The National Interest

As the curtains fell on the UN’s annual high-level meetings last week, the world was left with an unsettling message: the international order is crumbling, and no one can agree on what comes next.

The focus of the week—the one time of the year that most of the world’s leaders are all in the same place—was meant to be on urgently accelerating global action on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Yet, against a backdrop of intensifying geopolitical tensions, the war in Ukraine, coups in Africa, the escalating climate crisis and the ongoing pandemic, a different theme emerged: the fracturing and fragmenting of the global order, and the urgent need to reform the United Nations before it’s too late.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s opening address to the UN General Assembly was both a rallying cry and a stark warning: ‘Our world is becoming unhinged. Geopolitical tensions are rising. Global challenges are mounting. And we seem incapable of coming together to respond.’

Describing a world rapidly moving towards multipolarity while lamenting that global governance is ‘stuck in time’, Guterres warned that the world is heading for a ‘great fracture’. Urging the renewal of multilateral institutions based on 21st-century realities, he left no illusions about what will happen if this doesn’t happen: ‘It is reform or rupture.’

Unsurprisingly, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky echoed this in a powerful address to a special UN Security Council high-level open debate later in the week. He warned that the gridlock over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the UN meant that humankind could no longer pin any hopes on it to maintain peace and security. He then called for meaningful reform—including on the use of the veto in the UN Security Council.

It’s a sentiment shared by Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong. In her address to the UN Security Council, she called for urgent reform, including ‘constraints on the use of the veto’. She condemned Russia’s use of its position as a permanent member of the Security Council to veto any action ‘as a flagrant violation of the UN charter’, and later told the media that ‘across many issues, the UN system is falling short of where we want it to be and where the world needs it to be, but what we want to do is to work with others to ensure that the United Nations evolves’.

While the existence of the veto prevents any Security Council action from being taken against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine (or against the other four permanent members), the UN charter more broadly—by design—makes any reform of the UN incredibly difficult and extremely unlikely. And given that US President Joe Biden was the only leader of a P5 country to actually show up to the UN for leaders’ week, it’s not clear that even Western countries like the UK and France are committed to the UN—the bedrock of the international system since World War II.

Where does all this leave a multipolar world teetering on the brink? With the existing order already so divided, how do we reimagine and agree on a global system that can meet the challenges of the 21st century?

After all, if, despite being a blatant breach of international law and the UN charter, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hasn’t caused any meaningful reform to yet take place, what will?

Indeed, the fact that the broader international community is relatively ambivalent about holding Russia to account for its ongoing atrocities in Ukraine is a testament to Russia’s and China’s efforts to dilute multilateral institutions and create an alternative world order that’s more accommodating of autocracies.

Confronted with these dynamics, the international community stands at a pivotal juncture. The decisions made now will determine the trajectory of the global order for decades to come. As Guterres said in his opening address, the international community is presented with a stark choice: reform and rally behind a renewed vision of multilateralism, crafted collaboratively to meet the multifaceted existential challenges of our times; or continue to pursue self-interest above all else, and prepare for a rupture.

By the looks of things, in this rapidly changing landscape marked by division and lack of consensus, we must steel ourselves for what lies ahead: an era of ‘unhinged’ global disorder.

Mercedes Page is a senior fellow at ASPI.

This article was first published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Image: Reuters. 

Western efforts to choke Russia’s oil profits are failing as production cuts agreed with Saudi Arabia push the market price towards US$100 a barrel and Russia’s biggest customers—China and India—start paying close to full market price.

Russia is successfully evading the Western effort to impose a price cap of US$60 a barrel on a large share of its oil sales.

The price cap, devised by US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and in place since December 2022, demands that Western insurance companies only provide coverage of Russian oil shipments if they can be certified as being sold at no more than the upper limit.

The aim was to curb Russia’s profits while allowing its oil to keep flowing to world markets. An absolute ban on Russian oil sales, as the US imposed on Iran and Venezuela, would have sent the global price rocketing and was, in any case, seen to be impractical with such a large supplier as Russia.

Since Western insurance companies covered around 90% of the world’s shipping, it was expected to be successful. The agreement on the price cap binds all European Union and G7 members, except Japan. Australia is also party to the arrangement. Japan secured an exemption, which was recently extended to the middle of next year, because of its extensive involvement in Russia’s Sakhalin-2 oil and liquefied natural gas project, in which Japanese trading companies have invested and which supplies 10% of Japan’s LNG imports.

Estimates by French trade data consultancy Kpler show that, in August, only 24 million barrels of Russian oil were delivered by ships carrying insurance, while no insurance could be identified for tankers carrying 67 million barrels. The share with identifiable insurance has dropped from 47% to 26% since May.

According to energy pricing company Argus Media, Russian oil was selling for US$87 a barrel on 22 September, only a few dollars short of the North Sea benchmark price of US$94, and far above the level set by the cap. Russia had been forced to accept discounts of as much as US$35 a barrel until April this year.

Yellen acknowledged last weekend that the prices being fetched by Russian oil showed the price cap wasn’t working as hoped. ‘It does point to some reduction in the effectiveness of the price cap,’ she said.

‘Russia has spent a great deal of money and time and effort to provide services for the export of its oil. They have added to their shadow fleet, provided more insurance and that kind of trade is not prohibited by the price cap,’ she said.

The ‘shadow fleet’ Yellen referred to is understood to comprise almost 500 tankers, often with obscure ownership and insurance details that can change monthly. Shipments are sometimes made in small tankers and then transferred to larger vessels in the Mediterranean for the journey to Asia.

Lloyds List analyst Michelle Wiese Bockman says prices for nearly all grades of Russian crude oil and refined products are now between 28% and 50% above the G7 price cap. She said a significant portion of Russia’s oil shipments were still using Western insurance, implying they were complying with the cap.

She suggested that false attestation documentation by the Russian sellers could explain how Russia was exceeding the limit. ‘There’s no suggestion sanctions are being breached by those ships, but I can’t see how so many volumes could be compliant. These documents aren’t publicly available, but would be available to regulators upon request. Perhaps enforcement needs to be stepped up to find out how these deals are being structured so they can remain below the cap.’

A Financial Times investigation found that on the Russia-to-India trade, oil was being loaded at Russia’s Baltic ports at a price below the cap, but was arriving in India at prices US$18 a barrel higher, which is about double the freight cost.

Russia’s most potent counter to the Western price cap is the deal it struck with Saudi Arabia 12 months ago to cut oil production, with combined OPEC and Russian output falling by two million barrels a day. The cut was supposed to expire last month, but Saudi Arabia and Russia recently agreed to extend it to the end of the year.

The International Energy Agency, which represents oil-consuming nations, commented, ‘The Saudi–Russian alliance is proving a formidable challenge for oil markets.’ It predicts demand will rise by 1.5 million barrels a day over the remainder of the year, with most of the increase coming from China, and says supplies will run short.

It’s a seller’s market for oil and this favours Russia getting the prices it wants. Shipping is too fragmented an industry—with its flags of convenience, tax-haven ownerships and a multitude of shippers who can operate from a post office box—to be corralled reliably by the G7 price cap, particularly when the biggest buyers of Russian oil—China, India and Turkey—are not parties to it.

Yellen is a formidable economist. She chaired the US Federal Reserve and the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton, and has held significant academic appointments. However, the price cap may have been too clever, overestimating the power of financial regulators to dictate the terms of trade to the oil market.

There have been concerns that Russia may use the tight state of markets to generate a further global energy crisis over the coming northern winter, with suggestions that Russian President Vladimir Putin is keen to make life for US President Joe Biden as uncomfortable as possible in the lead-up to next year’s US election. Russia recently banned the export of diesel and petrol, claiming it faced a domestic shortage, which added to global anxiety about energy supplies.

While an energy crisis may suit Russia, it is not in the interest of Saudi Arabia. The alliance between the two is just one of convenience. The Saudis want to keep the oil price high, but not so elevated that it leads to either a global recession or a fresh surge of US shale oil production. It was only three years ago that a disagreement between Saudi  Arabia and Russia over production cuts in the face of the pandemic descended into an all-out price war which at one point sent the global oil price negative.

David Uren is a senior fellow at ASPI.

This article was first published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Image: Shutterstock.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un met for their second summit last month in the Russian Far East, there was much discussion about the military consequences, including North Korean weapon sales to Moscow, as the war in Ukraine grinds on and a truce remains out of the question.

Since the end of the Cold War, contact between Moscow and Pyongyang has diminished. Still, the relationship between the two countries should be briefly revisited for context—and to understand how we “got here.”

We can perhaps start on October 14, 1945, when a young ethnic Korean man stepped out before a crowd assembled at Kirimri Stadium in Pyongyang. It was here that Kim Il-sung, a former trainee of the Soviet Red Army, was presented to the Koreans as an “outstanding guerrilla leader.” Kim’s appearance drew public skepticism, but the Russians were determined to position the 33-year-old man as their appointee on the Korean peninsula. To get the job done, they launched a relentless propaganda campaign that blurred the line between fiction and reality. To this day, propaganda plays an instrumental role in bringing the North Korean nation to life. Without Soviet propaganda, the current leader’s grandfather may have been relegated to the ash heap of history.

Kim Il-sung died in 1994, but across the decades of his rule, he leveraged the impact of images and their unlimited reproducibility in the modern age to strengthen his grip on power. He called filmmakers and other artists “engineers of the soul.” His son, Kim Jong-il, shared his father’s passion for the moving image. Kim Jong-il regarded cinema as an essential channel for ideological indoctrination. He instructed North Korean writers to “grasp the seed which fires [their] heart with an unquenchable flame.”

As an educated public, we must understand North Korea’s nuclear weapons stand for many things. They are obviously symbols of the nation’s defense policy. Still, given the regime’s historically heavy reliance on visual representation, we also must consider that they are a form of cultural expenditure that’s taking front and center at a time when the state has diminished its role. Increased marketization is generating change—spurring North Korean migration and movement in the twenty-first century.

Judging by the accounts of most North Korean defectors in the South, the state has achieved very little for its people following a widespread and preventable famine. Weapons of mass destruction have surged in significance for the leadership while grassroots changes continue to spread in the country. Unless the North Korean military loses its domestic role as a symbol of regime solidarity or its international role as a source of persuasive spectacle for the outside world, we should not expect any willingness to give up weapons.

As we have observed over the years, it is through the many apparatuses of postmodern globalization, including online platforms, that North Korea does not so much capture its enemies as captivate them. In doing so, the leadership is again successfully blurring the lines between the real and the imaginary.

Elizabeth Shim is an author and former journalist based in New York City and currently a principal at Haven Tower Group, a strategic communications consultancy. Shim’s forthcoming book, North Korea’s Nuclear Cinema: Simulation and Neoliberal Politics in the Two Koreas (Bloomsbury 2024), is the culmination of nearly a decade of journalism. She has reported for United Press International, Associated Press, and South China Morning Post.

Image: Reuters. 

The wages of hubris are dear. Four months into Ukraine’s vaunted counteroffensive—which, at a massive cost in men and materiel, has made minimal territorial gain—support for Kyiv is openly eroding. Frustration flows from the growing economic burden of war and continuing corruption scandals in Ukraine. But it is aggravated by the backlash against the overconfidence and arrogance of the Western, especially American, foreign-policy establishment. For months, skeptical voices were sidelined while the media contrasted Western military-technological prowess with Russian backwardness and disarray. NATO brains would defeat Russian brawn, experts confidently predicted in June, thus making the disillusion and distrust of October all the greater.

Who isn’t aghast at over 20,000 casualties for a gain of 100 sq. miles, evoking the carnage of WWI? Since Russia occupies 40,000 sq. miles of Ukrainian land, the unsustainability of such a campaign is evident. Yet officials in Brussels and Washington insist that Kyiv’s counteroffensive is succeeding, cheering minor advances and illusory breakthroughs. At the same time, a chorus of retired military officers exaggerate Russian weakness and see victory as just one more “game-changing” weapons transfer away. Why haven’t NATO-supplied armaments, including hundreds of modern tanks, worked as expected? Because of minefields and trenches, they lament, neglecting to admit that Russia is fighting fiercely with both tactical and technological prowess—from devious electronic warfare to devastating anti-tank drones. But weren’t we told that Russian technology lagged far behind the West’s? And that Ukraine had an army of drones while Russia’s demoralized draftees were poorly armed, poorly led, and perpetually on the brink of desertion? 

The brutality of war sparks passions—admiration for Ukraine, hatred and derision of Russia—that inflame public debate and impede objective analysis. The latter, by definition, must be dispassionate. If think tanks become partisan and the media act as cheerleaders, then we see only what we want to see. With Ukraine, the cheerleading mirrors that of our Iraq and Afghanistan debacles. As a result, we underestimated the adversary, leading to flawed tactics, failed operations, and now flagging public support. What next? As always, the default choice is escalation—providing Kyiv with more armaments and munitions. But will a few squadrons of F-16s and a few hundred ATACMS be enough to defeat Russia? 

Underestimating Russia

One morning in mid-June, Russian president Vladimir Putin awoke to bad news. In a pre-dawn raid, Ukraine struck the bridge linking Crimea and the Russian mainland. If he had followed U.S. media, Putin would have been truly distressed; experts described how the attack dealt a severe blow to Russia’s war because the bridge was the vital supply line for the front. But while pundits hailed this as a triumph for Kyiv, Putin merely shrugged while predicting Moscow’s victory. Was he in denial, or did he know something crucial about Russian resilience? In fact, notwithstanding initial hyperbole, only road traffic was disrupted while supply trains continued unimpeded. Moreover, Ukraine attacked the same bridge in 2022, and repairs quickly restored full operation despite similar predictions of doom. Indeed, the Crimean Bridge has symbolized Russian resourcefulness in the face of Western scorn for a decade; many initially sneered that Russia lacked the know-how to build Europe’s longest bridge, with some even predicting that it would collapse under its own weight. As such, this sturdy engineering marvel invites us to reconsider our stereotypes. 

“Russia is running out of ammunition.” A Google search of this phrase yields almost ten million hits, as versions of it appeared in Western headlines for a year. CNN, Newsweek, The Economist, Forbes, and Foreign Policy all joined the chorus, echoing assessments from U.S. and UK defense officials. In June 2022, the Washington Post predicted that Russian munitions would soon be depleted and Russia would “exhaust its combat capability” within months. Yet by June of 2023, all of these outlets reported that it was actually Ukraine that was critically low on missiles and artillery. How low? Russia now fires over 10,000 artillery rounds per day, while Ukraine manages just 5,000. It takes the United States weeks to produce what Ukraine expends in a few days, while NATO allies have reached “the bottom of the barrel” in donating their reserves to Kyiv. Meanwhile, Russia is still outproducing the West despite “crippling” sanctions that were supposed to strangle its war effort. Likewise, Russian missiles continued to strike Ukraine a year after reports that production would soon halt because arms manufacturers were reduced to cannibalizing computer chips from home appliances. And still, we scoff at Russia’s claim that it will increase tank production by 1,500 next year—three times the number of Western tanks provided to Ukraine. 

“So what if Russia makes more tanks? Ukraine will just destroy them with missiles and drones.” This follows the narrative of how Kyiv nullifies Russian quantity with superior quality, especially their hi-tech “army of drones.” Thus, we pay scant attention to news that belies this narrative, namely Russia’s adoption of new systems and tactics. Ukraine now loses up to 10,000 drones per month to Russian counter-drone weapons and electronic warfare. Russia also jams GPS signals to sabotage the guidance systems of U.S.-supplied armaments such as JDAM glide bombs and HIMARS artillery. And Russia is deploying a new line of unmanned aerial vehicles, such as the Lancent “kamikaze” drone, that have destroyed or disabled dozens of just-delivered Western tanks and armored vehicles—thereby thwarting the rapid breakthrough that was supposed to follow billions in NATO armor and months of NATO training. 

