The National Interest

Peter Suciu

Security, Asia

The Chinese People’s Armed Forces Coast Guard Corps (CPAFCGC) is also the world’s largest coast guard and has increasingly been taking on a role of a naval force.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The “militarization” of the China Coast Guard actually began in 2007 when the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) transferred two Type 728 cutters, which at the time were the largest China Coast Guard ships in its fleet.

Despite being one of the newest—and certainly lesser-known—branches of the Central Military Commission, the Chinese People’s Armed Forces Coast Guard Corps (CPAFCGC) is also the world’s largest coast guard and has increasingly been taking on a role of a naval force. This month the Chinese Communist Party released a draft law that would empower the Chinese Coast Guard to use actual “military force” against foreign vessels, and that could potentially be applied in disputes in the South China Sea.

Under this new law, China will allow its coast guard personnel to use weapons when foreign vessels are involved in illegal activities in waters under Beijing’s jurisdiction. The draft details, which were first revealed by the National People’s Congress on Wednesday, maintain that the coast guard has the authority to also forcibly drive away foreign vessels that intrude into Chinese territorial waters or even to interrogate their crews.

Paramilitary Unit

This empowerment of the coast guard comes after the service was incorporated into the armed police force, which also included the coast guard fleet being upgraded with significantly larger vessels.

The unit was formerly the maritime branch of the People’s Armed Police (PAP) Border Security, which served the Ministry of Public Security until 2013. Then in March of that year, Beijing announced it would form a unified coast guard commanded by the State Oceanic Administration, and that new unit was then transferred from civilian control to the PAP in 2018 and ultimately under the command of the Central Military Commission.

The “militarization” of the China Coast Guard actually began in 2007 when the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) transferred two Type 728 cutters, which at the time were the largest China Coast Guard ships in its fleet. In March 2017, the service sent its 12,000 ton China Coast Guard (CCG) 3901 cutter—which is not only the largest cutter in the world, but it is also larger in size the U.S. Navy’s aging 9,800 ton Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers or the 8,300-9,800 ton Arleigh-Burke-class guided missile destroyed.

The CCG 3901 is a true warship and is armed 76mm H/PJ-26 rapid fire naval guns, two auxiliary guns, and two anti-aircraft guns. It has a maximum speed of twenty-five knots and given its size it is easy to see why some analysts have nicknamed the white hulled ship the “Monster.”

China’s legal changes come as Beijing has amplified its claims to the Senkaku Islands (called Diaoyu by Beijing), which are administered by Tokyo, and could be used to target Japanese fishing vessels near the uninhabited islands.

The draft law’s rules of engagement are just the latest transition of the China Coast Guard into a true quasi-military force—and one under the PAP, which answers directly to the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Military Commission.

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

Image: Reuters

Robert Farley

History, Asia

Friendly fire casualties were common in the Vietnam War.

Here's What You Need to Know: The mistaken attack killed three Australian sailors.

Friendly fire casualties were common in the Vietnam War. The unconventional nature of the conflict made for more than the occasional artillery mishap and engagements in dense vegetation often meant combatants had little opportunity to visually identify their targets before firing. As morale deteriorated late in the war, “fragging” incidents became common, with enlisted personnel turning upon their officers. And of course, relations between American and South Vietnamese forces were always strained.

Even in this context, however, one “friendly fire” incident stands out. On June 17, 1968, U.S. fighter jets apparently launched air-to-air missiles that struck a U.S. Navy heavy cruiser and a Royal Australian Navy guided-missile destroyer. How did this happen?

The Ships

In mid-June 1968, numerous U.S. Navy and allied vessels were operating in the vicinity of Tiger Island, just on the North Vietnamese side of the DMZ. The ships were deployed to interdict the “maritime Ho Chi Minh Trail,” which used small boats to deliver supplies to insurgents in coastal areas, as well as to engage North Vietnamese targets with gunfire. 

The USS Boston was a 17,000-ton heavy cruiser, modified from her original World War II configuration to carry a Terrier surface-to-air missile aft. Commissioned in 1944, Boston had served in the final campaigns of the Second World War before entering the reserve fleet. Reactivated for Korea, she was later one of a few vessels to receive a single-end conversion, with the aft turret replaced by the Terrier missile system. Ironically, the guns of USS Boston would prove more lasting than the missiles, which were quickly rendered obsolete by rapid advances in missile technology. Boston was in Vietnam primarily because of what her guns could deliver to Vietnamese shore targets. Boston was accompanied by USS Edson, a 4,000 ton Forest Sherman class destroyer with a heavy gun armament, two small patrol vessels, “swift boats” PCF-12 and PCF-19, and a U.S. Coast Guard cutter were also in the area. 

Alongside the U.S. ships served the Australian destroyer HMAS Hobart. Hobart was a 4,600-ton guided-missile destroyer of a modified Charles F. Adams design. Australia had attempted to build its own class of destroyers, but the effort had resulted in over-priced, underperforming ships. Consequently, Canberra made the decision to buy destroyers from the United States, part of a historic shift of alignment from the United Kingdom to the United States. Hobart was primarily designed for air warfare (with a Tartar SAM system) but also carried a 5” gun and various anti-submarine equipment.

The Incident

On the night of June 16, 1968, unidentified aircraft fired missiles at PCF-12 and PCF-19. Two missiles hit PCF-19, sinking it rapidly. PCF-12 and the Coast Guard cutter responded, pulling survivors out of the water. PCF-12 claimed to identify a pair of North Vietnamese helicopters as the assailants, although such craft had not previously been reported in the area. 

Some hours later, jet aircraft approached the allied flotilla. Hobart and Boston evaluated the aircraft as friendly, rendering them completely surprised when missiles struck the ships. The destroyer USS Edson also came under attack but was not hit. Boston, heavily armored by the standards of the day, suffered only minor damage. Hobart, however, was hit by a missile that killed one sailor and wounded two others. The aircraft circled around for a second pass, firing another two missiles, both of which hit the destroyer. Another sailor was killed and six wounded by the second salvo. One of the missiles ended up in an empty magazine devoted to Hobart’s anti-submarine warheads; had it been filled with weapons, the consequences could have been dire. Hobart opened up when it appeared that the aircraft was swinging around for another pass, firing five 5” shells from its forward gun. Analysis later determined that the missiles were AIM-7s, not generally known to be of use in the Vietnamese People’s Air Force.

The Appraisal

It was quickly apparent that the attack against the large ships could only have come from U.S. aircraft, and it was soon determined that U.S. Air Force F-4 Phantoms were responsible. How did F-4s mistake U.S. ships for North Vietnamese targets? USS Boston, in particular, was a huge ship by the standards of the Vietnam War. By contrast, the largest ships available to the Vietnamese People’s Navy were small patrol boats, generally less than 100 tons in displacement.

The best explanation for the confused night action is that PCF-12 identified enemy helicopters as the assailants that sank PCF-19. The precise type of helicopter remains unclear, but the Phantoms were summoned to deal with the helicopters. Reportedly, USAF Phantoms of the era carried radars that could not distinguish low-flying helicopters from even large surface vessels. An inquiry determined that the attack on Hobart was definitely a friendly fire incident, but also that the attack on PCF-19 earlier in the evening was the result of friendly fire. However, USAF pilots in Vietnam faced significant restrictions against firing on targets that could not be visually identified, making it curious that the Phantoms let loose against the purported helicopters. For what it’s worth, the case has become famous among UFO enthusiasts, who suggested that the F-4s were targeting UFOs when they struck the Australian ship.

Concluding Thoughts

Some lessons; even relatively small weapons (such as an AIM-7) can inflict significant damage on modern warships. While Boston was armored as a World War II heavy cruiser and thus was unlikely to suffer any real damage, the missiles that hit Hobart inflicted casualties and could have done serious damage under the right (or wrong) circumstances. The death of three Australian sailors was tragic, but an unlucky hit could have resulted in the loss of the ship.

Second, simple courtesy should demand that pilots tasked to missions over water should be trained to identify the difference between an American heavy cruiser and a North Vietnamese patrol boat (or helicopter for that matter). At the very least, pilots operating over water in the same area as friendly surface vessels should have had a sense of the danger implicit in launching missiles without clear targets. The Vietnam War was riven with inter-service conflict and inappropriate joint training, although the results weren’t always as dramatic as a missile attack on a cruiser.

Modern technology makes incidents like this far less likely, with improved friend or foe recognition systems and radars that are better at discriminating between surface and air targets. At the same time, the increased lethality of modern weapons threatens to make the impact of friendly fire incidents considerably more devastating.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is a Visiting Professor at the United States Army War College. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

This article first appeared in March 2020.

Image: Flickr

Robert Farley

Security, Middle East

Built on a foundation of pre-independence militias, supplied with cast-off World War II weapons, the Israel Defense Forces have enjoyed remarkable success in the field.

Here's What You Need To Remember: When considering the effectiveness of Israeli weapons, and the expertise of the men and women who wield them, it’s worth noting that for all the tactical and operational success the IDF has enjoyed, Israel remains in a strategically perilous position. The inability of Israel to develop long-term, stable, positive relationships with its immediate neighbors, regional powers, and the subject populations of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip means that Jerusalem continues to feel insecure, its dominance on land, air, and sea notwithstanding.

Since 1948, the state of Israel has fielded a frighteningly effective military machine. Built on a foundation of pre-independence militias, supplied with cast-off World War II weapons, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have enjoyed remarkable success in the field. In the 1960s and 1970s, both because of its unique needs and because of international boycotts, Israel began developing its own military technologies, as well as augmenting the best foreign tech. Today, Israel boasts one of the most technologically advanced military stockpiles in the world, and one of the world’s most effective workforces.

(This first appeared in 2015.)

Here are five of the most deadly systems that the Israeli Defense Forces currently employ.

Recommended: 8 Million Could Die in a War with North Korea 

Merkava

The Merkava tank joined the IDF in 1979, replacing the modified foreign tanks (most recently of British and American vintage) that the Israelis had used since 1948. Domestic design and construction avoided problems of unsteady foreign supply, while also allowing the Israelis to focus on designs optimized for their environment, rather than for Central Europe.  Around 1,600 Merkavas of various types have entered service, with several hundred more still on the way.

Recommended: The Real Reason China Has Built a Massive Military 

The Merkava entered service after the great tank battles of the Middle East had ended (at least for Israel). Consequently, the Merkavas have often seen combat in different contexts that their designers expected. The United States took major steps forward with the employment of armor in Iraq and Afghanistan (particularly in the former) in a counter-insurgency context, but the Israelis have gone even farther. After mixed results during the Hezbollah war, the IDF, using updated Merkava IVs, has worked hard to integrate the tanks into urban fighting. In both of the recent Gaza wars, the IDF has used Merkavas to penetrate Palestinian positions while active defense systems keep crews safe. Israel has also developed modifications that enhance the Merkavas’ capabilities in urban and low-intensity combat.

Recommended: Inside America's Most Secret Submarine Ever 

Indeed, the Merkavas have proved so useful in this regard that Israel has cancelled plans to stop line production, despite a lack of significant foreign orders.

F-15I Thunder:

The Israeli Air Force has flown variants of the F-15 since the 1970s, and has become the world’s most versatile and effective user of the Eagle. As Tyler Rogoway’s recent story on the IAF fleet makes clear, the Israelis have perfected the F-15 both for air supremacy and for strike purposes. Flown by elite pilots, the F-15Is (nicknamed “thunder”) of the IAF remain the most lethal squadron of aircraft in the Middle East.

The F-15I provides Israel with several core capabilities. It remains an effective air-to-air combat platform, superior to the aircraft available to Israel’s most plausible foes (although the Eurofighter Typhoons and Dassault Rafales entering service in the Gulf, not to mention Saudi Arabia’s own force of F-15SAs, undoubtedly would provide some competition. But as Rogoway suggests, the Israelis have worked long and hard at turning the F-15 into an extraordinarily effective strike platform, one capable of hitting targets with precision at long range. Most analysts expect that the F-15I would play a key role in any Israeli strike against Iran, along with some of its older brethren.

Jericho III:

The earliest Israeli nuclear deterrent came in the form of the F-4 Phantom fighter-bombers that the IAF used to such great effect in conventional missions in the War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War. Soon, however, Israel determined that it required a more effective and secure deterrent, and began to invest heavily in ballistic missiles. The Jericho I ballistic missile entered service in the early 1970s, to eventually be replaced by the Jericho II and Jericho III.

The Jericho III is the most advanced ballistic missile in the region, presumably (Israel does not offer much data on its operation) capable of striking targets not only in the Middle East, but also across Europe, Asia, and potentially North America. The Jericho III ensures that any nuclear attack against Israel would be met with devastating retaliation, especially as it is unlikely that Israel could be disarmed by a first strike. Of course, given that no potential Israeli foe has nuclear weapons (or will have them in the next decade, at least), the missiles give Jerusalem presumptive nuclear superiority across the region.

Dolphin:

Israel acquired its first submarine, a former British “S” class, in 1958. That submarine and others acquired in the 1960s played several important military roles, including defense of the Israeli coastline, offensive operations against Egyptian and Syrian shipping, and the delivery of commando teams in war and peace. These early boats were superseded by the Gal class, and finally by the German Dolphin class (really two separate classes related to the Type 212) boats, which are state-of-the-art diesel-electric subs.

The role of the Dolphin class in Israel’s nuclear deterrent has almost certainly been wildly overstated. The ability of a diesel electric submarine to carry out deterrent patrols is starkly limited, no matter what ordnance they carry. However, the Dolphin remains an effective platform for all sorts of other missions required by the IDF. Capable of maritime reconnaissance, of sinking or otherwise interdicting enemy ships, and also of delivering special forces to unfriendly coastlines, the Dolphins represent a major Israeli security investment, and one of the most potentially lethal undersea forces in the region.

The Israeli Soldier:

The technology that binds all of these other systems together is the Israeli soldier. Since 1948 (and even before) Israel has committed the best of its human capital to the armed forces. The creation of fantastic soldiers, sailors, and airmen doesn’t happen by accident, and doesn’t result simply from the enthusiasm and competence of the recruits. The IDF has developed systems of recruitment, training, and retention that allow it to field some of the most competent, capable soldiers in the world. None of the technologies above work unless they have smart, dedicated, well-trained operators to make them function at their fullest potential.

Parting Thoughts: 

When considering the effectiveness of Israeli weapons, and the expertise of the men and women who wield them, it’s worth noting that for all the tactical and operational success the IDF has enjoyed, Israel remains in a strategically perilous position. The inability of Israel to develop long-term, stable, positive relationships with its immediate neighbors, regional powers, and the subject populations of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip means that Jerusalem continues to feel insecure, its dominance on land, air, and sea notwithstanding. Tactics and technologies, however effective and impressive, cannot solve these problems; only politics can.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is a Visiting Professor at the United States Army War College. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

 

James Holmes, Robert Farley

Security,

An impressive list.

Here's What You Need to Know: These weapons of war were the best in their day.

(This is a series of 5 pieces combined for your reading pleasure that have ranked as some of our most popular ever.)

5 Best Battleships:

Ranking the greatest battleships of all time is a tad easier than ranking naval battles. Both involve comparing apples with oranges. But at least taking the measure of individual men-of-war involves comparing one apple with one orange. That's a compact endeavor relative to sorting through history to discern how seesaw interactions shaped the destinies of peoples and civilizations.

Still, we need some standard for distinguishing between battlewagons. What makes a ship great? It makes sense, first of all, to exclude any ship before the reign of Henry VIII. There was no line-of-battle ship in the modern sense before England's "great sea-king" founded the sail-driven Royal Navy in the 16th century. Galley warfare was quite a different affair from lining up capital ships and pounding away with naval gunnery.

