be worth after that? And how, after this, could [the United States] threaten anyone or remain solvent?”

Retired Col. Viktor Litovkin gave a less politically-tinged, but still pointed assessment to Russian outlet Izvestia. “No missile, no aircraft, flies on the very first time. There is always a testing period, mistakes and failures will occur . . . however, Americans have boasted of their hypersonic weapons, their hypersonic missiles, for the last twenty years—and still cannot accomplish anything.” Litovkin maintained that, with Russia’s Tsirkon, Kh-47M2 Kinzhal, and Avangard systems already in service, it will take the United States another ten years to catch up with Russia’s hypersonic weapons capabilities. Shortly following the failed ARRW test, Russian outlet Tsargrad touted these systems as “three blows to America’s self-confidence.”  

The U.S. military is deploying a slew of hypersonic systems that are expected to reach operational maturity by the turn of the decade. Unfortunately, both China and Russia have already fielded hypersonic weapons.  

Not only does the United States currently lack parallel capabilities, but it may not have a reliable means of countering these threats. Testifying about the challenges posed by Chinese and Russian hypersonic weapons programs, former Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Michael Griffin said that Washington does not “have systems which can hold them [China and Russia] at risk in a corresponding manner, and we don’t have defenses against those systems.”

Mark Episkopos is a national security reporter for the National Interest. This article is being reprinted due to reader interests.

Image: Reuters.

James Holmes

Aircraft Carriers, World

Captain Leslie E. Gehres marred the USS Franklin’s human component.

Here's What You Need to Know: A ship is more than a hunk of steel.

Seldom does your humble scribe come away incensed from reading history. The saga of the World War II aircraft carrier USS Franklin (CV-13) constitutes an exception. We normally think of Franklin’s history as a parable about the importance of shipboard firefighting and damage control. It’s about materiel and methods, in other words. And these things are important without a doubt. Fighting ships are metal boxes packed with explosives and flammables. Suppressing fire represents a crucial function, which is why the first thing a new sailor does after reporting aboard is qualify in rudimentary damage control.

But a ship is more than a hunk of steel. The hunk of steel plus the crew that lives on board it comprises the ship. Bad leadership marred Franklin’s human component. In the end, then, this is a story with mixed lessons. It is not merely about the material dimension of naval warfare.

USS Franklin lived a short but eventful life, joining the Pacific Fleet in mid-1944. Franklin was the first fleet carrier to absorb a direct strike from a Japanese kamikaze, in the aftermath of the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944. But the flattop was to endure its worst trial in March 1945, while operating with Task Force 58 off the Japanese seacoast. On the morning of March 19 a “Judy” dive bomber eluded the fleet’s air defenses, dumping two bombs on a Franklin whose decks were crowded with fully armed, fully fueled aircraft preparing to raid sites on Kyushu.

Armor plating shielded the carrier’s innards—in particular the engineering plant—from destruction. The crew eventually managed to restart propulsion, and Franklin made the fleet anchorage at Ulithi Atoll under her own power. In the interim, however, dozens of secondary explosions spanning five hours transformed the flight and hangar decks into something out of Dante. It was a charnel house. The blasts killed the damage-control team while disabling fire fighting equipment on the hangar deck. Ammunition “cooked off,” amplifying the destruction. Aircraft fuselages melted. Rivers of burning fuel sluiced into the hangar deck and beneath from fractured pipes. Over 800 perished out of a crew of around 3,400 sailors and aviators.

Recovery operations were fitful under these circumstances. The crew managed to start a diesel-powered fire pump and organize makeshift fire parties. Cruiser USS Santa Fe came alongside and executed a controlled crash with the flat top so seamen could pass across supplies, render such firefighting aid as they could, and take aboard Franklin crewmen. The carrier survived, returning to New York via the Panama Canal.

This is a Pacific War story rich in insights for practitioners of sea power. For instance, it reveals much about the strategic and operational environment in Eurasian waters today. To wit: a foe with no navy of consequence can still exert influence at sea. It can deploy shore-based implements of sea power to punish a hostile navy cruising off its shores. The Imperial Japanese Navy met its doom at Leyte Gulf in October 1944. It could do little despite a flashy last-ditch effort or two to stem the American advance. But airfields in the home islands could act as unsinkable if stationary aircraft carriers once U.S. Navy task forces came within reach. Japan fielded an array of tactical aircraft along with munitions to arm them and pilots to fly them or, in the case of the kamikaze, crash them into American vessels. Tokyo waged an “anti-access” strategy long before the term was invented.

Franklin’s ordeal also yielded hard-won lessons about naval architecture and shipboard practices, and about firefighting and damage control in particular. These are the standard lessons of the affair. To oversimplify, the chief lesson was: equip ships with more of everything. Assigning more people to a damage-control organization would give it a better chance of withstanding damage. Installing more and longer fire hoses would bolster fire parties’ capacity to get at blazes in remote recesses of the ship. Furnishing more portable pumps would let firefighters do their work should fireplugs fail. More high-capacity foam systems would help control and extinguish flaming fuel. Mounting quick-access “scuttles” on armored hatches would allow crewmen to escape compartments should hatches become jammed or too hot to handle. And on and on.