The Fog of War 

The Ukrainian battlefield is broad, flat farmland criss-crossed by strips of forest. It is covered by extensive air defenses, continually monitored by both Russian and Ukrainian ground and air-based systems, and blanketed by both sides’ surveillance drones. With night-vision capabilities as well, the “fog of war” has finally lifted—at least within a band of fifteen kilometers along the battlefront. Little can move far without being detected, and to be detected is to be targeted—by attack drones, by artillery, by rockets (such as the HIMARS), and by air-to-surface missiles (such as Russia’s LMUR). The Russians experienced this in the war’s first phase, suffering grievous losses as their drive on Kyiv was repulsed. Moscow’s last major advance, capturing the city of Bakhmut in May, came at the cost of tens of thousands of lives. But now Kyiv is suffering as its counteroffensive—meant as a blitzkrieg through Russian lines—instead advances at a bloody crawl. 

It’s true that the Ukrainians and their NATO advisers underestimated the density of Russian minefields. But while mines take a direct toll, they also work indirectly by restricting vehicles to secured routes and narrow paths where they are easier targets for Russian artillery and drones. In June, Russia decimated an entire column of Ukrainian armor—including just-acquired German Leopard tanks and American Bradley infantry fighting vehicles—in a clash on the Zaporizhzhia front. This morale-boosting victory for Moscow saw the site memorialized as “Bradley Square.” The lesson is that any large concentration of armor is quickly detected, and any major convoy of troops is similarly seen and targeted. 

With layers of surveillance, including swarms of drones providing real-time detection and targeting to Russian artillery, a grand Desert Storm-style offensive became impossible. Another problem is Ukraine’s inferiority to Russia in the air and its consequent inability to pave the way for its armor and infantry units by pounding Russian defenses from the skies. Even battalion-sized operations are problematic, much less the brigade-level blitzkriegs that many imagined. Ukrainian activity confines itself to company or platoon-level operations where a few dozen troops, supported by a handful of vehicles, advance stealthily under the cover of forest lines. Backed by drones—and supported by artillery fire—they seek to degrade the enemy enough to storm Russian trenches. 

Clumsy, Cowardly Russians?

Sometimes, they succeed. Sometimes, the Ukrainians are detected early, and the Russians ambush them with artillery fire. Snipers and stormtroopers contest every trench, with deadly drones buzzing above. The Ukrainians press on, their courage under fire reverently detailed in the media. But that of the Russians—also fighting fiercely and taking heavy losses—is nowhere to be seen. After numerous stories about disarray in command and desertion in the ranks, the fact that the Russians are fighting with discipline and cohesion has left those who predicted otherwise silent. The first direct acknowledgment of dogged Russian resistance in major U.S. media came only recently from CNN. This admission did not come from Western experts but from Ukrainian soldiers themselves. Frustrated that their NATO backers had faulted their meager progress, they lamented, “We expected less resistance. They are holding. They have leadership. It is not often you say that about the enemy.” 

Such observations are notably absent in U.S. media. Yet, is the aim of war reporting to celebrate one’s allies? Or is it to present a balanced assessment, regardless of whether the good or bad guys have the upper hand? This partisanship over the prowess of soldiers is also seen in coverage of the weapons they wield. Following the narrative of “Ukrainian brains over Russian brawn,” a succession of upgrades to Kyiv’s arsenal have been touted as wonder weapons. These include HIMARS artillery, Leopard tanks, Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, Storm Shadow missiles, and DPICM cluster munitions—“game changers” all. But these high hopes have been frustrated, in large part because of the weapons the Russians use to counter them. Moscow’s arsenal includes electronic warfare (EW) systems that down Ukrainian drones by the dozens and GPS jamming of U.S.-made HIMARS artillery and JDAM glide bombs. Untested on such a vast scale, their effectiveness has been a nasty surprise. Also unexpected was Russia’s introduction of new systems, such as the Lancet drone, which wreaks havoc on Ukrainian armor thanks to its expanded range, payload, and anti-jamming features. Others include new FAB glide bombs and the improved LMUR missile, whose range puts the helicopters launching it beyond the reach of Ukrainian air defense. These Russian weapons are blunting Ukraine’s advance, yet mainstream analyses rarely mention them. After all, Russia was said to be running out of precision munitions, not developing and deploying new ones. 

Instead of asking why they badly underestimated Russia’s resilience and innovation, the excuse for Kyiv’s failures is that “Moscow had months to prepare defensive lines.” Media experts—often the same ones who predicted rapid progress—now explain why progress could never have been rapid in any case. This is an incomplete and self-serving answer; the Russians clearly excel at building defenses more complex than just minefields and trenches, and proper appreciation of that is essential to analyzing Ukraine’s prospects and possible endpoints for this war. 

The Ever-Imminent “Collapse” of Russia

Many analysts remain bullish on Ukraine’s eventual victory, yet now see it resulting from a Russian collapse—whether of the Russian army or the entire Putin regime. In other words, these military experts base their prognoses not on analysis of military operations per se but on hunches about the perseverance and patriotism of Russian soldiers and citizens. Some, like General Mark Milley, say that the Russians “...lack leadership, they lack will, their morale is poor, and their discipline is eroding.” Others, like ex-CIA Director General David Petraeus, believe that Russian resolve might “crumble” in response to Ukraine’s drone attacks on Moscow. Such strikes “bring the war to the Russian people” and may convince them that, like the USSR’s 1980s quagmire in Afghanistan, today’s war in Ukraine is “ultimately unsustainable.” Even a largely sober analysis by Warographics concludes with a scenario based on hope; a Ukrainian reconquest of Bakhmut could deliver “a devastating psychological blow” perhaps sufficient to cause a Russian collapse. 

Wishful thinking is no basis for policy, nor is there reason to hope that a Ukrainian reconquest of Bakhmut would deliver a “devastating psychological blow” sufficient to cause a Russian collapse.  In fact, such a blow was already absorbed by the Ukrainians, who lost the indispensable cream of their army (to hordes of dispensable Russian criminals-turned-stormtroopers) in the doomed defense of a city that President Zelensky had vowed would not fall.  As seen, Ukrainian soldiers themselves rebut Milley’s claim that Russian forces lack leadership, will, and discipline. Petraeus is correct that Kyiv’s drone strikes unnerve Muscovites, and evidence from Russian social media reveals distress over high casualties. But these have not translated into broad anti-Putin, anti-war attitudes. On the contrary, support for Putin remains strong, and an anti-Western, rally-round-the-flag effect intensifies as Russia finds itself in a proxy war with all of NATO, per Kremlin propaganda. 

Petraeus’ hope that Russia’s elite will reject the Ukraine war as “unsustainable”—as the Soviet elite supposedly did with the Afghan war in the 1980s—is based on a flawed analogy. The old Soviet ruling elite did not see the Afghan war as unsustainable or worry much about public opinion. It took a new leader who prioritized improving ties with the West, China, and the Muslim world—all of whom made leaving Afghanistan a precondition of detente—to start working toward an exit. The point is not that war isn’t costly; the Afghan war was, and the Ukraine war is even more so. Accepting defeat in a major war—especially one that is justified in terms of “vital national interests”—is unlikely until there is both a new leader and elite turnover. For Putin and his political-military elite, the geopolitical implosion that followed Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and other outposts—particularly Central Europe—is precisely why they believe that Russia must stand firm in Ukraine today. 

Putin is Now Weaker/Stronger than Ever

Yet, if the media and its commentators are correct, that leadership transition is coming soon. For months—especially since the abortive June mutiny led by Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin—consensus has reigned on Putin’s weakness and potential ouster. Per one former KGB officer on CNN, Putin’s hold on power is now “almost nonexistent,” and state authority “is in free fall.” Another CNN guest—a top Ukrainian official—agreed about Putin’s waning authority and said, “The power he used to have is just crumbling down.” Further, this hastens Ukrainian victory because it has “greatly affected Russian power on the battlefield.” These predictions were wrong: Putin’s grip is stronger now than before; the mutiny failed to rally support; Wagner has been tamed, and its boss eliminated; and Putin has sidelined officials who echoed Prigozhin’s criticism of him or his top brass. As for the war in Ukraine, Russian resistance has actually stiffened since June. Who was this Ukrainian official who claimed that Putin’s army, like his authority, was “crumbling?” None other than Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. 

With all due respect to Zelensky and his office, a journalist’s duty is to push back against spin and insist on evidence for extravagant claims. Instead, the media meekly accepts arguments from officials—then repeated by commentators and pundits—because they fit our narratives of Putin the loser, of a collapsing Russia, or of Western superiority. In other words, because they feed our hubris. Consider the claim by UK intelligence chief Richard Moore that Putin was compelled to “cut a deal to save his skin.” In fact, it was the opposite. Prigozhin—to temporarily save his own skin since he faced summary execution for treason—was forced to accept Putin’s terms. Ridiculing Putin as the one who backed down in fear for his life has little to do with intelligence. It plays well in the moment, but people eventually notice the accumulation of flawed assessments and failed predictions. 

When the Going Gets Tough…Spin? 

This helps explain a recent poll showing that a majority of Americans now oppose more military aid to Ukraine. Here, they join EU countries where majorities already believed—even before Ukraine’s recent failures—that sending more weapons only prolongs an unwinnable war and delays negotiations for peace. The polls cannot tell exactly what measure of concerns lie behind such opinions—be it general “Ukraine fatigue,” loss of faith in Kyiv’s chances of victory, concern at the heavy burden borne by taxpayers, distress at the news of Ukrainian corruption, or alarm at the cost of assimilating millions of Ukrainian refugees. Yet underlying all is a broader loss of faith in their leaders and the NATO-EU elite still promising to fight for “as long as it takes” to achieve “decisive victory.” 

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken recently defended Ukraine’s counteroffensive by arguing that, thanks to last year’s campaign, “They (Russia) have already lost,” and “(Ukraine) has already taken back about 50 percent of what was initially seized.” Yet the entire point of this year’s campaign is to retake the other 50 percent. Similar spin comes from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a highly regarded think tank but one whose pro-Ukrainian partisanship complicates its objectivity. ISW claimed that Ukraine regained more territory in under six weeks than Russia in the previous six months. Instead of assessing Kyiv’s campaign by its stated objective—a rapid thrust to sever Russia’s land bridge with Crimea—ISW relativizes its failures by comparing them with Russia’s. But even this doesn’t convince because Russia’s recent gains refer to the conquest of Bakhmut, a large and heavily fortified city (prewar population 73,000). By contrast, Ukraine’s recent gains consist of open fields and small villages like Robotnye (prewar population: 500). 

Maintaining public support for the war is tougher than in the early 2000s following the 9/11 attacks. The sense of outrage and the White House’s pledges of quick and remorseless victory convinced many to back ill-fated ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not only is the “hubris and mendacity” of those recent debacles still fresh in the public mind, but today, we have many more sources of critical information—from expert journals and websites to specialized analysts offering detailed, current information and independent critiques on the conflict. They subject the claims of our political-military leaders to close scrutiny, and unless there is a sharp reversal of fortunes in Ukraine, that scrutiny will be harsh.

Preparing for the Horrors Ahead

But is a sharp reversal of fortunes likely? After so many failed forecasts, many now doubt the assurances of Washington, Brussels, and Kyiv. And it’s not just the quantity of failed predictions that diminish faith in a Russian collapse. It’s also their quality, or the way those predictions have failed, that raises doubt about their authors’ insights into the system about which they prognosticate. Analysts who foresaw that economic sanctions would cripple Russia’s war effort have had to admit that they misunderstood key aspects of Russia’s economic resourcefulness. Others underestimated Russia’s military resilience—as detailed above—due to flawed assumptions about Russian ineptitude or Western military-technological superiority. 

Some fall victim to confirmation bias—finding evidence of Russian weakness because their assumptions told them to seek it. When attention focuses on disorganization and dissent in the Russian army—trumpeting incidents of soldiers’ and officers’ complaints, even desertion—it suggests imminent collapse. But how many Russian soldiers and officers are not complaining, and how common is disorganization or dissent in the Ukrainian military? And where is the analysis of why regular soldiers spurned the Wagner mutiny? A related problem is that of selective coverage. Among many examples was recent media coverage of Moscow’s “desperation” in seeking an arms deal with North Korea. Yet they simultaneously ignored signs of “desperation” in Kyiv, such as lowering fitness standards for military service or seeking to deport back to Ukraine men who are ducking conscription in countries of the EU. 

Ukraine could be closer to collapse than Russia. There may indeed be an “asymmetrical attrition gradient”—another way of saying that Russia is taking more casualties than Ukraine—but even some Kyiv officials admit that Russia can sustain them better than Ukraine. By late autumn, when weather slows the fighting and campaigns usually end, Ukraine may have clawed back another 100 sq. miles—but at what cost? Looking to 2024, Russia will draw on a manpower base far larger than Ukraine’s. Ukraine will receive more NATO missiles, but they are unlikely to “change the game” any more than HIMARS and Storm Shadows did before them. Kyiv will also receive a few dozen F-16 fighters, but their hastily trained pilots—confronting a dense and sophisticated belt of air defenses—may suffer severe losses with no major impact on the war. 

Faced with an asymmetrical armaments gradient—the inability or unwillingness of NATO states to continue providing Ukraine with sufficient munitions to keep pace with Russia—Ukraine will seek to change the equation. This means more drone strikes on Moscow and other Russian cities, raids on Russian border towns, and a ferocious battle over Crimea. Ukraine will expand attacks on Russia’s Black Sea ships and ports, perhaps finally destroying the Crimean Bridge. And Russia will do likewise, improving its drone and missile force (including reverse engineering of captured NATO weapons) to hit airfields, railroads, ports, and other infrastructure harder than ever. Civilian casualties will soar, as will the danger of chemical or nuclear “accidents.” 

Cheerleading that “Ukraine must win decisively, and with superior NATO armaments, it surely will” supports neither sensible military strategy nor responsible policy debate. Those who argue thus recall Britain’s WWII leader, Winston Churchill, who stiffened a nation’s resolve through its darkest hour and led it to triumph. Rarely do they recall Britain’s WWI commander Douglas Haig, whose insistence that Germany would collapse if only the Allies mounted just one more offensive ultimately prolonged a grueling war of attrition at the cost of a million lives. Hubris is not only our enemy but Ukraine’s too.

Robert English, a former Pentagon policy analyst, is the Director of Central European Studies at the University of Southern California. He is the author of various works on the Cold War’s end and aftermath, including Russia and the Idea of the West.

Image: Reuters.

Lasers may be the cure for whatever ails you in science fiction, but if America is looking for a real solution to the myriad problems posed by modern hypersonic weapons, lasers – or directed energy weapons – won’t be able to provide the magic bullet that we’re looking for.

Modern hypersonic missiles, which combine flying at speeds in excess of Mach 5 with the ability to change course unpredictably, pose a unique challenge for even today’s most advanced integrated air defense systems. While the air defense enterprise is an incredibly complex one, the job itself is somewhat simple: Air defense systems identify and track inbound weapons using sensors, like radar, and then use computers to calculate the remainder of the weapon’s inbound flight path. With its course determined, air defense systems, like America’s MIM-104 Patriot, then launch a missile of their own, known as an interceptor, to fly toward a point further along the inbound weapon’s flight path to intercept it.

It’s the same basic principle as a quarterback leading a receiver: you don’t throw the ball to where the receiver is, but rather, to where the receiver will be by the time the ball gets there.

This approach to missile defense has proven very effective against ballistic missiles, which do travel at hypersonic speeds, but along a fairly predictable ballistic flight path. Cruise missiles pose a different type of risk, as they fly at much lower altitudes under power, more like an aircraft or suicide drone, which makes them less predictable. However, because of their lower relative speeds, air defense systems are often capable of intercepting cruise missiles using the same sort of arithmetic.

