Agrégateur de flux

Recently released documents show that the United States has conducted at least nine flight tests of a new long-range nuclear cruise missile meant to be carried by America’s B-52 and forthcoming B-21 Raider bombers. While details about this new missile, dubbed the AGM-181A Long Range Stand Off cruise missile (LRSO), remain limited, these successful tests suggest the weapon is well on its way to entering service before the close of the decade. 

While development on the LRSO has been no secret, discussions about this new nuclear-capable cruise missile have been rather muted in recent years. In fact, as far as Sandboxx News can tell, only one of the nine successful flight tests to date had previously been revealed. Word of the rest of these tests only reached the public in early October, when Air & Space Forces Magazine’s Editorial Director John Tirpak came across their inclusion in a 2022 Selected Acquisition Report (SAR). Although the report was dated December 2022, it was only released some weeks ago. 

The LRSO is slated to replace America’s aging fleet of AGM-86B Air Launched Cruise Missiles (ALCM). Its road to service began in 2017 with contracts awarded to both Lockheed Martin and Raytheon to develop competing designs. By 2020, the Air Force announced their decision to move forward with Raytheon’s design, moving Lockheed Martin into a support role rather than removing them from the effort. 

This new long-range weapon will be part of the venerable B-52 Stratofortress’ nuclear arsenal, but will also be carried internally by the forthcoming B-21 Raider – America’s new stealth bomber in active development. 

Although there were nine successful flight tests listed in the report, it appears as though the missile itself was only flown in four of them. The other five included things like captive-carry flight tests, where the missile is carried either internally or externally by aircraft to ensure its size, shape, dimensions, or mounting points don’t cause any unforeseen issues. Based on the information within the report, at least one of the successful flight tests was conducted with what was almost certainly an inert test article based on the W80-4 nuclear warhead. 

The Warzone was able to confirm this test via the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration’s Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan, which highlighted the test’s success. 

“The LRSO and W80-4 Life Extension Program joint test teams completed the first powered flight test of a LRSO Cruise Missile with W80-4 Warhead released from a B-52 aircraft. The missile successfully released from the aircraft, powered its engine, and executed all in-flight maneuvers,” the report states. 

The W80-4 warhead is a life-extension program for the “dial-a-yield” W80-1 warheads already in service. These weapons come with two different yield settings: they are able to produce a relatively small five-kiloton blast (about one-third the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945), or a much larger 150-kiloton blast – or about 10 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. 

This weapon is being designed primarily to serve as a long-range portion of the airborne leg of America’s nuclear triad, but the Defense Department has not ruled out the possibility of also fielding a conventionally armed variant for more tactical strikes. Early documents suggest plans to produce 1,020 missiles for service with 67 additional test articles, but it’s unclear if those figures have shifted in the years since the program’s announcement. 

Initially, plans called for this missile to enter service in 2030, but it now appears that the weapon could be ready much earlier. As a result, the hold-up may just be the W80-4 program, which is expected to be complete in 2027. 

Like the vast majority of new Air Force weapons and platforms, the LRSO is being designed with an open software and hardware architecture, which should allow the branch to take competing bids on upgrades and update efforts in the future from a variety of firms, bringing down the cost of keeping this new missile viable for years – or likely decades – to come. 

The B-52H is a highly capable and cost-efficient bomber, but it’s not sneaky. While the Air Force does maintain an inventory of nuclear bombs, air-launched cruise missiles make it possible for bombers like the modern B-52H to deploy nukes from stand-off ranges, or well outside the reach of enemy air defenses or even combat air patrols.

Alex Hollings is a writer, dad, and Marine veteran.

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

Image: Keith Homan / Shutterstock.com

In the wake of the shocking attack against Israel by Hamas, much attention has focused on the role of Iran, given its material, financial, and rhetorical support for Hamas. What is the nature of the coordination between Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah? How does Iran perceive its interests in this situation? Does Iran still view Hezbollah’s missile capabilities as a deterrent against a potential Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities? Or have Iran’s calculations potentially changed in a way which would make a large-scale attack by Hezbollah more likely than that would imply? On October 17, the Center for the National Interest hosted a discussion of these issues and more.

Dr. Raz Zimmt is an expert on Iran at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). He holds a master’s degree and a PhD in Middle Eastern history from Tel-Aviv University and was selected as an Alice and Paul Baker Research Fellow at the INSS. His PhD dissertation focused on Iranian policy towards Nasserism and Arab radicalism between 1954 and 1967. He is also a research fellow at the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies at Tel-Aviv University. He is the author of the book “Iran From Within: State and Society in the Islamic Republic” published (in Hebrew) in 2022. In addition, he is the editor of “Spotlight on Iran,” published by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. His main research interests are the politics, foreign relations, society & social media of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Greg Priddy, Senior Fellow for the Middle East at the Center, moderated the discussion.