These are all valuable insights. To me, though, the tale of USS Franklin represents a cautionary tale about the scourge of “toxic leadership.” When I reported at the Surface Warfare Officers’ School a few brief years ago, my check-in interview with the skipper amounted to this: leave the place better than you found it. Toxic leaders leave the place worse than they found it. They put themselves ahead of the institution, and they deploy leadership and management tactics that advance their personal interests—even at the expense of colleagues or subordinates.

I’ve known toxic leaders. So have you if you’ve worn a military uniform. They appear from time to time, often as ship captains. Why them in particular? It’s been said a ship captain is the world’s last absolute monarch once underway. And like any absolute monarch, the skipper can be a tyrant if he rules in his selfish interest rather than the common good. He can abuse his authority in an effort to get ahead.

Enter Captain Leslie E. Gehres. Captain Gehres assumed command of Franklin at Ulithi on the heels of the October 1944 kamikaze strike. Historian Joseph Springer, the author of a gripping oral history of the carrier’s travails, recounts how the new skipper introduced himself to the crew. Gehres relieved Captain J. M. Shoemaker at Ulithi. At the change-of-command ceremony, according to one Franklin sailor, Gehres proclaimed: “‘It was your fault because you didn’t shoot [the kamikaze] down. You didn’t do your duty; you’re incompetent, lazy, and careless. Evidently you don’t know your jobs and I’m going to do my best to shape up this crew!’ We just stood there and couldn’t believe our ears. He sure got a lot of cheers for that.”

Imagine that. You’ve just been through hell. Dozens of your shipmates are dead, dozens more wounded. And the first thing your new commanding officer does is upbraid you and your shipmates while insulting his predecessor in his presence. That’s extreme toxicity. According to crew accounts relayed by Springer, as many as three hundred sailors jumped ship in Bremerton, Washington, when the carrier made port there for shipyard repairs. They did so in large part because they believed Franklin was jinxed following the suicide strike. In part, though, they fled to escape Captain Gehres and his noxious brand of leadership.

It gets worse. Japanese warplanes harried Task Force 58 relentlessly in the hours leading up to the March 19 attack. Franklin had gone to general quarters a dozen times in six hours, so Captain Gehres relaxed the ship’s posture to allow the crew to get a hot meal.

The captain’s after-action report and the official war damage report indicate that the skies were clear the morning of March 19. The deck log—the official record of a ship’s doings—says otherwise. At 0654 the ship’s Combat Information Center reported a “bogey,” or unidentified aircraft, thirty miles off. Two other sightings followed. The range was decreasing. At last, at 0708, lookouts on board USS Hancock positively identified the Judy. Hancock radioed Franklin: “Bogey closing you!” The dive bomber was twelve miles off at that point, and inbound fast. (The aircraft would cover that distance in under three minutes, scant reaction time for the best-trained crew.)

Yet Gehres never ordered Franklin to general quarters—meaning the bombs struck the flat top when it was less than fully ready for battle.

When Santa Fe came alongside he ordered the wounded evacuated and then, writes Springer, issued an order that “could not possibly have been more vague.” Gehres directed the air officer to evacuate anyone who “would not be needed to save the ship.” A mass exodus to the cruiser ensued as those who defined themselves as nonessential fled. Ship-wide communications were out, and in the confusion many crewmen believed “abandon ship” had been ordered. The skipper then stopped the evacuation. He later directed about one hundred sailors—including some blown overboard by bomb blasts—to return to Franklin, whereupon he demanded that they state in writing why they had “left this vessel while she was in action and seriously damaged when no order had been issued to abandon ship.” Springer opines that his action “nearly tainted” the carrier’s gallant struggle to survive.

Nearly tainted? Gehres announced that 215 Franklin crewmen would be charged with desertion, and insisted that ships carrying them treat them as prisoners. He founded the “Big Ben 704 Club” to honor the crewmen who had remained on board (and ostentatiously exclude everyone else), barred evacuees from attending the memorial service for fallen shipmates, made sure no evacuee received a medal, and laid the legal groundwork for courts-martial against officers and chief petty officers who took refuge in Santa Fe. (Thankfully the navy leadership ignored his legal maneuvering.) “The treatment of these Franklin crewmen,” concludes Springer, constituted “one of the greatest but least-known injustices involving the U.S. Navy in World War II.”

And how. No bad deed went unrewarded in the case of Leslie Gehres. The navy whitewashed his misdeeds. He was decorated with the Navy Cross, its loftiest award for martial valor, and ultimately promoted to a rear admiral. Here was a navy captain who assumed command of a wounded vessel, shattered its culture, scapegoated his way out of high-seas disaster, and in fact garnered promotions and high honors for his trouble. Many individual Franklin mariners—the ship’s chaplain and one of her engineering officers in particular—displayed conspicuous gallantry following the March 19 cataclysm. Indeed, the flattop is the most decorated U.S. Navy warship ever. Yet this was far from the navy’s finest hour.