But modern hypersonic missiles complicate matters a great deal. Rather than achieving hypersonic speeds by flying along a predictable ballistic flight path, hypersonic boost-glide weapons and hypersonic cruise missiles both change course unpredictably while flying at these extreme speeds. As a result, an air defense system’s calculations to predict the remainder of the weapon’s flight path are rendered more or less moot, and because of their high closing speed, there’s little to no time left to attempt a recalculation to launch another interceptor.

The solution to this problem may be directed energy weapons or lasers. Rather than launching a missile to close with a target at supersonic speeds, lasers travel at the speed of light, and while a Patriot launch station may only carry four interceptors… you don’t run out of lasers unless you run out of energy.

In theory, it’s a perfect solution. But in practice… things get more complicated.

THE CURRENT STATE OF LASERS IN THE US MILITARY

While massive and powerful chemical lasers were all the rage in the 1980s, in recent years, the vast majority of developmental efforts have been focused on the comparably smaller, safer, and less powerful solid-state laser approach.

Chemical lasers work by sending an electric current through a gas to generate light through a process known as population inversion. In other words, operating a chemical laser means toting a bunch of hazardous chemicals around with you and adding size, weight, and danger to operators. 

Solid-state lasers, on the other hand, use a solid crystalline material, rather than a gas or liquid, as the “lasing medium.” This makes them far smaller and far safer to operate – but until fairly recently, they were simply unable to produce enough consistent power for weapons applications. 

Today, solid-state lasers are an increasingly promising technology, with numerous developmental efforts ongoing and a number of laser systems already deployed on U.S. Navy vessels.

The U.S. Navy first installed a laser on one of its warships in 2014 in the 33-kilowatt AN/SEQ-3 Laser Weapon System (LaWS), with the stronger 60-kilowatt HELIOS, or High-Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance system, following in 2019. The Navy believes HELIOS will eventually be able to output as much as 150 kilowatts. It wants to begin testing the 300-kW HELCAP, short for High Energy Laser Counter Anti-ship Cruise missile Program, next year. 

In September of last year, Lockheed Martin delivered the most powerful tactical laser fielded to date, the 300-kW-class Indirect Fires Protection Capability-High Energy Laser (IFPC-HEL), to the U.S. Army. This system delivers only about 1/3 of the power output provided by the massive MIRACL from the 1980s, but is compact enough to be carried by a single truck or inside the fuselage of a variety of aircraft.

In late July, Lockheed Martin announced plans to field a 500kW-class laser which will offer a number of new defense possibilities but will still fall well short of being able to stop an inbound hypersonic missile.

THE BIG PROBLEMS WITH USING LASERS TO SHOOT DOWN HYPERSONIC MISSILES

While lasers are already becoming extremely useful close-range weapons and air defense systems, there are several serious technological limitations that prevent them from being used to take down incoming hypersonic, or even ballistic, missiles.

According to Pentagon assessments, power output is the first limiting factor. While a clear consensus on power requirements for different types of targets doesn’t exist, the DoD does have a general rule of thumb for the power output by a system and its potential applications:

• 100kW-Range Weapons: Can engage unmanned aircraft, small boats, rockets, artillery, or mortars
• 300kW-Range Weapons: Can engage the side of a cruise missile fuselage to destroy it or knock it off course
• 1MW (1,000kW)-Range Weapons: Can engage ballistic or hypersonic missiles, but may be limited to burning through the side of the fuselage

As you can tell by looking at those figures, the systems currently deployed on U.S. Navy ships can engage slow-moving drones and even small boats by concentrating a laser beam on the target for an extended period of time and eventually burning through them to damage internal systems. The more powerful 300kW IFPC-HEL and HELCAP, on the other hand, are powerful enough to burn through the side of a cruise missile in flight to destroy it or send it off course, but again, in order to do so, they must keep the beam pointed at the exact same spot on the fuselage as the missile flies by. In 2020, it took 15 seconds of sustained fire from a 150kW-class weapon to destroy an airborne drone.

This approach, some contend, could be easily countered by designing missiles to roll during their flight path, making it impossible to focus the beam on one singular point.

In order to stop a hypersonic missile from reaching its target, the DoD estimates that they’d need at least a 1 megawatt (or 1,000 kilowatt) laser. That’s more than three times the power output of today’s most advanced tactical laser system… but even such a laser would likely struggle to burn through the nosecone of a hypersonic missile. After all, these weapons are designed to withstand temperatures in excess of 1,700 degrees. 

And as the Navy has pointed out, it’s cheaper to build missiles with more heat shielding than it is to field lasers with more power output – so as laser defenses become more commonplace, missiles will almost certainly be better shielded and thus, less susceptible to laser engagement. 

Line of Sight

Unlike interceptors, which can be launched at targets identified beyond the horizon, the very nature of lasers limits them to line of sight. This presents problems when the laser needs time to burn through a target. Hypersonic weapons like China’s DF-ZF may be traveling at 2 miles per second or even faster, meaning there would be precious little time to actually destroy the weapon by the time it appeared in the lasers’ line of sight. 

Atmospheric Scattering

We tend to think of lasers as a thin beam of energy that continues onward forever, but that’s really not the case at all. Water vapor, sand, salt, smoke, air pollution, and other substances found in the atmosphere can all have a scattering effect on laser beams. This atmospheric turbulence is a serious problem – to the point where the Pentagon currently sees lasers as a viable weapon system only at ranges of less than a mile. And even optimistic projections for the near future still only think lasers will be viable at ranges of less than five miles. 

Again, when we’re talking about countering a missile that’s designed to manage heat and traveling at more than 2 miles per second, this leaves almost no time for intercept. 

Thermal Blooming

As a laser continues to fire in the exact same direction for an extended period, it heats up the air it passes through, which ultimately defocuses the laser beam. This isn’t a real issue when engaging a missile from the side or at an angle as the missile flies through the sky, but it becomes a huge problem with engaging a missile that’s flying straight at you. 

As a result, lasers will not be an effective means of self-defense until the amount of power they produce is so immense that they can destroy a target in a split second. 

Beam control

Of course, thermal blooming is only a problem if you can keep your laser pointed in the same direction while riding a warship moving at high speeds on the open ocean. In order to be effective, a laser needs to stay focused on a single point on the target as it heats up and burns through it – and there are multiple programs aimed at doing just that like Position Sensing Devices (PSD), Fiber Optic Gyros (FOG), Fast Steering Mirrors (FSM). However, as of 2018, Deputy Director of the Missile Defense Agency Jon Hill stated in no uncertain terms all of these efforts were still working with margins “thousands of times wider” than those required for missile defense. 

HOW LASERS REALLY CAN AID IN THE MISSILE DEFENSE EFFORT

Technology has advanced so rapidly throughout the 20th and 21st centuries that it seems irresponsible to ever count a concept out. Overcoming engineering challenges is, more often than not, simply a question of time, resources, and investment – and the U.S. Defense Department is exceedingly good at giving contractors at least two of those things. But, from where laser technology sits today, it has far more likely applications as a supplement to close-range defenses like the close-in weapon system (CIWS) than it does for taking down hypersonic missiles. 

However, that doesn’t mean lasers don’t offer a significant (and growing) benefit to defense. Eventually, high-powered lasers will likely exceed the capabilities of systems like the 20mm CIWS, reducing the costs associated with close-in defense and offering a wide variety of new applications for close-in defensive systems. (Because laser power can be adjusted, such systems would even allow for more escalating options in limited engagements). Over time, the range of these systems will likely grow to many miles and they’ll be incorporated into other systems to supplement targeting data for battle networks and more. 

But, at the end of the day, lasers in the real world are limited by physics in ways they never were in the science fiction we’ve grown up with. Will lasers ever become the all-purpose solution they’re often perceived to be? Maybe… but I wouldn’t bet against kinetic options any time soon.

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

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

Someone has some explaining to do at the U.S. Embassy in Türkiye. Maybe it was US Ambassador Jeffry L. Flake, or perhaps it was just some lowly consular official. Either way, someone in the State Department issued a visa to Ersin Tatar, the separatist leader of the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” (TRNC), the puppet regime that the Turkish General Staff and Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization established following Turkey’s 1974 invasion of the island. Tatar, who styles himself president but in reality acts as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s governor on Cyprus, used a Turkish passport to attend the UN General Assembly. 

This raises a number of questions:

If the United States does not recognize occupied Cyprus as a second country and, indeed, believes its pretensions of statehood threaten the peace, why did it issue its leader the visa on a Turkish passport?

More specifically, since the Republic of Cyprus allows Turkish Cypriots to obtain passports, why should the United States issue any Cypriot a visa on anything other than a Republic of Cyprus passport?

While the State Department is obliged to issue visas to leaders from countries like Cuba and Iran, “The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” is no more legitimate than Luhansk and Donetsk, the two states Russia carved out of Ukrainian territory. By enabling Tatar entrance to the United States, the State Department is bestowing legitimacy on a colonial project that deserves no such courtesy. Put another way, if Sergey Kozlov, the prime minister of the Luhansk People’s Republic, wished to attend the UN General Assembly, would the US Ambassador in Moscow issue him a visa on a Russian passport or instead demand he present a Ukrainian passport since, after all, Luhansk is part of Ukraine?

If the State Department owes Cyprus an apology, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres owes far more, for Guterres’ interactions at the UN General Assembly betrayed Cyprus and undermined peace. 

One month before Guterres hosted Tatar, the Turkish Cypriot leader’s militias attacked UN peacekeepers in the worst incident in years. Several UN peacekeepers still recover from injuries sustained when Tatar’s forces beat them and rammed UN vehicles with bulldozers. For Guterres to meet with a man who sought to leverage violence against the United Nations for political gain was poor judgment. There would have been merit in Guterres telling off Tatar, but he did no such thing. Perhaps misguided etiquette trumps the protection of men and women who serve the UN as peacekeepers.

Guterres further enabled his own humiliation. 

Returning to the Turkish-occupied airport in northern Cyprus from his meetings in New York (and shopping in its luxury boutiques), Tatar bragged about putting Guterres in his place. “I told [UN Secretary-General Antonio] Guterres that we are very opposed to the appointment of the special representative to implement Security Council decisions, to make reports, and to impose a federal solution onto us,” he said. His press conference apparently substituted for any official response.

It gets worse: While Guterres made time for Tatar, the Turkish delegation at the last minute shuffled their date cards. Instead of Guterres meeting Erdogan, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan came in his place. In effect, Erdogan signaled to his supporters that he was too important for the Secretary-General and stood above Tatar and Guterres. Perhaps such symbolism matters little in Guterres’ home state of Portugal, but they resonate in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. To complete the coup de grâce, Erdogan then proceeded to slam the United Nations’ mediation on the island. “The realities of the island are obvious and the TRNC [Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus] is the most concrete reality of Cyprus,” Erdogan declared.

Guterres may not be an exceptionally talented secretary-general, but State Department negligence compounded the problem and enabled Erdogan to both empower himself and bolster Tatar before the cameras. Erdogan’s proxies do not deserve such respect or the trappings of legitimacy. They certainly do not deserve visas. If Ambassador Flake will not explain how and why Tatar got through, it is time for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to compel Secretary of State Antony Blinken to do so.

Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he specializes in Iran, Turkey, and the broader Middle East.

Image: Shutterstock.

Picking five of the many excellent service rifles the United States military used was tough. There are so many excellent firearms that the U.S. military has used throughout its history. But the five choices that made this list are both excellent and revolutionary weapons.

I hope you enjoy what I think are the five best service rifles the United States has ever fielded in some capacity.

THE KENTUCKY LONG RIFLE

This rifle existed before the United States did, but it served with the Continental Army in the American Revolution. The Kentucky Long Rifle, also known as the Pennsylvania rifle or American Long Rifle, is a muzzle-loading weapon with a fairly long barrel that shot a relatively small caliber.

German gunsmiths brought rifling to the United States and began producing these rifles for hunters and frontiersmen. The rifling made them accurate, and the long barrels allowed their lead balls to fly at higher speeds. The smaller caliber was an unusual but clever choice. Hunters and frontiersmen went into the wild on foot and having smaller bullets meant they could carry more of them.

These accurate rifles allowed soldiers to hit the enemy from greater distances and the smaller projectiles meant they carried more ammo into battle. These service rifles were not general issue rifles but were often brought by members of militias. Occasionally, whole outfits carried rifles, and these outfits were pivotal in the Battle of Saratoga, the Battle of Cowpens, and the Battle of New Orleans.

M1861 SPRINGFIELD

In the midst of the Civil War, the Union troops were armed with one of the finest rifle muskets ever made, the Springfield Model 1861. This large .58 caliber rifled musket utilized a Minie ball, which allowed for the general issue of rifled muskets over smoothbore muskets. The M1861 was the first general-issue rifled firearm. It had a 40-inch barrel and weighed nine pounds, which was not too heavy, especially for that era.

The Model 1861 wasn’t necessarily revolutionary as far as service rifles go but was more a culmination of good ideas developed over decades of rifled muskets. One of the rifle’s biggest advantages was that it was soldier-proof: Its sights were simple, with settings for 100, 300, and 500 yards, and could be used quickly and easily by the masses of conscripts.

The Springfield offered a very robust and reliable rifle with excellent accuracy. Well-trained troops could fire three shots a minute on targets out to 500 yards. The rifle was so robust and stout that it would become the basis for the next generation of both rifled muskets and breach-loading cartridge rifles.

THE HENRY RIFLE

The Civil War also saw the Union troops wielding the Henry Rifle. The Henry Rifle is a lever-action firearm and the first practical and successful repeating rifle. These rifles were issued by the Union forces in small numbers and for special assignments as they were too expensive to be issued en masse compared to a rifled musket and ball. They also had a relatively low effective range compared to a proper rifle.

Union soldiers used these rifles in small numbers and some soldiers even purchased their own. The Henry Rifles found themselves in the hands of scouts, skirmishers, flank guards, and raiding parties as these men had to be quick and nimble.

The key to the rifle’s success was its use of brass cartridges. The lever-action rifle held 16 rounds which allowed a soldier to fire it quickly. One Henry Rifle provided the firepower of a squad of muskets. It became such a fearsome weapon that one Confederate exclaimed, “that damned Yankee rifle that they load on Sunday and shoot all week!”

M1 GARAND

The years between the Civil War and World War II saw a number of revolutionary weapons, but in hindsight, they lost out to the M1 Garand. The M1 Garand was the first time the United States ever issued semi-auto service rifles to the bulk of the armed forces. At that time, the world carried bolt-action rifles, but the Americans made an impressive leap forward with the M1 Garand. Other countries struggled to keep up and produce their own autoloading battle rifles.

This .30-06 autoloader used a gas-operating system and integral magazine fed by En Bloc clips. It gave riflemen eight rounds of firepower and an effective range of 500 yards with standard iron sights. The impact of the shoulder-fired, man-portable rifle was immediate in World War II. It was extremely capable, and the higher rate of fire proved important for infantry fighting forces.

The M1 Garand would go on to also serve as a sniper rifle and would arm forces until after the Korean War. General Patton once called the M1 Garand “the greatest battle implement ever devised.”

M16

Last but not least is the M16. The M16 was a weapon the Army wanted to hate and nearly sabotaged during its trial by fire in Vietnam. The goal of its predecessor, the M14, was to replace the BAR, the Grease Gun, and M1 Garand all at once. However, it spectacularly failed to do so. The M16, on the other hand, proved to be light, easily controlled, and well-suited for tight jungle warfare.

The platform proved modular and, over the decades, evolved alongside technology. Some evolutions, like the A2 variant, weren’t great, but most were excellent, and rifles like the M4 and Mk 12 have been derived from it. The M16 served from Vietnam into Afghanistan and only now seems to be on the way out. Even so, it will likely serve for decades more in the hands of various forces around the world.

