The National Interest

Paul Richard Huard

T-34, Eurasia

"The T-34, for all its faults, is now often referred to by tank experts and historians as possibly the best tank of the war."

Here's What You Need to Know: The T-34 in the hands of determined Soviet tankers routed the Germans at Kursk, the greatest tank battle of all time.

On June 22, 1941, Nazi German launched Operation Barbarossa, a massive attack on the Soviet Union that was the largest invasion in history.

More than three million German soldiers, 150 divisions and 3,000 tanks comprised three mammoth army groups that created a front more than 1,800 miles long.

The Germans expected to face an inferior enemy. Giddy from victories in Poland and France, Hitler and many in his military high command believed it was the destiny of Germany to invade Russia. “The end of the Jewish domination in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state,” Hitler announced in his manifesto Mein Kampf.

For months Germans won victory after resounding victory. But then the attack stalled—and the appearance of a new Soviet tank stunned the Wehrmacht.

It was the T-34. The new armored vehicle had an excellent 76-millimeter gun and thick sloped armor and cruised at more than 35 miles per hour. It possessed many advanced design features for the time—and it could blow German Panzers to Hell.

The T-34 had its problems—something we often forget when discussing a tank with a legendary reputation. The shortfalls included bad visibility for the crew and shoddy Soviet workmanship.

“They were good, but they were not miracle weapons and they had their faults,” writes Philip Kaplan in Rolling Thunder: A Century of Tank Warfare. “But the T-34, for all its faults, is now often referred to by tank experts and historians as possibly the best tank of the war.”

World War II German Field Marshall Ewald Von Kleist was more succinct. “The finest tank in the world,” is how he described the T-34.

The origins of the T-34 are simple enough. The Red Army sought a replacement for the BT-7 cavalry tank, which was fast-moving and lightly armored for use in maneuver warfare. It also had Christie suspension, one reason for the tank’s increased speed.

But during a 1938-to-1939 border war with Japan, the BT-7 fared poorly. Even with a low-powered gun, Japanese Type 95 tanks easily destroyed the BT-7s. Tank attack crews also assaulted the BT-7s with Molotov cocktails, reducing the Soviet tank to a flaming wreck when ignited gasoline dripped through chinks between poorly welded armor into the tank’s engine compartment.

The T-34 was the solution. It kept the Christie suspension, replaced the gasoline engine with a V-2 34 V12 diesel power plant and offered the crew speeds that were 10 miles per hour faster than the German Panzer III or Panzer IV.

Furthermore, the T-34’s high-velocity gun was capable of killing any tank in the world at the time.

“In 1941 when Hitler launched Barbarossa, the tank was indisputably the best in the world,” Jason Belcourt, a veteran of the U.S. Army who served in the armor branch, told War Is Boring. “The combination of sloped armor, big gun, good speed and good maneuverability was so much better than anything the Germans had on tracks.”

By mid-1941, the USSR had more than 22,000 tanks—more tanks than all the armies of the world combined, and four times the number of tanks in the German arsenal.

By the end of the war, the Soviet Union had produced nearly 60,000 T-34 tanks—proving the point that quantity does have a quality all of its own.

At first, the Germans were at a loss when it came to countering the threat the T-34 posed. The Germans’ standard anti-tank guns, the 37-millimeter Kwk36 and the 50-millimeter Kwk 38, couldn’t put a dent in the Soviet tank with a shot to its front.

That left the Germans with a limited set of tactics. German tankers could attempt flank shots with their guns. The Wehrmacht could lay mines. Soldiers risked their lives in close assaults employing satchel charges and Molotov cocktails.

In what could be called an act of desperation, the Germans even used modified 88-millimeter anti-aircraft guns to stop attacking T-34s with direct fire.

But the Russians never had enough trained crews for the tanks the Red Army fielded. The Soviets wasted the T-34 and its crews in vast numbers.

By the time the Soviets trained enough crews to man the T-34s, the Germans had tanks with high-velocity guns and better anti-tank weapons like the Panzerfaust, a recoilless anti-tank weapon with a high-explosive warhead.

But the Russians always had more T-34s than the Germans had Panzers or Tigers.

“Where the tank was decisive was in the battle of production,” Belcourt said. “From June 1941 until the end of the war, the Soviets were always producing a tank that was often good and never worse than adequate.”

The final verdict on the T-34 perhaps is less glowing than the legend that the Soviets weaved around the tank—but is still complimentary. The T-34 tipped the balance in favor of the USSR when it came to armored battle; mass production of the tank outmatched anything the Germans could do when it came to manufacturing.

The T-34 in the hands of determined Soviet tankers routed the Germans at Kursk, the greatest tank battle of all time.

The T-34 was “undeniably revolutionary, but it was not the first in anything except how to combine thick sloped armor with a diesel engine, wide tracks and a big, relatively powerful gun,” Belcourt said. “They had all been done before, but never together.”

This piece first appeared in WarIsBoring here. 

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Peter Suciu

China, Asia

China currently maintains a single overseas naval base in the nation of Djibouti, located on the “Horn of Africa” at the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, which separates the Gulf of Aden from the Red Sea.

The United States is home to more than forty naval bases spread along the eastern and western coasts, while there are also overseas bases in the U.S. territories of Guam and Puerto Rico, as well as twenty-some bases around the world. These bases are critical to the global reach of the U.S. Navy but are also a crucial part of the national defense. 

Now, China is looking to change that and according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, citing classified intelligence, the People’s Liberation Army Navy could create its first permanent military presence on the Atlantic Ocean on the coast of the small African nation of Equatorial Guinea. 

While the plans for the PLAN haven’t been described in detail, the facilities at the port city of Bata would escalate the threat China poses to the United States. The deepwater port at Bata, which was already upgraded by the China Road & Bridge Co. between 2009 and 2014, could be used by Chinese warships to rearm and refit opposite of the East Coast. According to the report, U.S. intelligence first learned of the possibility of the PLAN base in 2019. 

Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander of U.S. Africa Command, told the Senate in April that China’s “most significant threat” would be “a militarily useful naval facility on the Atlantic coast of Africa,” The Hill reported. Such a facility might enable China to “rearm with munitions and repair naval vessels,” Townsend added. 

President Joe Biden has said that it remains a top priority of his administration not to let China surpass the U.S. military during his presidency. The Defense Department recently announced plans for major infrastructure improvements to be made at the U.S. military airfields in Guam and Australia as part of larger efforts to counter China.  

It was in October that Jon Finer, Biden’s principal deputy national security adviser, traveled to Equatorial Guinea to meet with President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and his son, Vice President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue. He urged them to reject China’s proposal to build a naval facility.   

“As part of our diplomacy to address maritime-security issues, we have made clear to Equatorial Guinea that certain potential steps involving [Chinese] activity there would raise national-security concerns,” a senior Biden administration official said, according to Wall Street Journal. 

China currently maintains a single overseas naval base in the nation of Djibouti, located on the “Horn of Africa” at the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, which separates the Gulf of Aden from the Red Sea. It protects the approach to the Suez Canal. The African nation is unique because it hosts the United States Naval Expeditionary Base next to the Djibouti-Ambouli International Airport and other foreign military bases including a French airbase, an Italian support base and the Japan Self-Defense Force Base Djibouti—the first JSDF full-scale, long term overseas base—as well as PLAN’s first overseas military base.   

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

Image: Reuters

David Axe

Strategic Bombers, Guam

The abrupt end to the Continuous Bomber Rotation effort in Guam could signal a further decline in the Air Force’s ability to project long-range firepower.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Bombers aren’t necessarily going to deploy less often or in fewer numbers, the Air Force implied. Rather, they’re simply going to deploy less predictably under a new scheme the service calls “dynamic force employment.”

In mid-April 2020 the Air Force abruptly ended its 16-year-old rotation of B-1, B-2, and B-52 bombers at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam.

At least one expert believes the abrupt end to the Continuous Bomber Rotation effort signals a further decline in the Air Force’s ability to project long-range firepower.

“The Air Force knows this mission area is stretched too thin,” retired Air Force major general Larry Stutzriem and Douglas Birkey wrote in Defense News.

Stutzriem is the director of studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in Virginia. Birkey is the institute’s executive director

The flying branch, however, put a happy spin on the decision to halt the bomber rotation, which since 2004 has maintained a small force of bombers in the western Pacific region in order to deter Chinese aggression.

Bombers aren’t necessarily going to deploy less often or in fewer numbers, the Air Force implied. Rather, they’re simply going to deploy less predictably under a new scheme the service calls “dynamic force employment.”

“Our diverse bomber fleet – B-52, B-1, and B-2 – allows us to respond to global events anytime, anywhere. Whether they’re launched from Louisiana, Guam or the U.K., long-range strategic bombers have and will remain a bedrock of our deterrence!” Air Force Global Strike Command tweeted on April 16, 2020.

The Air Force six days later launched its first dynamic bomber sortie. A single B-1 took off from its base in South Dakota and, over the course of a 30-hour sortie, flew all the way to Japan and formed up with Japanese air force F-2 and F-15 fighters and locally-based U.S. Air Force F-16s before turning back toward the United States.