Image: Anas-Mohammed / Shutterstock.

How the war in Ukraine ends is clearly the most important geopolitical question confronting the international community today. I do not claim to know how the war will end. That is because the mechanisms by which interstate hostilities normally cease—negotiated settlements and military victory—appear nowhere in sight.

Two intractable issues preclude the possibility of a peace agreement. The first is that Ukraine (understandably) demands the return of all the territory seized from it by Moscow beginning in 2014. This includes the oblasts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhia, and Crimea. For its part, Russia sees this territory as a crucial buffer against Western encroachment and, therefore, has no intention of ever returning it to Ukraine. Absent Moscow’s willingness to return this land, there remain no grounds for a negotiated settlement.

The second issue involves that which arguably ignited the war in the first place—NATO’s intention to eventually extend membership to Ukraine. Moscow demands that the West renounce any present or future plans to incorporate Ukraine into NATO. Yet Ukraine and its Western allies refuse to accede to that demand, seeing it as morally reprehensible, an unacceptable violation of Ukrainian sovereignty, and counterproductive to their own national interests. Absent the West’s willingness to take NATO membership off the table, there remain no grounds for a negotiated settlement.

The possibility of an outright victory also appears unlikely for the foreseeable future. Because each side senses an existential threat from the other, Ukraine from Russia and Russia from the West, we can expect them to fight to the death. When it appears that one side is gaining the upper hand, the other side makes the necessary adjustments to even the playing field, with Moscow mobilizing more troops and increasing its defense spending and the West boosting its military support to Kyiv. Such has been the story since the war first broke out early last year, and the most important reason it has settled into a bloody stalemate today.

The caveat here, of course, is if the West eventually tires of supporting Ukraine and lets it go its own way. That possibility, though, shows no sign of materializing any time soon, if it ever does. The United States has demonstrated a remarkable ability to remain committed to unwinnable conflicts, as this one appears to be. Moreover, abandoning Ukraine would likely be seen as the greatest act of great power cowardice since the Munich debacle.

One thing is abundantly clear, though: this war is potentially even more dangerous than the Cold War. If Putin senses an existential threat to Russia or to his own survival, might he consider using nuclear weapons if the West continues to back him into a corner over Ukraine? This possibility represents one terrifying answer to the question of how the Ukraine war ends.

Nilay Saiya is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and Global Affairs at Nanyang Technological University.

Image: Shutterstock. 

Projecting how a war will end can be a fraught enterprise. Hoping for the complete collapse of the Russian military and a putsch overthrowing Vladimir Putin is pure fantasy at this point. It is also absolute hubris to argue that the next “new” weapon will transform the conflict, providing either Ukraine or Russia a free run at the opposition. 

Initially, it was the grand hopes of artificial intelligence and cyber operations, with cyber providing a “thunder run” opportunity for Russia to open the gates of Kyiv. At this point, a laughable conjecture is offered by very serious pundits. AI has also proven just as frustrating, playing a more significant role in battle coordination behind the scenes or for facial recognition of the dead rather than facilitating the emergence of a modern AI general to lead the military.

While the precision strike complex has transformed modern combat since the 1980s, enabling the massive destruction of armor on the battlefield, mines and layers of trenches remain the natural obstacles. Active surveillance facilitated by drones and satellites helps keep constant eyes on the battlefield, lessening the fog of war. Yet, this has been true since the advent of old-fashioned balloons and reconnaissance aircraft, as old as World War I.     

The latest hope is delivering the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMs). An advance in the range from the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), an ATACM can reach 190 miles behind the front lines while HIMARS can reach forty-three miles. Unfortunately, these are not transformative weapons because the United States has too few, and Ukraine needs to advance further to hit critical targets deep in Crimea. 

Instead of advanced weapons transforming the war, we are witnessing the continuation of the security dilemma. As John Herz argued, advances in security cause a perceived decrease in the opposition’s security, facilitating a constant action-reaction search for a way out of the conflict spiral. Sadly, conflict spirals never end. Likewise, no magic weapon will facilitate the termination of this war. 