Generations of young men and women have carried one in every clime and place you can bring a gun. It’s a fantastic rifle and will likely go down in history as one of the greatest rifles of all time.

I’ve expressed what I think are America’s best service rifles, but what say you, fine folks? We all have opinions, and I’d love to hear yours below! Tell us what you think America’s best rifles are. Do you think the M27 or XM5 will join the list one day?

Travis Pike is a former Marine Machine gunner who served with 2nd Bn 2nd Marines for 5 years. He deployed in 2009 to Afghanistan and again in 2011 with the 22nd MEU(SOC) during a record-setting 11 months at sea. He’s trained with the Romanian Army, the Spanish Marines, the Emirate Marines, and the Afghan National Army. He serves as an NRA certified pistol instructor and teaches concealed carry classes.

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

Image: Shutterstock.

With the world slowly gathering speed again to the pre-COVID pace, 2023 is proving to be a year of fast-paced changes in world politics as leaders regain the momentum for face-to-face meetings, including Kim Jong-un. Leaders met and produced joint statements, marking the beginning of a possible epochal shift in the regional security order that could lock in North Korea’s current security outlook. South Korea and Japan agreed to move on from historical issues in March. Subsequently, Japan, South Korea, and the US proclaimed the beginning of a new chapter of trilateral relations as they performed their friendship at the Camp David Summit in August, marking the beginning of new (or renewed) tensions as China accused the trio of starting a “new” Cold War. The other “camp” of the new Cold War—China, Russia, and North Korea—has also put on their performance of comradeship, beginning with North Korea’s hosting of a Chinese delegation in commemoration of the end of the Korean War in July to the recent summit between Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin.

North Korea also “normalized” its missile launches and tests but at a quicker pace—its missile test frequency in 2022 hit more than 70, making 2022 the year of greatest frequency. The DPRK strives to perfect its missile delivery capabilities in 2023 by conducting strategic cruise missile tests and launching a solid-fueled ICBM in July. Some of these tests and launches are purportedly in response to US-South Korea’s military exercises, which have been conducted in response to North Korea’s missile tests and launches, resulting in a tit-for-tat, action-reaction. However, this tit-for-tat pattern alone does not indicate North Korea will not give up its nuclear weapons.

A more pertinent indicator of North Korea’s unwillingness to relinquish its nuclear weapons is the domestic institutionalization of its nuclear power status, as reflected in two recent moves.

First, Kim Jong Un formally introduced his daughter, Kim Ju Ae, to the world in November 2022 as they visited a missile test launch site. Whether she is his successor is uncertain, given that the North Korean leader allegedly has an older child. What matters is that her public appearance is not only propaganda but is part of Chairman Kim’s effort to pass down the “family-institutional” memory of the Kim regime and the centrality of nuclear weapons and missiles to its longevity. By educating his daughter on North Korea’s achievements, Kim may hope his efforts and those of his ancestors to achieve nuclear power status live on with his children.

Second, in September, North Korea enshrined its nuclear power status in its constitution, further institutionalizing its nuclear state status proclaimed in 2013. Kim justified the institutionalization by securitizing the trilateral military cooperation between Japan, South Korea, and the United States, calling it the “worst actual threat.” This comes after institutionalizing the use of nuclear weapons for preemptive purposes last year. With the enshrinement and gradual elevation of its self-recognition would come North Korea’s demands for international recognition of its nuclear power, not its nuclear weapons.

All these recent movements do not negate the efforts to re-engage North Korea. The nuclear anxiety of 2017 dissipated with efforts to thaw in 2018–2019. During this period of liminality, North Korea flirted with the idea of denuclearization and diplomatic normalization with the United States, leaving the world holding its breath at the crossroads between peace and a nuclear war. The world was close to a relatively more peaceful era. A return to this liminal period remains possible, as 2017 has proven. But as the clock ticks, the bar for getting North Korea to start a dialogue will only rise.

Minseon Ku is a Rosenwald postdoctoral fellow at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College.

Image: Reuters.

Ukrainian fighter pilots are now training to operate F-16s provided by a growing list of Western partners. The F-16 jet promises to offer the embattled nation a significant increase in combat capability.

Perhaps the biggest benefit the F-16 can offer Ukraine (beyond bolstering airframe numbers) is in the suppression or destruction of enemy air defenses (SEAD/DEAD).

The nimble F-16 has proven extremely effective in this role for the United States since absorbing it from the F-4G Wild Weasel. American F-16s tasked with SEAD/DEAD missions often have specialized equipment to coincide with the specialized training pilots flying these missions receive. Even the somewhat dated F-16s heading for Ukraine will immediately offer a significant boost in SEAD capability.

Ukrainian forces have been leveraging America’s AGM-88 High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM) since August of 2022 or earlier, but because these weapons are being deployed by dated Soviet jets that were never intended to use them, their utility has been dramatically limited. 

Anti-radiation missiles like the HARM work by honing on the electromagnetic radiation broadcast by radar arrays – in other words, radar waves – making them uniquely suited for the SEAD role. American Wild Weasel pilots often fly their aircraft into contested airspace, waiting for enemy air defense systems to power up in an attempt to target them or their wingmen. Once the air defense systems are broadcasting radar waves, Wild Weasel pilots launch their HARM missiles to hone in on those radar waves and destroy the air defense equipment. 

It’s important to understand that there are several iterations of the HARM missile, each with a few unique capabilities and limitations, so for the most part, we’ll have to speak in generalities about how the new modes available with the F-16 could affect the SEAD mission. 

Ukraine’s Soviet-era fighters are only able to leverage the HARM missile in what many call the “pre-briefed” mode. In effect, the missile is pre-programmed with a target area and then launched by an aircraft, often at a fairly long distance. The missile flies toward its intended target area, using its seeker to look for any air defense systems powering up and broadcasting radar waves for it to then close with and destroy. 

This method can be very effective, especially when launching these missiles in volume, as even if they don’t ultimately destroy enemy radar sites, their presence alone will often prompt air defense crews to power down their arrays. This effectively amounts to suppression of air defenses, as those powered-down arrays allow aircraft to operate inside the contested area for a short time. However, once the HARM threat has passed, these arrays can power back up and begin hunting for Ukrainian jets all over again. 

However, if operated by an aircraft carrying NATO-standard busses that allow pilots to leverage their full capability set, HARMs have two more operational modes that can be very handy in a fight, “self-protect” mode and “target of opportunity” mode. In self-protect mode, the aircraft’s onboard radar warning receiver identifies an enemy radar array that’s broadcasting. It then passes that target data over to the HARM, which can hone in on either the broadcasting radar or the specific location that waves were coming from in the event the enemy powers the system down. The target of opportunity mode is similar but allows the AGM-88’s onboard seeker to spot enemy radar arrays powering up, which then alerts the pilot to launch the weapon. 

These additional modes will provide Ukrainian F-16 pilots with more options for the suppression or destruction of enemy air defense operations, effectively allowing for a larger emphasis on the destruction of these assets than their suppression. And because these MLU F-16s are equipped with AN/ALR-69A(V) Radar Warning Receivers, they will be much better suited to avoid incoming missiles than Ukraine’s current jets.

Editor’s Note: A version of this article was previously published as part of an in-depth analysis of the utility of F-16 jets for Ukraine.

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

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

Image: Shutterstock.

A little over 19 months ago, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in what would be the largest conflict on European soil since the end of World War Two. 

Considered to be one of the strongest forces in the world at the time, the Russian military invaded with more than 200,000 men and thousands of heavy weapon systems. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin advisers – and many analysts in the West – expected a quick in-and-out campaign that would last from three days to a couple of weeks. Indeed, the Russian military and intelligence leadership were more concerned about a potential Ukrainian insurgency rather than the Ukrainian military. 

The Ukrainians have fought admirably against all odds. Moscow’s blatant aggression and Kyiv’s success in first stopping and then pushing back the Russian forces motivated the West to help. 

Since the full-scale invasion began on February 24, 2022, an international coalition comprised of dozens of countries has provided equipment worth tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine. The United States has led that effort with almost $45 billion and more than 70 different types of weapon systems and munitions. 

TANKS, ARTILLERY GUNS, DRONES, AND LOTS OF BULLETS 

U.S. security assistance to Ukraine can be broken down into seven major categories: Air Defense, Fires, Ground Maneuver, Aircraft and Drones, Anti-Armor and Small Arms, Maritime, and Miscellaneous and Support Capabilities. 

Some of the weapon systems that have made the difference in the war include the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), MIM-104 Patriot air defense systems, National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS), M-777 155mm howitzers, M-109 Paladin 155mm self-propelled howitzers, M982 Excalibur precision-strike 155mm munitions, Remote Anti-Armor Mine (RAAM) 155mm munitions, M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles, M113 Armored Personnel Carriers, Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles (MRAPs), M1117 Stryker Armored Security Vehicles, T-72 main battle tanks, Mi-17 helicopters, FIM-92 Stinger anti-aircraft weapons, FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missiles, Switchblade loitering munitions, Phoenix Ghost suicide drones, High-speed Anti-radiation missiles, Tube-Launched, Optically-Tracked, Wire-Guided (TOW), and AT-4 anti-tank weapons. 

These are some interesting facts regarding U.S. military assistance to Ukraine: In total, the U.S. alone has provided Ukraine with an astounding 300 million small arms ammunition and grenades. Moreover, the Pentagon has sent almost 100,000 anti-tank weapons to Kyiv, reflecting the mechanized nature of the conflict. In September, Kyiv received its first M1A1 SA Abrams main battle tanks from a package of 31 armored vehicles. The U.S. provided the funds for the Czech Republic to refurbish and upgrade 45 T-72B Soviet-made tanks and send them to Ukraine. In addition, the U.S. has furnished the Ukrainian forces with more than 3,5 million artillery, rockets, and mortar rounds. 

U.S. military assistance to Ukraine has been coming from two sources: Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) and the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI). The former allows the Pentagon to draw weapon systems and munitions from its stocks, whereas the latter provides the funds so the Pentagon can go out to the industry and purchase new equipment and munitions for the Ukrainian military. 

Both programs have pros and cons. Through the PDA, the U.S. can send Ukraine weapon systems and munitions very quickly – sometimes in only a few days – but it can only send so much before it endangers the military’s readiness and deterrence. 

On the other hand, through the USAI, the U.S. can buy new, advanced weapon systems for Ukraine that will ensure a technological and, thus, qualitative advantage over Russia for years to come. However, the downside is that those weapons and munitions often take months and years to be delivered. 

The U.S. has been balancing the two programs, ensuring with more PDA packages that Ukraine has the necessary weapons to fight now but also foreseeing future needs with fewer but well-placed USAI packages. 

MORE IS NEEDED 

And yet, despite the astounding security aid that Ukraine has received from the U.S. and the rest of the West, Kyiv needs more to win and liberate the whole of the country from the Russian occupation.

Recently, the White House indicated that the Ukrainian military will finally receive MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS). Fired by the M142 HIMARS and with a maximum range of almost 200 miles, the ATACMS will bring all the Russian forces within Ukraine within range. Ukraine will also receive F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter jets from the Netherlands and Denmark. The U.S.-made aircraft will help the Ukrainian Air Force to establish air superiority over the battlefield, something that neither side has managed to do in almost two years of conflict.

With no end in sight, the Ukrainian military will need a steady supply of the weapons and munitions that have allowed it to stop the Russian forces in their tracks and push them back. However, for the Ukrainians to win the war, the U.S. and the West should ensure that Kyiv has the advanced capabilities necessary to prevail.

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned defense journalist specializing in special operations and national security. He is a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ). He holds a BA from the Johns Hopkins University, an MA from the Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and is pursuing a J.D. at Boston College Law School.

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

Image: Shutterstock.

Concerning North Korea's nuclear weapons program, the interesting question is, what would be the circumstances in which Pyongyang would consider surrendering its nuclear deterrent? The context is clear. Kim Jong-un faces two potential threats to the survival of his regime—internal and external. Kim sees the need to defend against both, and any way forward must help him achieve both goals. To neutralize the first, Kim needs to look after the people that matter. These are the roughly 3 million people living in the capital. Over his decade in power, he has privileged Pyongyang to an excessive degree, stretching wide the economic gap between town and country. A massive building program has delivered tens of thousands of new apartments and leisure facilities to the inhabitants. The funfairs, restaurants, leisure, and sports facilities in the capital are twinned with the Masik ski resort, the beaches of Wonsan, and Mount Kumgang’s package tours to deliver outside what is practically unavailable at home. At the same time, the markets are well stocked for those with the money to pay. The very success of this gambit is demonstrated by the recent decision to strengthen controls around the capital to mitigate the economic pull of internal migration for those locked outside.

The external threat from Seoul, let alone Washington and Tokyo, is so enormous that the North is totally out-gunned. There is no alternative since conventional deterrence is no longer credible or feasible. Seoul’s 10 percent plus increase in military spending in 2021 was greater than the North’s annual military budget, leaving Pyongyang with no option apart from nuclear deterrence. Serendipitously, it has the collateral benefit of addressing the North’s key economic bottlenecks, choking any prospect of serious growth—manpower and energy. With more than a million men in the Korean Peoples Army, this deterrence strategy provides the opportunity and prospect of demobilizing hundreds of thousands into factories and workshops, as foreseen in Kim's 2019 New Year’s Address. In parallel, the civil face of the nuclear program with indigenous Light Water Reactors would help fill the energy gap.

Thus, with patience and remittance, there is a narrow path to denuclearization. It will take at least a decade and more. Pyongyang will require serious and solid security guarantees—not a letter from a sitting U.S. president, but rather something similar to the Iran Deal, where the UN Security Council signed off on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Along with that, Pyongyang will need major funding with a decade-long budget of $25-30 billion to rehabilitate its economy and infrastructure. There would be step-by-step progress, first with a nuclear and ICBM testing freeze in exchange for easing sanctions. Then, the hard part, with both sides committing to irreversible concessions with an “end of war” declaration and unrestricted and unqualified sanctions relief traded for the North, giving up its plutonium and highly enriched uranium programs as the next step forward. This long quest continues until the North gives up its nuclear weapons. Even if, at some point, the deal falls apart, the world will be in a better place than without an agreement. Many will argue that $30 billion is too high a price to reward bad behavior. Yet with the North's recent rapprochement with Moscow, it’s a bargain compared to the global cost of nuclear conflagration on the Korean peninsula.

Glyn Ford is a former Member of the European Parliament specializing in Trade and Foreign Affairs who now works with the NGO Track2Asia. He has visited North Korea close to fifty times and is the author of Talking to North Korea (2018, Pluto Press) and Picturing the DPRK (Pacific Century Institute, 2023). Both are available in Korean.

Image: Shutterstock.

A majority of American voters oppose Congress continuing to provide funding and weapons for Ukraine’s war with Russia, according to polling data released Monday and shared with The Daily Signal. By a 44% to 36% margin, Americans want their dollars out of this conflict. 

Of those who identify as Democrats, 52% want continued funding for the Ukraine war while only 17% of self-identified Republicans and 32% of independents say the U.S. should continue funding. 

The Scott Rasmussen national survey polled 1,000 registered voters from Sept. 25-26. 

More Republican, independent, black, and Hispanic voters opposed additional funding than supported it. Republican opposition sat at 68%, while independents were at 40% (versus 32% who supported more funding). Blacks were 49% in opposition versus 25% in support, and Hispanics were 45% in opposition versus 36% in support. 

The survey also asked voters how they would rate the way President Joe Biden has handled the foreign conflict. Only 26% of independents gave the commander in chief excellent or good marks, with 61% rating his Ukraine war policy fair or poor. For Democrats, that ratio was 54% excellent or good to 40% fair or poor, and for Republicans, it was 9% to 85%.  