This is a story worth telling and retelling. It supplies insight into material matters, along with examples of grit and fortitude. It also supplies a case study in how not to lead. Let’s detoxify the sea service.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College. The views voiced here are his alone.

This article first appeared in August 2017.

Image: U.S. Navy / Wikimedia Commons

Michael Peck

Tanks, Eurasia

Old Russian tanks cannot pierce modern tank armor, these unorthodox shells can do the job. 

Here's What You Need to Remember: There are several international organizations campaigning to ban depleted uranium shells. Whether the Russian government will heed them is another matter. 

Russia is arming its tanks with controversial depleted uranium shells.

While depleted uranium, or DU, is extremely dense and can punch through thick tank armor, many believe that these shells release small doses of radiation, like miniature neutron bombs. The U.S. has used DU shells in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria.

A Russian Defense Ministry bulletin said Russian T-80BV tanks would be armed with these powerful munitions, according to Russia’s TASS news agency. The bulletin noted that “the T-80BVM (the letter M stands for ‘modernized’) features ‘the improved weapons stabilizer and the loading mechanism for the 3BM59 Svinets-1 and 3BM60 Svinets-2 munitions.’”

The Svinets-1 has a tungsten carbide core, while the Svinets-2 uses depleted uranium. according to the Below the Ring armor site, published by a pair of Dutch defense experts. A 2016 post speculated that Russia might have been producing these special rounds for several years as replacements for existing tank ammunition.

The shells “utilize an aluminum sabot with three points of contact - this is rather unique, as most other types of APFSDS sabot use only two points of contacts,” Below the Ring said. “If and how this affects accuracy and barrel wear is currently not known.”

The Svinets-2 is not the first Russian shell to use depleted uranium. The 3BM-32 Vant, designed for Soviet 125-millimeter tank cannon, also contained a DU core. But the new rounds are longer.

“Compared to the 3BM-32 Vant APFSDS with a 380-mm-long [14.7-inch] DU penetrator, the two types of new ammunition have an approximately 79 to 84 percent longer projectile, which should lead to a significant increase in penetration power,” Below the Ring estimated.

The problem is that older Russian tank ammunition has difficulty piercing advanced tank armor such as that found on the U.S. M-1 Abrams or Israeli Merkava. “The 3BM-42 Mango relies on an outdated penetrator design, using two relatively short tungsten rods inside a steel body,” according to Below the Ring. “...Steel penetrates armor less efficiently than a high-density heavy metal alloy.”

Thus, the appeal of DU shells as tank killers (you can find a concise scientific explanation of depleted uranium ammunition here). There are 120-millimeter DU shells for the M-1 Abrams and 30-millimeter shell for the A-10 Warthog. Ironically, the Abrams tank uses depleted uranium in its armor plating to stop anti-tank shells.

The U.S. military says depleted uranium ammunition is safe, for the most part. “When fired, or after ‘cooking off’ in fires or explosions, the exposed depleted uranium rod poses an extremely low radiological threat as long as it remains outside the body,” says a U.S. Air Force fact sheet. “Taken into the body via metal fragments or dust-like particles, depleted uranium may pose a long-term health hazard to personnel if the amount is large. However, the amount which remains in the body depends on a number of factors, including the amount inhaled or ingested, the particle size and the ability of the particles to dissolve in body fluids.”

However, even the Veterans Administration acknowledges that depleted uranium poses health risks to soldiers, such as those who fought in Operation Desert Storm, where DU rounds were used to destroy Iraqi tanks. There are also complaints that depleted uranium contaminates the environment, such as in Iraq. The Pentagon promised that it wouldn’t use DU ammunition in Syria, though it later admitted that it fired thousands of rounds in 2015.

There are several international organizations campaigning to ban depleted uranium shells. Whether the Russian government will heed them is another matter.

Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

This article first appeared last year and is being republished due to reader interest.

Ethen Kim Lieser

Unemployment Benefits,

The U.S. Department of Labor has opened up the possibility of unemployed Americans still being able to receive some form of government-issued payments. It recently noted that states could, in fact, disburse periodic or one-time direct cash payments to those who are still searching for work.

In less than two weeks, the enhanced federal unemployment benefits are slated to come to a screeching halt.

That means come Labor Day, according to a study conducted by the People’s Policy Project, citing data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, approximately ten million more Americans on unemployment will lose those extra $300 in weekly benefits. The Century Foundation is supporting such projections as it has claimed that 7.5 million will lose all their jobless benefits in September.

But the U.S. Department of Labor has opened up the possibility of unemployed Americans still being able to receive some form of government-issued payments. It recently noted that states could, in fact, disburse periodic or one-time direct cash payments to those who are still searching for work.

States Taking Action

On the heels of this statement, there are already several states that are tapping into federal relief funds from President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan to hand out their own “stimulus” checks to their respective residents.

For example, in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the 2021 California Comeback Plan last month that included $8.1 billion for stimulus payments. Taxpayers earning between $30,000 and $75,000 annually will receive a $600 check. In all, roughly two-thirds of the state’s total population can expect to receive some form of cash payment.