One inescapable chore is to compare ships' technical characteristics. A recent piece over at War Is Boring revisits an old debate among battleship and World War II enthusiasts. Namely, who would've prevailed in a tilt between a U.S. Navy Iowa-class dreadnought and the Imperial Japanese Navy's Yamato? Author Michael Peck restates the common wisdom from when I served in mighty Wisconsin, last of the battleships: it depends on who landed the first blow. Iowas commanded edges in speed and fire control, while Yamato and her sister Musashi outranged us and boasted heavier weight of shot. We would've made out fine had we closed the range before the enemy scored a lucky hit from afar. If not, things may have turned ugly.

Though not in so many words, Peck walks through the basic design features that help qualify a battleship for history's elite -- namely guns, armor, and speed. Makes sense, doesn't it? Offensive punch, defensive resiliency, and speed remain the hallmarks of any surface combatant even in this missile age. Note, however, that asymmetries among combat vessels result in large part from the tradeoffs naval architects must make among desirable attributes.

Only sci-fi lets shipwrights escape such choices. A Death Star of the sea would sport irresistible weaponry, impenetrable armor, and engines able to drive the vessel at breakneck speed. But again, you can't have everything in the real world. Weight is a huge challenge. A battleship loaded down with the biggest guns and thickest armor would waddle from place to place. It would make itself an easy target for nimbler opponents or let them run away. On the other hand, assigning guns and speed top priority works against rugged sides. A ship that's fleet of foot but lightly armored exposes its innards and crew to enemy gunfire. And so forth. Different navies have different philosophies about tradeoffs. Hence the mismatches between Yamato and Iowa along certain parameters. Thus has it always been when fighting ships square off.

But a battleship is more than a machine. Machines neither rule the waves nor lose out in contests for mastery. People do. People ply the seas, and ideas about shiphandling and tactics guide their combat endeavors. Great Britain's Royal Navy triumphed repeatedly during the age of sail. Its success owed less to superior materiel -- adversaries such as France and the United States sometimes fielded better ships -- than to prolonged voyages that raised seamanship and gunnery to a high art. Indeed, a friend likes to joke that the 18th century's finest warship was a French 74-gun ship captured -- and crewed -- by Royal Navy mariners. The best hardware meets the best software.

That's why in the end, debating Jane's Fighting Ships entries -- lists of statistics -- for Iowa, Yamato, and their brethren from other times and places fails to satisfy. What looks like the best ship on paper may not win. A ship need not outmatch its opponents by every technical measure. It needs to be good enough. That is, it must match up well enough to give an entrepreneurial crew, mindful of the tactical surroundings, a reasonable chance to win. The greatest battleship thus numbers among the foremost vessels of its age by material measures, and is handled by masterful seamen.

But adding the human factor to the mix still isn't enough. There's an element of opportunity, of sheer chance. True greatness comes when ship and crew find themselves in the right place at the right time to make history. A battleship's name becomes legend if it helps win a grand victory, loses in dramatic fashion, or perhaps accomplishes some landmark diplomatic feat. A vessel favored (or damned) by fortune, furthermore, becomes a strategic compass rose. It becomes part of the intellectual fund on which future generations draw when making maritime strategy. It's an artifact of history that helps make history.

So we arrive at one guy's gauge for a vessel's worth: strong ship, iron men, historical consequence. In effect, then, I define greatest as most iconic. Herewith, my list of history's five most iconic battleships, in ascending order:

Bismarck:

The German Navy's Bismarck lived a short life that supplies the stuff of literature to this day. Widely considered the most capable battleship in the Atlantic during World War II, Bismarck sank the battlecruiser HMS Hood, pride of the Royal Navy, with a single round from her main battery. On the other hand, the leadership's martial spirit proved brittle when the going got tough. In fact, it shattered at the first sharp rap. As commanders' resolve went, so went the crew's.

Notes Bernard Brodie, the dreadnought underwent an "extreme oscillation" in mood. Exaltation stoked by the encounter with Hood gave way to despair following a minor torpedo strike from a British warplane. Admiral Günther Lütjens, the senior officer on board, gathered Bismarck crewmen after the air attack and "implored them to meet death in a fashion becoming to good Nazis." A great coach Lütjens was not. The result? An "abysmally poor showing" in the final showdown with HMS Rodney, King George V, and their entourage. One turret crew fled their guns. Turret officers reportedly kept another on station only at gunpoint. Marksmanship and the guns' rate of fire -- key determinants of victory in gunnery duels -- suffered badly.

In short, Bismarck turned out to be a bologna flask (hat tip: Clausewitz), an outwardly tough vessel that shatters at the slightest tap from within. In 1939 Grand Admiral Erich Raeder lamented that the German surface fleet, flung into battle long before it matured, could do little more than "die with honor." Raeder was righter than he knew. Bismarck's death furnishes a parable that captivates navalists decades hence. How would things have turned out had the battlewagon's human factor proved less fragile? We'll never know. Doubtless her measure of honor would be bigger.

Yamato:

As noted at the outset, Yamato was an imposing craft by any standard. She displaced more than any battleship in history, as much as an early supercarrier, and bore the heaviest armament. Her mammoth 18-inch guns could sling 3,200-lb. projectiles some 25 nautical miles. Armor was over two feet thick in places. Among the three attributes of warship design, then, Yamato's designers clearly prized offensive and defensive strength over speed. The dreadnought could steam at 27 knots, not bad for a vessel of her proportions. But that was markedly slower than the 33 knots attainable by U.S. fast battleships.

Like Bismarck, Yamato is remembered mainly for falling short of her promise. She provides another cautionary tale about human fallibility. At Leyte Gulf in October 1944, a task force centered on Yamato bore down on the transports that had ferried General Douglas MacArthur's landing force ashore on Leyte, and on the sparse force of light aircraft carriers, destroyers, and destroyer escorts guarding the transports from seaward assault.

Next ensued the immortal charge of the tin-can sailors. The outclassed American ships charged Yamato and her retinue. Like Lütjens, Admiral Takeo Kurita, the task-force commander, appeared to wilt under less-than-dire circumstances. Historians still argue about whether he mistook Taffy 3, the U.S. Navy contingent, for a far stronger force; lost his nerve; or simply saw little point in sacrificing his ships and men. Whatever the case, Kurita ordered his fleet to turn back -- leaving MacArthur's expeditionary force mostly unmolested from the sea.

Yamato met a quixotic fate, though less ignominious than Bismarck's. In April 1945 the superbattleship was ordered to steam toward Okinawain company with remnants of the surface fleet, there to contest the Allied landings. The vessel would deliberately beach itself offshore, becoming an unsinkable gun emplacement until it was destroyed or its ammunition was exhausted. U.S. naval intelligence got wind of the scheme, however, and aerial bombardment dispatched Yamato before she could reach her destination. A lackluster end for history's most fearsome battlewagon.

Missouri:

Iowa and New Jersey were the first of the Iowa class and compiled the most enviable fighting records in the class, mostly in the Pacific War. Missouri was no slouch as a warrior, but -- alone on this list -- she's celebrated mainly for diplomatic achievements rather than feats of arms. General MacArthur accepted Japan's surrender on her weatherdecks in Tokyo Bay, leaving behind some of the most enduring images from 20th-century warfare. Missouri has been a metaphor for how to terminate big, open-ended conflicts ever since. For instance, President Bush the Elder invoked the surrender in his memoir. Missouri supplied a measuring stick for how Desert Storm might unfold. (And as it happens, a modernized Missouri was in Desert Storm.)

Missouri remained a diplomatic emissary after World War II. The battlewagon cruised to Turkey in the early months after the war, as the Iron Curtain descended across Europe and communist insurgencies menaced Greece and Turkey. Observers interpreted the voyage as a token of President Harry Truman's, and America's, commitment to keeping the Soviet bloc from subverting friendly countries. Message: the United States was in Europe to stay. Missouri thus played a part in the development of containment strategy while easing anxieties about American abandonment. Naval diplomacy doesn't get much better than that.

Mikasa:

Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō's flagship is an emblem for maritime command. The British-built Mikasa was arguably the finest battleship afloat during the fin de siècle years, striking the best balance among speed, protection, and armament. The human factor was strong as well. Imperial Japanese Navy seamen were known for their proficiency and élan, while Tōgō was renowned for combining shrewdness with derring-do. Mikasa was central to fleet actions in the Yellow Sea in 1904 and the Tsushima Strait in 1905 -- battles that left the wreckage of two Russian fleets strewn across the seafloor. The likes of Theodore Roosevelt and Alfred Thayer Mahan considered Tsushima a near-perfect fleet encounter.

Like the other battleships listed here, Mikasa molded how subsequent generations thought about diplomacy and warfare. IJN commanders of the interwar years planned to replicate Tsushima Strait should Japan fall out with the United States. More broadly, Mikasa and the rest of the IJN electrified peoples throughout Asia and beyond. Japan, that is, proved that Western imperial powers could be beaten in battle and ultimately expelled from lands they had subjugated. Figures ranging from Sun Yat-sen to Mohandas Gandhi to W. E. B. Du Bois paid homage to Tsushima, crediting Japan with firing their enthusiasm for overthrowing colonial rule.

Mikasa, then, was more than the victor in a sea fight of modest scope. And her reputation outlived her strange fate. The vessel returned home in triumph following the Russo-Japanese War, only to suffer a magazine explosion and sink. For the Japanese people, the disaster confirmed that they had gotten a raw deal at the Portsmouth Peace Conference. Nevertheless, it did little to dim foreign observers' enthusiasm for Japan's accomplishments.Mikasa remained a talisman.

Victory:

Topping this list is the only battleship from the age of sail. HMS Victory was a formidable first-rate man-of-war, cannon bristling from its three gun decks. But her fame comes mainly from her association with Lord Horatio Nelson, whom Mahan styles "the embodiment of the sea power of Great Britain." In 1805 Nelson led his outnumbered fleet into combat against a combined Franco-Spanish fleet off Cape Trafalgar, near Gibraltar. Nelson and right-hand man Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood led columns of ships that punctured the enemy line of battle. The Royal Navy crushed its opponent in the ensuing melee, putting paid to Napoleon's dreams of invading the British Isles.

Felled on board his flagship that day, Nelson remains a synonym for decisive battle. Indeed, replicating Trafalgar became a Holy Grail for naval strategists across the globe. Permanently drydocked at Portsmouth, Victory is a shrine to Nelson and his exploits -- and the standard of excellence for seafarers everywhere. That entitles her to the laurels of history's greatest battleship.

Surveying this list of icons, two battleships made the cut because of defeats stemming from slipshod leadership, two for triumphs owing to good leadership, and one for becoming a diplomatic paragon. That's not a bad reminder that human virtues and frailties -- not wood, or metal, or shot -- are what make the difference in nautical enterprises.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College

*****

5 Best Aircraft Carriers:

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. USS Midway (CV-41):

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

4. USS Franklin (CV-13):

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

3. Akagi:

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

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

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

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

1. USS Enterprise (CV-6):

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

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College

*****

5 Best Submarines: 

There have been three great submarine campaigns in history, and one prolonged duel. The First and Second Battles of the Atlantic pitted German U-boats against the escorts and aircraft of the United Kingdom and the United States. The Germans very nearly won World War I with the first campaign, and badly drained Allied resources in the second. In the third great campaign, the submarines of the US Navy destroyed virtually the entire commercial fleet of Japan, bringing the Japanese economy to its knees. US subs also devastated the Imperial Japanese Navy, sinking several of Tokyo’s most important capital ships.

But the period most evocative of our modern sense of submarine warfare was surely the forty year duel between the submarines of the USSR and the boats of the various NATO navies. Over the course of the Cold War, the strategic nature of the submarine changed; it moved from being a cheap, effective killer of capital ships to a capital ship in its own right. This was especially the case with the boomers, submarines that carried enough nuclear weapons to kill millions in a few minutes.

As with previous “5 Greatest” lists, the answers depend on the parameters; different sets of metrics will generate different lists. Our metrics concentrate on the strategic utility of specific submarine classes, rather than solely on their technical capabilities.

· Was the submarine a cost-effective solution to a national strategic problem?

· Did the submarine compare favorably with its contemporaries?

· Was the submarine’s design innovative?

And with that, the five best submarines of all time:

U-31:

The eleven boats of the U-31 class were constructed between 1912 and 1915. They operated in both of the periods of heavy action for German U-boats, early in the war before the suspension of unrestricted warfare, and again in 1917 when Germany decided to go for broke and cut the British Empire off at the knees. Four of these eleven boats (U-35, U-39, U-38, and U-34) were the four top killers of World War I; indeed, they were four of the five top submarines of all time in terms of tonnage sunk (the Type VII boat U-48 sneaks in at number 3). U-35, the top killer, sank 224 ships amounting to over half a million tons.

The U-31 boats were evolutionary, rather than revolutionary; they represented the latest in German submarine technology for the time, but did not differ dramatically from their immediate predecessors or successors. These boats had good range, a deck gun for destroying small shipping, and faster speeds surfaced than submerged. These characteristics allowed the U-31 class and their peers to wreak havoc while avoiding faster, more powerful surface units. They did offer a secure, stealthy platform for carrying out a campaign that nearly forced Great Britain from the war. Only the entry of the United States, combined with the development of innovative convoy tactics by the Royal Navy, would stifle the submarine offensive. Three of the eleven boats survived the war, and were eventually surrendered to the Allies.

Balao:

The potential for a submarine campaign against the Japanese Empire was clear from early in the war. Japanese industry depended for survival on access to the natural resources of Southeast Asia. Separating Japan from those resources could win the war. However, the pre-war USN submarine arm was relatively small, and operated with poor doctrine and bad torpedoes. Boats built during the war, including primarily the Gato and Balao class, would eventually destroy virtually the entire Japanese merchant marine.

The Balao class represented very nearly the zenith of the pre-streamline submarine type. War in the Pacific demanded longer ranges and more habitability than the relatively snug Atlantic. Like their predecessors the Gato, the Balaos were less maneuverable than the German Type VII subs, but they made up for this in strength of hull and quality of construction. Compared with the Type VII, the Balaos had longer range, a larger gun, more torpedo tubes, and a higher speed. Of course, the Balaos operated in a much different environment, and against an opponent less skilled in anti-submarine warfare. The greatest victory of a Balao was the sinking of the 58000 ton HIJMS Shinano by Archerfish.

Eleven of 120 boats were lost, two in post-war accidents. After the war Balao class subs were transferred to several friendly navies, and continued to serve for decades. One, the former USS Tusk, remains in partial commission in Taiwan as Hai Pao.

Type XXI:

In some ways akin to the Me 262, the Type XXI was a potentially war-winning weapon that arrived too late to have serious effect. The Type XXI was the first mass produced, ocean-going streamlined or “true” submarine, capable of better performance submerged than on the surface. It gave up its deck gun in return for speed and stealth, and set the terms of design for generations of submarines.

Allied anti-submarine efforts focused on identifying boats on the surface (usually in transit to their patrol areas) then vectoring killers (including ships and aircraft) to those areas. In 1944 the Allies began developing techniques for fighting “schnorkel” U-boats that did not need to surface, but remained unprepared for combat against a submarine that could move at 20 knots submerged.

In effect, the Type XXI had the stealth to avoid detection prior to an attack, and the speed to escape afterward. Germany completed 118 of these boats, but because of a variety of industrial problems could only put four into service, none of which sank an enemy ship. All of the Allies seized surviving examples of the Type XXI, using them both as models for their own designs and in order to develop more advanced anti-submarine technologies and techniques. For example, the Type XXI was the model for the Soviet “Whiskey” class, and eventually for a large flotilla of Chinese submarines.

George Washington:

We take for granted the most common form of today’s nuclear deterrent; a nuclear submarine, bristling with missiles, capable of destroying a dozen cities a continent away. These submarines provide the most secure leg of the deterrent triad, as no foe could reasonably expect to destroy the entire submarine fleet before the missiles fly.

The secure submarine deterrent began in 1960, with the USS George Washington. An enlarged version of the Skipjack class nuclear attack sub, George Washington’s design incorporated space for sixteen Polaris ballistic missiles. When the Polaris became operational, USS George Washington had the capability from striking targets up to 1000 miles distant with 600 KT warheads. The boats would eventually upgrade to the Polaris A3, with three warheads and a 2500 mile range. Slow relative to attack subs but extremely quiet, the George Washington class pioneered the “go away and hide” form of nuclear deterrence that is still practiced by five of the world’s nine nuclear powers.