Overall, 64% of American voters rated the way Biden has handled the foreign conflict as fair or poor, the worst that number has been since Rasmussen began polling on the conflict in February 2022. This includes a 55% majority of black voters and a 69% majority of Hispanic voters. Just 28% of those polled described the commander in chief’s handling of the Ukraine war as good or excellent. 

Participants were also asked whether it was more important to keep the United States out of a wider war with Russia or to help Ukraine. By a 65% to 22% margin, voters preferred to keep the United States out of a potential Russian conflict. That margin has increased by 19 percentage points since the same question was put to voters in August and reported by The Daily Signal.  

That opinion was shared across party lines by a majority of Republicans (83%), independents (57%), and Democrats (56%). 

The margin of error for the poll was +/- 3.1 percentage points. 

Sara Garstka is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.

This article was first published by The Daily Signal.

Image: Reuters. 

A critical national security question has recently emerged: Will the United States need to adjust its nuclear posture in light of the so-called “two nuclear peer” problem? Specifically, this refers to China’s ongoing ramp up of its ICBM force to the point where its nuclear force, in size and capabilities, will approximate forces currently fielded by the United States and Russia. This may well alter the deterrence challenge facing the U.S. A bipartisan study group recently concluded that currently planned U.S. nuclear forces are insufficient to reliably deter China as a nuclear peer, an aggressive Russia, and possibly both simultaneously. Another study argues that Washington adopt a deterrence policy of targeting population to obviate the need to bolster forces. At issue, also, is the degree to which the United States should plan to hold China’s ICBMs at prompt risk with its ICBMs. This paper addresses:

-Counterforce vs Countervalue deterrence strategies? Answering the wrong question.

-Implications of Sino-Russian condominium.

-China’s ICBM buildup as a driver for U.S. force augmentation.

-Additional warheads required and when to upload them.

In the past, U.S. nuclear forces were focused on deterring Russia; China was a lessor included case in the sense that if the U.S. had the capabilities needed to deter the Soviet Union, it surely could also deter China. The emergence of China toward nuclear peer status, seen as a prospect for the mid-2030s, changes that calculation. Quoting from the Biden NPR:

By the 2030s the U.S. will, for the first time in its history, face two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors and potential adversaries. This will create new stresses on stability and new challenges for deterrence, assurance, arms control, and risk reduction.

Deterring a hostile Russia and China, possibly at the same time, has been a fixture of U.S. policy for decades. During the Cold War, even in light of a major nuclear exchange with Russia, sufficient survivable warheads were maintained to deter any incentive by China to “pile on.” This was during a time when both Russia and the United States maintained many thousands of strategic warheads, while China possessed just a few tens of ICBMs. There was both quantity and flexibility then in U.S. forces to deter both. Today, with deployed strategic, accountable warheads under New START capped at 1550, estimates are that China will field one thousand additional ICBM warheads by 2035. Moreover, the intensive, ongoing U.S. program to modernize each leg of the aging Triad leaves little excess capacity to respond with new nuclear program starts in the near term. What to do?

Most simply put, U.S. deterrence strategy for decades has been to hold at risk those assets valued most highly by adversary national leaders. This includes the ability to prosecute conventional and nuclear warfare. Some, however, incorrectly characterize this strategy as a choice between holding forces at risk, most specifically nuclear forces, or threatening cities and population centers with the express purpose of killing innocent civilians, which they unfortunately label as countervalue targeting. If the United States altered its current deterrence strategy to intentionally target population and not forces, they argue, it could avoid the need for a costly buildup in response to China’s ICBM buildup. That argument and its ramifications have been thoroughly countered in a recent piece which, in line with past rigorous studies, calls into question whether authoritarian regimes such as in Moscow and Beijing are adequately deterred by threats to their populace. In these regimes, human lives appear to be viewed as tools of the state and therefore expendable in service to the state, rather than as in democracies where the state seeks to serve its citizens and ultimately is answerable to them.

To be clear, the United States adheres to the international Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) and does not intentionally target cities or population. U.S. policy is to minimize civilian casualties in wartime operations. That said, striking targets that are co-located with civilian centers or objects may be consistent with the LOAC if their military significance is high—even though destroying such targets could result in a number of unintended casualties. In some cases, however, such installations will not be targeted because avoiding the prospect of inflicting excessive unintended collateral damage must take precedence.

U.S. deterrence strategy, very importantly, depends on the specific adversary to be deterred and is neither solely counterforce nor countervalue but involves a mix of targets that are all tied to the adversary’s value structure and its ability to pursue warfare. The potential cost incurred in their destruction is intended to ensure that no rational adversary would ever contemplate a nuclear attack of any scale against the United States or its allies.

U.S. nuclear forces include a robust capability to hold adversary nuclear forces at risk. Over the years, this has been a topic of debate. But to be clear, the main area of contention is not U.S. counter nuclear force capabilities but U.S. prompt counter nuclear force capabilities represented largely by its ICBM force. Indeed, most warheads in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and even some conventional weapons systems today, have sufficiently high accuracy and explosive power to hold at risk many of the hardest military targets fielded by adversaries including nuclear forces. Only ICBMs, however, can deliver such warheads to targets within 30 to 60 minutes of a President’s decision to execute such a strike. A prompt counterforce component of the U.S. nuclear triad is important for several reasons:

• Contributes to robust deterrence in both central strategic and regional scenarios by enabling a full range of enemy assets to be held at timely risk.
• Complicates enemy attack planning—multiple ICBM aim-points eliminates cheap attack.
• Enables redundancy and complementarity among triad components.
• Provides the President with options to limit damage to the U.S. and its allies.
• In rare cases against certain adversaries, coupled with defenses and other conventional forces, provides limited capabilities to preempt an imminent enemy nuclear strike.
• While prompt counterforce has potential to be destabilizing in nuclear crises, asymmetries in such capabilities could be destabilizing in a different sense.

This last point deserves clarification. During the Cold War, accurate, large throw-weight, highly-MIRVed, silo-based Soviet SS-18 ICBMs represented a significant disparity in prompt counterforce capability compared with the U.S. ICBM force of lower throw-weight, less-highly-MIRVed Minuteman IIs and IIIs. Fewer than 100 out of a total 300 deployed SS-18s could target each Minuteman silo with two warheads, eliminating most U.S. ICBMs. In the Carter-Reagan nuclear modernization program, this disparity was redressed by fielding two highly accurate ballistic missile systems: the 10-warhead Peacekeeper ICBM and the 8-12 warhead Trident D-5 SLBM (also with prompt delivery capability if not as responsive).

This was controversial: Wasn’t the U.S. making matters worse by incentivizing the Soviets to put their ICBMs on “hair trigger” alert, both decreasing crisis stability and increasing the chance of an inadvertent launch based on false warning? What actually happened was that once their fixed ICBMs were being held at comparable risk, the Soviets adjusted their force by trending to lower throw-weight, less highly-MIRVed, and more survivable mobile ICBMs. At the same time, they demonstrated an increased propensity to limit the silo-based SS-18s in arm control agreements. By taking on a near-term risk of potentially increased crisis instability, the U.S. shaped the arms competition towards a longer-term, more stable evolution in forces. Later on, when New START was concluded, the Obama administration downloaded the Minuteman IIIs to single warhead thus strengthening crisis stability by making them a much less desirable target to attack.

One complexity regarding force sufficiency and deterrence involves the potential for various levels of Sino-Russia security coordination. If the Russian and Chinese nuclear (and conventional) threats were independent and uncorrelated, then the two nuclear peer deterrence problem would be more manageable. If the U.S. and Russia were to agree in some form, once New START expires in 2026, to continue limits on warheads and delivery systems, there would be little need to augment U.S. strategic forces in regard to Russia. If China stopped once it achieved peer status, some adjustment to targeting priorities may be warranted but not likely a pressing need for U.S. force augmentation. If the threats are uncorrelated, planned U.S. strategic forces are likely sufficient to deter.

If China and Russia coordinate in their planning and force posture, then this calculus changes and will depend on the details. Coordination could range from minimal consultations or assistance to, perhaps less likely, a full-fledged alliance between the two countries with integrated forces and force planning. For example, if U.S. forces were engaged in a NATO-Russia conventional conflict, with accompanying nuclear overtones, China, even with minimum coordination with Russia, could exploit this opportunity “on the fly” to pursue its threat to take over Taiwan by force. A proactive (and, notwithstanding, expensive) strategy would be to posture sufficient conventional forces, combined with forces provided by allies, to deter this second conflict while fighting the first, and to retain sufficient nuclear forces to deter one or both conflicts from going nuclear. In light of recent developments, including in the nuclear arena, we must assume some degree of Sino-Russian cooperation in regional conflict.

As stated earlier, U.S. policy is to hold at risk critical assets and installations most valued by enemy leaders. An adversary’s nuclear forces might well fall into that category. In the case of China’s ongoing ICBM ramp up, the U.S. must decide whether and how to hold such forces at risk. One alternative is a force augmentation involving additional U.S. ICBM warheads.

Whether to hold the entire Chinese ICBM force at risk, some portion of it, or none of it is an open question. Indeed, U.S. policy specifies a role for counterforce targeting “only to the extent practicable or feasible.” For example, Russia’s 1990s initial deployments of mobile ICBMs made these forces more difficult to target. The policy seemed then to suggest: “OK to continue to try to hold mobile ICBMs at risk, but plan to do so with available forces and don’t expect a ramp up that would exceed existing limits in order to meet a more demanding requirement.” U.S. strategic force augmentation, depending on whether any agreed limits on forces are put in place after New Start expires, may require adjustment to this policy.

There is a benefit to the U.S. having a capability to hold some portion of China’s silo-based ICBMs at prompt risk. And not just for damage limitation. The Chinese should come to understand, as the Russians eventually did, that these systems are not being given a “free ride,” thus providing some disincentive to the ongoing ramp-up. In light of possible Sino-Russian coordination, this would require some augmentation of U.S. ICBMs (and potentially SLBMs). Depending on assessment of the likelihood of various levels of cooperation, this shortfall could be redressed with a smaller or larger force augmentation. Effective U.S. ballistic missile defenses could lower augmentation needs as could, potentially, additional forward deployments of existing, and potentially new types of U.S. non-strategic nuclear forces.

In the near term, U.S. forces could be augmented by uploading reserve warheads to existing delivery systems. Re-MIRVing Minuteman III and, at some cost in responsiveness, uploading warheads to fill currently-unoccupied slots on the Trident D-5 SLBM could add several hundred additional warheads to the deployed force. Ensuring that sufficient reserve warheads are available (and not placed in the dismantlement queue!), and timely provision of tritium and limited-life components (e.g., gas bottles, neutron generators) to activate reserve warheads is essential. Once activated, timelines for weapons upload will vary depending on the delivery system—days to weeks for bombers, weeks to months for the subs, and one to three years for ICBMs. To be sure, uploading does add some operational inefficiencies. Still, this is not an insignificant force augmentation capability by any measure.

How many warheads might need to be uploaded? China may add about one thousand ICBM warheads (350 silos) by 2035 with about half fielded by 2030. If upload is primarily to hold at risk some portion of China’s silo-based ICBMs, options could include—700 additional warheads (2 per silo), 350 additional warheads (one per silo), or quite possibly fewer depending on willingness to accept risk. Two on one targeting will be seen as, and indeed is, excessive. Given this admittedly rough estimate and assuming that Russia remains at roughly current levels, in the nearer term at least no more than a few hundred additional ICBM warheads could meet “two peer” deterrence needs.

One study argues to upload reserve warheads starting in 2026 when New START expires. This may be premature assuming a hedge upload capability that can be fully executed in one to three years, well before China’s new ICBMs become fully operational in 2035. If this estimate holds, there is more time to work the “two peer” problem while pressing to eliminate any force upload capability shortfalls. And what if, after New START expires, Russia presses to extend limits in some form simply to constrain any U.S. upload so that China might catch up? Would the U.S. reject such a proposal from Russia? Pressing for an earlier than needed upload, possibly via a unilateral decision not to seek to extend arms limits, would be contentious and has potential to upset the so far bipartisan consensus on modernization. On the other hand, being skeptical of intelligence assessments is prudent policy; we must consider that China could accelerate its buildup. Uploading sooner hedges that risk.

If one is optimistic regarding the 2035 estimate, prudent and timely U.S. force augmentation would begin in the 2030 timeframe. This would provide time both to build a political consensus for augmentation without jeopardizing the ongoing modernization program, and to fix any force upload shortfalls. It would also provide time for other strategies (e.g., diplomacy, arms control, U.S.-China dialog on strategic stability) that, while perhaps unlikely to succeed in the current security environment could, if they did, conceivably mitigate if not alleviate upload needs.

The most likely path to peer nuclear conflict involves escalation from an ongoing regional conventional conflict. Increased forward-deployment of U.S. conventional forces could help to deter such conflict in the first place by the ability to bring force to bear more quickly and reduce reliance on vulnerable reinforcement routes. The goal is to prevent faits accomplis. In recent years, progress has been made in NATO Europe, but more could be done there and in Asia. In addition, conventional deterrence could be strengthened by ensuring that weapons and command and control assets are sufficiently hardened to moderately severe nuclear environments, and that the U.S. regional commands, supported by Strategic Command, adapt their planning to fight the war once nuclear weapons are introduced to the conventional battlefield. Additional deployment of new or existing types of U.S. non-strategic nuclear forces, to include a modern nuclear, land-attack sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N), would bolster deterrence and help reduce the need for ICBM warhead augmentation.

The Biden team, if it is not already doing so, should, with urgency over coming months, establish a DoD-led process to review the Russian and Chinese nuclear programs, their potential for acceleration, the implications of Sino-Russia condominium in the nuclear arena and the status of U.S. force upload capabilities, and develop a set of response options for Presidential decision. At minimum, a decision is warranted to ensure a viable, executable option to field a few hundred additional ICBM warheads to meet emerging deterrence needs in the 2030 timeframe.

I would like to acknowledge very useful discussions with Frank Miller, Keith Payne, Brad Roberts, and Rob Soofer in preparing this paper. Recommendations and conclusions are my own.

John R. Harvey, Ph.D., served in senior posts in the Departments of Energy and Defense overseeing U.S. nuclear weapons policies and programs including, from 2009-13, as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs.

This article was first published by RealClearDefense.

Image: Shujaa_777 / Shutterstock.com

In September, Northrop Grumman announced that it had secured a contract from the Air Force to move forward with a new high-speed air-to-ground missile meant to be carried internally by America’s growing fleets of stealth fighters and bombers. This new missile, dubbed the Stand-in Attack Weapon (SiAW), is meant to lead the way in high-end conflicts with modern adversaries like China, rapidly engaging a variety of ground targets deep inside hotly contested airspace from extended ranges.

The new SiAW missile is being built upon the basic structure of the Navy-led Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile-Extended Range (AARGM-ER) program – the long-range radar hunting missile developed to be deployed by carrier-based F-35Cs. In fact, it appears the Air Force’s new SiAW missile may leverage a number of the same internal systems, as well as the same external dimensions.

As noted aviation journalist Tyler Rogoway posited all the way back in 2018, basing the SiAW missile on the AARGM-ER makes good practical sense for a number of reasons. The missile was designed to be carried inside the F-35C’s internal weapons bay and, unlike previous anti-radiation missiles that hone in on electromagnetic radiation alone, boasts an advanced guidance system that allows it to continue closing with enemy radar arrays even after they’ve powered down. As a result, the Air Force’s effort doesn’t need to reinvent any wheels. Instead, the $705 million contract awarded to Northrop Grumman can focus on tailoring the weapon’s capabilities specifically to the Air Force’s broader goals for the SiAW.