And in Florida, lawmakers are using federal funds from Biden’s stimulus bill to deliver $1,000 stimulus checks to teachers and educators in the state. In addition, Georgia, Michigan, and Tennessee are giving out similar cash payments to those working in schools.

Furthermore, do take note that the Internal Revenue Service is still working on distributing the remaining refunds from 2020 unemployment benefits. It was only a few weeks ago when the agency was able to disburse a sizeable batch of 1.5 million refunds averaging nearly $1,700—and more cash payments are expected to head out. Since May, the agency has issued about nine million unemployment refunds with a value of more than $10 billion.

Ending Benefits Cut Spending

What a recent study authored by economists and researchers at Columbia University, Harvard University, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and the University of Toronto is showing is that the twenty-six states that decided to withdraw early from the enhanced unemployment benefits did, in fact, see slightly higher job growth—but it was also responsible for a massive $2 billion cut in overall household spending.

According to the study’s data, the states that ended the benefits early witnessed employment rise 4.4 percentage points compared to the states that continued with the benefits. But that translated to only one in eight unemployed individuals in the “cutoff states” who eventually found employment. These same states also saw a 20 percent cut in weekly spending from their residents—which amounted to about $145 each week.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Washington state-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

Mark Episkopos

military, Americas

The Navy aims to accept as many as 273 F-35C fighter jets into service, a procurement that will transform U.S. naval aviation and define the power projection capabilities of the American carrier strike group for decades to come. 

Unmatched in its performance and versatility, the F-35C fighter jet is set to revolutionize the Navy’s carrier air wing. 

The Variants 

Although commonly referred to in the singular, Lockheed Martin’s fifth-generation F-35 stealth fighter jet was designed as three separate planes, purpose-built to accomplish different tasks in three of the U.S. military’s service branches. The F-35A is a conventional take-off and landing variant that will replace Air Force’s venerable F-16 Fighting Falcon, while the F-35B is a short takeoff and vertical landing model tailored to the Marine Corps’ unique operating requirements. Finally, there is the F-35C: a catapult-assisted take-off but arrested recovery variant that is designed to operate from aircraft carriers as part of the U.S. Navy’s carrier strike groups (CSGs).  

Enter the F-35C

The F-35C was introduced in 2019 as the Navy’s first aircraft-carrier-based next-generation stealth fighter. The fighter embarked on its first CSG deployment aboard the Nimitz-class USS Carl Vinson in August 2021. Whereas the F-35A and B variants are widely similar in external design, the F-35C can instantly be recognized for its large foldable wings that are meant to save space on crowded aircraft carrier decks—the plane has a forty-three foot-wingspan as opposed to the thirty-five feet of its two A and B counterparts. It is the heaviest F-35 variant, boasting seventy thousand pounds at full payload capacity. It also carries the most internal fuel by a slight margin, though this does not translate into a significant combat radius advantage over the F-35A. The F-35C carries over five thousand pounds worth of weapons in its internal weapons bays or a combined eighteen thousand pounds in external and internal slots for situations where the fighter can afford to sacrifice stealth performance in exchange for maximum firepower.

The Navy’s current workhorse fighter, the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, has a combat radius of just under four hundred nautical miles. This is a serious potential vulnerability at a time of rapidly growing Chinese and Russian tactical strike capabilities. The latter will soon field the formidable new 3M22 Tsirkon winged, hypersonic anti-ship cruise missile. With a range of up to one thousand kilometers (around 621 miles) and flight speed of around Mach 9, Russian military officials and defense experts are projecting confidence that Tsirkon can effectively bypass the surface-to-air systems of CSGs and disable U.S. aircraft carriers with just one hit. The Chinese military is developing parallel capabilities with its hypersonic DF-17 medium-range ballistic missile. This means that, in their current form, the Navy’s carrier air wings will increasingly be forced to operate within strike distance of the latest Russian and Chinese missiles, putting their CSG at greater risk and compromising the formation’s ability to effectively project power.

The Advantage

That’s where the F-35C comes in. With an unrefueled combat radius of 670 nautical miles, Lockheed’s fighter reduces the potential for missiles like Tsirkon to threaten the Navy’s CSG’s whilst enhancing the formation’s battlespace persistence. As a fifth-generation stealth fighter, the F-35C is more survivable than the Super Hornet. Not only is it safer to operate across the board, but the F-35C vastly expands the Navy’s scope of mission possibilities—these include strike missions against high-value targets deep into enemy airspace, as well as the potential to execute multiple strikes within a single sortie. With arguably the most advanced and robust sensor suite of any active-service fighter in the world, the F-35C likewise introduces a whole new dimension of networking and interlinked performance. The fighter acts as a force multiplier for the rest of the CSG with its groundbreaking “sensor fusion” capabilities, painting a dynamic picture of the battlefield for nearby friendly sea, air, and ground units. 

The Navy aims to accept as many as 273 F-35C fighter jets into service, a procurement that will transform U.S. naval aviation and define the power projection capabilities of the American carrier strike group for decades to come.  

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

Image: Reuters

Kyle Mizokami

military, Americas

If a submarine’s hull remained intact, then it was able to surface and the reactor continued to operate the crew had a shot at survival. The USS San Francisco was able to do all three.