The B-1 sortie might have seemed to underscore the Air Force’s continuing commitment to a global bomber presence despite the flying branch also planning on cutting its 157-strong bomber fleet by one B-2 and 17 B-1s.

The service as part of its 2021 budget submission has asked Congress for permission to begin decommissioning the bombers. The B-1s, in particular, suffered from overuse over Afghanistan and the Middle East in the decades following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks -- and also suffered from a dearth of maintenance.

The result in 2019 was an abysmal readiness rate for the swing-wing bomber. In July 2019 just seven of 62 B-1s were fully mission-capable, South Dakota senator Mike Rounds revealed. Readiness somewhat improved in 2020.

The Air Force framed the first “dynamic” B-1 mission as evidence of the service’s enduring an undiminished ability to deploy long-range airpower. But Stutzriem and Birkey see the situation differently.

The defunct bomber-rotation was “a tremendous success,” they wrote. “It clearly communicated U.S. readiness to act decisively when U.S. and allied interests were challenged.”

Halting the bomber rotation “now sends the opposite message, just as the region grows more dangerous,” Stutzriem and Birkey added. “This is a decision with significant risk, yet it is an outcome compelled by past choices resulting in a bomber force on the edge.”

David Axe was defense editor at The National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels War Fix, War Is Boring and Machete Squad.

This article first appeared last year and is being reprinted for reader interest.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Trevor Filseth

Iran, Middle East

The Iranian government has criticized the most recent sanctions and warned that they would not help the United States achieve its goals in the Vienna talks.

As nuclear negotiations between the United States, the other P5+1 nations, and Iran enter their second week in Vienna, Austria, the Biden administration has imposed a new round of sanctions on Iranian officials, leading Tehran to warn Washington that further sanctions could not be considered a source of leverage in the talks.  

In the most recent round of economic sanctions, the Treasury Department placed restrictions on the Special Units of Iran’s Law Enforcement Forces (LEF) and Counter-Terror Special Forces, accusing them of human rights violations. Several Iranian officials associated with the two organizations, including LEF commanders Hassan Karami and Seyed Reza Mousavi Azami and Basij militia commander Gholamreza Soleimani, were also blacklisted. 

The Treasury Department issued a statement on Tuesday that said the sanctions were put into place after those organizations violently suppressed civilian protests in Iran in November 2019. The statement included sanctions implemented against accused human-rights violators in Syria and Uganda, sanctioning them on the basis of the 2017 Global Magnitsky Act. 

The Iranian government has criticized the most recent sanctions and warned that they would not help the United States achieve its goals in the Vienna talks. Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh slammed the move on Twitter, arguing that “doubling down on sanctions won’t create leverage—and is anything but seriousness & goodwill.” 

The most recent sanctions on Iran, and the Iranian response, are further strains on the nuclear negotiations, which have struggled to move forward in spite of rhetorical support from both President Joe Biden and Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi. American officials have sought to re-enter the deal, but have argued that Iran has attempted to gain more from the deal while conceding less. For their part, Iranian negotiators have insisted that all U.S. sanctions be lifted prior to the agreement’s restoration—a demand that has been criticized as a non-starter in Washington. The most recent talks between the two sides ended on Friday after U.S. negotiators accused the Iranian delegation of acting in bad faith. 

“What we’ve seen in the last couple of days is that Iran right now does not seem to be serious about doing what’s necessary to return to compliance, which is why we ended this round of talks in Vienna,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during the Reuters Next conference, which was hosted by the Reuters news agency on Friday. 

Nuclear talks are expected to resume this Thursday in Vienna. 

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for the National Interest. 

Kris Osborn

Chinese Navy, Asia

The new Chinese ships are armed with rocket-propelled torpedoes, operate sub-hunting helicopters and advanced sonar systems. 

China has now already built eight new Type 055 stealthy destroyers, a class of next-generation destroyers likely intended to rival the U.S. Navy’s emerging Arleigh Burke-class DDG 51 Flight III destroyers or even Zumwalt-class warships. 

Three of these new Type 055 destroyers are already operational. 

While the weapons, technologies, and stealth characteristics of these ships are likely to be of interest to Pentagon officials, the sheer pace of Chinese shipbuilding continues to be a cause of concern. China’s industrial apparatus and ability to rapidly build ships enable the People's Republic of China (PRC) to continue its large-scale Naval expansion at a pace that is tough for the United States to match. Multiple reports say China is on pace to double its fleet of destroyers within just the next five years. The concern, however, is by no means restricted to pure numbers but also grounded in uncertainties related to the relative sophistication and capability of China’s new destroyers. Having more destroyers does not necessarily equate to any kind of maritime superiority if they cannot compete with the range, precision, networking, and overall capability of U.S. destroyers. 

Furthermore, the U.S. Navy has as many as ten DDG Flight III destroyers under contract and is moving quickly to modernize their sensors, radar systems, computing, and ship-integrated weapons. 

The Chinese Communist party-backed newspaper the Global Times reported that the Type 055 destroyers are engineered for multi-mission operations to include land-attack, open water maritime warfare, and anti-submarine missions. The new Chinese ships are armed with rocket-propelled torpedoes, operate sub-hunting helicopters and advanced sonar systems. 

The first Type 055 Chinese destroyer, the Nanchang, looks a bit like a hybrid between the U.S. Zumwalt-class and Arleigh Burke DDG 51 class destroyers. It does have what appear to be some stealthy attributes such as a rounded front hull and smooth exterior with fewer protruding structures, but there are mounted antennas and what look like masts on the back end as well. The helicopter landing area on the back of the Nanchang also looks like that of a U.S. DDG 51. 

China's three operational Type 055 destroyers seem to match the U.S. Navy’s plan for three Zumwalt-class destroyers. The kind of weapons range, radar, fire control and computing aboard the Nanchang will most likely determine the margin of difference regarding its ability to rival its U.S. counterparts. 

Perhaps of greatest consequence is the question of whether these Type 055 destroyers have any kind of Aegis-radar-like ballistic missile defense technology. Does it have the ability to link fire-control, air and cruise missile defense, ballistic missile defense, and interceptor missiles capable of firing from deck-mounted Vertical Launch Systems?

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

Image: Reuters

David Axe

F-5E Tiger II, Iran

All things being equal, the F-5 might still possesses the agility to gain the advantage over an F-35 if it can close the distance.

Here's What You Need to Remember: If an Iranian pilot can survive a merge with an F-35 and engage the stealth fighter in a turning dogfight, the Iranian might just bag himself a stealth fighter.

Amid escalating tensions between Iran and the United States, in part resulting from U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision unilaterally to withdraw the United States from the 2015 deal limiting Iran’s nuclear program, the U.S. armed forces have deployed a wide array of ships, planes and other weapons to the Middle East.

The American arsenal in the region includes F-35 stealth fighters. If tensions turn into warfare, the factory-fresh F-35s could face an Iranian air force operating some of the oldest active fighters in the world.

The Iranians with their four-decade-old F-4s, F-5s and F-14s might not seem to have a chance against the Americans flying arguably the world’s most advanced fighter aircraft. But history, and recent testing show how Iranian pilots flying old planes could defeat Americans flying brand-new ones.

For one, the F-35, while new, isn’t necessarily a stellar aerial performer. In 2015 someone associated with the F-35 test effort leaked an official report explaining the stealth fighter’s limitations in air-to-air maneuvers with an F-16.

“The F-35 was at a distinct energy disadvantage,” an unnamed F-35 test pilot wrote in a scathing five-page brief. “Insufficient pitch rate,” he added. “Energy deficit to the bandit would increase over time.”

The complaints continued. “The flying qualities in the blended region (20 to 26 degrees [angle of attack]) were not intuitive or favorable,” the pilot wrote, adding that there’s no point for an F-35 pilot to get into a sustained, close turning battle with an enemy pilot. “There were not compelling reasons to fight in this region.”

The pilot’s revelations underscore what many observers long have suspected about the F-35. While its radar-evading qualities and high-end sensors might allow it to gain a favorable position for long-range missile shots, in a close fight the F-35 hardly excels.

If an Iranian pilot can survive a merge with an F-35 and engage the stealth fighter in a turning dogfight, the Iranian might just bag himself a stealth fighter. It’s worth noting that the Iranian air force flies scores of fighters that excel precisely in that regime.

American-made F-5 Tigers, for instance. Former U.S. Navy pilot Francesco Chierici who flew F-5s in the adversary role, sang the plane’s praise in a 2019 article for The War Zone. “The Tiger was clean, just an AIM-9 and a telemetry pod on the wingtips, and occasionally a centerline fuel tank,” Chierici wrote. “She slipped through the ‘number’ (Mach 1) easily. … The F-5 was a pair of engines and wings. It was so simple …”

Aerodynamically, the F-5 will always be what we call a category-three fighter, where the F-35 and F-22 are now category-five fighters. Compared to modern jets, it is underpowered, slow and bleeds airspeed badly in a sustained turn, not to mention it has no stealth other than its tiny size.