And until 1967, the George Washington and her sisters were the only modern boomers. Their clunky Soviet counterparts carried only three missiles each, and usually had to surface in order to fire. This made them of limited deterrent value. But soon, virtually every nuclear power copied the George Washington class. The first “Yankee” class SSBN entered service in 1967, the first Resolution boat in 1968, and the first of the French Redoutables in 1971. China would eventually follow suit, although the PLAN’s first genuinely modern SSBNs have only entered service recently. The Indian Navy’s INS Arihant will likely enter service in the next year or so.

The five boats of the George Washington class conducted deterrent patrols until 1982, when the SALT II Treaty forced their retirement. Three of the five (including George Washington) continued in service as nuclear attack submarines for several more years.

Los Angeles:

Immortalized in the Tom Clancy novels Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising, the U.S. Los Angeles class is the longest production line of nuclear submarines in history, constituting sixty-two boats and first entering service in 1976. Forty-one subs remain in commission today, continuing to form the backbone of the USN’s submarine fleet.

The Los Angeles (or 688) class are outstanding examples of Cold War submarines, equally capable of conducting anti-surface or anti-submarine warfare. In wartime, they would have been used to penetrate Soviet base areas, where Russian boomers were protected by rings of subs, surface ships, and aircraft, and to protect American carrier battle groups.

In 1991, two Los Angeles class attack boats launched the first ever salvo of cruise missiles against land targets, ushering in an entirely new vision of how submarines could impact warfare. While cruise missile armed submarines had long been part of the Cold War duel between the United States and the Soviet Union, most attention focused either on nuclear delivery or anti-ship attacks. Submarine launched Tomahawks gave the United States a new means for kicking in the doors of anti-access/area denial systems. The concept has proven so successful that four Ohio class boomers were refitted as cruise missile submarines, with the USS Florida delivering the initial strikes of the Libya intervention.

The last Los Angeles class submarine is expected to leave service in at some point in the 2020s, although outside factors may delay that date. By that time, new designs will undoubtedly have exceeded the 688 in terms of striking land targets, and in capacity for conducting anti-submarine warfare. Nevertheless, the Los Angeles class will have carved out a space as the sub-surface mainstay of the world’s most powerful Navy for five decades.

Conclusion

Fortunately, the United States and the Soviet Union avoided direct conflict during the Cold War, meaning that many of the technologies and practices of advanced submarine warfare were never employed in anger. However, every country in the world that pretends to serious maritime power is building or acquiring advanced submarines. The next submarine war will look very different from the last, and it’s difficult to predict how it will play out. We can be certain, however, that the fight will be conducted in silence.

Honorable Mention: Ohio, 260O-21, Akula, Alfa, Seawolf, Swiftsure, I-201, Kilo, S class, Type VII

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is a Visiting Professor at the United States Army War College. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

*****

5 Best Bombers:

Bombers are the essence of strategic airpower. While fighters have often been important to air forces, it was the promise of the heavy bomber than won and kept independence for the United States Air Force and the Royal Air Force. At different points in time, air forces in the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and Italy have treated bomber design and construction as a virtually all-consuming obsession, setting fighter and attack aviation aside.

However, even the best bombers are effective over only limited timespans. The unlucky state-of-the-art bombers of the early 1930s met disaster when put into service against the pursuit aircraft of the late 1930s. The B-29s that ruled the skies over Japan in 1945 were cut to pieces above North Korea in 1950. The B-36 Peacemaker, obsolete before it was even built, left service in a decade. Most of the early Cold War bombers were expensive failures, eventually to be superseded by ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

States procure bombers, like all weapons, to serve strategic purposes. This list employs the following metrics of evaluation:

· Did the bomber serve the strategic purpose envisioned by its developers?

· Was the bomber a sufficiently flexible platform to perform other missions, and to persist in service?

· How did the bomber compare with its contemporaries in terms of price, capability, and effectiveness?

And with that, the five best bombers of all time:

Handley Page Type O 400:

The first strategic bombing raids of World War I were carried out by German zeppelins, enormous lighter than aircraft that could travel at higher altitudes than the interceptors of the day, and deliver payloads against London and other targets. Over time, the capabilities of interceptors and anti-aircraft artillery grew, driving the Zeppelins to other missions. Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and others began working on bombers capable of delivering heavy loads over long distance, a trail blazed (oddly enough) by the Russian Sikorsky Ilya Muromets.

Even the modest capabilities of the early bombers excited the airpower theorists of the day, who imagined the idea of fleets of bombers striking enemy cities and enemy industry. The Italians developed the Caproni family of bombers, which operated in the service of most Allied countries at one time or another. German Gotha bombers would eventually terrorize London again, catalyzing the Smuts Report and the creation of the world’s first air force.

Faster and capable of carrying more bombs than either the Gotha IVs or the Caproni Ca.3, the Type O 400 had a wingspan nearly as large as the Avro Lancaster. With a maximum speed of 97 miles per hour with a payload of up to 2000 lbs, O 400s were the mainstay of Hugh Trenchard’s Independent Air Force near the end of the war, a unit which struck German airfields and logistics concentration well behind German lines. These raids helped lay the foundation of interwar airpower theory, which (at least in the US and the UK) envisioned self-protecting bombers striking enemy targets en masse.

Roughly 600 Type O bombers were produced during World War I, with the last retiring in 1922. Small numbers served in the Chinese, Australian, and American armed forces.

Junkers Ju 88:

The Junkers Ju-88 was one of the most versatile aircraft of World War II. Although it spent most of its career as a medium bomber, it moonlighted as a close attack aircraft, a naval attack aircraft, a reconnaissance plane, and a night fighter. Effective and relatively cheap, the Luftwaffe used the Ju 88 to good effect in most theaters of war, but especially on the Eastern Front and in the Mediterranean.

Designed with dive bomber capability, the Ju 88 served in relatively small numbers in the invasion of Poland, the invasion of Norway, and the Battle of France. The Ju-88 was not well suited to the strategic bombing role into which it was forced during the Battle of Britain, especially in its early variants. It lacked the armament to sufficiently defend itself, and the payload to cause much destruction to British industry and infrastructure. The measure of an excellent bomber, however, goes well beyond its effectiveness at any particular mission. Ju 88s were devastating in Operation Barbarossa, tearing apart Soviet tank formations and destroying much of the Soviet Air Forces on the ground. Later variants were built as or converted into night fighters, attacking Royal Air Force bomber formations on the way to their targets.

In spite of heavy Allied bombing of the German aviation industry, Germany built over 15,000 Ju 88s between 1939 and 1945. They operated in several Axis air forces.

De Havilland Mosquito:

The de Havilland Mosquito was a remarkable little aircraft, capable of a wide variety of different missions. Not unlike the Ju 88, the Mosquito operated in bomber, fighter, night fighter, attack, and reconnaissance roles. The RAF was better positioned than the Luftwaffe to utilized the specific qualities of the Mosquito, and avoid forcing it into missions in could not perform.

Relatively lightly armed and constructed entirely of wood, the Mosquito was quite unlike the rest of the RAF bomber fleet. Barely escaping design committee, the Mosquito was regarded as easy to fly, and featured a pressurized cockpit with a high service ceiling. Most of all, however, the Mosquito was fast. With advanced Merlin engines, a Mosquito could outpace the German Bf109 and most other Axis fighters.

Although the bomb load of the Mosquito was limited, its great speed, combined with sophisticated instrumentation, allowed it to deliver ordnance with more precision than most other bombers. During the war, the RAF used Mosquitoes for various precision attacks against high value targets, including German government installations and V weapon launching sites. As pathfinders, Mosquitoes flew point on bomber formations, leading night time bombing raids that might otherwise have missed their targets. Mosquitos also served in a diversionary role, distracting German night fighters from the streams of Halifaxes and Lancasters striking urban areas.

De Havilland produced over 7000 Mosquitoes for the RAF and other allied air forces. Examples persisted in post-war service with countries as varied as Israel, the Republic of China, Yugoslavia, and the Dominican Republic

Avro Lancaster:

The workhorse of the RAF in World War II, the Lancaster carried out the greater part of the British portion of the Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO). Led by Arthur Harris, Bomber Command believed that area bombing raids, targeted against German civilians, conducted at night, would destroy German morale and economic capacity and bring the war to a close. Accordingly, the Lancaster was less heavily armed than its American contemporaries, as it depended less on self-defense in order to carry out its mission.

The first Lancasters entered service in 1942. The Lancaster could carry a much heavier bomb load than the B-17 or the B-24, while operating at similar speeds and at a slightly longer range. The Lancaster also enjoyed a payload advantage over the Handley Page Halifax. From 1942 until 1945, the Lancaster would anchor the British half of the CBO, eventually resulting in the destruction of most of urban Germany and the death of several hundred thousand German civilians.

There are reasons to be skeptical of the inclusion of the Lancaster. The Combined Bomber Offensive was a strategic dead-end, serving up expensive four-engine bombers as a feast for smaller, cheaper German fighters. Battles were fought under conditions deeply advantageous to the Germans, as damaged German planes could land, and shot down German pilots rescued and returned to service. Overall, the enormous Western investment in strategic bombing was probably one of the greatest grand strategic miscalculations of the Second World War. Nevertheless, this list needs a bomber from the most identifiable bomber offensive in history, and the Lancaster was the best of the bunch.

Over 7000 Lancasters were built, with the last retiring in the early 1960s after Canadian service as recon and maritime patrol aircraft.

Boeing B-52 Stratofortress:

The disastrous experience of B-29 Superfortresses over North Korea in 1950 demonstrated that the United States would require a new strategic bomber, and soon. Unfortunately, the first two generations of bombers chosen by the USAF were almost uniformly duds; the hopeless B-36, the short-legged B-47, the dangerous-to-its-own-pilots B-58, and the obsolete-before-it-flew XB-70. The vast bulk of these bombers quickly went from wastes of taxpayer money to wastes of space at the Boneyard. None of the over 2500 early Cold War bombers ever dropped a bomb in anger.

The exception was the B-52.The BUFF was originally intended for high altitude penetration bombing into the Soviet Union. It replaced the B-36 and the B-47, the former too slow and vulnerable to continue in the nuclear strike mission, and the latter too short-legged to reach the USSR from U.S. bases. Slated for replacement by the B-58 and the B-70, the B-52 survived because it was versatile enough to shift to low altitude penetration after the increasing sophistication of Soviet SAMs made the high altitude mission suicidal.

And this versatility has been the real story of the B-52. The BUFF was first committed to conventional strike missions in service of Operation Arc Light during the Vietnam War. In Operation Linebacker II, the vulnerability of the B-52 to air defenses was made manifest when nine Stratofortresses were lost in the first days of the campaign. But the B-52 persisted. In the Gulf War, B-52s carried out saturation bombing campaigns against the forward positions of the Iraqi Army, softening and demoralizing the Iraqis for the eventual ground campaign. In the War on Terror, the B-52 has acted in a close air support role, delivering precision-guided ordnance against small concentrations of Iraqi and Taliban insurgents.

Most recently, the B-52 showed its diplomatic chops when two BUFFs were dispatched to violate China’s newly declared Air Defense Zone. The BUFF was perfect for this mission; the Chinese could not pretend not to notice two enormous bombers travelling at slow speed through the ADIZ.

742 B-52s were delivered between 1954 and 1963. Seventy-eight remain in service, having undergone multiple upgrades over the decades that promise to extend their lives into the 2030s, or potentially beyond. In a family of short-lived airframes, the B-52 has demonstrated remarkable endurance and longevity.

Conclusion

Over the last century, nations have invested tremendous resources in bomber aircraft. More often than not, this investment has failed to bear strategic fruit. The very best aircraft have been those that could not only conduct their primary mission effectively, but that were also sufficiently flexible to perform other tasks that might be asked of them. Current air forces have, with some exceptions, effectively done away with the distinctions between fighters and bombers, instead relying on multi-role fighter-bombers for both missions. The last big, manned bomber may be the American LRS-B, assuming that project ever gets off the ground.

Honorable Mention

Grumman A-6 Intruder, MQ-1 Predator, Caproni Ca.3, Tupolev Tu-95 “Bear,” Avro Vulcan, Tupolev Tu-22M “Backfire.”

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is a Visiting Professor at the United States Army War College. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

*****

What are the five greatest fighter aircraft of all time?

Like the same question asked of tanks, cars, or rock and roll guitarists, the answer invariably depends on parameters. For example, there are few sets of consistent parameters that would include both the T-34 and the King Tiger among the greatest of all tanks. I know which one I’d like to be driving in a fight, but I also appreciate that this isn’t the most appropriate way to approach the question. Similarly, while I’d love to drive a Porsche 959 to work every morning, I’d be hesitant to list it ahead of the Toyota Corolla on a “best of” compilation.

Nations buy fighter aircraft to resolve national strategic problems, and the aircraft should accordingly be evaluated on their ability to solve or ameliorate these problems. Thus, the motivating question is this: how well did this aircraft help solve the strategic problems of the nations that built or bought it? This question leads to the following points of evaluation:

Fighting characteristics: How did this plane stack up against the competition, including not just other fighters but also bombers and ground installations?

Reliability: Could people count on this aircraft to fight when it needed to, or did it spend more time under repair than in the air?

Cost: What did the organization and the nation have to pay in terms of blood and treasure to make this aircraft fly?

These are the parameters; here are my answers:

Spad S.XIII:

In the early era of military aviation, technological innovation moved at such speed that state of the art aircraft became obsolete deathtraps within a year. Engineers in France, Britain, Germany and Italy worked constantly to outpace their competitors, producing new aircraft every year to throw into the fight. The development of operational tactics trailed technology, although the input of the best flyers played an important role in how designers put new aircraft together.

In this context, picking a dominant fighter from the era is difficult. Nevertheless, the Spad S.XIII stands out in terms of its fighting characteristics and ease of production. Based in significant part on the advice of French aviators such as Georges Guynemer, the XIII lacked the maneuverability of some of its contemporaries, but could outpace most of them and performed very well in either a climb or a dive. It was simple enough to produce that nearly 8,500 such aircraft eventually entered service. Significant early reliability problems were worked out by the end of the war, and in any case were overwhelmed by the XIII’s fighting ability.

The S.XIII filled out not only French fighter squadrons, but also the air services of Allied countries. American ace Eddie Rickenbacker scored twenty of his kills flying an XIII, many over the most advanced German fighters of the day, including the Fokker D.VII.

The Spad XIII helped the Allies hold the line during the Ludendorff Offensive, and controlled the skies above France during the counter-offensive. After the war, it remained in service in France, the United States, and a dozen other countries for several years. In an important sense, the Spad XIII set the post-war standard for what a pursuit aircraft needed to do.

Grumman F6F Hellcat:

Of course, it is not only air forces that fly fighter aircraft. The F6F Hellcat can’t compare with the Spitfire, the P-51, or the Bf 109 on many basic flight characteristics, although its ability to climb was first-rate. What the F6F could do, however, was reliably fly from aircraft carriers, and it rode point on the great, decisive U.S. Navy carrier offensive of World War II. Entering the war in September 1943, it won 75% of USN aerial victories in the Pacific. USN ace David McCampbell shot down nine Japanese aircraft in one day flying a Hellcat .The F6F was heavily armed, and could take considerably more battle damage than its contemporaries. Overall, the F6F claimed nearly 5,200 kills at a loss of 270 aircraft in aerial combat, including a 13:1 ratio against the Mitsubishi A6M Zero.

The USN carrier offensive of the latter part of World War II is probably the greatest single example of the use of decisive airpower in world history. Hellcats and their kin (the Douglas SBD Dauntless dive-bomber and the Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bomber) destroyed the fighting power of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), cracked open Japan’s island empire, and exposed the Japanese homeland to devastating air attack and the threat of invasion.