Here's What You Need To Remember: In 2005, a U.S. Navy attack submarine collided head-on with an undersea mountain at more than thirty miles an hour. Despite the damage the ship sustained and the crew’s injuries, the USS San Francisco managed to limp to its homeport of Guam on its own power. The incident was a testament to the design of the submarine and the training and professionalism of its crew.

USS San Francisco is a Los Angeles-class nuclear attack submarine. Submarine builder Newport News Shipyard began construction on it in 1977, and it was commissioned on April 24, 1981. The submarine joined the U.S. Pacific Fleet and served there throughout its career.

Like all Los Angeles-class submarines, it displaced 6,900 tons submerged, was 362 feet long, and had a beam of 33 feet. A General Electric PWR S6G nuclear reactor provided 35,000 shipboard horsepower, driving the submarine to a speedy 33 knots. A typical crew consisted of 129 officers and enlisted men.

On January 8, 2005, the USS San Francisco was traveling at flank (full) speed—approximately 38 miles an hour at a depth of 525 feet. It was 360 miles southeast of Guam heading to Brisbane, Australia for a liberty stop. Navigation plotted the route based on undersea maps that were generally agreed to give the most complete view of the seabed. According to the New York Times, the captain went to lunch and the navigation officer, believing it was safe to do so, dived the submarine from 400 to 525 feet and accelerated to flank speed.

At approximately 11:42 local time, while transiting the Caroline Islands mountain chain, the submarine came to an abrupt—and unexpected—halt. There was a shudder and then a tremendous noise. Men throughout the ship were thrown from their stations against their surroundings. In an instant many suffered bruises, lacerations, broken bones and fractures. A chief petty officer described the scene as looking like a “slaughterhouse,” with blood running everywhere. Ninety-eight crewmen were injured with one, Machinist's Mate Second Class Joseph Allen Ashley, fatally injured.

Despite their injuries, and not having any idea what had just happened, the captain and his crew rushed to surface the boat. The crew threw the emergency blow activator, known as the “chicken switch,” that immediately blast compressed air into the USS San Francisco’s ballast tanks. Unknown to the crew, the impact of the explosion had punched huge holes in the forward ballast tanks. The submarine was supposed to immediately rise, but it was an agonizing thirty seconds before the submarine began to surface. By 11:44 the submarine had surfaced.

Damage control reported the USS San Francisco’s inner hull was intact, its Mk. 48 torpedoes and Tomahawk cruise missiles were unharmed, and remarkably, its nuclear reactor was completely undamaged. All alone in the Pacific, the submarine began the long trip back to Guam. The submarine limped back into Apra Harbor in Guam thirty hours later on January 10, the crews of other moored submarines manning their rails in the stricken submarine’s honor.

Later, an investigation would reveal the submarine had crashed into a seamount rising 6,500 feet from the ocean floor. The seamount had not appeared on the charts that San Francisco’s crew had used to plot their course, but appeared on other charts as a “potential hazard.” The hazard was reported two miles from the site of the collision and the Captain of the San Francisco has stated that had he known about it, he would have given the potential obstacle a wide berth.

The chart used by the USS San Francisco’s crew was prepared by the Defense Mapping Agency in 1989. According to a study of the incident prepared by the University of Massachusetts in 2008, a Landsat satellite image showed a seamount in the area of the collision that rose to within one hundred feet of the surface. The Navy’s charts were not updated with the new data—according to the UMass report, the Navy believed that with the cessation of the Cold War the crash site area was not a high priority for mapping, and that priority had instead been given to the Middle East region to support the Global War on Terror.

After repairs to ensure hull integrity, San Francisco traveled under its own power to Puget Sound, Washington. The damaged portion of the boat’s bow was removed. The bow of sister submarine USS Honolulu, soon to be retired, was removed and welded onto San Francisco. The submarine rejoined the fleet in 2009 and served for another seven years. In January, it began a two-year conversion that will turn it into a permanently moored training submarine.

The heroic actions of the crew were essential to the submarine’s survival. Still, how did a submarine survive a high-speed collision with a mountain? In 1963, immediately after the loss of USS Thresher, the Navy instituted the SUBSAFE program. The goal of the program was to ensure that a submarine’s hull would retain pressure in the event of an accident and it would be able to surface. The Navy’s Nuclear Propulsion Program made safe, resilient nuclear reactors an absolute top priority.

If a submarine’s hull remained intact, then it was able to surface and the reactor continued to operate the crew had a shot at survival. The USS San Francisco was able to do all three. That it was able to survive was no accident but rather the culmination of decades of hard work and dedication by the U.S. submarine force.

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 piece was originally featured in 2016.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

James Holmes

U.S. Military, Americas

The time is now to match means to ends against specific threats.

Here's What You Need to Know: The masters of strategy agree: let’s get back to basics.

The congressionally-chartered National Defense Strategy Commission set tongues a-wagging in November 2018 by issuing a novella-length report entitled Providing for the Common Defense.

Here’s a tip: read the whole thing.