But with just a few modifications, the F-5 is being turned into a threat plane with a legitimate sting. The newest upgrades include an [electronically-scanned] radar, good [radar-warning] gear, chaff and flares, a jamming pod and a helmet-mounted cueing system for a high off-boresight IR (infrared-guided) missiles. 

A Tiger so outfitted can provide Super Hornets and F-35s a legitimate threat, especially in the training environment.

Iran indeed has been upgrading its F-5 fleet, although the modifications likely will not include the latest sensors and helmet sights.

Still, all things being equal the F-5 despite its age might still possesses the agility to gain the advantage over an F-35. Again, provided the F-5 pilot survives the merge to a close-in fight.

That’s a big assumption. F-35 pilots understand the limitations of their aircraft and certainly would do their best to avoid a dogfight. The Iranians might have to ambush the Americans in order to force the fight to close range. It’s unclear how the Iranians might do so, given the Americans’ huge advantage in sensors and situational awareness.

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

Image: Reuters.

Trevor Filseth

Insurrection, Americas

Former president Donald Trump has sought to prevent the committee from questioning former members of his administration.

Former North Carolina Republican senator and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has abruptly ceased his cooperation with the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, according to his lawyer, George Terwilliger. 

Terwilliger indicated that Meadows had pulled out of the scheduled hearings because he was concerned that the committee, which includes seven Democrats and two Republicans, would have “no intention of respecting boundaries” with regard to topics that former president Donald Trump regarded as off-limits. The lawyer added that Meadows had reached his decision after learning that the committee had “issued wide-ranging subpoenas for information from a third-party communications provider,” ostensibly violating the agreement that Meadows had reached with the committee. 

From political exile in Florida, Trump has sought to prevent the committee from questioning former members of his administration. The former president has issued legal challenges to the committee’s authority based on “executive privilege,” a legal doctrine giving presidents some ability to withhold information from the public. It remains unclear, however, if executive privilege can be invoked by former presidents; President Joe Biden has expressly indicated that he will not invoke it on behalf of Trump administration officials. 

Although the matter of executive privilege is still being decided in the courts, Meadows, along with former Trump administration officials Steve Bannon, Dan Scavino, and Kash Patel, have all been subpoenaed to appear before the committee. All four men initially indicated that they would not testify to the committee while the question of executive privilege was being decided. After the committee initiated legal proceedings against Bannon, Trump’s former White House Chief Strategist, Meadows changed his mind and agreed to testify. Bannon has persisted in his refusal and was indicted in November for contempt of Congress; his trial is scheduled for July 2022. 

White House Chief of Staff, Meadows is the highest-ranking official to be called before the committee. His testimony could ultimately make or break the committee’s hypothesis that Trump was directly responsible for the storming of the U.S. Capitol, an attack in which more than one hundred police officers were injured and five died within days. To date, the connection between the officers’ deaths and the Capitol riot remains tepid. 

January 6 Committee members Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) indicated in a joint statement that Meadows would face legal consequences for his refusal. 

“If indeed Mr. Meadows refuses to appear, the Select Committee will be left no choice but to advance contempt proceedings and recommend that the body in which Mr. Meadows once served refer him for criminal prosecution,” the two representatives said in the joint statement. 

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for the National Interest. 

Image: Reuters

Paul Richard Huard

A-10 Warthog, Europe

The Henschel Hs 129 wasn't a Warthog. It was a turkey.

Here's What You Need to Know: By the time that the Hs 129 entered service in quantity, the German army was on the defensive.

At first glance, you might think the Henschel Hs 129 was the perfect ground-attack airplane.

Twin engines. A heavily armored cockpit that protected the pilot from small-arms fire. The aircraft even eventually had the heaviest and most powerful forward-firing cannon ever fitted to a production military aircraft during World War II.

The Hs 129 was supposed to be the Luftwaffe’s ultimate aerial tank-killer, dealing death from above to Soviet T-34s on the Russian front. In other words, it would be easy to see it as a World War II-forerunner of today’s formidable A-10 Warthog.

There was just one problem: By all accounts, the Hs 129 was a questionable performer. In fact, the original Hs 129 A-1 series was so bad that the Luftwaffe refused to accept any of the A-1s for service.

The Hs 129 wasn’t a Warthog. It was a turkey.

Still, the aircraft occupies an interesting niche in aviation history. It’s an aeronautical also-ran that reminds us that despite their reputation for Teutonic technical superiority that included producing jet fighters and ballistic missiles, the Nazis could screw up, too.

“The Hs 129 was intended to be the A-10 Warthog of its time, but never came close to achieving that exalted status,” John Little, assistant curator and research team leader at The Museum of Flight, Seattle, told War Is Boring. “Though slow, the A-10 is extremely maneuverable, pleasant to fly and does everything extremely well from plinking tanks to bringing its pilots home alive.”

“The Hs 129 was a dog of an airplane that should have been completely redesigned to incorporate more powerful engines, more reliable engines, lower stick forces, better maneuverability and better visibility,” Little continued. “Unfortunately for the Luftwaffe, the need for the Hs 129 was so great that it had to enter service even though it was far from combat-ready. With that said, the Hs 129 was rugged and popular with its pilots—that’s about all that it has in common with the A-10.”

By the late 1930s, German military planners decided the Luftwaffe needed a dedicated ground-attack aircraft. German pilots who flew ground-attack missions as members of the Kondor Legion during the Spanish Civil War learned that low-level attacks could demoralize the Republicans with strafing runs, destroy installations with more accurate bombing, disrupt communications and pinpoint enemy artillery.

There was nothing revolutionary about the idea of a dedicated attack aircraft — the first planes for that purpose were developed during World War I.

But Hitler didn’t want to fight a war like World War I. He wanted rapid movement that swept away Germany’s adversaries. That strategy called for special aircraft that could support German ground forces.

But design difficulties, intelligence failures and poor decision-making in the Luftwaffe high command plagued the manufacture and deployment of the Hs 129, Little said.

The high command “underestimated the need for a dedicated ground-attack aircraft— and particularly a dedicated tank-killer—until it was far too late,” he said. “For example, prior to Operation Barbarossa, the German Abwehr had estimated that the Soviets had only about 10,000 main battle tanks. The actual number was about 24,000. By the time the Germans realized that they needed a dedicated tank-busting aircraft such as the Hs 129, the die had already been cast.”

What’s more, the German government treated Henschel as an all-purpose manufacturer and often directed it to build aircraft for other firms.

“Henschel spent much of the war ‘tooling up’ to produce other companies’ aircraft, only to be ordered to switch to another aircraft before having actually produced any airplanes,” Little said.

The result was that Henschel made relatively few aircraft. Counting the three Hs 129 design prototypes and the eight Hs 129 production prototypes, only 870 Hs 129s appear to have been built, compared to more than 33,000 Messerschmitt Bf 109s and 20,000 Focke-Wulf Fw 190s, the Luftwaffe’s main fighter aircraft.

By the time that the Hs 129 entered service in quantity, the German army was on the defensive and the most urgent mission was destroying Soviet armor. When available in sufficient quantity and equipped with adequate armament, the Hs 129 proved to be fairly effective against Soviet tanks.

Unfortunately for the Germans, there were never more than five squadrons of Hs 129s, and they often carried inadequate weapons.

Then there were the design problems. The Hs 129 was slow, with a top speed of less than two hundred miles per hour when fully loaded. The plane’s three-inch-thick canopy glass impeded the pilot’s view.

What’s more, the Hs 129’s French Gnôme-Rhône 14M engines were hypersensitive to dust and sand.  The engines would frequently seize during flight with no advance warning.

Perhaps embracing the idea that flying a plane that doesn’t kill them might make them stronger, most pilots of Hs 129 actually liked the aircraft for one significant reason—it was damn near indestructible. It could also haul could carry some very heavy Rüstsätze—armament packages—for destroying armored vehicles.

In fact, Rudolf-Heinz Ruffer, Luftwaffe ground-attack ace and recipient of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, achieved most of his 80 tank kills while piloting an Hs 129. His record made Ruffer was one of history’s most successful tank-killing pilots.

But his love affair with the Hs 129 did not end well. In 1944, Soviet flak hit Ruffer’s aircraft while he was flying a mission over Poland.

He was killed instantly when his Hs 129 exploded.

Paul Richard Huard is a military historian, free-lance journalist and contributor to War Is Boring, where this article first appeared.

Image: Alf van Beem / Wikimedia Commons

Ethen Kim Lieser

Coronavirus,

In all, more than one-third of Americans between the ages of thirteen and fifty-six have cited the nearly two-year-long pandemic as a chief source of stress.

Results from a new poll are indicating that the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has taken a huge toll on most Americans—but the heaviest struggles are being experienced by teenagers and young adults.

In all, more than one-third of Americans between the ages of thirteen and fifty-six have cited the nearly two-year-long pandemic as a chief source of stress, and many have admitted that it has made certain parts of their lives harder, according to a survey conducted by MTV Entertainment Group and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

However, when it came to education, friendships, and dating, the impact was found to be more pronounced among Gen Zers.