In 1943, the United States needed a fighter robust enough to endure a campaign fought distant from most bases, yet fast and agile enough to defeat the best that the IJN could offer. Tough and reliable as a brick, the Hellcat fit that role. Put simply, the Honda Accord is, in its own way, a great car; the Honda Accords of the fighter world also deserve their day.

Messerschmitt Me-262 Swallow:

The Me 262 Schwalbe (Swallow, in English) failed to win the war for Germany, and couldn’t stop the Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO). Had German military authorities made the right decisions, however, it might at least have accomplished the second.

Known as the world’s first operational jet fighter, full-scale production of the Me 262 was delayed by resistance within the German government and the Luftwaffe to devoting resources to an experimental aircraft without a clear role. Early efforts to turn it into a fighter-bomber fell flat. As the need for a superlative interceptor become apparent, however, the Me 262 found its place. The Swallow proved devastating against American bomber formations, and could outrun American pursuit aircraft.

The Me 262 was hardly a perfect fighter: it lacked the maneuverability of the best American interceptors, and both American and British pilots developed tactics for managing the Swallow. Although production suffered from some early problems with engines, by the later stages of the conflict, manufacturing was sufficiently easy that the plane could be mass-produced in dispersed, underground facilities.

But had it come on line a bit earlier, the Me 262 might have torn the heart out of the CBO. The CBO in 1943 was a touch and go affair; dramatically higher bomber losses in 1943 could well have led Churchill and Roosevelt to scale back the production of four engine bombers in favor of additional tactical aircraft. Without the advantage of long-range escorts, American bombers would have proven easy prey for the German jet. Moreover, the Me 262 would have been far more effective without the constant worry of P-47s and P-51s strafing its airfields and tracking its landings.

Nazi Germany needed a game changer, a plane capable of making the price too high for the Allies to keep up the CBO. The Me 262 came onto the scene too late to solve that problem, but it’s hard to imagine any aircraft that could have come closer. Ironically, this might have accelerated Allied victory, as the Combined Bomber Offensive resulted in not only the destruction of urban Germany, but in the waste of substantial Allied resources. Win-win.

Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 “Fishbed”: 

An odd choice for this list? The MiG-21 is known largely as fodder for the other great fighters of the Cold War, and for having an abysmal kill ratio. The Fishbed (in NATO terminology) has served as a convenient victim in Vietnam and in a variety of Middle Eastern wars, some of which it fought on both sides.

But… the MiG-21 is cheap, fast, maneuverable, has low maintenance requirements. It’s relatively easy to learn to fly, although not necessarily easy to learn how to fly well. Air forces continued to buy the MiG-21 for a long time. Counting the Chengdu J-7 variant, perhaps 13,000 MiG-21s have entered service around the world. In some sense, the Fishbed is the AK-47 (or the T-34, if you prefer) of the fighter world. Fifty countries have flown the MiG-21, and it has flown for fifty-five years. It continues to fly as a key part of twenty-six different air forces, including the Indian Air Force, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, the Vietnamese People’s Air Force, and the Romanian Air Force. Would anyone be surprised if the Fishbed and its variants are still flying in 2034?

The MiG-21 won plaudits from American aggressor pilots at Red Flag, who celebrated its speed and maneuverability, and played (through the contribution of North Vietnamese aces such as Nguyễn Văn Cốc ) an important role in redefining the requirements of air superiority in the United States. When flown well, it remains a dangerous foe.

Most of life is about just showing up, and since 1960 no fighter has shown up as consistently, and in as many places, as has the MiG-21. For countries needing a cheap option for claiming control of their national airspace, the MiG-21 has long solved problems, and will likely continue to serve in this role.

McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle: 

What to say about the F-15 Eagle? When it came into service in 1976, it was immediately recognized as the best fighter in the world. Today, it is arguably still the best all-around, cost-adjusted fighter, even if the Su-27 and F-22 have surpassed it in some ways. If one fighter in American history could take the name of the national symbol of the United States, how could it be anything other than the F-15?

The Eagle symbolizes the era of American hegemony, from the Vietnam hangover to the post-Cold War period of dominance. Designed in light of the lessons of Vietnam, at a time where tactical aviation was taking control of the US Air Force, the F-15 outperformed existing fighters and set a new standard for a modern air superiority aircraft. Despite repeated tests in combat, no F-15 has ever been lost to an aerial foe. The production line for the F-15 will run until at least 2019, and longer if Boeing can manage to sell anyone on the Silent Eagle.

In the wake of Vietnam, the United States needed an air superiority platform that could consistently defeat the best that the Soviet Union had to offer. The F-15 (eventually complemented by the F-16) provided this platform, and then some. After the end of the Cold War, the United States needed an airframe versatile enough to carry out the air superiority mission while also becoming an effective strike aircraft. Again, the F-15 solved the problem.

And it’s a plane that can land with one wing. Hard to beat that.

A Contest Based on Parameters:

Again, this exercise depends entirely on decisions about the parameters. A different set of criteria of effectiveness would generate an entirely different list (although the F-15 would probably still be here; it’s invulnerable). Nevertheless, the basic elements of the argument are sound: weapons should be evaluated in terms of how they help achieve national objectives.

Honorable mentions include the North American Aviation F-86 Sabre, the Fokker D.VII, the Lockheed-Martin F-22 Raptor, the Messerschmitt Bf 109, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, the Supermarine Spitfire, the North American Aviation P-51 Mustang, the McDonnell Douglas EA-18 Growler, the English Electric Lightning, the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, the Sukhoi Su-27 “Flanker,” and the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon.

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

Robert Farley , a frequent contributor to TNI, is a Visiting Professor at the United States Army War College. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

This article appeared earlier last year.

Image: DoD photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Todd Cichonowicz, U.S. Navy

Michael Peck

Security,

Russian tanks are now firing depleted uranium shells.

Here's What You Need to Remember:  “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.”

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 difficult 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 pentrator 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.

Image: Reuters.

Michael Peck

Security, Asia

The decision to drop the A-bomb may or may not have been the best decision.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Perhaps a greater man than Truman would have balked at unleashing the monstrous genie of atomic warfare. Yet after six years of the most terrible war in history, greatness was in short supply across the globe, replaced by a desire just to get the slaughter and misery over with and bring the boys home.

One of the most controversial decisions in history was President Harry Truman's decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

Some argue that Truman was haunted by estimates that Operation Downfall -- the proposed invasion of Japan in 1945 -- would cost a million American casualties. Others say that Japan was starving and exhausted, the casualty estimates were exaggerated, and that Truman had ulterior motives for dropping the Bomb, namely intimidating the Soviet Union with a display of America's technological might.

Like any counterfactual, there can never be any definitive proof of the outcome of a hypothetical invasion of Japan. But we can make a few reasonable assumptions.

First, we can take a good guess what an amphibious assault on Japan in November or December 1945 would have been like. Fresh in American minds would have been Operation Iceberg, the April 1945 assault on the island of Okinawa, 400 miles from the Japanese mainland and politically a part of Japan proper. Rather than suicidal banzai charges in the face of American firepower, the Japanese changed tactics: they retreated to fortified lines and caves in the Okinawan interior, where they fought  for three months and almost to the last man. Meanwhile, wave after wave of kamikaze aircraft dove on U.S. and British Commonwealth ships (even the super-battleship Yamato made a suicide sortie). The result was more than 50,000 U.S. casualties, a quarter-million Japanese military and civilian dead, and more than 400 Allied ships sunk or damaged.

Operation Downfall would have made Okinawa look like a picnic. "The often-repeated common wisdom holds that there were only 5,500, or at most 7,000, aircraft available and that all of Japan’s best pilots had been killed in earlier battles, writes historian D.M Giangreco "Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan 1945-47.

"What the U.S. occupation forces found after the war, however, was that the number of aircraft exceeded 12,700, and thanks to the wholesale conversion of training units into kamikaze formations, there were some 18,600 pilots available. Most were admittedly poor flyers, but due to the massive influx of instructors into combat units, more than 4,200 were rated high enough for either twilight or night missions."

Today's U.S. Navy fears attacks by swarms of Iranian or North Korean small boats, but the Japanese would have unleashed a horde of suicide craft. There were squadrons of training aircraft whose wooden frames were almost invisible to radar, a thousand suicide speedboats, and carefully stockpiled gasoline to power them. The Japanese army was filled with poorly trained conscripts, but they would have been fighting on home ground, in rough and fortified terrain, and backed by a ragtag but indoctrinated civilian militia that would have battled American tanks with farm tools.

As it had against a Mongol amphibious invasion in the 13th Century, the weather gods would have favored Japan. A devastating typhoon in October 1945 would have delayed Allied invasion preparations, while bad weather in the winter and spring of 1946 would have hampered operations and logistics.

Of course, the Allies (Britain and Australia would have contributed warships and aircraft) would have enjoyed air and naval supremacy to isolate and pound Japanese troops, supply lines and whatever factories hadn't been destroyed by U.S. B-29 bombers. They would have had numerous tanks and artillery pieces, and ample ammunition to use all this firepower. But then again, the Allies enjoyed these advantages at the Battle of the Bulge and in Korea, and still suffered heavy losses.

So would Operation Downfall have cost a million American casualties, plus a horrific number of Japanese military and civilian dead? That toll was not guaranteed, but it appears quite possible.

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The problem for Harry Truman and his generals was never going to be outright defeat of an invasion, but rather how long and costly the victory. The U.S. had suffered less during the war than other combatants (the advantage of fighting on someone else's soil). Yet by 1945, America was tired of the casualty lists, the rationing, the relentless wartime factory shifts. With the prospect of another year or two of war, there would have been pressure to use the handful of new atomic bombs -- out of frustration as much as military necessity -- and even to use poison gas to subdue the Japanese.

Perhaps a greater man than Truman would have balked at unleashing the monstrous genie of atomic warfare. Yet after six years of the most terrible war in history, greatness was in short supply across the globe, replaced by a desire just to get the slaughter and misery over with and bring the boys home.

The decision to drop the A-bomb may or may not have been the best decision. But it almost certainly was an inevitable one.

Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook. This article first appeared last year.

Image: Wikipedia.

Robert Farley

Security,

The F-22 has enjoyed the unusual distinction of holding an almost universally acknowledged dominance in the core air superiority mission for over a decade, and yet has not participated in a consequential way in any military conflict.

Here's What You Need to Know: As the United States increasingly shifts its attention to peer competitor conflicts, voices emerge calling for a restart of the Raptor line.

The F-22 has been the world’s most formidable air superiority fighter since it first entered service in 2005. Although the Raptor has yet to kill a target in anger, aviation specialists almost unanimously agree that it can outclass any opponent, foreign or domestic. The only hard limitation on its ability to kill appears to be the number of missiles that it can carry.

But what if the F-22 had never been? Like all advanced technological systems, the Raptor has suffered from hiccups; in 2009 these hiccups were severe enough to excuse the ending of the production line. What if those hiccups had been more severe, or if the United States had decided earlier that the Raptor simply wasn’t in its strategic interest?

The Plane

The Air Force appreciated that the Soviet Union could catch up with the F-15 and F-16, the formidable air superiority pairing developed in the 1970s. In the early 1980s, it began to pursue the Advanced Tactical Fighter program, geared towards producing a revolutionary air superiority platform that would include stealth, as well as a wealth of blooming technological advances. Two teams made it to the prototype stage, producing the YF-22 and the YF-23. The YF-22 won the competition, and went into production and testing in 1997. The Raptor first entering service in late 2005, and immediately began dominating warfighting exercises.

The Problems

But the problems faced by the F-22 were immense. Any innovative new aircraft faces delays and cost overruns associated with managing new technologies. The F-22, however, ran into one of the most comprehensive military technological shifts since the dawn of the jet age; the digitization of warfare that ensued in the 1980s and the 1990s. This was over and above the “normal” problems associated with creating the world’s first supersonic stealth airframe.

The strategic situation complicated matters further. The end of the Cold War reduced the need for advanced air superiority aircraft, leading DoD to reduce the expected buy. The 750 became 648, which became 339, which became 277, which became 183. This represented a classic death spiral, in which development costs were divided between a smaller and smaller number of aircraft. This made the Raptor seem more expensive, even as the production process matured.

The U.S. response to September 11 further clouded the F-22’s prospects. Instead of facing off against peer competitors, the US military engaged itself in conflicts against significantly technologically inferior opponents, including insurgents who had no air forces to speak of. This made the spiraling expense of the F-22 unpalatable, even to many defense hawks, who could not identify any meaningful contribution that the Raptor could make to the current conflict. Moreover, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter seemed to offer a cheaper, more modern alternative. In 2009, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates capped the overall production line at 187 (plus eight test aircraft) for all of these reasons.

The decision could have come sooner. The Joint Strike Fighter project began in 1992, and offered a more contemporary option for the US Department of Defense. The Wars of Yugoslav Disintegration demonstrated that the United States had presumptive air dominance over most foes, even without the F-22. And no peer competitor appeared, in the late 1990s, capable of challenging this dominance in the near term.

The Alternatives

The immediate, obvious alternative to the F-22 Raptor was its competitor aircraft, the Northrop YF-23. In some ways a more innovative design, the F-23 was faster and stealthier than the Raptor, and many have argued that the USAF made the wrong choice. At the time, though, the Air Force believed the F-23 was too risky, and that the Raptor represented the safe choice. The competition was not foreordained, however, and if the F-22 had not won then the F-23 probably would have; competitions of this sort very, very rarely result in the dismissal of both choices. Of course, the F-23 would have run into its own development problems along the way, just as the United States became embroiled in Iraq and Afghanistan, and might have been cancelled for the same reasons.

Alternatively, the Air Force could have simply waited for the F-35 to arrive. Although the F-35 was always understood to be a less formidable air superiority platform to the Raptor, it was also expected to be cheaper, in some sense was the aviation equivalent of a “digital native,” a person who grew up during the internet age and who incorporated the basic structures of the digital age into their day-to-day existence. Sensor fusion, networked communications, and a modular software build are intrinsic to the F-35 in a way that are not to the F-22, and it’s hardly impossible to imagine DoD simply giving up on the latter to await the former. Indeed, this was part of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates reasoning for capping the F-22 buy at 187 units.

Finally, the Air Force could have continued to pursue improvements to its legacy fleet. Boeing has demonstrated that the F-15 design still has some life in it, having proposed both a stealthy version and a “missile truck” version. The IDF Air Force has doubled down on the F-15, supplemented but not replaced by F-35s, and it is hard to argue that the Israelis don’t value air superiority. Similarly, even before Russia gave up on the Su-57, it invested heavily in improving legacy platforms, especially the Su-27 family of fighters.

Wrap

The most difficult question associated with the Raptor may be this: Would anyone ever really have missed the F-22 if it had not existed? In an important sense the answer is “no,” at least thus far. The F-22 has enjoyed the unusual distinction of holding an almost universally acknowledged dominance in the core air superiority mission for over a decade, and yet has not participated in a consequential way in any military conflict. It is the world’s best boxer, and yet can find no one to fight. This may change, of course; the international system is unpredictable, and the window of the Raptor’s dominance does not appear to be closing. And indeed, as the United States increasingly shifts its attention to peer competitor conflicts, voices emerge calling for a restart of the Raptor line. Though there is undoubtedly something sad about such a dominant aircraft never finding a way to make a contribution.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is a Visiting Professor at the United States Army War College. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

This article appeared earlier last year.

Image: U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Brittany A. Chase

Robert Farley

History,

One of the major "what ifs" of the war.

Here's What You Need to Know: Hitler and Roosevelt believed that war was inevitable, and they were both probably right.

What if Germany had never declared war on the United States during World War II? 

Scholars and analysts have long wondered whether this represented one of the great “what-ifs” of World War II; could the Germans have kept the United States out of the war, or at least undercut popular support for fighting in the European Theater, by declining to join the Japanese offensive?