Nor is it any mystery why the report generated buzz. The commissioners postulate that “Americans could face a decisive military defeat” if the U.S. armed forces tangle with, say, Russia in the Baltic Sea or China in the Taiwan Strait. That’s dark language and marks quite a turnabout from the triumphalism of the post-Cold War years, when Americans talked themselves into believing history had ended in Western triumph underwritten by perpetual U.S. maritime supremacy.

But it’s also accurate language, and has been for some time. Think about the algebra of Eurasian warfare. Likely contingencies would pit a fraction of U.S. forces against the concentrated military might of Russia in the Baltic or China in the Taiwan Strait. The same would go for other hotspots. Decisive defeat is always a possibility when part of one force squares off against the whole of another on the latter’s home turf.

Welcome Back to History

Congress charged the commission with critiquing the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the Trump Pentagon’s most authoritative statement of how it saw the world and intended to manage it. To me the report’s most acute criticism involves fudge factors. Admiral J. C. Wylie observes that lawmakers make strategic decisions through the budgetary process all the time. Hence it behooves national security professionals to explain the repercussions of such decisions for martial undertakings.

In so doing they bolster the likelihood of sound decisions. By fixing the overall budget or allocating funding to some priorities—and, strategy being the art of setting and enforcing priorities, neglecting others—Congress could cap or deform U.S. military effectiveness in certain contingencies. Wrongfoot the armed forces and they may fail to attain the tactical, operational, or strategic goals assigned to them. Fail to achieve those goals and America has suffered a defeat—perhaps a decisive one if the foe gets everything it wants.

Decisive defeat need not mean losing the force in an afternoon (although that does seem to be what the commissioners mean). Yet one contender need not annihilate another’s armed force to score a decisive victory. Even Carl von Clausewitz defines “destruction” as destroying the enemy force as a fighting force, not necessarily as wreaking physical destruction. In theory, every enemy soldier, airman, or sailor could survive an encounter with all of their weaponry intact and still could have suffered catastrophe.

Not every decisive battle or campaign need be a Trafalgar, Tsushima, or Leyte Gulf, an engagement that inflicts wholesale human and material destruction on one of the antagonists. Strategic and political results are what distinguish victory from defeat.

Back to fudge factors, lawmakers may restrict budgets—and thus military options—while administration officials decline to slacken demands on the force. As a result, it’s natural for the Pentagon and service magnates to try to accomplish the goals they’re given with the manpower and taxpayer resources supplied to them. They approach with a can-do spirit.

This has pitfalls. Though not in so many words, the commissioners take the framers of the National Defense Strategy to task for fudging in hopes that the armed services can fulfill all assigned missions with inadequate resources. For instance, they find the strategy’s emphasis on “dynamic force employment” to be “imprecise and unpersuasive.” It appears to mean “creating efficiencies within the force and decreasing the need to expand force structure by having a single asset perform multiple missions in different theaters on a near-simultaneous basis.”

If so, this is indeed a troubling sign. Wringing new efficiencies out of existing budgets and force structure to fund operations or hardware acquisitions is a staple of defense debates. It looks like conjuring new resources out of thin air. Seldom, however, do such economies yield the windfalls advertised for them. And if dynamic force employment means shifting forces constantly from theater to theater, it may be a throwback to the 1970s, when overseers of the shrunken and “hollow” post-Vietnam force foresaw “swinging” naval forces from Pacific to Atlantic in times of war.

That’s a precedent America should reject with all its might. Eliminating the need to swing forces from side to side on the map constituted a major part of the rationale impelling the Reagan administration’s defense buildup in the 1980s. Again: one hopes the National Defense Strategy isn’t taking us back to the groovy 1970s. Disco is dead. Let swinging stay buried next to it.

Beware of Fudge Factors

I confess my favorite part of Providing for the Common Defense isn’t the consensus text, though. My favorite bit comes from my colleague Andrew Krepinevich in an appendix toward the report’s end. (Krepinevich and I are island-chain defenders of long standing.) If the commissioners proffer a critique of the National Defense Strategy, Professor Krepinevich critiques the critique. That’s the hallmark of sound analysis and writing. Kudos to the commission for publishing a dissent.

In fact, Andy reprimands his fellow commissioners for the same failings they identify in the National Defense Strategy. He faults them in particular for global, vague, abstract thinking.

In his telling the coauthors revert to “‘capabilities-based’ planning rather than ‘threat-based’ planning.” Capabilities-based planning was long in vogue at the Pentagon after the Cold War, when no peer competitor had appeared on the horizon and none seemed to be in the making. That being the case, U.S. strategists and planners took to imagining what capabilities—a “capability” being “the ability to” do X, Y, or Z—the U.S. armed forces needed to prosecute a generic contingency in a generic setting against a generic foe to be named later. Then the services built those capabilities and trusted that they would fit real-life situations.

By contrast, threat-based planning designates a prospective opponent and theater of conflict and gears planning and force design to foreseeable contingencies involving that opponent in that theater. Naming an enemy has its hazards from a diplomatic standpoint; from a military standpoint it’s valuable beyond measure. It situates capabilities in real settings. It’s concrete and actionable compared to capabilities-based planning. And it supplies a benchmark against which to measure U.S. tactical and operational efficacy.