“Among Americans in Gen Z—the survey included ages thirteen to twenty-four—46 percent said the pandemic has made it harder to pursue their education or career goals, compared with 36 percent of Millennials and 31 percent in Generation X. There was a similar gap when it came to dating and romantic relationships, with 40 percent of Gen Z saying it became harder,” the Associated Press writes.

“Forty-five percent of Gen Z also reported greater difficulty maintaining good relationships with friends, compared with 39 percent of Gen X Americans. While many Millennials also said friendships were harder, Gen Z was less likely than Millennials to say the pandemic actually made that easier, 18 percent vs. 24 percent. Roughly half of Americans across generations, including Gen Z, said the pandemic led to struggles having fun and maintaining mental health,” it continues.

Developing Brains

According to Dr. Cora Breuner, a pediatrician at Seattle Children’s Hospital, the outsized impact on Gen Z could be partly blamed on where the children are in their respective brain development.

“It’s this perfect storm where you have isolated learning, decreased social interaction with peers, and parents who also are struggling with similar issues,” she told the news agency, adding that many children do lack the necessary skills to be able to cope with stress and make complex decisions.

Deteriorating Mental Health

The poll’s findings shared similarities with a separate national study conducted by FAIR Health earlier this year. The nonprofit, which collects data for the largest database of privately billed health insurance claims in the United States, examined thirty-two billion records to closely study individuals in the younger age groups.

What the researchers discovered was that in March and April of 2020, mental health claims for those aged thirteen to eighteen approximately doubled compared to the year prior. Moreover, in the Northeast region for the thirteen to eighteen age group, claim lines for generalized anxiety disorder surged 93.6 percent, while major depressive disorder claim lines increased 83.9 percent.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on mental health, particularly on that of young people,” FAIR Health president Robin Gelburd said in a statement. “The findings in our new report have implications for all those responsible for the care of young people, including providers, parents, educators, policymakers, and payors.”

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

Image: Reuters

Stephen Silver

Omicrom, Americas

Warning: a severe illness takes time to develop and the new variant was only spotted less than two weeks ago.  

Centers for Disease Control Director Rochelle Walensky said on Tuesday that the Omicron variant, the latest major variant of the coronavirus, is in fifty countries and nineteen U.S. states. 

“While we are still working to understand the severity of omicron as well as how it responds to therapeutics and vaccines, we anticipate that all of the same measures will at least, in part, provide some protection against omicron,” Walensky said during a White House briefing on the coronavirus.

White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeff Zients added that the U.S. administered 12.5 million shots, more than half of them boosters, in the last week, the highest weekly total since May of this year.

As for the trajectory of the new variant, Dr. Anthony Fauci said during the same briefing that data will likely be available by next week about how well the current vaccines hold up against the new variant. 

Fauci said during the briefing that while early reports from South Africa indicate that the new variant leads to more mild illness, it’s also true that much of the cohort of those infected so far in that country is younger. Many people who have become infected had already been infected by the previous variants and recovered.

Meanwhile, also Tuesday, CNN looked at the reports that Omicron cases in South Africa have been milder, concluding that while it’s too soon to tell, there are positive indicators.

The news network cited a pre-print study stating that the Omicron variant “carries a portion of genetic material that’s very similar to segments seen in one of the types of coronaviruses that causes the common colds,” which is an indicator that the new variant might resemble a “nuisance virus” more than something deadlier. 

However, multiple experts told CNN that it’s too soon to reach any conclusions.  

“Even assuming the insert came from a common cold virus—that’s very dicey—it probably would not make it more like the common cold virus,” Robert Garry a virologist at Tulane University’s medical school, told CNN.  

The other warning from doctors and other experts is that severe illness takes time to develop, the new variant was only spotted less than two weeks ago.  

“There’s a distinction between hopeful and reality. It’s good to hope but it is much too early to conclude that Omicron only produces mild infections. We don’t have those data," William Schaffner, medical director at the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University, told CNN. He added that “Covid has thrown us several curveballs.”  

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

Image: Reuters

Stephen Silver

Coronavirus,

Dr. Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at the Division of Infectious Disease at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told CNBC that it appears the Omicron variant will lead to more mild infections for the fully vaccinated.

Ever since the Omicron variant of the coronavirus appeared for the first time the week of Thanksgiving, researchers, as well as the general public, have been wondering whether the variant has the ability to resist existing vaccines.

One study, albeit an early one, indicates that is indeed the case.

According to CNBC, an early preprint study out of South Africa, from the Africa Health Research Institute, finds a “41-fold drop” in antibodies’ ability to “neutralize” the new variant, compared to the original coronavirus, among subjects who received the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.

The study is preliminary, based on very early data, and is not yet peer-reviewed. It also has a very small sample size, consisting of fourteen plasma samples from twelve vaccinated people.

“The results we present here with Omicron show much more extensive escape” than was the case with the previous variant, the study said, per CNBC. “Previous infection, followed by vaccination or booster is likely to increase the neutralization level and likely confer protection from severe disease in Omicron infection.

Dr. Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at the Division of Infectious Disease at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told CNBC that it appears the Omicron variant will lead to more mild infections for the fully vaccinated.

“I think that there’s still going to be protection against serious illness,” Offit told the network. “I think with either vaccination or natural infection or both. You’re going to be protected against serious illness.”

While it remains very early in the life of the new variant, early indications are that the Omicron spreads faster than earlier variants, but doesn’t lead to illness that’s as severe, especially in vaccinated people.

Meanwhile, the CDC said Tuesday, per NPR, that cases of Omicron have been reported in 50 different countries, as well as 19 states- both numbers that the CDC expect to get larger. She added that at least in the U.S. the Delta variant remains the dominant one.

“While we are still working to understand the severity of omicron as well as how it responds to therapeutics and vaccines, we anticipate that all of the same measures will at least, in part, provide some protection against omicron,” the CDC’s director, Rochelle Walensky, said Tuesday.

On the same day, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that data will be available, likely by next week, in terms of how well vaccines hold up against the new variant. He added that while early indications out of South Africa are that the disease is less severe than past variants, not much time has passed, while many of those infected so far in that country are younger individuals.

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

Image: Reuters

Paul Richard Huard

Aircraft Carriers, Asia

The sinking of the Card was stunning victory for the Viet Cong, yet little remembered today.

Here's What You Need to Know: The USNS Card was the last carrier in U.S. military history to date sunk by enemy action.

It was shortly after midnight when two Viet Cong commandos emerged from a sewer tunnel that emptied into Saigon Port, each man carrying nearly 90 pounds of high explosives and the components needed to make two time bombs.

Their target was the largest American ship in port, USNS Card. An escort carrier that saw distinguished service as a submarine-hunter in the North Atlantic during World War II, during the early morning hours of May 2, 1964, Card was part of U.S. Military Sealift Command.

The ship supported an escalating military commitment of the South Vietnamese government that occurred well before the Tonkin Gulf Incident. Since 1961, Card had transported both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters to the beleaguered nation as well as the U.S. pilots and support crews need to operate them.

The commandos swam toward Card, where they spent about an hour in the water attaching the charges just above the waterline near the bilge and the engine compartment on the ship’s starboard side. They set the timers and quickly swam away.

The charges exploded. Five civilian crewmen on board Card died, the explosion tore a huge hole in the engine-room compartment and a proud ship that had survived German U-boat attacks was on her way to the bottom — the last aircraft carrier in U.S. military history to date sunk by enemy action.

The sinking of the Card was stunning victory for the Viet Cong, yet little remembered today. It illustrated how vulnerable naval vessels can be even when faced with a low-tech enemy … and how difficult maintaining port security can be in a war with no real front.

But it also demonstrated how resilient American naval forces are. In 17 days, salvage crews raised Card out of nearly 50 feet of water, and six months later the ship returned to service for another six years.

Not surprisingly, North Vietnam celebrated the sinking of Card, considering it a propaganda victory of the first rank. The U.S. government refused to even acknowledge the vessel’s sinking, telling the public the carrier had only been damaged.

The North Vietnamese government even commemorated the event by portraying the operation on a 1964 postage stamp.

Naval vessels often have a mystique about them — they look formidable, bristle with weapons and aircraft, and have the ability to project a nation’s power anywhere on the planet. In particular, aircraft carriers are the symbol of a nation possessing “great power” status.

But they are vulnerable to attack. For example, there are reasons why even aircraft carriers have numerous escort vessels — destroyers, guided-missile cruisers, even submarines — to protect a carrier as well as engage the enemy.

We shouldn’t be too surprised when an enemy takes out a naval vessel in combat, even if it is a commando with a time bomb, James Holmes, a naval historian and analyst who teaches at the U.S. Naval War College, told War Is Boring.

“We shouldn’t get carried away with thinking of warships as ‘castles of steel,’ or latter-day dreadnoughts, or whatever,” Holmes said. “A castle is a fortification whose walls can take enormous punishment, whereas most modern warships have thin sides — the nuclear-powered carrier being an honorable exception. So a guy with a charge can do a lot of damage.”