Advanced or even primary weapons supplied by the West will not win the war for Ukraine, nor will emergency supplies from North Korea or Iran deliver victory to the Russian side. All these developments will achieve is the revival of the military-industrial complex worldwide. There is no magic solution; the only thing left is to settle for a political solution or the slow attrition of either side’s will to fight. As Margaret Mead argued so long ago, war is a social invention, a poor and inefficient one that will only facilitate constant suffering and death until humans develop a better way. 

Brandon Valeriano specializes in military innovation and cyber security. He teaches at Seton Hall University and is also a Senior Fellow at the Royal Danish Defense College, the Marine Corps University, Gray Space Strategies, and the Cyberspace Solarium Commission 2.0.

Image: Shutterstock. 

Both China and Russia are eager to assert their own authoritarian models of national “greatness.” Related to this goal is knocking down the international order forged by the United States and its allies after World War II, an open, rules-based international system that brought prosperity to so many nations (including China once Beijing embraced it). 

But national greatness, whether political influence, soft power, or military might, is largely a function of economic power. By participating in (and in many cases gaming) the open, capitalist trade and economic system, China has built economic power. China and the world are now economically interdependent. Many depend on China’s exports, and global companies want to keep access to the Chinese market. 

Meanwhile, Russia has lost it. With a GDP the size of Italy and the hemorrhaging of its best and brightest after the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s economy is a literal Potemkin village. Once weaned of dependence on Russia’s oil and gas, nobody needs Russia’s economy. The only way for Russia to assert influence in the world and to maintain the fiction of “greatness”—is by destructive military actions. 

Now, China risks losing its true source of power and influence—its robust, entrepreneurial, globally entangled economy. President Xi Jinping is reining in entrepreneurs and free speech, frightening away foreign businesses, investors, and Chinese entrepreneurs. China is losing business abroad as many countries and companies work to decouple from China’s corrupting, surveilling, and stealing state-run economic apparatus. China’s birth rate is dropping, growth is slowing, and political leadership is congealing around a “strongman” more focused on control at home and saber-rattling abroad than economic prosperity.

Most observers predicted that China’s rise would eclipse America’s economic and political influence in the world. That’s the story of American decline and China’s rise promoted by Xi Jinping. Conventional wisdom also sees this dynamic as the most likely source of a military clash between China and the United States. An “empire” in decline threatened by a rising power leads to conflict.

But this doesn’t describe the current reality. The United States and its allies are working hard. So far, they are keeping the economic high ground by making disruptive innovations like the fastest chips and artificial intelligence that drive new businesses and maintain national security. Russia’s innovation economy is gone, and China is chasing its own away, exposing the fragility of a system propped up by state spending, and political versus market direction.

However, this is not all good news. As we have seen, an increasingly isolated and diminished power like Russia chooses to lash out militarily. A China beginning to lose the underpinnings of its new-found international influence could prove even more dangerous—and more eager to assert its “greatness” through military adventures and political and economic coercion. 

Avoiding war requires a delicate balancing act. We in the United States must acknowledge the aspirational and identity-based yearnings of the Chinese people: namely, the desire to be recognized as a great nation and to rise economically.

We need to say to China: we welcome your rise as a great nation, a great culture and people. We have no desire to keep you “down.” But we don’t welcome political and economic coercion of other nations and peoples, acts of military force. We will, working with allies (that we still have), check and contain these efforts at every turn.

John Austin is a Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Brookings Institution and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

Image: U.S. Department of Defense.

One of the more closely guarded mission sets within the U.S. military is Personnel Recovery (PR). As defined by the Department of Defense’s Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), the PR mission is the “sum of military, diplomatic, and civil efforts to prepare for and execute the recovery and reintegration of isolated personnel.” In simplest terms, when a U.S. service member goes missing in combat, is captured, or in some other way becomes isolated from other U.S. forces, the military sets in motion its personnel recovery efforts.

Those efforts range from preparing service members on how to become and behave as a prisoner of war – through committing to the U.S. military’s Code of Conduct – to classified rescue missions to bring them home. In between those benchmarks fall the diplomatic and civil efforts, as well as Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training, part of which involves training a service member to resist and escape captivity.

There are also highly classified programs that fall within the category of the personnel recovery mission set, the existence of which only a few in the entire Department of Defense (DOD) are aware. The U.S. military takes the PR mission very seriously, as we want our military to keep faith with the individual service members and make every effort to bring them home.