Air Force officials are aiming to have this new weapon reach its initial operating capability by 2026, which means the new SiAW missile is clearly on the fast track to service.

AMERICA’S NEED FOR LONGER-REACH IN THE PACIFIC

The Air Force kicked off its Stand-in Attack Weapon development cycle back in January 2020 with a request for information (RFI) to industry partners for a new air-to-ground weapon specifically meant to be carried in the internal weapons bay of the branch’s runway queen (conventional take-off and landing) F-35A. Right from the get-go, one could argue the Air Force had Chinese targets in mind, highlighting the need “to hold at risk surface elements of the A2/AD environment” in the RFI.

That A2/AD acronym, which translates to Anti-Access/Area Denial, could really be attributed to any hotly contested near-peer battlefield, but the term itself is commonly used in reference to China’s approach to fortifying its sovereignty claims over vast swaths of the Pacific Ocean in recent years. This strategy includes the fielding of advanced air defenses, anti-ship weapons, anti-satellite measures, and a rapidly expanding Naval armada made up of the largest standing Navy on the planet, a rapidly growing and militarized coast guard, maritime militia, and even fleets of large-hulled fishing vessels that all fall within the country’s military command structure.

China’s A2/AD methodology pivots largely on a variety of long-range anti-ship missiles designed specifically to keep American aircraft carriers at bay. Weapons like the hypersonic DF-ZF boost-glide missile, which is carried aloft by China’s medium-range DF-17 ballistic missile, have a claimed range of nearly 1,200 miles, and an alleged top speed ranging somewhere between Mach 5 and Mach 10. With the ability to carry large conventional or even nuclear payloads combined with the sheer kinetic force of a hypersonic impact, the DF-ZF may potentially have the power to render even America’s Nimitz and Ford-class supercarriers inoperable with a single strike.

The DF-ZF creates significant challenges for American power projection, as its claimed range of nearly 1,200 miles is nearly twice the combat radius of America’s longest-flying carrier fighter, the F-35C. With about 37% more wing area than the rest of the Joint Strike Fighter family, the F-35C has a combat radius of nearly 690 miles – 510 miles short of China’s hypersonic reach. Put simply, this means sailing one of America’s carriers close enough to China to launch F-35 sorties also means placing that carrier squarely within reach of China’s carrier-killing missiles.

However, the United States Navy has taken a multi-faceted approach to offset this strategic shortcoming, with the highest profile effort arguably being its work on a 6th-generation stealth fighter – currently dubbed F/A-XX – that is intended to offer greater range and larger payloads. Other efforts include fielding carrier-based drone refuelers and operating Marine Corps F-35Bs from more distributed amphibious assault ships.

But American airpower isn’t solely a naval enterprise, and the U.S. Air Force would undoubtedly play a pivotal role in a Pacific conflict. And that’s precisely where the new SiAW missile comes into play.

GIVING THE AIR FORCE A STEALTHY LONG-RANGE PUNCH

The new Stand-in Attack Weapon (SiAW) may be based directly on the Navy’s radar-hunting AARGM-ER, but this new weapon will be going after a much wider variety of targets than enemy surface-to-air missile systems. In fact, there’s a chance these weapons could provide the Air Force with a vital means of eliminating portions of China’s area defense systems in the early stages of conflict, clearing the way for carriers to sail closer to Chinese shores without risking being sunk.

According to the Air Force’s budget request for Fiscal Year 2020: “The Stand In Attack Weapon (SiAW) system will provide strike capability to defeat rapidly relocatable targets that create the Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) environment. The target environment includes Theater Ballistic Missile Launchers, Land Attack and Anti-Ship Cruise Missile Launchers, GPS Jammers, Anti-Satellite Systems, and Integrated Air Defense Systems.”

In essence, the SiAW is envisioned as a means to engage just about any stationary or moving target on the ground or even at sea, leveraging its multi-mode guidance capabilities to that end. The SiAW will carry a different warhead and fuse than the AARGM-ER, but appears to boast the same GPS-assisted inertial navigation system and millimeter-wave radar seeker. That means these missiles can close with pre-programmed targets, even in GPS-denied environments, or identify targets within a set area to engage. In the AARGM-ER, this capability allows the missile to continue chasing after enemy radar arrays even after they power down – by first identifying the array and then using its inertial and GPS navigation to close with its last broadcast location. The millimeter wave radar seeker can even allow it to close with moving targets within the target area.

If target information changes while the missile is already in flight, a two-data link allows the launching aircraft (or other nearby assets) to update the weapon with new target coordinates on the spot.

Because of its advanced guidance system, the weapon can even be launched toward a set area more or less “blind,” or within a specific intended target in mind. As it flies, it can receive new target information from offboard sensors, identifying a target while in flight and then closing with it on land or sea, even if it’s moving.

When combined with the advanced sensor suite of the F-35A, the SiAW will offer a single weapon that can address a wide variety of surface threats. Its overall range – and that of the AARGM-ER – remain undisclosed, but previous claims have suggested that it will offer an increase in range from 20% to even 50% over the AGM-88E it’s set to replace. This would give the SiAW and its AARGM-ER sibling a range of somewhere between 96 and 120 miles.

The AARGM-ER is approximately 13 feet, four inches long, with an 11.5-inch wingspan and around 1,030 pounds. Despite carrying some slightly different hardware, the SiAW is expected to be about the same, as it too will need to be stowed inside the F-35’s cramped interior.

HOW THE SIAW AND AARGM-ER COULD HAVE A HUGE EFFECT IN THE PACIFIC

F-35As and F-35Cs carrying a combination of ARRGM-ERs and new SiAWs could play a pivotal role in a Pacific conflict, engaging a wide variety of air defense and anti-ship targets from stand-off ranges, well outside the reach of even the most advanced and modern air defense systems.

Russia’s S-400 Triumf surface-to-air missile systems are widely considered to be among the most capable on the planet, despite their recent poor performance in Ukraine. To that end, China first secured a contract to purchase these systems from Russia in 2014, with the second complete system arriving in 2020.

According to a peer-reviewed assessment by Hellenic Air Force Colonel and electronics engineer Konstantinos Zikidis, published by the Journal of Computations & Modelling in 2014, Russia claims the low-frequency arrays leveraged by the S-400’s Nebo-M radar array can detect the F-117 Nighthawk at a range of 350 kilometers (217 miles) in an environment free from electronic warfare (EW), and potentially as far as 72 kilometers (45 miles) under heavy jamming. This serves as the basis for the S-400’s counter-stealth claims.

However, low-frequency arrays are not capable of securing a weapon’s grade lock. In other words, they don’t have the image fidelity to guide a weapon into a target. Instead, the low-frequency array serves as a guide for a higher-frequency targeting array, potentially speeding up the targeting process once a stealth aircraft flies close enough for it to produce a high-frequency return.

The F-35 has a publicly disclosed radar cross-section of about half the size of the F-117 Nighthawk, which could potentially double those disclosed detection ranges (depending on the angle of observation and a number of other variables). Based on publicly available data, an F-35 would likely need to fly within 20 miles of the S-400 system in order to be targeted.

With the AARGM-ER’s range likely to be between 96 and 120 miles, this means the F-35 could effectively engage China’s most advanced air defense systems from as much as 100 miles outside their targeting envelope. But, despite this significant advantage, there’s still the issue of getting enough land and sea-based F-35s into range of these systems to take them out. Luckily, America has another stealth platform heading for service that comes with plenty of range and payload capacity to spare: the B-21 Raider.

B-21 RAIDERS CARRYING AARGM-ERS AND SIAWS MAKES FOR A SERIOUS ONE-TWO PUNCH

In the U.S. Air Force’s budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2018, the branch outlined intentions to integrate the Stand-in Attack Weapon (SiAW) into the B-21 Raider – America’s new stealth bomber in active development. With a projected payload capacity of 30,000 pounds or better, the B-21 could potentially carry dozens of SiAWs and AARGM-ER missiles on rotary launchers similar to those employed by the in-service B-2 Spirit.

The B-21’s actual range has yet to be revealed, but Defense officials have already begun touting it as unmatched in the world.

“Let’s talk about the B-21’s range. No other long-range bomber can match its efficiency. It won’t need to be based in-theater. It won’t need logistical support to hold any target at risk,” Defense Secretary Llyod Austin has said. Its predecessor, the B-2 Spirit, boasts an unrefueled range of 6,000 nautical miles (more than 6,900 miles or 9,600 kilometers), and it stands to reason that the B-21 will be able to exceed even that. As a result, America’s intended fleet of more than 100 B-21 Raiders could play a pivotal role in clearing a path for American carriers to close with Chinese shores by flying initial strikes against anti-ship and integrated air-defense systems, engaging hundreds of targets on land and sea with SiAW and AARGM-ER missiles.

Because of the wide array of targets these weapons can engage, B-21 pilots could make tactical decisions in theater regarding which systems to prioritize for their own self-defense as well as for optimal mission accomplishment. And because the B-21 was designed to be optionally manned, these sorties may not even require putting pilots at risk.

By launching this sort of attack in conjunction with other programs, like Rapid Dragon – which would allow cargo aircraft like the C-130 and C-17 to launch dozens of low-observable and long-range cruise and anti-ship missiles from 500 miles out – the United States could lay waste to a large portion of China’s shoreline defenses in short order. With the path cleared for American carriers to sail closer to Chinese territory, more suppression of air defense operations would follow until the airspace became permissive enough for less stealthy platforms to join the fight in a more active way.

But… this approach to warfare is an expensive one, and it’s important to understand the difference between plans and reality.

DETERRING WARS, OVER WINNING THEM

Exploring the ways in which these advanced technologies could give the United States a strategic edge in a large-scale conflict with an opponent like China may paint a rosy picture, but the harsh realities of warfare never live up to our most optimistic expectations. Ultimately, even if the United States manages to field and mass-produce these advanced platforms and weapons in sufficient volume to mount such an offensive, losses are all but certain. Stealth is not invisibility, aircraft and weapons are rarely (if ever) leveraged at maximum ranges, and even advanced systems are prone to fail amid the extreme rigors of combat.

And while this approach could give the United States the advantage in such a conflict, China’s massive military footprint would still present enormous challenges for the American military. In other words, at best, this approach could amount to an incredible opening volley; the war that would follow would be costly for both nations at a scale the world has not seen since the end of World War II.

Therefore, it’s vital to remember that the most valuable use for new weapons like the SiAW, AARGM-ER, and even the stealth aircraft that will carry them isn’t in winning a war. Instead, their best return on investment comes from deterring such a conflict from happening in the first place.

And therein lies the reason Uncle Sam is happy to reveal these developmental efforts, why new fighters and bombers get product-reveals like a new iPhone, and why there’s so much information about America’s military capabilities in the public’s hands. A secret weapon has no strategic value until blood is already being shed, but a disclosed one has the unique power to prevent bloodshed without ever being fired.

Ultimately, there could be no better outcome for all the incredible engineering that goes into weapons like the Stand-in Attack Weapon than never actually having to take it off the shelf.

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

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

Image: Shutterstock.

In the span of mere days, the long-disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, home to Armenians since antiquity, has disappeared as a political entity. By the evening of September 29, almost 100,000 people, over 80 percent of the enclave’s population, had crossed to Armenia, fleeing with the clear encouragement of the Azerbaijan regime.

The Azerbaijanis seized back control of this region from a self-styled independent state, closely tied to Armenia itself, in a series of military campaigns beginning in 2020 and culminating in a lightning strike on September 19-20. The triumphant mood was palpable in Baku when I visited just prior to the latest attack—from huge electronic displays of patriotic flag waving on the skyscrapers that had been built with oil and gas riches to a carpet woven with a map of Nagorno-Karabakh, which a museum guide breathlessly described as “our land.”

Back in Yerevan, the capital of the Republic of Armenia, the mood was considerably darker. On the first day of the beginning of the latest attack, a senior Armenian foreign ministry official was anticipating the collapse of resistance. “It’s a series of actions that can lead to only one thing—the complete ethnic cleansing of Nagorno Karabakh,” he told me.

This humanitarian disaster is taking place as the world watches, issuing ritual statements of condemnation but apparently unable to intervene. Armenia is left largely on its own to cope with a massive influx of people who have been forced to leave possessions and homes, some lived in for centuries, with no hope of return. Azerbaijani forces are arresting Karabakh Armenian leaders, preparing to hold show trials for their “crimes” of resistance. Any acts of resistance are likely to justify brutal and violent repression of those who remain.

Armenians are haunted by the historical memory of the Turkish genocide of 1915, when a million or more Armenians were murdered by the Ottomans amidst the chaos of World War I. U.S. Agency for International Development director Samantha Power, a witness to similar scenes of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and the author of a hallmark study of the failure to respond to genocide, came to Armenia immediately after the attack, offering condolences and a mere $11.5 million in refugee aid.

This war in what seems like a distant and peripheral corner of the world deserves our attention. It is a test of the willingness to tolerate acts of violation of fundamental human rights, at a time when these values are on the line in the nearby war in Ukraine. As in that war, the Russian state is asserting its imperial heritage and is determined to punish those whom it sees as disloyal and turning to the West.

The Azerbaijani offensive is possible only because of a de facto alliance of autocrat Ilham Aliyev with Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey. Armenia and its democratically elected government led by Nikol Pashinyan are being punished by Putin for the crime of seeking to broaden ties to the United States and the European Union. Weakened by war in Ukraine, and worried about losing control of its former imperial backyard in the South Caucasus, Putin decided to greenlight the return of Azerbaijani rule over Nagorno-Karabakh and abandon Russia’s traditional role as a protector of Armenia.

Russian peacekeeping forces in Nagorno Karabakh have become nothing more than doormen for the ethnic cleansing operation.

 “The Russian peacekeeping operation is a sham,” a veteran Armenian political leader told me. “Without the agreement of Putin, neither Azerbaijan nor Turkey could have pursued this war.”

Meanwhile, the conflict is hardly over. An emboldened Azerbaijan, handed a virtual blank check by Turkey and Russia, demands, and prepares to seize, a land bridge across Armenian territory that will connect it to the Azerbaijani enclave of Nakhichevan and through that to Turkey. Azerbaijan dictator Aliyev now talks of recovering “western Azerbaijan,” referring to claims on Armenia itself, a claim manifested in attacks along the border, including in recent days.

The immediate origins of this war lie in the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, a moment I witnessed first-hand as the Moscow bureau chief of the Christian Science Monitor. A mass movement of Armenians rose up to demand independence and the return of Nagorno-Karabakh to their territory. The region had been placed in the 1920s by Joseph Stalin under the authority of the ethnically Turkish Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, an act that Armenians had long seen as unjust.

As Soviet authority waned, both Armenia and Azerbaijan claimed independence, leading to a fierce war that ended in a 1994 ceasefire. The war left a legacy of mutual acts of ethnic violence and deepened hatred. The fighting left the Armenians in control of a vast swath of Azerbaijani territory, including establishing a land corridor between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. They avoided the sovereignty issue by establishing an independent Nagorno-Karabakh.

The plan was to trade most of the captured Azerbaijani land for a permanent peace, but compromise proved elusive. Conflicting claims of sovereignty could not be resolved, despite the efforts of a group formed by Russia, the United States, and France. Intransigence on both sides grew as time went by. Eventually, the Azerbaijanis regained military strength, using oil and gas revenues to buy advanced arms from Turkey, Israel, and Russia (which supplied both sides), along with Turkish training and officers, to try to resolve the conflict by armed means.

In a weeks-long offensive in 2020, coming when the world was distracted by Covid-19 and the United States was under the isolationist rule of Donald Trump, the Azerbaijanis restored control of all of their occupied territory and much of Nagorno-Karabakh itself. The Russians only intervened at the end to negotiate a ceasefire that ceded much to Azerbaijan and implanted Russian troops on the ground as “peacekeepers.”