Holmes said the sinking of Card “provided a preview” of the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 — a textbook case of a low-tech assault taking out a prime example of U.S. naval might.

Al Qaeda operatives mounted a suicide attack against Cole, a guided-missile destroyer, using a small boat packed with explosives that targeted the American ship while she was docked in Aden harbor. The blast tore a huge hole in the vessel, killing 17 sailors and injuring 39 — the deadliest attack on a U.S. Navy ship in recent history.

The blast from the explosion reached Cole’s galley, killing and wounding many there as sailors were lining up for lunch. Investigators later said they did not consider the timing of the attack a coincidence.

Fifty years ago, penetrating harbor security was a major concern as well for the perpetrators of the attack on Card.

Lam Son Nao, 79, the leader of the Viet Cong commandos, was a maintenance worker at the port at the time of the attack. He used his job as cover while he gathered intelligence, hid explosives and planned the mission.

Despite patrol boats filled with harbor police, Nao and his companion were able to mount their operation because of careful planning and the corruption of Saigon law enforcement.

“For the Card mission, my fellow operative and I pretended to be fishermen,” Nao said in an April 22, 2015 interview with Vietnamese News Service. “When our boat reached Nha Rong Wharf, the police chased us to the bank of the Thu Thiem Peninsula. To avoid having my boat inspected, we pushed the boat to a swamp, so that the police boat could not reach it.”

Nao told the harbor police that he wanted to shop at a market on a nearby island, offering to share part of the clothing and radios he planned to buy there. Then, he gave the police a generous bribe — and they let Nao go his way.

The aftermath of the attack on the Card rallied American rescue and salvage crews to deal with a severe crisis. The American brass and Pres. Lyndon Johnson wanted to keep the results of the attack as quiet as possible.

However, raising Card would be a major salvage operation.

Five Navy divers investigated damage to Card. One said he found the remains of a U.S.-made demolitions pack — evidence that the Viet Cong might have used stolen American military munitions.

In the meantime, the Navy sent the salvage vessel USS Reclaimer and the tug USS Tawakoni to Saigon Port to begin pumping water out of the sunken vessel. Despite poor diving conditions and numerous equipment malfunctions, salvage crews raised Card in a little more than two weeks.

Soon, both Reclaimer and Tawakoni towed Card out of Saigon harbor on their way to the U.S. Navy port of Subic Bay in the Philippines for repairs.

Naval vessels are very flexible ships capable of recuperating from serious battle damage. Apparently, Card was no exception — ships are often “re-purposed” in the U.S. Navy and enjoy long lives in service, Holmes said.

“The carrier Midway went from being a World War II carrier to a modern supercarrier over the course of her life, which reached into the 1990s,” he said. “That philosophy — deliberately build ships to allow for easy changes and upgrades over a long life — is making a comeback.”

Even Cole survived her attackers. After 14 months of repair, Cole departed dry-dock on April 19, 2002, and returned to her homeport of Norfolk, Virginia.

The ship deployed again in 2003. Cole remains in operation with the Sixth Fleet. Card decommissioned in 1970.

This first appeared in WarIsBoring here.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Trevor Filseth

Russia, Eurasia

President Joe Biden expressed reservations to Putin about Russia’s role in fomenting the border crisis. He urged diplomacy and de-escalation on both sides. 

President Joe Biden and Russian president Vladimir Putin outlined their positions on the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian crisis during a virtual meeting on Tuesday. The two political leaders largely steered clear of confrontation. Instead, they voiced their concerns about the situation in Eastern Europe to one another. 

Tensions have risen in eastern Ukraine after Russian military forces, numbering as many as 175,000, have taken up positions along the border. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has described this move as a precursor to an invasion. 

The White House summarized the leaders’ two-hour meeting in a statement, which described how they discussed “a range of issues.” These issues included the escalation of forces along the border, broader tensions in Russo-American relations and opportunities for dialogue, and ransomware and cyberattacks between the two nations.  

During the meeting, Biden expressed reservations to Putin about Russia’s role in fomenting the border crisis. He urged diplomacy and de-escalation on both sides. Also, he raised the issue of economic sanctions against Russia—which he had previously described as “high impact economic measures”—in the event of a conflict, extracting a price from Moscow if it pursued military action in Ukraine. The president indicated that the United States supported Ukrainian sovereignty and opposed Russia’s attempts to influence decisionmaking in Kiev through coercion. 

For his part, Putin has expressed frustration at NATO’s eastward expansion into the historically Soviet bloc, including the proposed admission of Ukraine, which has proceeded since the Euromaidan revolution of 2014. Earlier in the week, Putin had asked for a guarantee from Biden that NATO would not be expanded further east, which he described as a “red line” for Moscow. The White House rejected this request, noting that decisions regarding NATO membership are made with the alliance as a whole.  

Biden and Putin also explored areas for cooperation, most prominently the ongoing Iranian nuclear negotiations in Vienna, in which both Washington and Moscow are part of the “P5+1” signatories to the original 2015 agreement.  

While no concessions were made from either side, both leaders “tasked their teams to follow up,” according to the White House statement.  

The Kremlin spoke positively about the meeting. It said the discussion served as an entry point for further negotiations. “It’s hard to expect any sudden breakthroughs, but the presidents demonstrated their willingness to continue practical work and begin discussing sensitive issues that seriously concern Moscow,” Kremlin official Yuri Ushakov said after the talks had concluded. 

It is expected that Biden will also hold a meeting with Zelensky in the coming days, to reassure the Ukrainian government of continued American support. 

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for the National Interest. 

Image: Reuters

Peter Suciu

Cavalry, Europe

Cavalry charges once defined European warfare. World War I made it virtually irrelevant in the European theatre. 

Here's What You Need to Remember: Cavalry was all but useless after the opening weeks of the First World War, at least on the Western Front. The static trench lines made it impossible for cavalry to flank enemy positions, while direct assaults against machine guns and fortified positions resulted in horrific bloodbaths.

In countless wars around the world over the centuries, cavalry was a flexible multipurpose force that offered greater mobility than infantry, while it performed long-range reconnaissance and security for commanders. During battle, cavalry secured and protected the flanks and rear of the infantry line, and could be used to counter enemy cavalry or counter an enemy infantry attack.

Cavalry was used to cover a retreat as well as to push back a retreating enemy. It was thus an effective unit that was part scout, part strike force and part rearguard all in one. Soldiers on large, heavy horses could break enemy formations while small lighter horses could scout, patrol and pursue.

During the nineteenth century, cavalry further evolved with specialized heavy cavalry, and in some European armies continued to wear metal breastplates or "cuirass" armor as well as steel helmets; while light cavalry were armed with lances or rifle carbines. Horses also gave generals and their staff extra height and ability to move around a battlefield to direct their soldiers.

Before the outbreak of the First World War almost all military officers, especially in Europe, could ride a horse; while many of the men who entered the army and ended up serving in the ranks also had some riding skills. Yet, even a generation later, during the Second World War, few younger officers had ever been on horseback and apart from those men who grew up on farms hardly any of the ranks could ride.

In other words, in a single generation, the traditional cavalry all but disappeared from the battlefield, and the reason was that warfare changed in unexpected ways.

Cavalry was all but useless after the opening weeks of the First World War, at least on the Western Front. The static trench lines made it impossible for cavalry to flank enemy positions, while direct assaults against machine guns and fortified positions resulted in horrific bloodbaths. Yet, cavalry along with mounted infantry played a role in some of the other theaters of operation, notably the Palestine Front, where Australian Light Horse (mounted infantry that typically dismounted to attack) took part in a class "cavalry charge" against Turkish lines on October 31, 1917, at the Battle of Beersheba.

Yet apart from such moments, it was clear the days of glorious charges were a thing of the past. It wasn't just the defensive weapons that included rapid-fire machine guns, but also the introduction of the tank, the truck and the airplane. Tanks quickly became the spearhead of a new strike force, trucks could move men and materials faster and further and the airplane could scout much further and more accurately than the mounted scout.

It wasn't just the military innovations that changed and evolved. During the industrial revolution across Europe and much of North America, vast segments of the population moved to cities, and by the turn of the century trolleys followed by subways came to move people to work. Then the automobile arrived and as people learned to drive they never bothered to learn to ride.

By World War II, the armies of the world were increasingly mechanized. While it is true that Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union with more horses in 1941 than the Emperor Napoleon had when he invaded Russia in 1812, the size of the armies were vastly different. Moreover, the Germans largely used the horses to transport material because of a lack of trucks and few of the millions of men who marched towards Moscow knew how to ride.

Horses did play a minor role in a few engagements on the Russian Front. The Charge of the "Savoia Cavalleria" at Izbushensky in August 1942 is considered the last "significant" cavalry charge in history, where 700 Italian soldiers of the Regiment "Savoia Cavalleria" successfully attacked some 2,500 Soviet soldiers of the 812th Siberian Infantry Regiment. The last true “charge” took part during the Battle of Schoenfeld near the end of the Second World War in March 1945, when a small united of Polish cavalry, supporting Soviet infantry overwhelmed a German artillery position.