It Connects Plans and Forces with Reality

And it helps ward off bad habits. We often caution Naval War College students against “script-writing” in strategy. That’s the fallacy of choreographing a strategy and supporting operations, often in minute detail, and expecting hostile actors to play the parts the choreographers set forth for them. It’s one thing for Hollywood screenwriters to script out events; they pay the actors and can expect them to comply with instructions. Not so in armed strife.

Moreover, script-writing has a way of locking friendly commanders or officialdom into a particular doctrine for doing things. Which is fine except it ignores the fact that some characters listed in the dramatis personae—meaning foes—have every interest in spoiling our script.

Accordingly, it’s high time to get back to judging ourselves against real competitors. As Krepinevich notes, “it is now possible to identify the character of major threats to our security with far greater clarity” than it was during the heyday of capabilities-based planning. As Clausewitz might put it, we can now envision the “nature of the war” and venture some net assessment of the surroundings and likely combatants. We now brandish a yardstick.

That may mean it’s inadvisable or impossible to come up with a one-size-fits-all force design to suit all theaters against all adversaries at all times. Carrier task forces may remain the right implement for waging war in the North Atlantic, for example. The Pentagon seems to think so in light of the USS Harry S. Truman strike group’s recent deployment for exercises in northern climes. It certainly feels like the 1980s are back in the strategic competition against Russia.

But traditional formations may not be the right tool elsewhere. A force skewed more toward light surface combatants, a mix of diesel and conventional submarines, and land-based air and missile forces might be the optimal instrument against China. If the strategic goal is to confine Chinese air and sea forces within the China seas, nontraditional forces might close the straits while aircraft carriers and other high-end combatants play the role of supporting mobile forces in the Western Pacific—behind the island chain. In a sense, the battle fleet as usually construed would take a back seat to lesser forces that are better suited to the job.

Bottom line, it’s time to get specific about dreaming up and wargaming real-world scenarios and designing capabilities around them.

Krepinevich closes by proposing a series of big-think capabilities that sound as though they could have been drafted by Julian Corbett, the English marine historian of the turn of the century. Corbett maintains that a maritime hegemon can wage limited war in distant theaters if it can accomplish three goals: assure seaborne access to the theater, isolate the geographic object from the sea, and safeguard its homeland from an “unlimited” counterattack—meaning an enemy effort at regime change from afar. For instance, unseating the government in Washington could settle matters in favor of Moscow or Beijing without major combat on the scene.

In other words, a global maritime power like the United States must guard North America while preserving its command of the maritime commons that connects North America to embattled zones. Applying that Corbettian logic to the Baltic Sea, Taiwan Strait, and other contested areas would furnish strategists and planners a north star for their efforts.

The masters of strategy agree: let’s get back to basics.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College. The views voiced here are his alone.

This article first appeared in November 2018.

Image: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Olympia O. McCoy

David Axe

North Korea, Asia

Pyongyang's nukes are scary, but don't forget about North Korea's artillery.

Here's What You Need to Remember: In firing the artillery at the same time as it launched a ballistic missile, North Korea reminded the world of its enormous conventional firepower.

Years back, North Korea on May 4, 2019 test-fired a short-range ballistic missile -- its first major launch in the 18 months since North Korean leader Kim Jong Un suspended missile testing ahead of a summit with U.S. president Donald Trump.

Pyongyang on May 9, 2019 launched a second “projectile,” South Korean officials said.

The May tests of at least one apparently nuclear-capable short-range missile startled foreign observers and threatened to elevate tensions between the United States and its allies South Korea and Japan on one side and, on the other side, North Korea and its main patron China.

But a less dramatic test of North Korea’s heavy artillery that occured at the same time as the May 4 rocket launch arguably is more important.

“On May 4, under the watchful eye of Kim Jong Un, North Korea launched a series of projectiles featuring two types of large-caliber, multiple launch rocket systems and a new short-range ballistic missile,” Michael Elleman wrote for 38 North, a North Korea-focused think tank associated with the Washington, D.C.-based Stimson Center.

“A few days later, North Korea released photographs of tested projectiles, which provides a basis for preliminary evaluations,” Elleman continued. “The 240-millimeter and 300-millimeter diameter MLRS systems are not new to North Korea, nor do they alter the country’s battlefield capabilities.”

It’s true that Pyongyang long has operated large-caliber artillery systems. But Elleman is wrong to downplay the significance of the May 2019 artillery test. That’s because North Korea’s roughly 13,000 artillery pieces arguably pose a greater immediate threat than do Pyongyang’s nukes to South Koreans and Americans living in South Korea.

In firing the artillery at the same time as it launched a ballistic missile, North Korea reminded the world of its enormous conventional firepower. North Korea previously tested, in November 2018, upgrades to its non-nuclear artillery.

Much of Pyongyang’s artillery is in range of the Seoul Greater Metropolitan Area, which begins just 25 miles south of the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas. Some 10 million people live in the Greater Seoul Metropolitan Area and another 15 million reside just outside of the metropolitan area. South Korea has prepared underground shelters for Seoul’s entire population.