Armenian officials believe relations with Moscow had already started to fray after a civic movement brought the reformist government of Pashinyan to power in 2018, removing more pro-Russian leadership. “It started when Russia didn’t like a more open, democratic Armenia,” the senior foreign ministry official said.

“The Russians are much more comfortable working with Azerbaijan than with the current Armenian government,” says Tigran Grigoryan, the head of the Regional Center for Democracy and Security, an Armenian-based think tank. “Aliyev and Putin speak the same language. That is not true for Putin and Pashinyan.”

Still, the Armenian government has been very careful not to upset its traditional allies in Russia, joining the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) organized by Moscow along with Belarus and a handful of other former Soviet republics. The reality is that the Russians retain huge leverage in this small nation—a Russian army unit remains based in northwestern Armenia near the Turkish border and patrols that border. Armenia remains dependent on Russia for most of its energy needs, including the operation of a dangerously aging nuclear power plant. Furthermore, millions of Armenians work in Russia, with their remittances key to the economy back home.

“We never wanted to provoke Russia,” the senior official said. “Why should we? We always wanted more room to maneuver.”

Russia has traditionally opposed the expansion of Turkish influence in the region, but amid the Ukraine war, the situation has completely changed, and Russia is clearly far weaker than before. “The Russians needed a new status quo in the South Caucasus,” explained Grigoryan. “They could tolerate the Turks, but their main concern is the West.”

Armenian analysts compare this to the bargain that the Bolshevik leaders struck in 1921 with the Turks to oust a British-led intervention into the South Caucasus. That deal included the decision to give Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan.

In broader historical terms, this is the delayed resumption of “a protracted process of imperial disintegration,” says Ukrainian historian Igor Torbakov, a prolific writer on the collapse of the Ottoman and Russian empires. That created “imperial shatter zones” from the Middle East and the Balkans to the Caucasus, leading to forced “unmixing of peoples.” The Bolshevik deal with Kemalist Turkey restored the empire and created a relative peace for seventy years but “the Soviet implosion opened up the nationalist Pandora’s box for the second time in the 20th century,” Torbakov says.

For the Armenian government, the clearest signal of Moscow’s abandonment came a year ago when Azerbaijani attacks along the border with Armenia itself—beyond the Karabakh region—failed to trigger a Russian response. This was a violation of commitments that should have been the result of Armenia’s participation in CSTO.

Pashinyan began to speak out more openly about Russia’s failure to live up to its expected role. Both the European Union and the United States stepped up efforts to mediate the conflict, leading to two rounds of talks convened by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in May and July of this year which seemed to be leading toward some agreement. But Putin stepped in and called his own meeting in Moscow, a move meant “to remind people who is the master of the house,” the senior Armenian official recounted.

Moscow has been openly carrying out a verbal war with the Pashinyan government—responding angrily to even small gestures of independence such as the dispatch of a humanitarian aid mission to Ukraine led by the prime minister’s wife and the holding of a small-scale joint military exercise with the U.S. 101st Airborne carried out just days before the Azerbaijani attack. Former Russian prime minister Dmitri Medvedev warned Yerevan against “flirting with NATO.”

In an interview earlier in September, the Armenian leader explained that with Russia in desperate need of arms and ammunition, it could not supply Armenia, which has been totally dependent on them, even if it wanted to do so.

“The security systems and the allies we have relied on for many years” were “ineffective,” Pashinyan said in his speech to the Armenian people after the attack.

The Aliyev regime offered Putin a devil’s bargain—“you give us Nagorno-Karabakh, and we make Armenia into a second Belarus,” the senior foreign ministry official put it.

If Moscow comes to the rescue now, it will only be because there is no alternative for Armenia. Many Armenian analysts believe the Azerbaijani attack is only a first step aimed at a Russian-sponsored overthrow of the Pashinyan government in street protests fed by the anger of displaced Karabakh Armenians.

“This was their coup attempt inside Armenia,” says Eric Hacopian, an Armenian-American political analyst based in Yerevan. “We were placed under a Sword of Damocles—move away from the West or suffer ethnic cleansing. For them, stopping a Western pivot is more important. Armenia is the prize.”

As dark as the future may seem, there is another narrow road out of this tragic situation. The Russians have discredited themselves as a power by relying on the Turks. Georgia, which has also been maneuvering between the West and Russia as the war in Ukraine stalls, is watching all this closely. There is an opening to push back Russian control and influence in the South Caucasus, but it requires a far more assertive Western presence.

At this moment, the Armenian senior official told me, the United States “is the only player that can really change the situation on the ground.” The EU has a role as well, particularly as it will host renewed talks between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan at the meeting of the European Political Community on October 5 in Spain. European leaders have clearly denounced Azerbaijani aggression and warned against further ethnic violence.

The regime in Baku has largely insulated itself from such pressure through its role as a supplier of oil and gas to Europe, transported by pipeline through Georgia and to Turkey. Aliyev counts on the desperation of Europe and the illusion of a pro-Western Azerbaijan to conceal the reality of his axis with Putin and Erdogan.

But the Azerbaijani regime is fragile. It is a one-man show, sitting on dwindling reserves of oil and gas in old fields, as other energy sources for Europe rapidly come online. A proposal to link the Azerbaijani-based pipelines to those of Kazakhstan via the trans-Caspian Sea pipeline seems stalled. And Moscow is pushing hard instead, with nominal Azerbaijani consent, to create north-south rail and pipeline routes that will link to Iran.

This suggests that serious pressure on Azerbaijan, and in turn on Turkey and Israel as its arms suppliers, could yield results. One option is the threat of sanctions but perhaps more effective would be the insistence that Baku allow the introduction of international peacekeeping forces, along with U.S. and EU observers, to replace the Russians.

It may be equally essential to manifest support for the Pashinyan government, which will face increasing Russian-backed internal opposition. A far more massive U.S.-led relief effort for the tens of thousands of Karabakh Armenians is an immediate need. But also crucial is to replace the Russians as guarantors of Armenia’s established boundaries, including resistance to the forced creation of an Azerbaijani corridor that would seal off Armenia’s border with Iran. Normalization of relations with Turkey, opening that border to trade and transport, is long overdue, but it can only happen with Americans providing border security forces.

Undoubtedly, the Biden administration has other priorities but the situation in the South Caucasus is intimately tied to the war in Ukraine. The United States has tended to think about this crucial region too little and too late. But a strategic opportunity still exists. The alternative is an even greater human tragedy.

Daniel Sneider is a Lecturer in International Policy and East Asian Studies at Stanford University. He is a former foreign correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor and served as Moscow bureau chief from 1990-1994, where he covered the first Nagorno Karabakh war. He just returned from a visit to the region.

Image: Shutterstock.

The DPRK believes it needs nuclear weapons to offset its vulnerability to the U.S. nuclear capability and to compensate for the weakness of its conventional military forces relative to those of South Korea. Those problems would return if North Korea dismantled its nuclear weapons program. The war in Ukraine offers Kim a fresh example of how hostile great powers prey on non-nuclear-armed countries. Ukraine gave up its Soviet-deployed nuclear weapons based on security guarantees from Russia and the West.

Nuclear weapons give North Korea prestige. Kim’s government has invested heavily in making nuclear weapons an essential part of the regime’s legitimacy and the country’s self-image. Nuclear weapons reinforce the notion, crucial to the narrative that helps keep the regime in power, that the superpower United States is bent on destroying North Korea, thwarted only by the extraordinary leadership of the Kims. Nukes represent a technical accomplishment that puts a poor and weak North Korea into the small international club that includes the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. Acquiring nukes got Kim meetings with the leaders of the United States and China. 

 Recent statements by the regime explicitly state the nuclear weapons program is permanent and will never be on the bargaining table. Perhaps more significantly, the Kim regime is moving beyond a minimum deterrence strategy by expanding its inventory of nuclear bombs and diversifying its delivery systems. With each passing day, the DPRK sinks more resources into its arsenal of nuclear missiles, making a turnaround harder and less likely. 

The possibility of North Korean denuclearization is decreasing with the passage of time. With the establishment of the nuclear weapons program, groups of North Korean elites that benefit from its presence become more firmly established. These groups would act as bureaucratic obstacles to any attempt to shutter or wind down the program.

The larger geopolitical trends are unfavorable to North Korean denuclearization. The bifurcation of Northeast Asia into two competing blocs has tightened and hardened. Since it invaded Ukraine, Russia has grown closer to both China and North Korea. Pyongyang and Moscow are exploring new areas of economic and technical cooperation. This reduces the DPRK’s international isolation and enlarges the country’s economic safety net, increasing the Kim regime’s ability to weather U.S. sanctions and correspondingly undercutting the power of those sanctions to compel Pyongyang to bargain away its nuclear weapons. At the same time, the deterioration in relations between the United States and the China-Russia bloc minimizes any incentive in Beijing and Moscow to be tough on Pyongyang as a favor to Washington.

The Trump-Kim meetings in 2018 and 2019 suggest negotiations over denuclearization could resume, especially if Trump gets re-elected president. Keep in mind, however, that the last round of talks in 2019 failed spectacularly; bilateral relations remained poor thereafter for the remainder of the Trump presidency; it was never clear that Pyongyang intended to actually denuclearize, as opposed to selling off unimportant parts of its nuclear weapons infrastructure to gain relief from U.S. sanctions. Any denuclearization agreement would face immense implementation hurdles involving transparency and verification. 

The chances of the DPRK giving up its nuclear weapons are not zero, but realistically this could only happen in a future world with radically changed conditions.

Denny Roy is a Senior Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, specializing in Asia-Pacific strategic and security issues. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago and is the author of Return of the Dragon: Rising China and Regional Security (Columbia University Press, 2013), The Pacific War and its Political Legacies (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2009), Taiwan: A Political History (Cornell University Press, 2003), and Chinas Foreign Relations (Macmillan and Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), co-author of The Politics of Human Rights in Asia (Pluto Press, 2000), and editor of The New Security Agenda in the Asia-Pacific Region (Macmillan, 1997). He has also written many articles for scholarly journals such as International Security, Survival, Asian Survey, Security Dialogue, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Armed Forces & Society, and Issues & Studies. He tweets at @Denny_Roy808.

Image: Reuters.

In a quiet July experiment, engineers at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, launched a small unmanned plane and told it to break the rules. The plane, an Osprey MK III, was programmed with a flight path that would take it beyond identified boundary constraints. This was the big test: would the plane respect the pre-established “laws” that allowed it to operate safely? Or would its onboard AI decide it had to follow orders at all costs?

Once the plane was airborne, experimenters switched controls to onboard autonomy and sat back to see what it would do.

Sure enough, the Osprey MK III’s “watchdog feature” proved stronger than the rule-breaking programming. Each time the plane got close to breaking the established airspace boundary, the feature would kick in, disengaging autonomy mode and sending it back to a pre-designated point for remediation, according to Air Force releases about the test. Its AI made the right decision.

Luke Reddaway, 413th Flight Test Squadron, monitors the Osprey MKIII’s autonomous flight July 20 at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. The unmanned aerial system’s first flight demonstrated flight safeguards are in place and working while the aircraft is in autonomous flight. (U.S. Air Force photo/Jaime Bishopp)

That test, a pivotal validation moment, was conducted at the Air Force’s new Autonomy Data and AI Experimentation proving ground (ADAx) at Eglin. Established earlier this year, the proving ground is a joint enterprise between the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office, or CDAO, and Air Force’s experimentation branch AFWERX. Eglin’s 96th Test Wing takes the lead for experimentation efforts, while other base units also provide support. 

Testing an autonomous plane’s inner governor falls under a larger Test of Autonomy in Complex Environments (TACE) effort. Trust remains a major barrier to the integration of extensive autonomy into warfighting; humans in the loop need to know that autonomous or AI-governed systems are not going to become confused by conflicting information and make a choice that endangers humans or puts mission objectives at risk. 

According to Air Force releases, TACE is contained in a software component of the test systems “that sits between the onboard autonomy and the aircraft itself.”

Not only can TACE override unwanted or unsafe commands, officials said in releases, it can also alter the world a test plane’s onboard autonomy perceives “to create more realistic scenarios for testing autonomy without jeopardizing the aircraft.” MK III performed five TACE-testing flights over three days, for a total of 2.7 hours airborne.

Luke Reddaway, 413th Flight Test Squadron, monitors the Osprey MKIII autonomous flight path July 20 at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. The unmanned aerial system’s first flight demonstrated that flight safeguards are in place and working while the aircraft is in autonomous flight. (U.S. Air Force photo/Jaime Bishopp)

“We want to prepare the warfighter for the digital future that’s upon us,” Col. Tucker Hamilton, 96th Operations Group commander and Air Force AI test and operations chief, said in a released statement. “This event is about bringing the Eglin enterprise together and moving with urgency to incorporate these concepts in how we test.”

The experiments parallel work DARPA has done with unmanned ground vehicles in its Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency (RACER) program. The goal of that line of research, which began last year, is to test off-road autonomy at “speeds on par with a human driver” and in unpredictable environments where obstacles and rapidly changing conditions might be more likely to scramble a robot’s decision-making capabilities. 

The outcome is far from guaranteed. As self-driving cars become more common in American cities like San Francisco, reports are emerging about how unexpected inputs can cause dangerous confusion. For example, multiple reports have shown that graffiti can make a driverless car misread a stop sign as a 45-mile-per-hour speed limit sign. Further, an Air Force test pilot, Col. Tucker “Cinco” Hamilton, made headlines around the internet in June when he described a hypothetical scenario in which an AI-enabled drone opted to kill the human operator feeding it “no-go” orders so it could execute its end mission of destroying surface-to-air missile sites.

“We trained the system – ‘Hey don’t kill the operator – that’s bad. You’re gonna lose points if you do that,'” Hamilton said, according to highlight notes from the conference he spoke at. “So what does it start doing? It starts destroying the communication tower that the operator uses to communicate with the drone to stop it from killing the target.”

The Air Force ultimately walked back Hamilton’s account, saying the service had not conducted any drone simulations of this kind, and Hamilton himself amended to call his story “a thought experiment.”

2nd Lt. Ryan Collins demonstrates an automatic fly-up maneuver generated by the Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System, or Auto GCAS, in a research flight simulator, Dec. 6, 2022, at the Air Force Research Laboratory, or AFRL, Aerospace Systems Directorate at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Auto GCAS is a software update developed by AFRL, Lockheed Martin and NASA that prevents an aircraft from impacting the ground by automatically pulling the aircraft up before an accident can occur. (U.S. Air Force photo/Richard Eldridge)

While the U.S. military is eager to capitalize on the bright promise of AI and autonomy, from reliable unmanned platforms that take humans out of harm’s way to advance automation that results in significant time and money savings, building trust in AI to make appropriate decisions in complex environments is a necessary prerequisite. If humans don’t trust the system, they won’t use it; a recent War on the Rocks article described how the introduction of the Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System (Auto-GCAS) on F-16 fighter jets was slowed because pilots, irritated by “nuisance pull-ups” – when the system detected an obstacle that wasn’t really there – were turning the program off. Ultimately, though, the system grew smarter and pilots became more familiar with it, which allowed it to carry out its life-saving work. 

The flights with the Osprey MK III were the first major experimental effort for the new ADAx proving ground, but others are soon to follow. The Air Force plans tests with the Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Ops Models, or VENOM, which will turn F-16s into “airborne flying test beds” with “increasingly autonomous strike package capabilities.” Also in the works is Project Fast Open X-Platform, or FOX, which aims to develop a way to install apps directly onto aircraft to “enable numerous mission-enhancing capabilities such as real-time data analysis, threat replication for training, manned-unmanned teaming, and machine learning.”

Hope Hodge Seck is an award-winning investigative and enterprise reporter who has been covering military issues since 2009. She is the former managing editor for Military.com.