Was the decision to declare war on the United States, effectively relieving the Roosevelt administration of the responsibility of mobilizing American sentiment for war in Europe, among Hitler’s greatest blunders?

Probably not. Washington and Berlin agreed that war was inevitable; the only question was who would fire the first shots.

At War:

The United States and Germany were at war in all but name well before December 1941.  Since early 1941 (at least) the United States had shipped war material and economic goods to the United Kingdom, enabling the British government to carry on with the war.  American soldiers, sailors, and airmen served in the British armed forces, albeit not in great numbers.  And in the late summer of 1941, the United States effectively found itself at war in the Battle of the Atlantic. The Greer Incident, in which a U.S. destroyer tangled with a German U-boat, served to bring the conflict into sharp focus. 

The Fireside Chat delivered by President Roosevelt on September 11, 1941 made clear that the United States was already virtually at war with Germany:

“Upon our naval and air patrol -- now operating in large number over a vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean -- falls the duty of maintaining the American policy of freedom of the seas -- now. That means, very simply, very clearly, that our patrolling vessels and planes will protect all merchant ships -- not only American ships but ships of any flag -- engaged in commerce in our defensive waters. They will protect them from submarines; they will protect them from surface raiders.

It is no act of war on our part when we decide to protect the seas that are vital to American defense. The aggression is not ours. Ours is solely defense.

But let this warning be clear. From now on, if German or Italian vessels of war enter the waters, the protection of which is necessary for American defense, they do so at their own peril.”

This declaration did not simply apply to U.S. territorial waters. The United States would escort convoys filled with military equipment to Europe with surface ships and anti-submarine craft, firing at will against any German submarines, ships or planes that they encountered.

Moreover, even U.S. ground forces had begun to participate in the war.  In early July 1941, the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps, with Navy support, began deploying to Iceland. The Americans relieved British and Canadian troops who had invaded the island a year earlier.

Why?

In the long run, Hitler (and the rest of the German government) believed that confrontation with the United States was virtually inevitable.  The U.S. had intervened in 1917 on behalf of Russia, France, and the United Kingdom; it was almost certain to do so again.  U.S. behavior in 1941 reaffirmed this belief. Starting the war on German terms, before the U.S. was prepared to effectively defend itself, was the consensus position within the German political and military elite.

And so Germany declared war on the United States not out of a fit of pique, but rather because it believed that the United States was already effectively a belligerent, and that wider operations against the U.S. would help win the war. In particular, the Axis declaration of war enabled an operation that the Germans believed was key to driving Britain out of the conflict; a concerted submarine attack against U.S. commercial shipping.  Although the Kriegsmarine had targeted U.S. vessels in the months and years before Pearl Harbor, it radically stepped up operations in the first months of 1942, launching a major effort just off the U.S. Atlantic seaboard.

The German tactics were devastatingly effective against a U.S. military that lacked good tactics, equipment, and procedures for fighting the U-boats.  For their part, British military and political authorities worried that the German offensive might work, destroying enough shipping to cut Britain’s lifeline to North America. The Royal Navy and Royal Air Force quickly dispatched advisors to the United States in an effort to staunch the bleeding, but 1942 nevertheless proved the most devastating year of the war for shipping losses.  Overall, Operation Drumbeat proved far more successful for the Axis than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

But What If…

If, despite all this, Germany and Italy had somehow managed to avoid an open declaration of war against the United States, conflict would have continued in the North Atlantic. The U.S. would have continued to supply Britain and the Soviet Union with war material, potentially with somewhat more secure lines of supply, especially if the Germans continued to avoid attacks along the Atlantic seaboard.

In the real war, U.S. air, naval, and ground forces made their first decisive contribution in the Mediterranean. Plenty of analysts, now and then, have questioned the strategic logic of the Mediterranean campaign, but in the long run it helped beat U.S. ground and air forces into shape.  If the U.S. had maintained formal neutrality, Operation Torch (the invasion of North Africa) might never have happened, and progress in the Med would have come much more slowly.

U.S. participation in the Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO), designed to destroy German industry and morale and drive the Third Reich from the war, might also have developed more slowly.  Given the limited impact and immense cost of the CBO in its early stages, however, it’s unclear how much of a net impact on the tides of war that this would have made.

A reduced U.S. combat commitment in the Atlantic could have led to a greater effort in the Pacific, although it’s difficult to see what impact that would have made in the first year of the war.  Over time, the U.S. built up an enormous advantage over the Japanese; this would have happened even more quickly with a smaller commitment to Europe. Still, the overwhelming superiority that the U.S. exhibited in 1944 depended on technology, training, and the availability of ships that remained on the slipways in 1942. Schemes to step up the fight in China or in Southeast Asia suffered from immeasurable logistical problems, which the U.S. could not solve until 1944 in any case.

The Final Salvo

Both Hitler and Roosevelt believed that war was inevitable, and they were both probably right.  Restraining the war machine in December of 1941 might have bought some additional time for Germany in the Med and (possibly) in the skies, but would have forced the Kriegsmarine to forego an offensive that it believed could win the war. And in the end, the Americans likely would have joined the conflict anyway, perhaps with less experience, but with greater overall preparation to make a decisive commitment.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is author of The Battleship Book. He serves as a Senior Lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and The Diplomat.

This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Robert Farley

History, World

The Yamato was, with its sister ship Musashi, the largest ship in history - and more agile and heavily armed than the Bismarck.

Here's What You Need to Know: Apart from the Iowas and HMS Vanguard, the Bismarcks and the Yamatos were the two largest classes of battleships ever built.

Can we imagine a scenario in which two titans of World War II, the German battleship Bismarck and the Japanese battleship Yamato, would come into conflict? Difficult, but not impossible. Had the Battle of the Marne gone the other way, Germany might have forced France from the World War I in the early fall of 1914, just as it did in the spring of 1940. Germany and the United Kingdom might plausibly have come to an accommodation on naval armaments that would have left the Reich with a free hand on the Continent in exchange for the security of the British Empire.

Prior to World War One, Germany held extensive territories in the Pacific. A German Empire emerging victorious from the Great War might well have sought to extend those territories, especially in China. Just as Japan chafed against the existence of the British and American empires in Asia, it could well have come into conflict with Berlin.

The Players

Apart from the Iowas and HMS Vanguard, the Bismarcks and the Yamatos were the two largest classes of battleships ever built. Bismarck and her sister Tirpitz displaced about fifty thousand tons, with a speed of roughly thirty knots and an armament of eight fifteen-inch guns in four twin turrets. The Bismarcks carried about nineteen thousand tons of armor, albeit in an archaic configuration by World War II standards. The Yamatos, on the other hand, displaced about seventy-two thousand tons, armed with nine 18.1” guns in three triple turrets and capable of twenty-seven knots. Yamato and her sister carried about twenty-two thousand tons of armor in modern (“all or nothing”) configuration.

We will assume for our purposes that Germany would construct ships akin to the Bismarck and Tirpitz, and then deploy them to the Far East (in a shorter Great War, Germany might well have retained the naval base at Tsingtao). The long-legged German battleships, designed for raiding, would take to Pacific service well. We also assume that they represent the early stages of German fast battleship design, meaning that the more powerful ships will remain in the Atlantic.

The Stage

As the clouds of war gather, Bismarck, Tirpitz, and a collection of smaller vessels (two heavy cruisers, six destroyers) abandon Tsingtao for the German naval base at Truk. With Kido Butai (the Japanese carrier force) engaged elsewhere, the Imperial Japanese Navy assigns HIJMS Yamato and HIJMS Musashi (with a similarly constituted support group) the task of catching and destroying the German ships.

The German squadron has a three-knot speed advantage, which it uses to try to pull away from the Japanese and avoid the engagement. However, the Japanese have a clear geographic advantage; the existence of relatively close bases means that they can station squadrons of older, smaller ships along potential channels of exit. Rather than fight with a collection of older battleships led by HIJMS Nagato, Admiral Lutjens decides to try his luck with the cream of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Lutjens wants to engage before dark, when he knows that the Japanese will have a significant tactical advantage, despite German radar.

The Germans open fire first, when it becomes apparent that they cannot escape the fight. Lutjens decides to attack before Japanese cruisers and destroyers can close into torpedo range; German intelligence is well-apprised of the capabilities of the Type 93 torpedo, designed to destroy and disable capital ships at a distance. Bismarck opens fire on Yamato and Tirpitz on Musashi, with Bismarck scoring an early hit on the Japanese flagship.

Before long, the Japanese begin to reply with their 18.1” guns. Both the Germans and the Japanese have excellent fire control, but the contest is unequal. The fifteen-inch guns of Bismarck and Tirpitz fire at a greater rate than the Japanese guns, but even when they hit, they do relatively little damage to the vitals of the Japanese ships (although they extensively scar the upper works). By contrast, the 18.1” hits begin to do serious damage immediately, plunging into the German ships at great range. Large and with effective subdivisions, neither German ship suffers lethal damage. However, before long both Bismarck and Tirpitz begin to lose speed, cutting off any chance of escape.

The battle between the smaller ships also begins to go the Japanese way. After a flurry of shellfire on both sides, the Japanese ships open up at range with their twenty-four-inch “Long Lance” torpedoes. Three German ships suffer hits, with a cruiser and a destroyer shearing out of line. Japanese gunfire slows the rest of the line, allowing several of the IJN’s support squadron to detach themselves and concentrate on the German battleships.

Increasingly accurate Japanese fire devastates the upper works of the German ships. With their speed advantage gone, the Germans find themselves in a slugging match with far larger, more heavily armored opponents. The Japanese advantages soon tell, and fire from both German ships becomes sporadic and inaccurate. The destroyers Yukikaze and Isokaze brave the secondary armament of the two German behemoths to close within torpedo distance, hitting both targets.

At this point, the situation becomes academic. The German ships lose the capacity to meaningfully engage the Japanese, and are subjected to withering fire from the battleships. Yamato and Musashi (both of which have suffered significant damage to their upper works and secondary armaments) close to point blank range. The remaining Japanese cruisers and destroyers, having disposed of their German counterparts, open up with their own guns and fire their remaining torpedoes. Still, both German battleships remain shockingly resistant to the damage inflicted by the IJN.

Two hours into the engagement, an explosion rocks Tirpitz; the crippled battleship soon capsizes and sinks. The Japanese concentrate their fire on Bismarck, which has slowed to a stop and ceased firing. An eagle eyed Japanese sailor onboard Yamato sees a German officer strike the ships colors, and miraculously, the order goes out across the fleet to cease firing. A boarding party from Yukikaze embarks upon the crippled German ship, followed by damage control parties from the rest of the Japanese squadron.

With the assistance of the surrendered German crew, the Japanese manage to get the fires and flooding under control. Yamato takes Bismarck under tow until tugs arrive. Although officially taken into IJN service, Bismarck never returns to combat status; the expense and difficulty of refit prove too much for the Japanese. Most of her crew survives the war, however.

Wrap

Although large and capable of absorbing enormous battle damage, Bismarck and Tirpitz simply did not compare favorably with any other navy’s fast battleships. Yamato and Musashi, the largest and most powerfully built ships in history (although perhaps at some disadvantage relative to the American Iowas) utterly outclassed the German ships, and would have defeated them easily.

More importantly, the imperial ambitions of Kaiserine Germany are worth remembering. Both US and Japanese policy in the Pacific in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (particularly the U.S. seizure of the Philippines) kept German regional ambitions firmly in mind. Japan entered the Great War against the Central Powers as a coalition partner; if the coalition had broken up, Tokyo might still have found reason to quarrel with Berlin.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to the National Interest, is author of The Battleship Book. He serves as a senior lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His work includes military doctrine, national security and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money, Information Dissemination and the Diplomat.

This article first appeared several years ago.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Robert Farley

History, Europe

Italy undertook mischief across the Mediterranean.

Here's What You Need to Know: The Italian raid helped demonstrate the potential for special operations forces to have a strategic impact.

Mussolini’s effort to seize control of the Mediterranean had, by late 1941, largely ended in failure. 

The success of the Royal Navy in the raid on Taranto and at the Battle of Cape Matapan had given the British a decisive advantage. Low morale and fuel shortages further limited the effectiveness of the Regia Marina. Yet the Italians still had several modern battleships, along with a few older, modernized vessels. And on the upside, the Royal Navy had lost one of its battleships, HMS Barham, to U-boat attack in late November. In anticipation of war with Japan, additional Royal navy warships were headed to the Far East.

That’s when the Italians decided to get creative. In order to further redress the imbalance, the Italians conceived a daring operation to attack British ships directly. They borrowed a page from their own history in World War I, and managed to knock two British battleships out of the war.

The Plan: 

Italy lacked aircraft carriers, and consequently could not respond in kind to the Taranto attack. But in a previous war, the Italians had developed a weapon that could be just as lethal to battleships as the torpedo bomber. In 1918, days before the surrender of the Central Powers, the collapsing government of Austria-Hungary made clear that it would pass one of its dreadnought battleships, SMS Viribus Unitis, on to the newly created State of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs, a forerunner of Yugoslavia. Italy believed the ship still to be in the possession of Austria-Hungary, and no peace treaty yet existed. In any case, the Italians had little interest in seeing a battleship pass into the possession of what might become a regional rival. Accordingly, a team of divers entered Pula Harbor and attached a mine to the bottom of the battleship. They were quickly captured, and confessed to attaching the weapon without indicating the exact spot of its placement. But the Austrians couldn’t find the mine, which exploded and sank the battleship.

In the late 1930s, the Italians began to assemble a team that would become the scourge of the Mediterranean. Based on experience in the Pula raid and the more recent enthusiasm for spearfishing and underwater diving, Italy began to develop a capability for attacking enemy ships at anchor. This included explosive motorboats, diving equipment, limpet mines, and two-man minisubs known as “human torpedoes.” In 1940, the Regia Marina stood up Decima Flottiglia MAS, a team detailed to conduct raids against Allied facilities.

From the beginning of the war, X MAS (from the Roman number for ten) undertook mischief across the Mediterranean. The raids were dangerous, and depended on a good deal of luck to succeed. Nevertheless, teams managed to cause significant damage in several different ports. Like many special forces units, X MAS was also known for its ideological enthusiasm, in this case fanatic support for the Fascist government of Italy. 

The Attack: 

Scire, a submarine carrying three minisubs, left Italy on December 3. A short while later, Scire picked up six members of X MAS, who would form into three teams of two. On December 19, the attack commenced, with Scire making a submerged approach to Alexandria Harbor. The three torpedoes were released, and Scire retreated an appropriate distance. Their targets were two battleships, the HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Valiant, and an aircraft carrier that was expected to be in port but was absent. After placing limpet mines, the teams would exfiltrate into Alexandria, then make their way to a pre-arranged point where Scire would pick them up with small boats.

Both Queen Elizabeth and Valiant had recently been modernized, bringing them up to the standard of modern battleships. They constituted the core of the British Mediterranean Fleet, especially with more modern units transferred to the Far East. One team successfully attached a mine to the hull of Queen Elizabeth and another team to a large oil tanker (an aircraft carrier could not be found). 

The final team second ran into mechanical problems, both with its breathing equipment and with the torpedo. The two frogmen nevertheless managed to attach a bomb to HMS Valiant, although both members of the team were captured in the process. A scene played out aboard Valiant reminiscent of what had happened in Pola twenty-three years before. The captain of Valiant ordered the Italians confined below decks, where they would be vulnerable to the explosion. Nevertheless, they remained silent until just before the mine exploded.

The mines inflicted severe damage. Queen Elizabeth sank into the mud, although she, fortunately, remained upright. Valiant was seriously damaged but did not come to rest on the floor of the harbor. The tanker Sagona was badly damaged, and in the process of her sinking, a British destroyer also suffered serious damage. The British took elaborate steps to hide evidence of the damage, but Queen Elizabeth took nine months to repair, Valiant six. At a stroke, the Italians had eliminated two of the Royal Navy’s most powerful units from the Mediterranean, at very little cost to themselves. The other four commandos were arrested in the vicinity of Alexandria. 