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

“North Korea has deployed at least three artillery systems capable of ranging targets in the [Greater Seoul Metropolitan Area] with virtually no warning,” Brooks warned. The 170-millimeter Koksan gun is the most numerous. It can fire a distance of 37 miles. North Korea also deploys truck-mounted launchers that can fire a volley of as many as 22 240-millimeter rocket out to a range of 37 miles.

The 300-millimeter KN-09 rocket artillery is the newest system. “The rocket was first tested in 2013, with subsequent tests performed in 2014 and 2016,” Elleman explained.

It has a reported range of [118 to 124 miles] and carries a light, conventional warhead. It is powered by a standard composite-type solid fuel. Photographs show that the rocket is steered during flight by four small canard fins mounted at the rocket’s front end, near the warhead section, which provides for precision strikes if the guidance unit includes a satellite navigation receiver to update the inertial navigation components.”

The KN-09 is fielded on a six-wheeled truck equipped with two launch pods, each having four launch tubes. Its primary mission is to strike rear echelon targets, some [31 to 62 miles] behind the primary line of battle.

"Even without using nuclear weapons, North Korea has the capacity to unleash a devastating level of violence against a significant portion of the ROK population through some mix of conventional artillery and possibly chemical munitions," according to a January 2019 report from RAND, a California think tank with close ties to the U.S. military.

A North Korean artillery barrage could inflict as many as 250,000 casualties in Seoul alone, RAND reported, citing a U.S. Defense Department estimate.

David Axe was Defense Editor of the National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels  War Fix, War Is Boring and Machete Squad. This article is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters. 

Mark Episkopos

Great Power Competition, Pacific

The Air Force concluded that a fundamentally different approach is needed.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The United States would have to deploy as much as 80 percent of its Navy and Air Force to win a pitched conflict with China in the South and East China Seas, where the latter enjoys significant logistical and operational advantages, according to an estimate by Lu Li-shih,  a former instructor at Taiwan’s Naval Academy in Kaohsiung.

The U.S. Air Force finally has a plan for successfully repelling a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, but only at a steep cost.  

China has spent the past decade gradually building up its strength against U.S. assets operating in the Pacific, but a series of earlier war games have shown just how drastically the regional balance of power has shifted in Beijing’s favor. Noting China’s growing success in countering U.S. power projection capabilities, Air Force Lt. Gen. Clinton Hinote offered a bleak assessment: “At that point, the trend in our war games was not just that we were losing, but we were losing faster . . .  After the 2018 war game I distinctly remember one of our gurus of wargaming standing in front of the Air Force secretary and chief of staff and telling them that we should never play this war game scenario [of a Chinese attack on Taiwan] again because we know what is going to happen.”  

“The definitive answer, if the U.S. military doesn’t change course” Hinote continued, “is that we’re going to lose fast. In that case, an American president would likely be presented with almost a fait accompli.”  

The Air Force concluded that a fundamentally different approach is needed. The service repelled a Chinese invasion of Taiwan with a roster of advanced drones and next-generation fighters during a war game held late last fall, according to Defense News. This networked, survivable force spearheaded the defense of Taiwan, rebuffing the Chinese invasion force and thus blocking Beijing from realizing its long-held strategic goal of absorbing the island nation to its east.  

At first glance, the war game seemed to herald something of a turning point: for the first time in recent years, the U.S. military won a simulated conflict with China. However, that victory comes with serious caveats. First, any such conflict implies substantial losses for both the U.S. and Taiwanese sides. “The force that we had programmed, say, in 2018 took devastating losses. This force doesn’t take those devastating losses. They do take losses. We do lose a lot of airmen. It is a difficult fight,” Hinote said. “And that kind of gets to the point of what does it take to stand up to China in the Indo-Pacific, literally on their front doorstep. And the answer is: It takes a willingness to be able to suffer those losses. It’s just a difficult, very sobering reality that we have.” The United States would have to deploy as much as 80 percent of its Navy and Air Force to win a pitched conflict with China in the South and East China Seas, where the latter enjoys significant logistical and operational advantages, according to an estimate by Lu Li-shih,  a former instructor at Taiwan’s Naval Academy in Kaohsiung.

But there is yet another problem: the U.S. military won the war game in large part with technology it does not currently possess, and under assumptions that may not hold up in real-life circumstances. The upcoming Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter played a key role in high-risk penetration operations into enemy airspace, as did several types of autonomous “loyal wingman” drones that are currently either in the development or acquisition stage. The simulation’s force composition and deployment patterns were partially pre-determined in a way that is beneficial to the U.S. side. The war game also assumed that the military had fully implemented its ongoing Joint All Domain Command and Control, allowing U.S. assets to fight as an interlinked force; it likewise presumed certain future defense investments on the part of Taipei.  

The war game signals a step in the right conceptual direction, but there is much more work to be done—both in terms of strategic planning as well as ongoing defense investments—if Washington is to acquire the capability to credibly deter and defeat a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. 

Mark Episkopos is a national security reporter for the National Interest. This article is being reprinted due to reader interest.

Image: Flickr.