Cavalry is now relegated to parades and other ceremonial duties, but how it disappeared should still be viewed as a portent to what could come in the future. While superior weapons led to the end of the cavalry, so too did the fact that fewer people could ride horses. Today many millennials, as well as members of Generation-Z, are opting not to drive. That could hasten a need for self-driving tanks and other military vehicles if the know-how to drive isn't there. Thus, we could see a future where the tanker went the way of the cavalryman.

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

This article is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Charlie Gao

Israel, Middle East

American equipment in Israeli service is often extensively modified to fit the IDF’s unique mission.

Here's What You Need to Know: Israel is a key customer of American weaponry.

The Israel Defense Forces field a wide variety of American military equipment, due to significant amounts of American military aid to Israel. However, American equipment has not always been the best suited to the tough desert and urban conditions encountered by the IDF. As a result, American equipment in Israeli service is often extensively modified to fit the IDF’s unique mission. Here are some unique derivatives of American equipment that the IDF fields.

1. MAPATS Antitank Missile

The IDF has had a long relationship with the antitank guided missile. In the long desert approaches that surround Israel, antitank missiles can direct the flow of combat and are very effective weapons. While the first ATGMs fielded by Israel were the French SS.10 and SS.11, it was replaced in the late 1970s by the American TOW (Orev in IDF service) missile. However, due to its wire-guided nature, the TOW has range limitations and cannot be used in all circumstances. Bodies of water, trees and power lines can disrupt the TOW’s guidance or endanger the TOW’s operator. As a result, the Israelis developed a version of the TOW that used laser guidance to avoid these issues. A new engine and improved warhead also gave it superior penetration and speed to the original TOW. The MAPATS has seen export success, although it is being replaced by other, newer Israeli ATGMs of wholly indigenous design.

2. Israeli M16 and CAR-15 Variants

While nominally most of the IDF has switched over to the Tavor, variants of the M16 continue to serve in the IDF. However, in the late 1980s and 1990s, these rifles were the frontline rifles of the IDF, replacing the heavier FN FAL and the Israeli Galil (although Galil carbines remained in service in the Armored corps, due to their shorter lengths with stocks folded). In the aughts, Israel set about modernizing these rifles. Due to the largely urban nature of combat the IDF Infantry engaged in, the long twenty-inch and 14.5-inch barrels of the M16s and Colt 653s were deemed too long. The barrels were sawn off to around 12.5 inch length, and the resulting carbines were called “mekut’zrar.” Furniture on these varied, but always had an eye towards the practical. Fabric bands could be wrapped around the plastic handguards to make them more rigid and stop them from creaking, red dots were added straight onto the carry handles and stocks were often replaced with modern six-position M4 stocks. The results were relatively modern, lightweight carbines on the cheap. Mekut’zrar carbines are still seen in service today, although they’ve been supplanted by new stocks of M4s and the Tavor series.

3. Machbet Self-Propelled Antiaircraft Gun

While the M163 VADS was always considered to be kind of a “stopgap” solution for the short-range antiair defense solution for the U.S. military, the VADS saw significant Israeli service in the 1982 Lebanon War. In addition to scoring a kill on a Syrian MiG-21, they provided valuable ground support, suppressing infantry in urban and mountainous areas with their rapid-fire twenty-millimeter cannons. While they were phased out of American service in the 1990s and replaced with the better-armored but slower-firing M6 Bradley Linebacker, Israel opted to upgrade its VADS to the new “Machbet” standard instead, fitting an optoelectronic tracking system, better radar, a quad-Stinger pod and an ADA network datalink to the VADS to make it effective against a wider variety of targets and faster reacting.

4. The F15 Baz Meshopar

Israel was one of the first customers for the American F-15 fighter. It has served admirably as the backbone of the Israeli Air Force (IAF) throughout the late 1970s to the present day. In addition to its superb performance in the air-to-air role during the 1982 Lebanon War, the F-15 was also used in Operation Opera and Operation Wooden Leg, both long-range-strike missions. These were done with the addition of some indigenous guidance and sensor pods. While Israel later acquired variants of the ground-attack F-15E Strike Eagle under the name F15I Ra’am, they also updated their first- and second-gen F-15s to a new standard with indigenous electronics and parts, under the name F-15 Baz Meshopar, or Baz 2000. The upgrade included a new radar with AIM-120 and Israeli Python missile compatibility, redone cockpits with a new throttle and stick and glass cockpit, and improved electronic-warfare capability. This upgrade program ran from 1995 to 2001, and these upgraded F-15s are expected to continue to serve far into the future.

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

This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: REUTERS/Amir Cohen

Charlie Gao

Fighters, World

The JF-17 is a relatively new single-engine fighter, meant to compete against other light fighters.

Here's What You Need to Know: A JF-17 pilot said that the Su-30 was one of the most formidable threats.

The 2019 India-Pakistan border skirmish resulted in major shake-ups within the Indian Air Force (IAF). The most accepted narrative, that of a loss of an IAF MiG-21 Bison to no losses of the Pakistan Air Force bodes poorly for the IAF. But interestingly, according to a July interview, the skirmish marked one of the first “hot” use of Pakistan’s new Chinese JF-17 “Thunder” fighters.

The JF-17 is a relatively new single-engine fighter, meant to compete against other light fighters like the F-16, Gripen, and MiG-29 for export contracts. As the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) is the only large user, most solid information about the aircraft is from Chinese marketing documents. But the July interview gives one pilot’s opinion on how the JF-17 stacks up against most common adversaries, from Sukhois to F-16s.

The extent of the JF-17’s “hot” usage following the border skirmish was in patrols near the border. In some incidents, the pilot said that during these patrols, he was getting radar lock-on Su-30MKIs at ranges in excess of 100 kilometers.

However, this doesn’t mean that a JF-17 could kill with a missile at that range. The JF-17’s primary beyond-visual-range (BVR) armament is the PL-12 missile, which is still undergoing integration (as of February 2019). During the actual border air skirmish, PAF F-16s lobbed AIM-120C-5 AMRAAM missiles at similar ranges, which forced IAF aircraft to go defensive to dodge the missiles, but no kills were scored. As the PL-12 is said to have a similar range to the AMRAAM, it’s likely that its kinematic performance at range is similar, and it too wouldn’t be able to score a kill.

But if the JF-17 allows the pilot to “lob” a missile at planes at such ranges, it still might be a step ahead of the IAF’s Su-30MKIs. According to an NDTV report, the Russian R-77 missiles cannot engage targets past 80 km.

Despite the Su-30’s missile limitations, the JF-17 pilot said that the Su-30 was one of the most formidable threats the PAF faces. This is likely due to the strong engines and maneuvering capability of the Su-30, which allows it to recover energy quickly after maneuvering and makes it hard to shoot down in a within visual range (WVR) engagement.

Interestingly, the pilot then goes onto state that he’s not that afraid of the Su-30 because he’s trained against F-16s with AMRAAMs, which he thinks is a far superior missile. The pilot also states that the MICA on the Mirage is also a significant threat.

This suggests that the pilot probably thinks that the fight will be largely decided, or largely influenced by the BVR stage of the engagement and that the JF-17’s capabilities in that arena are competitive to the F-16 and Mirage. However, the pilot does say that the JF-17’s limited BVR loadout is its main weakness, as most models of the JF-17 can only carry four BVR missiles, compared to the Su-30MKI which can carry eight or more.

The pilot also gives good marks to the JF-17 for reliability, flight characteristics, and maintenance. As the JF-17 is one of China’s “clean slate” designs, this bodes well for the reliability characteristics of the current generation of Chinese aircraft. However, the JF-17 still uses a Russian engine, and the PAF rejected offers to use Chinese engines in their JF-17s in 2015. Engines remain a critical weakness in the Chinese aerospace industry.

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

This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: REUTERS/Luke MacGregor

Robert Farley

Chinese Military, Asia

China would fight another war on the Korean Peninsula if it had to.

Here's What You Need to Remember: In almost every conceivable scenario, Beijing would work hard to try to restrain Pyongyang from using its nuclear, chemical, and biological arsenals. 

Three years ago I outlined what the contours of a war between China and the United States might look like. Although disagreements between Washington and Beijing over Taiwan and the South China Sea have hardly subsided, it increasingly appears that affairs on the Korean Peninsula would provide the spark for conflict. If the tense situation in Korea led to war between the United States and China, how would the conflict start? Who would have the advantage? And how would it end?

How it Would Start

War between North Korea, or the DPRK, and America is more likely to ignite a war between China and the U.S. than vice versa, although it’s not incomprehensible that Pyongyang might take advantage of U.S. distraction with China to make a move against South Korea. But if we assume the former, it would change the military situation at the beginning of the U.S.-China conflict. Whereas in most scenarios a war happens according to Beijing’s timetable, and consequently to Beijing’s advantage, if North Korea triggers a conflict China may be forced into a fight that it does not want and is not fully prepared for. At the very least, it would allow U.S. forces to fully mobilize in expectation of fighting against China. Even if the Chinese were allowed to launch the first blow, U.S. forces would be on high alert, tracking Chinese moves and capable of responding immediately. The experience of November 1950, in which China was allowed to launch a surprise attack, would surely be at the top of the minds of U.S. commanders.