Parting Thoughts:

By the time the two battleships re-entered service, the balance had tilted decisively in favor of the Allies. Valiant and Queen Elizabeth served for most of the rest of the war in the Pacific, although Valiant fell victim to a dreadful accident in a floating drydock that severely damaged the ship and removed her from active service.

The attack was dramatized in two British and one Italian films. Most of the captured divers were released from custody in 1944, after having decided to fight for the Allied Italian government. Several were active in the post-war Italian Navy, and two of them served in the Italian parliament. The raid helped demonstrate the potential for special operations forces to have a strategic impact, and influenced how both the United States and the Soviet Union thought about special operators after the war.

Dr. Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, teaches at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. He is the author of the Battleship Book and can be found at @drfarls.

This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Kris Osborn

Security, Americas

The Army seeks self-guiding, auto-loading robots empowered to arm combat vehicles and move ammunition from one platform to another quickly while reducing risk to soldiers and coordinating combined joint attacks.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Both air and ground robotic ammunition-carrying drones can extend range and dwell-time for attacking forces, precluding a need to stop, return or pause to rearm. The technology could therefore enable an advancing mechanized force to extend its penetration into enemy forces should initial assaults be met with success. 

The Army seeks self-guiding, auto-loading robots empowered to arm combat vehicles and move ammunition from one platform to another quickly while reducing risk to soldiers and coordinating combined joint attacks. 

The emerging artificial intelligence-centric system seeks to resolve a resupply problem often confronted by attacking forces traveling with finite amounts of ammunition. Furthermore, the need for ammunition, and the pace at which it is needed, is vastly different than it may have been in previous years. 

“The rate of fire is different now compared to autoloaders that existed in the past. We have sophisticated ammo now. The autoloading problem is a really difficult one. We have confidence in our armaments center,” Brigadier General John Rafferty, Director, Long Range Precision Fires Cross Functional Team, Army Futures Command, told The National Interest. 

By referring to sophisticated ammunition, Rafferty may have been citing several emerging high-tech artillery and rocket munitions such as new Excalibur variants. These include “shaped charge” or “shaped trajectory” 155mm rounds able to both course correct and, in some cases, tailor blast effects to meet a specific threat. 

An AI-capable ammunition-carrying robot might instantly know where ammo is most in need and network requests back to supply lines, optimizing the pace of attack and sustaining high op-tempo attack missions. 

Digital auto-loading and artillery systems have been here for many years, going back as far as the Army’s cancelled Crusader platform and Future Combat Systems. Auto-loading and advanced data links are already in the process of arming upgraded Abrams tanks, a combat circumstance which improves the rate of fire, underscoring the need for fast ammunition resupply. 

“We don’t necessarily want an autoloader as much as an improved rate of fire. We have a group of talented people solving hard problems. We are going through the process with small business innovation and Army research,” Rafferty said. 

Robotic ammunition transport will also need to incorporate what Rafferty explained as “trade-offs,” given that munitions of all sizes will need to transport quickly and efficiently, a circumstance requiring light-weight, fast-moving robots. Perhaps some drones can carry heavier loads while others move quickly with smaller cargo-load to meet urgent demands. 

“Some ammo is big and heavy, so we have to make a lot of trades to make sure we have the right space, weight and power to give ourselves many options,” Rafferty added. 

It is even possible that robotic ammunition platforms could help identify the kind of ammunition needed for a particular attack. For instance, perhaps an Abrams tank needs a canister round to shoot many fragments in an array to attack slightly dispersed groups of ground forces. Conversely, if confronting an armored vehicle threat, a robot could organize and deliver High Explosive Anti-Tank rounds to fire upon enemy armored vehicles. AI can also organize sensor information and make nearly instant calculations based on a number of otherwise separate variables such as range, terrain, navigational details and the configurations of enemy targets in relation to a surrounding high-value enemy area. 

Robotic air drones could also be used quite possibly to autonomously deliver ammunition to helicopters or even fixed-wing aircraft engaged in a heavy, fast-paced exchange of fire with enemy forces. Such a scenario would require some kind of automated delivery or intake system, enabling aircraft to accept and integrate ammunition deliveries. In some cases, such as with helicopters, manned crews might be able to receive ammunition. However, it seems automated ammunition reception or intake, responding to a robotic arm delivering ammunition, might greatly expedite the process by virtue of an ability to draw upon accelerated computer processing speeds. 

Both air and ground robotic ammunition-carrying drones can extend range and dwell-time for attacking forces, precluding a need to stop, return or pause to rearm. The technology could therefore enable an advancing mechanized force to extend its penetration into enemy forces should initial assaults be met with success. 

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

Image: Flickr.

Seth J. Frantzman

F-35 KC-46, Middle East

The replacements cannot come too soon given the age of the current fleet of tankers.

Israel has needed new refuelers for its air force for years. Its aging fleet of converted Boeing 707s are sixty years old. Yet these expensive upgrades were put off, along with more F-35 purchases and helicopters, because of a budget battle between the Ministry of Defense and Finance Ministry. There were also questions about how to pay for the warplanes amid U.S. military aid to Israel and a decade-long memorandum of understanding with the US. Israel’s goal is to maintain its “Qualitative Military Edge” over opponents in the region for decades to come. The tankers will join more F-35s, helicopters, air defense systems and other advanced technology.

Now it is official. Israel will procure two tanker jets. The U.S. State Department had approved a sale of up to eight of the advanced aircraft in March 2020. The Israeli Ministry of Defense said a Letter of Offer and Acceptance had been signed. “In addition to the Tankers, similar processes will be launched to acquire a third F-35 squadron, heavy lift Helicopters to replace the CH53 Yasur fleet, advanced munitions and more. The procurement programs are conducted with U.S. Military channels, utilizing Foreign Military Financing (FMF),” Israel says. 

“I welcome the progress in the procurement plan, which is critical at this point in time. It is a cornerstone of the IDF’s security concept,” said Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz. “I would like to thank our great friend the United States, for supporting the State of Israel on all levels. We will continue to work to complete the agreements that will enable the IDF to fulfill its purpose and to move forward with the missions facing us in the various arenas, near and far, at sea, in the air, on land and in cyberspace.” 

The deal has been in the works for years and in recent weeks there was immense pressure to finalize it and move forward. This is reportedly because of U.S. pressure regarding timing and the production line and because Israel needs these aircraft. There has been talk of “frontloading” the financing. The group JINSA in the United States had recommended this in a report on February 7. Furthermore, there are elections coming up in Israel and the country has been dealing with budget battles for a year due to the seemingly endless elections the country has faced in the last two years. There is also the coronavirus pandemic. Israeli defense companies were at IDEX in Abu Dhabi, a huge defense exhibition this week, but many Israeli members of the companies couldn’t attend because Israel’s airports are closed due to the pandemic. Amid all this, and with Defense Minister Gantz likely out of a job after the elections, the deal was moved forward. 

Over the weekend the head of the Israel Ministry of Defense Mission to the United States, Brig. Gen. (Res.), Mishel Ben Baruch signed a Letter of Offer and Acceptance, Israel said. The two KC-46 tankers will be manufactured by the Boeing Corporation. “In the next phase, two additional tanker aircraft will be acquired, out of a total of up to eight that will make up the future fleet,” Israel’s Ministry of Defense says. “As part of the agreement, the aircraft will be fitted with unique Israeli systems in accordance with the operational requirements of the Israeli Air Force (IAF). The first aircraft delivery is expected by the middle of this decade.”

That means that these aircraft won’t be flying in Israel for years. Yet Israel is facing tensions with Iran and pro-Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah. In addition, other Iranian proxies in Iraq, Syria and Yemen may threaten Israel. Israel also has new relations with partners in the Gulf and is moving forward with kitting out a new advanced warship to guard its exclusive economic zone. On Monday, February 22, Israel’s navy revealed it had recently confronted a threat from the Gaza Strip. This shows how important the tankers are.

On February 18 Israel’s General Staff of the IDF convened a workshop to discuss the multi-year plan dubbed Momentum Israel’s army is going through to prepare for future conflicts. “The workshop, which was held at the Dayan Base in Glilot, presented the implementation progress of the decisions of the multi-year program so far, including increasing the readiness to respond in the first and third circles, improving offensive capabilities, strengthening multi-force cooperation, responding to increasing threats in all theaters, the digital revolution, and preserving the IDF’s intelligence might,” the IDF said. During the workshop, the commanding officers of the Forces and Commands reviewed the progress of the multi-year plan’s implementation, in the light of the operational concept of victory, emphasizing military dominance in current and future combat theaters, Israel noted.

As part of Momentum Israel seeks to utilize advanced aircraft like the F-35 and pair them with the best intelligence, and air defense and other assets. Israel is constantly rolling out new technologies, such as electro-optics for drones, automatic target recognition and “deep learning” artificial intelligence applications for military units. Altogether the big picture is that the KC-46s and other new technology will blend well with Israel’s preparations for this future war. The Defense Ministry says that the new procurement will be crucial to strengthening the Israeli air force and maintaining Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge for decades. This means Israel will push for more F-35s, new helicopters and other “advanced munitions, air defense systems, marine and ground platforms, cyber systems and more.”

Seth J. Frantzman is a Jerusalem-based journalist who holds a Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the executive director of the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis and a writing fellow at Middle East Forum. He is the author of After ISIS: America, Iran and the Struggle for the Middle East (Gefen Publishing) and Drone Wars: Pioneers, Killing Machines, Artificial Intelligence, and the Battle for the Future (Forthcoming, Bombardier Books). Follow him on Twitter at @sfrantzman.  

Image: Reuters.

Robert Farley

History, Europe

Displacing 44,500 tons (standard) and capable of thirty knots, Vanguard was the largest battleship ever built by the Royal Navy, and was only exceeded internationally by the Iowa and Yamato classes. However, many of its foreign contemporaries carried a heavier main armament.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The Royal Navy’s first post–London Treaty battleships were the five ships of the King George V class, which served with honor in every theater of World War II. 

In an effort to take advantage of the superiority of the Royal Navy in World War I, First Sea Lord John “Jackie” Fisher developed a scheme to land British troops in Pomerania, thus directly threatening Berlin and forcing the Germans to withdraw troops from the Western Front. To this end, Fisher authorized design of a group of shallow-draft “large light cruisers” that would carry guns heavy enough to support the landings. HMS Courageous and HMS Glorious would each carry four fifteen-inch guns in two twin turrets, while HMS Furious was expected to carry two eighteen-inch guns in single turrets. The light cruiser designation, incidentally, enabled Fisher to evade government restrictions on the construction of new battlecruisers.

As it happened, the Baltic landings never proved practical, and Courageous and Glorious joined the Grand Fleet as battlecruisers. After the war, the Royal Navy removed the heavy guns and converted all three ships into aircraft carriers, a procedure enabled by the Washington Naval Treaty. All three served in World War II, although only Furious survived the conflict.

The conversions left four twin fifteen-inch turrets lying about, guns that couldn’t be used on new ships because of the Washington Naval Treaty. Gun turrets are among the most expensive and difficult to construct parts of a battleship, however, so they were retained in the hope of future use. The British fifteen-inch/38-caliber gun was regarded as a great success, and suitable for use in later ships.

The Royal Navy’s first post–London Treaty battleships were the five ships of the King George V class, which served with honor in every theater of World War II. The Navy intended to follow these up with the Lions, which would have represented the apogee of British battleship design. Each of the six ships would have displaced 43,000 tons and carried nine sixteen-inch guns in three triple turrets. The Lions would have carried heavier armor than the American Iowa class, with a design speed of twenty-eight knots. However, the war intervened, and the Admiralty determined that smaller ships should take precedence, shifting resources allocated to the Lions to aircraft carriers and antisubmarine craft.

Fortunately, the availability of the four old fifteen-inch turrets meant that a seventh ship, Vanguard, could be completed more quickly than the Lions. Intended for use in the Pacific, the ship would be fast enough to catch and powerful enough to destroy the Japanese Kongo-class battlecruisers. The design went through several evolutions (at one point the Royal Navy declared that the ship would be a replacement for HMS Royal Oak, sunk by U-47 in 1939) before the keel was finally laid in 1941. Work proceeded slowly, incorporating the lessons of the war, and Vanguard was not finally completed until late 1946. It was the last battleship ever launched, although not the last one completed, an honor that would belong to the French Jean Bart.

Displacing 44,500 tons (standard) and capable of thirty knots, Vanguard was the largest battleship ever built by the Royal Navy, and was only exceeded internationally by the Iowa and Yamato classes. However, many of its foreign contemporaries carried a heavier main armament. Vanguard was well armored and an excellent seaboat, but because of its light main battery it likely would have struggled against the Japanese and American super battleships. Visually, its great size made the fifteen-inch turrets look diminutive.

Vanguard saw only limited opportunities for action in the years after the war, but played an important ceremonial role. In 1947 it carried King George VI, Queen Elizabeth and a young Princess Elizabeth on a royal visit to South Africa. Elizabeth had presided over Vanguard’s launching in 1944, the first (but far from the last) such ceremony she would conduct. It was also present at the Coronation Fleet Review of Elizabeth II in 1953. Vanguard spent the rest of its career with the Home Fleet and the Mediterranean Fleet. It was placed in reserve in 1956.

The Royal Navy has rarely demonstrated the same enthusiasm for ship preservation found in the United States. Several of the most storied battleships of the twentieth century (HMS Warspite, HMS Rodney, HMS Queen Elizabeth) were quickly sold to the scrappers after World War II, in part because of the demands of postwar austerity. Four King George V–class ships survived until 1958 before meeting the same fate, leaving Vanguard as the only remaining Royal Navy battleship. Desultory efforts at preservation failed, perhaps in part because of its brief, uneventful career, and Vanguard went to the cutters in 1960.

Vanguard was an idiosyncratic curiosity, but would have filled its role effectively if it had been completed in time. Although not comparable to its contemporaries of modern design and armament, it was a beautiful ship, and well worthy of service to the royal family.

The above is part of an ongoing National Interest series based on Robert Farley’s recent publication, The Battleship Book. The views expressed are his own. (This first appeared several years ago.)

Image: Wikipedia.

Kris Osborn

U.S. Navy Submarines,

Additional attack submarines promise to bring new levels of undersea firepower, drone control, and stealthy reconnaissance technology in the nearer term.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Virginia-class submarines are engineered with “Fly-by-Wire” capability which allows the ship to quietly linger in shallow waters without having to surface or have each small move controlled by a human operator. With this technology, a human operator will order depth and speed, allowing software to direct the movement of the planes and rudder to maintain course and depth.

Many in Congress are hoping the Pentagon receives enough funding to secure the acquisition of more Virginia-class attack submarines on a faster timetable to help offset an anticipated submarine shortage, best leverage the many technical advances contained in the submarine, and optimize the fast-growing execution of undersea reconnaissance missions. 

The House Committee on Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces announced its proposals for the mark-up of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021; the subcommittee recommends the restoration of a second Virginia-class submarine and the required advanced procurement to maintain the two-per-year build rate, as reported by Seapower Magazine. 

Additional attack submarines promise to bring new levels of undersea firepower, drone control, and stealthy reconnaissance technology in the nearer term.

While firepower and attack weapons are naturally still a major area of focus for Virginia-Class submarines, the expanding ISR mission scope made possible by new technologies has provided key inspiration for senior Navy developers and members of Congress who have been working vigorously to increase the size of the attack submarine fleet.

Land weapons, port activities, and other enemy movements in coastal or island areas are more difficult for deeper draft surface ships to access, often complicating surveillance missions – without giving away their position. Surface ships and the drones or aircraft they operate could, in a variety of operational environments, would be more “detectable” to enemy radar and sensors when compared to attack submarines. Given these and other variables, Virginia-class submarines are becoming increasingly critical to clandestine “intel” missions beneath the surface in high-risk areas. 