The various components of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) can all play a role in the PR mission, as required. For example, when Army PFC Jessica Lynch was injured and captured in Iraq, she was rescued by a combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, with support from the Marines. Similarly, when wounded Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell was forced to escape and evade following compromise by enemy forces in Afghanistan, he was rescued by a contingent of U.S. Army Rangers and Afghan National Army soldiers. Both operations are good examples of the PR mission as executed by U.S. SOF combined with conventional forces.

Further, PR missions are almost always supported by the U.S. intelligence community through the provision of on-the-ground human and technical intelligence reporting, as well as satellite imagery and other methods of support. The whole U.S. national security and defense structure in a given theatre, in other words, becomes involved in trying to bring home a lost or captured service member.

Here, it is worth placing a special emphasis on the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) and its unique role in the PR mission. AFSOC’s Special Tactics Pararescuemen (PJs) are widely considered the premier force in the U.S. military when it comes to rescuing lost service members (in particular, downed U.S. pilots). The PJs are in fact the only DOD force specifically trained to conduct both conventional and unconventional rescue operations. Their primary function is to be personnel recovery specialists.

What differentiates the PJs from other SOF units that also conduct PR missions is both the advanced medical training they receive, as well as the broad range of technical rescue disciplines on which they train. These techniques range from technical extrication of trapped personnel from damaged/wrecked airframes, to rope rescues and water rescues, and everything in between. Therefore, PJs are of special importance when it comes to personnel recovery.

In contrast, a Navy SEAL element, for example, would primarily act as a direct action force in a combat PR mission. Similar to the Lynch and Luttrell rescues, the SEAL element would essentially be assigned to raid a target location, neutralize any on-scene enemies, and effect the rescue of the U.S. service member. Ofte a PJ contingent of one or two personnel will accompany a SEAL or other SOF element on such a raid, to take primary control of the possibly wounded U.S. service member who has just been rescued. The PJs would then be the primary responsible party for treating, packaging, and transporting the patient through the exfiltration process.

The PR mission is a complex and difficult one, and a mission that requires integration across different U.S. military components – both conventional and unconventional – as well as other parts of the larger U.S. government. Diplomacy could be involved, and both intelligence collection and special activities are also almost always required. Few operations will focus the mind in a combat zone like the rescue of missing U.S. personnel. Such missions become an “all hands” effort and are carried out with a sense of purpose and urgency that differentiates them from other more run-of-the-mill operations.

Frumentarius is a former Navy SEAL, former CIA officer, and currently a Captain in a career fire department in the Midwest.

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

Image: U.S. Military/Creative Commons.

Hamas blames Israel, but the Israeli military says it was a failed rocket launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Kyiv scores hits with long-awaited ATACMS system.

Beijing’s “pro-Palestinian neutrality” could help in mediating the conflict.

Whoever bombed a hospital in Gaza broke the laws of war, a top EU official has said, while warning that Middle East violence had raised the terrorism threat in Europe.

As Beijing struggles with a downturn, some experts make a brighter case.

Conflict in the Middle East comes as a long-awaited distraction from Ukraine.

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CONTRE-POINT - La maison LFI est désormais fracturée et le crédit du tribun révolutionnaire s’est effrité dans l’opinion.

DÉCRYPTAGE - Le président de la délégation française au Parlement européen attendait d’être choisi pour prendre la tête de liste des Républicains aux Européennes.

DÉCRYPTAGE - Éric Ciotti, président des Républicains, a dévoilé mardi matin les ambitions de son parti pour le redressement des comptes publics et une relance de l’économie nationale.

La différence d’intensité des réactions de l’Occident à l’invasion de l’Ukraine et aux bombardements israéliens sur Gaza suscite une accusation de « deux poids, deux mesures » de la part des pays du Sud global. Ces protestations risquent de raviver la dichotomie « West vs. the Rest » et de saper la crédibilité des positions géopolitiques adoptées par les puissances occidentales. L’analyse de Pascal Boniface.

 

A Greek, German and British consortium has won the 2023 Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for investigating the Adriana shipwreck, which left over 600 migrants dead off Pylos in Greece.

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

A Greek, German and British consortium has won the 2023 Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for investigating the Adriana shipwreck, which left over 600 migrants dead off Pylos in Greece.

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

La Nupes est-elle en train d'imploser ? Jean-Luc Mélenchon a semblé acter mardi la fin de cette alliance politique. Il accuse le patron des socialistes de l'avoir rompue en affirmant que le leader de la France insoumise ne pouvait plus "être celui qui incarne l'ensemble de la gauche et de l'écologie". Depuis l'attaque du Hamas, Jean-Luc Mélenchon refuse de qualifier le mouvement islamiste de "terroriste".