China could decide to intervene in a new Korean War under two circumstances; first, if it believed that the U.S.-ROK coalition was on the verge of destroying the DPRK (as was the case in 1950), and second, if it believed that the DPRK was winning and that Chinese intervention could preempt U.S. escalation. If the former case, China’s war objectives would be to prevent the destruction of the DPRK, and to prevent the DPRK from unleashing its nuclear arsenal. In the latter, the objective would be the opposite; to secure North Korean gains (whether these amounted to the entire Korean Peninsula or not), and to eliminate any temptation on the U.S. part to escalate to nuclear weapons. In either case, U.S. and ROK planners would pay careful attention to Chinese maneuvers, and both countries would have fully mobilized for war.

The Allies

Neither China nor North Korea have a lot of friends around the world. Still, both would likely enjoy benevolent neutrality from Russia, which would help significantly in keeping the militaries of both supplied with fuel, spare parts and ammunition.

The rest of the world would likely support the United States and the ROK to various degrees, less if the U.S .started the war, more if the DPRK started it. China would undoubtedly worry about its southwestern flank, but India is unlikely to intervene in any conflict that does not directly involve its interests. America’s European and Pacific allies would offer rhetorical and potentially some minor military support.

Japan’s participation would be the biggest question mark. Tokyo regards both North Korea and the growth of Chinese military power as key national security threats. Japan might well come under attack from North Korea during intra-Korean hostilities. At the very least, Japan would offer basing and support to the United States and (more quietly) to the ROK. But if Tokyo perceived that a Chinese-North Korean axis might win (as apart from merely preserving a rump DPRK), then Tokyo might well intervene on the U.S. side in a meaningful way. The combination of Tokyo’s military, financial, and economic might could significantly affect the course of the conflict.

The Course of Combat

On balance, South Korea is considerably more powerful than North Korea. While North Korea’s forces can cause enormous damage to South Korea in a conventional conflict, they cannot hope to destroy the Republic of Korea, or ROK, on their own. Attacks in depth against North Korean communications and logistics would make it difficult for the North Korean Army, or KPA, to maneuver. And in the early days of the conflict, South Korean and American airpower would utterly control the sky.

Chinese intervention could change this equation. War between the Koreas would create a problem for the U.S. by introducing the necessity to supply and maintain large scale land forces on the Korean Peninsula. Unleashed against South Korea, Chinese ballistic and land-attack cruise missiles could wreak havoc on U.S. and ROK military installations. Missiles would destroy Coalition aircraft on the ground, and reduce airfield readiness. Attacks on staging and logistics areas would give U.S. and ROK forces a taste of the same problems they had dished out to the North Koreans. US naval forces and installations would also come under attack.

In the first Korean War, the United States restrained itself from attacking China directly. In a new Korean War, the Americans would not exercise such forbearance. Chinese military installations associated with strikes against Korea would come under attack from U.S. air, missile, and naval assets. The PLAN, whether it took to sea or remained in port, would find itself a juicy target, although the U.S. Navy might limit its attacks geographically. Chinese air bases within China, and the aircraft based on them, would also suffer from U.S. attacks.

How it Would End

In almost every conceivable scenario, Beijing would work hard to try to restrain Pyongyang from using its nuclear, chemical, and biological arsenals. Indeed, the United States might well declare from an early point that it viewed any use of nuclear weapons by the Beijing-Pyongyang axis as implicating both partners, and thus requiring retaliation against both.

If Beijing and Washington could avoid nuclear combat, the end of the war would turn on the survival of the DPRK. North Korea cannot indefinitely stand against the combined might of the U.S. and the ROK, much less the addition of Japan to the Coalition. If Chinese intervention can either disrupt the U.S.-ROK war machine through brute force (the destruction of sufficient military assets to make it impossible to continue), or coerce the U.S. to give up through the imposition of high costs, the DPRK could survive and remain in control of some portion of the Korean Peninsula (whether large or small would depend on the timing and extent of Chinese intervention). If the Chinese can’t accomplish this, then the DPRK will cease to exist, and the ROK will extend to the Chinese border.

In the first scenario, the world looks much like it does today, only with substantial destruction across Northeast Asia, and profound disruption to global economic and financial systems. The second scenario sees the same kind of disruption and destruction, but China is the clear loser, with potentially dire implications for the power and legitimacy of the Communist Party of China.

Parting Thoughts

It is unlikely that the Chinese could win the war for North Korea, but they might well be able to prevent the DPRK from losing. But there is little question that China does not want to yoke its growing military machine to the whims of Pyongyang. Even if China could win such a war, the devastation to its trade and financial relationships would vastly exceed the value of preserving the DPRK. This is a war that China wants to avoid, and would only join in desperation.

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 first appeared in 2017 and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

 

Kris Osborn

U.S. Navy, United States

Adding large numbers of new next-generation destroyers will substantially change the Navy’s ability to conduct major maritime warfare operations by enabling surface forces to detect enemy attacks at much farther distances.

Here's What You Need to Know: Within just the next fifteen years, the Navy plans to add as many as thirty DDG 51 Destroyers, including twenty-two new, high-tech DDG 51 Flight III warships and eight state-of-the-art DDG 51 Flight IIA destroyers.

The Navy accepted delivery of the guided missile destroyer, the future USS Daniel Inouye, from shipbuilder General Dynamics Bath Iron Works, March 8. As the Navy adds another new Destroyer to its growing fleet of attack warships, many wonder if the service’s 500-ship ambitions remain afloat given the new budget environment led by a new Joe Biden administration.

The Navy’s ambitious fleet-size expansion plan, still believed to be largely intact as seeking a 500-ship “aim point,” relies upon a massive increase in heavily armed destroyers able to launch long-range attacks, fire interceptor missiles, defend carrier strike groups and engage in massive open blue water warfare.

Within just the next fifteen years, the Navy plans to add as many as thirty DDG 51 Destroyers, including twenty-two new, high-tech DDG 51 Flight III warships and eight state-of-the-art DDG 51 Flight IIA destroyers, according to the service’s most recent thirty-year shipbuilding plan.

“DDG 118 is a Flight IIA destroyer equipped with Aegis Baseline 9, which provides improved Integrated Air and Missile Defense capabilities, increased computing power, and radar upgrades that improve detection range and reaction time against modern air warfare and Ballistic Missile Defense threats,” a Navy report states.

Prioritizing such a large number of these warships offers an interesting analytical window into Navy thinking about the next five decades of ocean war. The plan signifies a broad service alignment with its Distributed Maritime Operations strategy which, among other things, seeks to massively increase lethality and sensor networking across vast swaths of ocean in real time.

Adding large numbers of new next-generation destroyers will substantially change the Navy’s ability to conduct major maritime warfare operations by enabling surface forces to detect enemy attacks at much farther distances. Moreover, these warships will be able to launch long-range strikes with greater precision and destructive force and disperse otherwise overly congested offensive forces across much wider maritime areas.

In addition to adding thirty new destroyers, the Navy’ also seeks fifteen Littoral Combat Ships, eighteen of the new frigates and as many as thirty-two new attack submarines in the next fifteen years. While many new ships are now under construction, the current number of Navy ships is roughly in the high 280s, a number the Navy hopes to grow to 355 by 2034.

Interestingly, while 355 ships by 2034 may still appear to be the objective, one thought to consider is that during President Biden’s previous time in the Barack Obama administration, there was a decided interest among the political leadership to operate a smaller number of actual ship platforms while making a special effort to ensure technological overmatch and tactical advantages. The concept during the Obama years was to embark upon a massive Pacific pivot with a technologically superior, yet numerically smaller Naval force. This plan was further enabled by new long-range precision weapons and more robust ship-to-ship networking systems connecting otherwise separated points of attack. Effective networking, high fidelity sensors, manned-drone-boat teaming and precision weaponry, however, are all expected to figure prominently as the service surges forward into an entirely new threat environment.

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

This article first appeared in March 2021 and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Charlie Gao

Artillery, Europe

And why did Sweden desire such a system to begin with?

Here's What You Need to Know: Peace-loving Sweden is also an arms exporter.

During the twentieth century, Sweden developed many weapons at the top of their class despite not being a superpower. From the Swedish K SMG to the AT4, Swedish weapons have won American orders and proven themselves to be excellent in the field. However, one of the most interesting and innovative Swedish designs never was exported. The Bandkanon 1 self propelled howitzer was a Swedish design with only twenty-six vehicles built. It still holds the records for being the fastest firing artillery system of its caliber. It possessed the ability to empty its entire magazine of fifteen shells within forty-five seconds, a world record. While the Bandkanons were never exported and were phased out of service in 2003, the legacy of their magazine-style loading system lives on in Sweden’s new Archer artillery system. But how can the Bandkanon fire so fast? Why did Sweden desire such a system, to begin with?