Virginia-Class submarines are engineered with “Fly-by-Wire” capability which allows the ship to quietly linger in shallow waters without having to surface or have each small move controlled by a human operator. With this technology, a human operator will order depth and speed, allowing software to direct the movement of the planes and rudder to maintain course and depth. The ships can be driven primarily through software code and electronics, thus freeing up time and energy for an operator who does not need to manually control each small maneuver, Navy program managers have told the National Interest.

This technology, using upgradeable software and fast-growing AI applications, widens the mission envelope for the attack submarines by vastly expanding their ISR potential. Using real-time analytics and an instant ability to draw upon and organize vast databases of information and sensor input, computer algorithms can now perform a range of procedural functions historically performed by humans. This can increase the speed of maneuverability and an attack submarine's ability to quickly shift course, change speed or alter depth positioning when faced with attacks.

“The most important feature for maneuvering in littoral waters is the fly-by-wire control system, whereby computers in the control center electronically adjust the submarine's control surfaces, a significant improvement from the hydraulic systems used in the Los Angeles-class,” a 2016 Stanford University “The Future of Nuclear Submarines” paper by Alexander Yachanin writes.

The U.S. Navy’s 2018 “Commander’s Intent for the United States Submarine Force,” writes - “We are uniquely capable of, and often best employed in, stealthy, clandestine and independent operations……. we exploit the advantages of undersea concealment which allow us to: Conduct undetected operations such as strategic deterrent patrols, intelligence collection, Special Operations Forces support, non-provocative transits, and repositioning,” the Navy strategy document writes.

Virginia-class subs are armed with Tomahawk missiles, torpedoes, and other weapons able to perform a range of missions; these include anti-submarine warfare, strike warfare, covert mine warfare, ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance), anti-surface/ship warfare and naval special warfare, something described as having the ability to carry and insert Special Operations Forces. Future Virginia-Class submarines provide improved littoral (coastal waters) capabilities, sensors, special operations force employment, and strike warfare capabilities.

Kris Osborn is the new 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 first appeared in June 2020 and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Flickr.

Robert Farley

Security, Asia

By the end of the decade, the balance of power (and the strategic landscape) may look very different.

Here's What You Need to Know: With luck and skill, Washington and Beijing will avoid war, even in 2030. But it behooves planners in both countries to take seriously the possibility that conflict might ensue.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the United States appear ready to plunge off the precipice of a trade war. This war could have far-ranging effects on the economies of both countries, as well as the future of the global economic order. But as of yet, it does not seem likely to involve the flight of actual bombs and missiles. While the U.S. and China have a variety of minor conflicts, none rise to the level of a casus belli.

But things could change over the next decade. Conflicts that now seem remote can take on urgency over time. As China’s relative power increases, the United States may find that small disputes can have big consequences. China, on the other hand, may see windows of opportunity in America’s procurement and modernization cycle that leave the United States vulnerable.

By 2030, the balance of power (and the strategic landscape) may look very different. What would the War of 2030 between China and the United States look like?

How Would War Begin?

The core of the conflict remains the same. China and the United States might well fall into the “Thucydides Trap,” however misunderstood the ancient Greek historian may be. Chinese power seems to grow inexorably, even as the United States continues to set the rules of the global international order. But even if the growth of Athenian power and the concern this provoked in Sparta really was the underlying cause of the Peloponnesian War, it required a spark to set the world aflame. Neither the PRC nor the United States will go to war over a trivial event.

We can imagine a significant threat to a U.S. ally, whether it be Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK), India, Taiwan, or perhaps the Philippines. The seeds of conflict between China and all of these countries have already been planted, even if they never bloom. If a militarized conflict developed between the PRC and any of these countries, the United States would almost invariably be drawn in. A war involving India and the PRC would undoubtedly carry the greatest stakes, threatening to bring not only the United States into the fray, but also Pakistan and Russia. But war between China and Japan could also have catastrophic consequences. We should also remain open to the prospect of significant strategic changes, such as rivalry between the ROK and Japan that leads to a militarized dispute that then leads to a confrontation involving China and the United States.

What New Technologies Would the Combatants Employ?

While the field of battle will depend on the cause of conflict, we can expect that the crucial theaters of war will be the East and South China Seas. This will place an emphasis on the air and naval capabilities of each country, granting that the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps have worked hard on developing ways to contribute to the ensuing “multi-domain battle.”

There is every reason to believe that the military balance will shift in China’s favor over the next twelve years. This does not mean that China will have an advantage, but, compared to the status quo, time favors the PRC. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is growing faster than the United States Navy (USN), even if the latter can find its way to 355 ships. In addition, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) is modernizing faster than the United States Air Force (USAF), even as F-35s and B-21s come online.

However, both sides will also field traditional technologies in significant numbers. China could very well have four aircraft carriers by 2030, most likely two Liaoning-type STOBAR carriers and two conventional CATOBAR carriers. Although the United States will still have more (including its fleet of assault carriers), and while the U.S. will enjoy qualitative superiority, China could potentially achieve temporary local superiority at the onset of the conflict. China will also deploy submarines and surface ships in large numbers- without the need to spread naval forces around the world. The USN will still have an advantage, but that advantage will be increasingly marginal.

With respect to aircraft, the United States Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps will all field F-35s in significant numbers. The Air Force will also have access to B-21 Raider stealth bombers, as well as its legacy bomber fleets. China will field more J-10s and J-11s, bringing its fleet up to par with America’s legacy force of F-15s, F-16s, and F/A-18s. The J-20 should be available in numbers, along perhaps with the J-31, if the PLA decides to buy. China’s modernization program won’t be quite enough to bring it up to U.S. standards by 2030, but the PLAAF will close the gap, and will have the advantage of plentiful bases and the support of enormous numbers of ballistic, cruise, and anti-aircraft missile installations.

The most significant difference by 2030 will likely be the explosion of unmanned vehicles that accompany, and often replace, existing manned platforms. Innovation in this area remains high-paced, and so it’s difficult to predict precisely what platforms will take center stage, but it is likely that aerial, naval, and undersea drones will conduct much of the fighting, both against each other and against manned platforms. These drones will depend on access to vast systems of reconnaissance and communication, systems that both sides will attempt to disrupt from the opening hours of the conflict.

No War But Cyber War?

Socially, economically, and militarily, China and the United States are both deeply wired, and deeply dependent upon cyber-connectivity. A significant disruption of that connectivity could have catastrophic effects. But some analysts of cyber-conflict have argued that just as U.S. and China have become more dependent on the internet, the structures that undergird connectivity have become more resilient and less susceptible to disruption. A useful analogy here is with the robustness of the industrial systems of the earlier 20th century; while German industry suffered heavily under Western bombing, it did not collapse like many expected, largely because a sophisticated system has multiple internal redundancies that cannot easily be undermined. By contrast, the less sophisticated Japanese economy suffered much more significant damage from blockade and bombing. Complexity, in other words, does not necessarily imply vulnerability, and we cannot assume that as economies become more digital that they will necessarily become easier to attack.

But this hardly means that the war won’t have a cyber-component; rather, digital combat will likely involve the military side more than the civilian side. Both the U.S. and China will undertake every effort to uncover and disrupt the connections that hold together the reconnaissance-strike complexes of either side, trying to blind their foe on the one hand, while also trying to see through the enemies eyes. The side that best coordinates cyber-attacks with “real-world” military operations may carry the day in the end.

How Will the War End?

Much has been written of late with respect to how a U.S.-China war might end. Without a firm grip on the specific casus belli associated with the War of 2030, it is difficult to assess how far each side might be willing to push. It seems extremely unlikely that China, even by 2030, could possess conventional capabilities that could permanently threaten U.S. industrial and warmaking capacity. On the other hand, it is increasingly hard to imagine a scenario in which the United States could fatally undermine the PRC, granting that defeat might cause a lasting political crisis. Victory will depend on which side can destroy the primary fielded forces of the enemy, either through decisive assault or through attrition.

A blockade probably isn’t the answer, either. While China’s energy consumption will likely increase by 2030, the PRC’s ability to remedy that strategic vulnerability may also increase. The construction of additional pipelines with Russia, in addition to the development of alternative sources of energy, will likely give the PRC enough slack to ride out any conflict with the United States. Unless the trade wars instigated by the Trump administration undermine the entire global economic system, the biggest pain for China will involve a collapse of its foreign trade.

In any case, ending the Sino-American War of 2030 would require careful diplomacy, lest the war become only the first stage of a confrontation that could last for the remainder of the century.

Conclusion

For almost four decades, many analysts suggested that war between the United States and the Soviet Union was inevitable. Despite a few close calls, it never happened. It is entirely possible, perhaps even likely, that China and the United States will not again find themselves in armed conflict. Then again, it’s worth thinking about how the balance of capabilities between the two countries could shift over time, and how windows of opportunity for either might emerge. With luck and skill, Washington and Beijing will avoid war, even in 2030. But it behooves planners in both countries to take seriously the possibility that conflict might ensue.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to the National Interest, is author of The Battleship Book. He serves as a Senior Lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and The Diplomat.

This article first appeared several years ago.

Image: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kaila V. Peters

Rachel Bucchino

Politics, Americas

Every four years there are complaints about which states vote first in the primaries.

The Democratic-controlled Nevada Legislature introduced legislation last week that would alter the presidential primary calendar and bump Nevada to be first in line for the nation’s nominating contest in 2024.

The bill also moves to eradicate the state’s caucus process and change its vote to a primary that would be held on the second-to-last Tuesday in January of presidential election years, putting direct threats on Iowa and New Hampshire’s generational roles of being the first states to vote in the presidential nomination process. The Democratic effort will likely see approval and be signed off by Gov. Steve Sisolak (D), but the Democratic National Committee will ultimately decide which state goes first in the nomination process—a verdict that will probably not be fully decided for another year.

Democrats lined up behind the initiative, including former Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, who has been pushing for the change for more than a year, argue that Iowa and New Hampshire don’t reflect the diverse electorate due to the states’ large white population. Moreover, they argue that Iowa botched its handling of the 2020 caucuses—a process that took a week to determine who won.

“Well if you look at Iowa and New Hampshire and you look at how Joe Biden did in those two states—he took fourth and fifth in those two states. Iowa and New Hampshire are not representative of the country. There’s no diversity. So it’s unfair, in my opinion, to have those as the first two primary states because it really gives the wrong impression of what the country is all about,” Reid told The New York Times.

And beyond racial diversity, Reid argued that there’s a strong presence of union membership among Nevada voters compared to Iowa and New Hampshire voters, adding that “the West is now heavily populated and is taking over being the center of our country.”

Reid went on to say that South Carolina should be another early state in the election process, even though Nevada and South Carolina are already among the First Four states posted on the primary calendar.

Democrats outside of Iowa and New Hampshire have echoed Reid’s concerns, as they’ve suggested that presidential candidates should redirect their focus from those traditional early states to a more diverse population in states like Nevada and South Carolina.

“The general case against Iowa and New Hampshire is that they do not represent the present or future of the Democratic Party. They are both overwhelmingly White in the party that is relying heavily on the votes of Latinos and African Americans,” Dave Peterson, political science professor at Iowa State University, said. “Iowa faces other challenges because the caucus system is somewhat archaic and can limit participation.”

Nevada and South Carolina are also small enough in terms of population size, so a presidential candidate can efficiently and easily compete there.

The Nevada legislation posed a real warning for Iowa and New Hampshire political operatives in what could develop into turmoil over the 2024 presidential primary calendar. Tom Perez, the former DNC chair, has voiced support for the change, contending, “this is the Democratic Party of 2020. It’s different from the Democratic Party in how we were in 1972. And we need to reflect that change. And so I am confident that the status quo is not going to survive.”

But key players haven’t gone public over the issue, including President Joe Biden and DNC Chair Jaime Harrison.

In early February, White House press secretary Jen Psaki insisted that it was “too soon” to cover the outline of which states will vote first for the next presidential primary but said they are “all great states” and that the White House’s initial focus is not the primary calendar. It’s important to note, though, that Iowa and New Hampshire, states that Biden ranked in fourth and fifth place, respectively, didn’t deliver him the nomination for the party. Democrats see Biden’s nomination in South Carolina—along with Rep. James Clyburn’s (D-S.C.) endorsement—as the victories that ultimately ramped up his national support to be the party’s 2020 nominee.

There are attempts from both sides of the aisle, however, to modify the primary calendar nearly every election cycle, according to experts.

“There is a discussion about the nomination calendar every cycle,” Peterson said. “The results of the 2020 cycle only heightened this as Biden did quite poorly in Iowa and New Hampshire before turning things around in South Carolina. That makes it harder for the first two states to effectively argue that they should stay the first in the nation.”

Douglas W. Jones, Iowa caucus expert and associate professor of computer science at the University of Iowa, said that arguments to change the nominating calendar occur “every four years.” He added, “Complaints range from ‘Iowa and New Hampshire are not representative’ to ‘Super Tuesday is a travesty’ to ‘nobody should be able to seal their nomination before the final primary.’”

And some experts have insisted that states like Iowa are more diverse than what voters think.

“Nevada and South Carolina were moved into the First Four contests to ensure that the earliest states were more representative of the country as a whole. When one looks at the demographics of the four states as a group, they are fairly representative of the country, including being geographically representative,” Karen M. Kedrowski, director of Iowa State University’s Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics, said. “While the demographics of Iowa don’t lie, they also don’t reflect the racial diversity of several urban centers, a growing Latino population, and an increasingly diverse economy. Iowa is more like the rest of the nation that it’s given credit for.”

In Iowa and New Hampshire, political operatives have started to prepare their defense of the war that’s expected to take place, as Iowa’s state Democratic Party chair, state Rep. Ross Wilburn, told Politico that he is “prepared to do whatever it takes to keep Iowa first in the nation.” New Hampshire’s secretary of state, Bill Gardner, also lined up behind Wilburn’s defensive rhetoric, pleading that neither party’s committee will determine when the state will vote, Politico reported.

“The status of the primary was not given to New Hampshire by the parties,” Gardner told the publication, referring to a state law that forces New Hampshire to have a primary at least seven days before a “similar election” in another state.

Iowa, too, has a similar law, but it must hold its caucuses at least eight days before another state’s nomination.

It’s unclear when Biden or the DNC will come down on either side of this intra-party calendar division, since no public statements have been released on the issue.

Rachel Bucchino is a reporter at the National Interest. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report and The Hill.

Image: Reuters.

Robert Farley

History, Europe

ron Duke was a well-designed ship, capable of outgunning its German (if not its American) counterparts.

Here's What You Need To Remember: HMS Iron Duke and its sisters perfectly captured the “super dreadnought” concept; their large guns, tripod masts and balanced appearance made them look both stout and deadly. Iron Duke seemed singularly well named for its role as flagship of the Grand Fleet, although it is odd that the greatest collection of Royal Navy capital ships was led by a ship that took the name of a British Army commander.

HMS Iron Duke was the second battleship named after the Duke of Wellington. The first, scrapped in 1906, had the distinction of ramming and sinking HMS Vanguard, another Royal Navy battleship. The second Iron Duke was the name ship of the last class of dreadnoughts to enter Royal Navy service prior to the beginning of World War I. It and its sisters were considered “super-dreadnoughts,” an ill-defined term that distinguishes the second generation of dreadnought battleships from the first. Generally speaking, super-dreadnoughts avoided wing turrets, carrying guns in the centerline with super-firing turrets. Most super-dreadnoughts carried weapons heavier than twelve inches (although this varied from country to country), and had more advanced armor schemes. However, no one has successfully established a clear definition for the distinction.

Laid down in 1912, Iron Duke was commissioned in March 1914. It displaced twenty-five thousand tons, and carried ten 13.5-inch guns in five twin turrets. Its secondary armament, deployed in single casemates, consisted of twelve six-inch guns. Like most Royal Navy battleships of the era, it could make twenty-one knots. Iron Duke was a well-designed ship, capable of outgunning its German (if not its American) counterparts, and serving as the basis for the even more heavily armed Chilean battleship Almirante Latorre. The Iron Dukes were the third four-ship class of super-dreadnought (following the Orions and the King George Vs), and represented a staggering acceleration of peacetime naval construction on the part of the United Kingdom. The Royal Navy, mindful of its competition with Germany, would commission twenty-two super-dreadnoughts between 1912 and 1917, plus another half-dozen battlecruisers. Only U.S. aircraft-carrier construction in World War II can compare with this level of productivity.

HMS Iron Duke became flagship of the Grand Fleet upon its creation in August 1914. Iron Duke carried the flag of Adm. John Jellicoe, who had been promoted by Winston Churchill to command at the beginning of the war. Jellicoe’s job was to not lose the war, and the way to do that was to avoid being destroyed by the German High Seas Fleet. Given that the German fleet was smaller than the Grand Fleet and was limited geographically, this was an achievable task. Jellicoe understood that numerical superiority was key to victory in modern naval engagements, and steadfastly refused to allow the Royal Navy to meet the High Seas Fleet in detail. Consequently, the Grand Fleet spent most of its time conducting gunnery and seamanship drills, punctuated by the occasional sortie to try to catch the High Seas Fleet in the open.

The only genuinely productive sortie of this sort came in late May 1916, when Iron Duke served as Jellicoe’s flagship at the Battle of Jutland. At the head of the British line, it inflicted serious damage on the German battleship SMS Konig, as well as several smaller ships. The German prey escaped in the night, however, and Iron Duke returned to Scapa Flow as the Navy became mired in controversy. The failure to destroy the High Seas Fleet, despite obvious British advantages, took a severe toll on public and elite impressions of Admiral Jellicoe. Jellicoe was eventually “promoted” out of the command of the Grand Fleet, and replaced by David Beatty. The crew of Iron Duke didn’t care for the new admiral, so Beatty moved his flag to Queen Elizabeth. The rest of Iron Duke’s World War I career was uneventful.

The Washington Naval Treaty culled the world’s battleship fleets, but Iron Duke survived the first cut of 1922. It served extensively in the Black Sea and in the Mediterranean, helping to manage the fallout of the Russian Civil War and the Greco-Turkish War. The Royal Navy investigated a modernization scheme in the late 1920s, but expected the pending London Naval Treaty of 1930 to further reduce the number of allowable battleships. Instead of a modernization, Iron Duke was demilitarized, losing most of its armor and much of its armament. It served as a gunnery training ship for the rest of the 1930s, and was an accommodation ship at the beginning of World War II. In October 1939, long-range German bombers struck Scapa Flow, and damaged it badly enough to force a grounding. A March 1940 raid inflicted additional damage, and Iron Duke would remain in place for the balance of the war. In 1948 Iron Duke was sent to the breakers.

HMS Iron Duke and its sisters perfectly captured the “super dreadnought” concept; their large guns, tripod masts and balanced appearance made them look both stout and deadly. Iron Duke seemed singularly well named for its role as flagship of the Grand Fleet, although it is odd that the greatest collection of Royal Navy capital ships was led by a ship that took the name of a British Army commander. Its type was of so little use by World War II that the Royal Navy made no effort to restore it to frontline service, as it would have suffered badly under the guns of modern German, Japanese and Italian warships.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is a Visiting Professor at the United States Army War College. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government

Image: Wikipedia

Michael Peck

History, Asia

The North Koreans nearly managed to seize the entire peninsula.

Here's What You Need to Remember: If the only lessons of Task Force Smith was that inexperienced soldiers with poor training and equipment do poorly on the battlefield, or that a nation shouldn’t let its army lapse into decay, these would be mere clichés. The real lesson is what happens when the U.S. military commits to a conflict totally different from what it has prepared for.

In July 1950, North Korea defeated the United States Army.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. In the summer of 1950, America was still savoring the glow of absolute victory in World War II. There was the Soviet threat, to be sure, and a Communist bloc swelled by the massive addition of China in 1949. But the United States still had the bomb, and the B-29s to carry the bomb, and the world’s most powerful navy besides. There was great certainty that the next war would be an atomic conflict waged by the Air Force and Navy, with the Army reduced to a clean-up crew for occupying the rubble.

Eager for normality after four years of exhausting total war, the American public also wasn’t in the mood for a large, expensive conventional army. So the Army of the late 1940s saw its budget trimmed, live-fire training restricted and basic training cut to as little as eight weeks (compared to ten or more weeks today). This was especially of the U.S. Army occupation forces in Japan, who had a soft job overseeing a remarkably docile Japanese population.

Unfortunately, there was nothing soft about the seventy-five thousand North Korean soldiers who crossed the thirty-eighth parallel on June 25, 1950. Many of its soldiers were veterans who had fought with Mao in the Chinese civil war, and they were well equipped with Soviet-made tanks, artillery and even fighters and bombers that initially gave North Korea control of the skies. Much like the Iraqi army faced by ISIS or the Afghan army fighting the Taliban, the U.S.-trained South Korean army disintegrated.

Backed by a UN mandate to use force (made possible by the Soviet envoy foolishly boycotting the vote), the United States began dispatching troops to save South Korea from conquest by Kim Il-sung’s troops. Naturally, the first to arrive were occupation troops airlifted from nearby Japan. By July 1, American combat boots were on the ground, in the form of Task Force Smith—a scratch force commanded Lt. Col. Charles Smith that was centered around two understrength rifle companies from the Twenty-First Infantry Regiment of the Twenty-Fourth Infantry Division. The scratch force had just over four hundred officers and men, plus a few 105-millimeter howitzers from attached artillery battalion. It had no tanks, no close air support and poor communications. Instead of the latest antitank rocket launchers, most of its tank-killing firepower consisted of 2.36-inch bazookas that hadn’t even been able to destroy German tanks five years before. Some of Task Force Smith’s offices and NCOs had seen action in World War II, but most of the troops were inexperienced.

Dispatched north to halt the North Korean advance, Task Force Smith dug in near the town of Osan. On the morning of July 5, a column of North Korean T-34/85 tanks from the 105th Armored Division attacked in what would be the first U.S. ground action of the Korean War.

What happened next seems inevitable in hindsight. The U.S. howitzers had HEAT antitank rounds, but only a few, and too few to stop the North Korean tanks from overrunning the American positions. The tank assault should have been repulsed by Task Force Smith’s bazookas, except that the rockets couldn’t penetrate the armor of the Soviet-made vehicles.

At the same time, Task Force Smith also faced encirclement by North Korean infantry. Smith decided it was time to withdraw. “The plan was for an orderly leap-frogging withdrawal, with one platoon covering another,” said one account. “Under heavy enemy fire, the poorly-trained American troops abandoned weapons and equipment in sometimes precipitous flight. Not all of them had received word of the withdrawal, and it was at this point that the Americans suffered most of their casualties.”

The Americans lost about eighty men killed and wounded, and about the same number captured—or almost half of Task Force Smith. North Korea suffered about 130 casualties, plus four tanks destroyed or immobilized. The American sacrifice had delayed the North Korean advance—but only for a few hours. Six years before, the U.S. Army managed to stop Hitler’s SS panzer divisions at the Battle of the Bulge. In July 1950, the Army was a speed bump.

In the grand scheme of things, the battle wasn’t a major disaster. The casualties were only a drop in a Korean bucket that eventually consumed fifty-four thousand American dead. U.S. troops had fled the battlefield, but they had also done that at Bull Run and Kasserine Pass. It wasn’t the first time that “inferior” Asians had humbled American forces, as the survivors of Pearl Harbor could attest. Two months later, it was turn of Kim Il-sung’s army to disintegrate after MacArthur’s landing at Inchon.

If the only lessons of Task Force Smith was that inexperienced soldiers with poor training and equipment do poorly on the battlefield, or that a nation shouldn’t let its army lapse into decay, these would be mere clichés. The real lesson is what happens when the U.S. military commits to a conflict totally different from what it has prepared for. It is an issue still with us today, as America ponders its strategy in a world where China is powerful, Russia is resurgent, terrorists run amok and nonstate actors like ISIS field armies with advanced weapons. America doesn’t have the resources to be powerful everywhere all the time, which means the Pentagon will have to make assumptions about the nature of war and how best to prepare for it. Will it be high-tech or low-tech? Big war or small war? Conventional warfare or guerrilla campaign? Remember that China and Russia must also make their own assumptions.

It’s a guessing game, but real people will pay the price.

Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on Twitter. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Kris Osborn

Security, Americas

Quickly sharing data to the right units and commanders is critical in wartime.

The U.S. military excels at acquiring intelligence, but central command and boots on the ground engaged in combat operations often run into technical bottlenecks when trying to share that mission-critical data over single beam terminals, such as parabolic antennas and other outdated infrastructure.

The U.S. Army, Air Force and Navy are conducting a series of ongoing key trials of cutting-edge satellites and terminals in a concerted effort to break through communications hurdles in an increasingly adversarial world. High-powered connectivity delivers a real competitive edge in battle.

During a recent live fire mission as part of the Army’s Project Convergence exercise in Yuma, Arizona, troops leveraged new low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellites to gain access to real-time targeting data. And while new satellite constellations will be launching new communications capabilities into LEO, medium-earth-orbit (MEO), and high-earth-orbit (HEO) over the next few years, the defense sector is equally focused on the ground.

Without next-gen ground infrastructure—advanced terminals like Isotropic Systems’ patented multi-beam antenna—new constellations will fall short of satisfying the intense demand for high-speed warfighter connectivity.

The Department of Defense’ Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) has tested the ability of the Isotropic Systems’ optics-based platform in extreme sea-like conditions with plans to ultimately unlock high-powered bandwidth aboard next-generation naval vessels.

The evaluation trials are measuring the effectiveness of the low-profile, high performance, affordable and customizable antenna to support multiple links over multiple frequencies of satellite capacity, covering S-, C-, Ka-, Ku, X-, and Q-band connectivity.

The Army, through the U.S. Defense Department’s innovative Defense Experimentation Using

Commercial Space Internet (DEUCSI) program is also reviewing Isotropic Systems’ optical beamforming antenna and its ability to simultaneously link with multiple SES satellites in GEO and MEO orbits.

Satellite operator SES led a group of space investors, including Boeing HorizonX Global Ventures, the UK Space Agency, and west coast deep-tech fund Promus, in a $40 million fundraising wave aimed at accelerating the commercial readiness of Isotropic Systems’ unique antenna.

“Isotropic Systems is extremely well positioned to unlock a new age of high-powered, multi-orbit connectivity with our next-gen multi-beam antenna,” said John Finney, Isotropic Systems Founder and CEO. “Our unique, cost-effective terminal solution has attracted world-class investment support as well as unprecedented interest and demand across a widely diverse spectrum of end users—including warfighters and military operations around the world.”

The antenna’s ability to enable the U.S. Army and other armed forces to deliver intelligence data at the tactical edge by leveraging commercial and military satellites over a single platform has former Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy already considering the newfound possibilities.

“It’s expeditionary warfare, connecting any sensor to any shooter. The goal is to bring all war engagement information together through command and control and synchronize data to get it to the right assets. We are looking at how we can use satellites to enhance the speed of targeting,” McCarthy told reporters.

The biggest user of satellite capacity in the world, the U.S. Army is exploring new ways to more effectively and efficiently utilize both existing and new capacity coming online.

“As new constellations are launched and join existing constellations in the years to come, our technology allows the military and government agencies to leverage all of the satellites that best fit their needs and unleash the full potential of the global satellite ecosystem using a single, integrated terminal,” noted Finney.

Maj. Gen. John George, Commander of Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, watched over the Army’s live attack experiments in the Arizona desert late last year. He noted the significance the new generation of connectivity will have on U.S. warfighter capabilities and national security as a whole. He told Warrior that high-speed satellite connectivity is increasingly being networked with ground terminals and antenna processing information in a much more comprehensive way at much faster speeds.

“LEO satellites, being much closer, dramatically reduce the latency that is inherent in satellite communication. They increase the throughput for more data. With the smaller form factor we can get more points of presence on the battlefield closer to the tactical edge,” an Army engineer explained to reporters at Project Convergence.

The commercial arrival of Isotropic Systems’ multi-beam antenna in 2022 aligns with crucial Pentagon plans that call for improved connectivity and resiliency. The connectivity will be delivered over a network of satellites leveraging multi-orbit capabilities used to pass targeting data and communications in real time across the battlespace or government enterprise.

The Isotropic Systems antenna transmission draws upon a first-of-its-kind beamforming optical lens, engineered to simultaneously send precise beams to multiple satellites—using only select system circuitry. That’s a real advantage over phased arrays that require fulltime circuitry use and far more power.

While new, advanced constellations in space are garnering most of the headlines, an impressive lot of space investors and the U.S. military are focused on equally game-changing innovations in ground infrastructure.

“Our antenna is just as cutting-edge as the next generation of constellations and reusable rockets,” said Isotropic Systems’ Finney. “The defense sector has been very pleased to see firsthand the impact our optics-enabled multi-beam antennas will have in the field, and our most recent fundraising wave will only help to accelerate our roadmap to commercial production of this transformational ground game.”

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

Image: Reuters.

Mark Episkopos

Security, Europe

The S-70 Okhotnik-B is a heavy stealth combat drone that pairs with the manned Su-57 stealth fighter.

New details have emerged concerning Russia’s mysterious Su-57 companion drone.

Test pilot Evgeny Frolov, who “controls the [drone] system from the ground,” gave a far-reaching interview to prominent Russian news network Russia 1 late this month. Frolov confirmed prior reports that the S-70 Okhotnik-B is a heavy stealth combat drone that adheres to the “loyal wingman” concept, acting in full conjunction with Russia’s fifth-generation Su-57 air superiority fighter. Frolov went into depth on Okhotnik-B’s battlefield role, explaining that the drone is designed as a natural extension of the Su-57’s combat capabilities. The drone shares the same artificial intelligence-powered command network as the Su-57 to which it is attached, tracking and targeting enemy units automatically without any need for manual inputs on the part of the pilot.

The current iteration of Okhotnik-B offers some level of redundancy through overlapping manual systems, including an LCD status display. Frolov clarified that the serial production version of Okhotnik will be fully autonomous: “this system will be fully automated in the future, it will likely not have these [manual] control features, and manual handling will likely not be present.” Frolov’s interview puts to rest long-standing speculation concerning Okhotnik’s design concept, confirming that it is intended for autonomous operation without any manual backup systems.

Okhotnik-B sports a flying-wing design and is powered by either a single AL-31F or AL-41F engine. Boasting a composite materials construction and radar-absorbent coating, the drone is being built to offer superior stealth performance. The full extent of Okhotnik-B’s stealth capabilities remains to be seen; as previously argued by The National Interest’s Kris Osborn, there are some subtle design cues that Okhotnik—with its relatively sharp and angular design—may underdeliver in the low-observability performance department. Nevertheless, Okhotnik’s prototype airframe may very well see stealth-oriented design improvements as the drone moves further along in the production cycle on its way to becoming a full-fledged serial product.

Precise performance details remain elusive, though current reporting notes that Okhotnik-B has a top speed of up to 1,000 kilometers per hour and range of just under 6,000 km at full payload capacity. While it’s unclear exactly what armaments Okhotnik-B’s will carry in its internal bays, it appears that the combat drone can leverage its offensive capabilities to strike in situations deemed too high-risk for its accompanying Su-57. Its most valuable role will likely be that of reconnaissance, utilizing its extensive suite of onboard sensors to feed the Su-57 information in real-time through datalink. It could feasibly extend the Su-57’s battlefield awareness, providing targeting information to help cue its long-range R-37M missiles.

It was reported earlier this month that three more Okhotnik units are under construction, with unspecified improvements made to the drones’ communications system and airframe. Frolov’s commentary comports with prior reports that the Okhotnik drone is currently being tested in a “partially autonomous” mode, with fully autonomous flight trials slated for the near future. Formally unveiled at Russia’s ARMY 2019 defense exhibition, Okhotnik-B is scheduled to enter service in 2025.

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

Image: Reuters.