To answer those questions, we must look at the circumstances that brought about the development of the Bandkanon. In the late 1940s, Sweden had a desperate need to modernize its artillery, as most of it was turn-of-the-century vintage. For most of the requirements, foreign-designed artillery fulfilled the requirements and was purchased. In contrast, the requirements for a heavy self-propelled artillery piece was set extremely high. This is where the extremely high rate of fire requirement came around, as the HQ wanted a rate of fire of fifteen rounds per minute for the self-propelled artillery piece. The reasons for this are not exactly clear, but some speculation exists. The Swedish military didn’t field multiple rocket launchers (MLRs) (such as the BM-21 Grad or M270 MLRs) during the Cold War at all, so the use of conventional artillery that has similar capability to MRLs would allow the Swedish artillery to fulfill two roles with one platform, making it more economical. The Bandkanon was also designed with a fast automated loading system that allowed it to prepare for a second fire mission much faster than MRLs. In addition to this, Swedish studies also came to the same conclusion as Soviet ones after WWII: that a fast rate of fire is desirable as artillery inflicts the most casualties at the beginning of the barrage when soldiers have not yet hunkered down in bunkers or fortified positions.

To fulfill these requirements, the Bandkanon required a design radically different from existing self-propelled artillery. Most self-propelled artillery at the time was laid out similar to tanks, with the gun breech being enclosed in a manned turret. The Bandkanon did away with that, with the gun being counterbalanced by a massive ammunition compartment on the rear of the turret, with no manual loader. The loading of the gun was done automatically via a rammer that stripped rounds from the magazine in the ammo compartment. This arrangement of all fourteen rounds pointed in the direction of the barrel gave the Bandkanon its incredible rate of fire. By the time the first round impacted the target at the maximum range of twenty-five kilometers, all other thirteen rounds would be in the air. Reloading the Bandkanon was also incredibly fast, thanks to the built in crane on the rear of the artillery piece. This crane would simply pick up an entire fresh set of fourteen rounds and place it in the ammo compartment. Manuals suggest that this was almost fully automatic, requiring pressing only three buttons once everything was positioned properly. The entire process of reloading only took two minutes.

While this incredible rate of fire was definitely an advantage, to achieve it the Bandkanon made significant compromises. The whole vehicle was incredibly heavy for its time, weighing in in excess of fifty tons. Combined with relatively weak engines, this meant that the Bandkanon could not move rapidly off road or on road. Unlike traditional manually loaded howitzers, the amount of charge could not be altered for the Bandkanon due to the unitary nature of its ammunition. This limited its flexibility in employment, especially on closer targets.

Despite these advantages, the Swedish army only procured twenty-six Bandkanons in the 1960s. In the 1970s, the modern FH77 field howitzer became the primary artillery system of the Swedish military. While it too had the capability to rapidly fire, it was not as fast nor as protected as the Bandkanon with its novel ammunition layout.

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

This article first appeared in 2018.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Abdul Rahman Rahmani

Afghanistan, South Asia

The lives of more than 6,300 Afghan women who served in the Afghan military are at risk.

On August 15, 2021, the Taliban took control of Afghanistan once again. In the previous twenty years, the United States and NATO countries promoted women’s rights, equality, and justice in Afghanistan. As part of those efforts, they provided opportunities for women to voluntarily serve in the Afghan military. This service has traditionally been subject to male domination in Afghanistan. Despite cultural difficulties, the United States and its allies trained a cadre of Afghan women in the military to do jobs that typically hadn’t been open to them. They served in U.S.-backed combat units, handled the cases of Taliban prisoners, and a small number of them even flew helicopters and military planes. Before the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, over 6,300 women served in the Afghan army, police, and air force.

These women did not just serve in the military and fight the Taliban, they also promoted democracy, equality, and justice as part of the transformation of Afghanistan. The international community, especially the United States, purposefully encouraged and supported women in the military as part of the broader transformation to a more democratic, just, and equal Afghanistan. Because these programs directly and symbolically put these women at war with the Taliban and what it stood for, the United States has incurred a moral obligation not to abandon them in the face of the Taliban resurgence. These women would likely face Taliban retribution and possibly death. The most straightforward way for the United States to meet its moral obligation is to grant those women U.S. visas and support their safe evacuation from Afghanistan.

From 1996 to 2001, the Taliban ruled Afghanistan until they were removed during the United States’ invasion. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan according to their extremist interpretation of Islamic Sharia Law, which, among other restrictions, banned girls from school and prevented women from serving in the government or military. The Taliban’s leadership would not allow women to serve in their regime because they “publicly humiliated and beat women if they didn’t comply [with their will]” during their rule. The best solution to potential Taliban brutality against those women is to get them out of Afghanistan.

The United States must evacuate these women because their lives are in great danger. Afghan women who served in the military fought the Taliban in both the land and the air domains. The majority of the 6,300 women in the Afghan National Army fought on the ground, but around 146 women served in the Afghan air force, flying combat and logistics aircraft. Several also served in the police, interrogating Taliban fighters at the Bagram military base and other prisons around Afghanistan. Some of the Taliban fighters interrogated by women police were freed from Afghan prisons under the peace agreement signed by the Taliban and the United States in in February 2020 in Doha. Those released Taliban prisoners actively participated in the recent fight against the Afghan government. Therefore, the work that these women did as army ground forces, as pilots, and as police interrogators put them at risk of being identified and executed by the Taliban.

Moreover, these women risked their lives to protect the United States, its allies, and the Afghan government’s interests in promoting values such as democracy, equality, and justice as part of Afghanistan’s transformation toward a democratic country. They were perfect examples of those values. For example, my work at the Office of National Security Council in the Presidential Palace in Afghanistan required me to read, analyze, and report on all of the U.S. reports on Afghanistan to the national security advisor and the president of Afghanistan. During my two-and-a-half-year tenure, I never saw a single report in which these women were not mentioned as a sign of progress in promoting democracy, justice, and equality. Moreover, many intellectuals, journalists, think tank experts, and other people involved in women’s rights in Afghanistan have claimed that the participation of Afghan women in the military was a positive sign in promoting these important values.

The values that the Afghan military women fought for are contrary to the Taliban way of life and its extremely conservative interpretation of Sharia Law, the Taliban’s code of conduct. Those values are also against those held by the people who supported the Taliban for twenty years and contributed to overthrowing the Afghan government. These women have no room to live in societies under the Taliban’s control. If they somehow survive the Taliban’s brutality, they will be subjected to forced marriages—despite the recently decreed ban—rapes, and their families will face social isolation and extreme poverty.

How could the United States help these women safely evacuate Afghanistan? To safely evacuate them from Afghanistan, the United States must negotiate with Pakistan for leverage over the Taliban to allow these women a safe passage. From an ethical perspective, the United States must not speak to the Taliban leaders who are still on the UN sanctions list. The United States should talk to Pakistani authorities and ask for their assistance. According to Barnett R. Rubin, a leading expert on South Asia, “the Taliban are desperate to be recognized by the US and its allies in the international arena.” They will be willing to do anything in exchange for international recognition. The United States and the international community are observing the Taliban’s behavior, particularly their conduct with Afghan women. As part of the deal, the United States can convince the Pakistani government that if the Taliban allow these women a safe passage, as they did for Westerners, it might help their quest for recognition in the international community.

However, the promise must be condition-based: if the Taliban do not change their code of conduct in accordance with the international community’s demands, the international community must retain the ability to sanction their regime. Given that Pakistan is under intense pressure from the United States and the international community for supporting the Taliban, it will likely help the United States negotiate a deal. While the Taliban is a pariah in the international arena, there is a strong possibility that they will allow those women a safe passage from Afghanistan.

The United States and its allies must act quickly to save these women’s lives or else they will be abandoned to suffer the Taliban’s brutality and eventually die in poverty. Allowing this to happen to Afghan military women will make future gender promotion in Afghanistan impossible. Some experts may argue that the Taliban will allow women to serve their regime to leverage and influence the international community. In pure Islamic governance, governance that the Taliban have fought for, it is against Sharia law to have women serve in the military. Prime examples of this fact are found in Saudi Arabia and Iran, where women cannot fully participate in the military. Furthermore, most Afghans who supported the Taliban view women’s service in the military, an environment of mixed genders, contrary to their values and way of life. Given the limited foreign aid the Taliban will receive from foreign countries compared to previous governments, and given the growing workforce in Afghanistan, it seems impossible for these women to find proper jobs and sustain themselves and their families in a male-dominated country.

The lives of more than 6,300 Afghan women who served in the Afghan military are at risk. They will potentially face the wrath of the Taliban, which could include brutality and killing. The Afghan military women put their lives in harm’s way fighting the Taliban and sacrificed to promote democracy, equality, and justice. They are now facing a great struggle for their lives under the Taliban’s brutality in Afghanistan. Therefore, the international community, particularly the United States, has a moral obligation to grant them visas and support their safe evacuation from Afghanistan.

Abdul Rahman Rahmani is a former colonel, Afghan pilot, and head of Presidential Information Coordination Center at the Office of National Security Council in Afghanistan. He is currently studying at National Defense University in Washington DC.

Image: Reuters.