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

Image: Shutterstock.

When talking about the dos and don’ts of taking on the Special Operations Assessment and Selection courses that the military has to offer, there are a ton of opinions out there, and I feel, a lot of misconceptions as well. This is particularly true when it comes to being the “Grey Man,’ which is a common name people use to describe an operator who can blend seamlessly into their environment.

I’ve been asked about this countless times in emails. One of the more common questions I receive from prospective candidates is always about trying to blend in at Assessment and Selection – being the Grey Man. I spoke with someone just in the past few weeks about this very subject. 

There is no shortage of people who will tell you being the Grey Man is important, some of them will be Special Operations Selection cadre members. So, respectively, I’ll disagree. Overall, unless you’re an intelligence professional trained at blending in and being invisible, I will stick with my original advice and say in the majority of instances, it isn’t a smart thing to do. I will explain why below, but first, my caveat:

Yes, there are times when you absolutely, positively need to be the guy people standing in front of you are going to look right past while giving their attention to someone else.

The first one is if you are in SERE School (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape). The last thing you want at SERE is to stand out in any way. Standing out to the guard force in the POW camp usually means you’re going to withstand some “corrective measures.”

Being the biggest member of the prisoners or the most senior guy in the SERE Class is not a good way to be the grey man. The SRO (Senior Ranking Officer) is always singled out for real or perceived rules infractions –you get the idea. Once you get through the Selection process and into the training pipeline, you’ll get to experience SERE up close and personal and all of your questions will be answered.

The second example of when it’s a good time to be a “grey man” is when you are doing some kind of undercover intelligence work. Then you want to blend into your surroundings. If someone saw you walking down a busy street in an urban environment, you don’t want to raise an alarm among surveillance operatives watching for that type of operation. 

This has a lot to do with demeanor, dress, mannerisms, and movement. Special Forces have a training program that teaches all of this and much more. But the course and the acronym associated with it will come after your training is complete and you move on to the operational units and get some experience under your belt.

So, we’re back to the 800-lb gorilla in the room, and the question is why not be the grey man during Selection? You will see blog posts from people, message boards, and social media posts all telling candidates to the grey man or something remotely similar. I see it all the time. So why is it actually a bad idea? 

As a former Selection cadre member, I’ll let you in on my perceptions: Trying to be the Grey Man just may put a huge bulls-eye on your forehead.  

As I mentioned above, most people aren’t trained properly to be a grey man. And if it appears to the Selection cadre that you are trying to blend into the background, that isn’t a good thing. To the cadre members, it appears like you are trying to “ghost” through events (as we called it during my time there). And if a guy is going to ghost during Selection, then he certainly will on a team.

Back in the day, when I had the night duty during a course, one of the other cadre members and I would wander around the candidates’ barracks at night with no berets, just being the grey men of the cadre. We wanted to hear the chatter of the class and see how well or not so well they were holding up. 

These conversations would sometimes be quite telling, especially during team week. More than once, we heard candidates who passed their patrol (the criteria have since changed, thank you LTC Brian Decker) talk about coasting through the last few events to make it through the long-range movement. Bad idea.

Then there were the others, guys who passed their patrol and were volunteering to help out the next day’s guys who would be in the barrel and under the microscope. More than once we heard conversations similar to this:

“Hey bud, whatever happens, tomorrow, put me on lashings, I’m really good at that, and that’s one thing you won’t have to worry about.”

That’s the guy I want on my team. He is not done yet, he is looking out for his teammates. He is going to get high marks on his peer reports. 

Special Operations isn’t looking for cookie-cutter robots. We understand that everyone is different and there are certainly guys who are characters. You’ll undoubtedly have some in your class. 

That is why my advice is always to be yourself. When I was there, our cadre was made up of the most eclectic group of people that I’ve ever worked with. There was never a dull moment and every NCO, although vastly different, respected who each one of us was. And we all got along because we had the humility to understand that every person brings some unique element to the table.

If you are a rah-rah type of guy, then be that guy. If you are a quiet, lead-by-example type of guy, that’s fine…be him. Don’t try to be something you are not. Sometimes the characters of the class would lift everyone around him. All of the cadre members had those types of guys in their own classes, and they know how valuable they are to keeping up class morale, and for team-building. 

My own class in the SFQC (Special Forces Qualification Course) had a tremendous NCO who we called CPT Camouflage during Land Navigation. He would wear some outlandish get-up: PT Shorts hiked way too high, jungle boots, with a poncho pulled over his head like a cape with eye holes cut out. He’d run through the woodline offering the craziest encouragement to “lost Land Nav students everywhere.” As dumb as it sounds, our class loved it. And after a day or so, the cadre would ask if Captain Camouflage had any words for the class after we’d return from the day’s or night’s navigation practice.

A couple of years ago, I had a podcast interview with Mike Sarraille, a Navy SEAL officer who has written a book on Special Operations leadership and how civilian companies should incorporate the lessons of Selection and Assessment into their hiring process. 

Mike was a successful Marine NCO with Recon before becoming an officer. During BUDs, the other members of his class naturally gravitated toward Mike because of his experience, military bearing, and demeanor. That is who he is. If he tried to blend into the background, the SEAL instructors would have seen right through that and he would have never passed or gone on to become the officer he was.

Of course, “be yourself” has to be tempered with a bit of common sense. Don’t be overly argumentative with the cadre, even if you know that you may be right when receiving a critique. That will have the exact opposite effect.  Don’t be a “Spotlight Ranger” either – those types never last long as they’ll get peered out quickly (failed by peer reviews). And please spare your war stories about leading an attack with the 18th Mess Kit Repair Unit in Iraq or someplace else. Nobody cares about that or is interested. 

Remember you are always being evaluated and assessed. This is a time for the cadre to see if you have the core attributes that make Special Operations troops the best in the world. Selection is the time when you begin building the reputation that will follow throughout your Special Operations career. And as big as it has grown, it is still a small community. Selection is the first step in the process of showing you belong in the Regiment. 

Trying to do so by blending in the background isn’t the way to do it. Be yourself, try to excel at everything, and remember, some of your fellow candidates may be better at some things than you are. That won’t change once you get to an operational unit. 

Do the best you can. (Yes you’ll hear that again.)

Steve Balestrieri is a SOFREP Senior Editor. He has served as a Special Forces NCO and Warrant Officer before injuries forced his early separation.

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

Image: Shutterstock.

Since the very inception of manned flight, the United States has invested heavily in fielding game-changing military aircraft that leverage cutting-edge technology to provide a tactical or strategic edge over the nation’s peers or competitors. This drive to dominate the skies over the battlefield led the U.S. to field the world’s first military aircraft in 1908, the first aircraft to break the sound barrier in 1947, the world’s first supersonic bomber in 1960, the world’s first manned hypersonic aircraft in 1967, and of course, the world’s first stealth aircraft in 1983… just to name a few prominent blips on the U.S. military aviation timeline.

But for every F-117 that makes it into service, there’s a long list of aviation programs that never quite made it. Sometimes, these efforts leaned too hard into the cutting edge, resulting in capable aircraft that were just too expensive to field in real numbers. Other times, these efforts were built around misconceptions about aviation that, in the days before computer simulations, could only be proven wrong through trial and error.

The existential threats that fueled military procurements throughout the Cold War led to a renaissance in aviation technology. Programs that would never see funding under normal circumstances were suddenly seen as worthwhile ventures in the name of securing any kind of advantage in the nuclear hellfire of a Third World War that, at the time, seemed inevitable to many in power.

Yet, even the massive military expenditures of the Cold War could only fund so many technological revolutions. And some platforms or programs that could have very changed the way mankind perceived airpower were just too expensive, too far-fetched, or too ahead of their time to secure their share of the Pentagon’s coffers, dooming these prototypes, concepts, and X-planes to the secretive confines of America’s sprawling library of military what-ifs.

Here are some of these game-changing programs that never got their chance to actually change the game.

BOEING X-20 DYNA-SOAR: A HYPERSONIC SPACE BOMBER THAT PREDATES SPUTNIK

Born out of Germany’s World War II efforts to create a bomber that could attack New York and continue on to the Pacific, Boeing’s X-20 Dyna-Soar was to be a single-seat craft boosted into the sky atop American rockets. That’s right, in the 1950s, the Dyna-Soar would have been the world’s first hypersonic bomber. In fact, the Dyna-Soar was very similar in both concept and intended execution to China’s fractional orbital bombardment system that drew headlines the world over after a successful test in 2021, despite the X-20 program pre-dating the launch of Sputnik 1. So… it’s safe to say this effort was a fair bit ahead of its time.

After launch, the X-20 would soar along the blurred line between Earth’s atmosphere and the vacuum of space, bouncing along the heavens by using a lifting-body design and hypersonic speeds to skip along the upper reaches of the atmosphere. It would circle the globe, releasing its payload over Soviet targets miles below, before making its way back to American territory to come in for a gliding landing, not entirely unlike the Space Shuttle decades later. The X-20 was a 1950s science fiction fever dream born of the nuclear age and the earliest days of the Cold War… and according to experts at the time, it very likely would have worked.

By 1960, the spaceplane’s overall design was largely settled, leveraging a delta-wing shape and small winglets for control in place of a traditional tail. In order to manage the incredible heat of re-entry, the X-20 would use super alloys like the heat-resistant René 41 in its frame, with molybdenum, graphite, and zirconia rods all used for heat shielding on the underside of the craft.

The program was so promising, in fact, that in that same year, the Pentagon tapped a group of elite service personnel to crew this sub-orbital hypersonic bomber. Among them was a 30-year-old Navy test pilot and aeronautical engineer named Neil Armstrong, who would go on to leave the program two years later for even greater heights as a part of NASA’s Gemini and Apollo missions.

Armstrong’s departure was a sign of things to come. After the launch of Sputnik in 1957, the United States saw a pressing need to focus its resources toward orbit itself, canceling this sub-orbital bomber effort to reallocate funds toward new space ventures within America’s fledgling space-fairing organization, NASA.

BOEING QUIET BIRD: A STEALTH JET THAT PREDATES THE F-117 BY DECADES

On December 1, 1977, Lockheed’s Have Blue technology demonstrator took flight for the first time, making a significant leap toward fielding the aircraft’s successor, the F-117 Nighthawk, just a few years later. But more than a decade and a half before Have Blue saw a runway, Boeing’s largely-forgotten Model 853-21 Quiet Bird was already making significant strides toward being the world’s first operational stealth aircraft.

While various aircraft have laid dubious claims about being the first to field “stealth” because of design or material happenstance (we’re looking at you, Ho 229), the Quiet Bird effort actually was aimed at developing a low-observable aircraft to serve as an observation plane for the U.S. Army.

Throughout 1962 and ’63, Boeing experimented with stealth aircraft design concepts for the Quiet Bird, incorporating different shapes and construction materials in an effort to reduce the jet’s radar cross section (RCS) long before Denys Overholser at Lockheed’s Skunk Works would develop the means to accurately calculate a design’s radar return without actually building it to stick in front of a radar array. In effect, the Quiet Bird’s stealth development was a very expensive game of guess-and-check.

Although Boeing’s tests did indeed prove promising, the U.S. Army didn’t fully appreciate the value a stealth aircraft could bring to the fight and the program was ultimately shelved. If the Army had been more forward-thinking, the Quiet Bird may have offered a low-observable battlefield reconnaissance platform by the late 1960s, kickstarting the stealth revolution more than a decade earlier and almost certainly changing the way airpower has matured in the decades since.

However, Boeing has credited lessons learned in the development of the Quiet Bird for some of the success they would later find with the AGM-86 Air Launched Cruise Missile.

CONVAIR KINGFISH: THE HIGH-FLYING ALTERNATIVE TO THE BLACKBIRD

When Lockheed’s U-2 spy plane entered service, Soviet air defenses were already capable of tracking the high-flying platform. American officials knew it was only a matter of time before tracking the Dragon Lady turned into targeting it, so, the CIA tasked both Convair and Lockheed with developing a new reconnaissance platform that could fly at higher altitudes, at significantly faster speeds, and have a reduced radar cross-section to minimize the chances of being shot down.

Lockheed would ultimately meet these requirements in their A-12 and subsequent SR-71, but Convair’s Kingfish was its primary competitor until then. Today, Convair’s Kingfish offers us an interesting glimpse into what could have been, if not for the unrelenting genius and budget-mindedness of Lockheed’s Kelly Johnson.

The Kingfish developed out of what remained of Convair’s first attempt, known as the First Invisible Super Hustler or FISH. The FISH would have been carried aloft by a modified B-58 Hustler before being launched and powered by onboard ramjets to speeds in excess of Mach 4. But with concerns about the complexity and cost of the FISH concept, Convair was instructed to go back to the drawing board to come up with a new design built around the Pratt & Whitney J58 “turboramjet” — the same propulsion system Lockheed was working with in their A-12 design proposal.

The resulting Kingfish design was rather forward-leaning for its time, tucking its two J58s deep inside the aircraft’s angular fuselage to limit the radar return they could produce. Its delta-wing design bore a striking resemblance to the stealth aircraft that would follow decades later, but it was that emphasis on stealth that may have ultimately done the Kingfish in.

Pentagon officials, spurred in no small part by criticisms from Lockheed’s legendary Kelly Johnson, feared the Kingfish incorporated too many untested technologies to be built, tested, and operated within the program’s assigned budget. Johnson was outspoken in his views that the Kingfish design compromised performance in favor of stealth — something that was seen as a mistake at the time, despite becoming commonplace in the stealth platforms of today.

Ultimately, Lockheed’s proposal won the day, and the Kingfish was relegated to the what-if file.

MCDONNELL DOUGLAS/GENERAL DYNAMICS A-12 AVENGER II: A CARRIER-CAPABLE STEALTH FIGHTER IN THE 1980S

On 13 January 1988, a joint team from McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics was awarded a development contract for what was to become the A-12 Avenger II, not to be confused with Lockheed’s proposed A-12 of the 1960s, which led to the SR-71. Once completed, this Navy A-12 would have been a flying wing design reminiscent of Northrop Grumman’s B-2 Spirit or forthcoming B-21 Raider, though much smaller and with harder angles.

Although the A-12 Avenger II utilized a flying wing design, its overall shape differed from the triangular B-2 Spirit under development at the time for the Air Force. The sharp triangular shape of the A-12 eventually earned it the nickname, “the flying Dorito.“

The A-prefix denoted an attack-emphasis in the A-12 design, but interestingly enough, the aircraft would have actually met the design requirements to be considered a fighter — including an onboard radar array and the ability to carry a variety of air-to-air missiles. As a result, this A-12, carrying an attack prefix, could have been the world’s first true stealth fighter, as the F-117 Nighthawk, secretly already in service, had neither onboard radar nor the ability to engage airborne targets outside the realm of hypotheticals. That’s right, the Air Force’s F-117 wasn’t really a stealth fighter, but the Navy’s A-12 actually would have been.

For some time, it seemed as though the A-12 Avenger II program was going off without a hitch, but then, seemingly without warning, it was canceled by Defense Secretary (and future Vice President of the United States) Dick Cheney in January of 1991. It was only later revealed that the A-12 Avenger II was significantly overweight, over budget, and behind schedule.

Despite a number of other efforts over the years, it would ultimately take 26 more years for the U.S. Navy to get a stealth fighter onto the decks of its carriers in the F-35C.

You can read our full feature on the A-12 Avenger II’s development here.

BOEING 747 CMCA: THE MOST COST-EFFECTIVE BOMBER CONCEPT IN U.S. HISTORY

During the 1960s, the United States began fielding intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in land-based silos, as well as submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) carried by stealthy sub-platforms strategically positioned around the globe. With America’s defense posture primarily oriented toward deterring Soviet aggression, these new methods of delivering nuclear payloads prompted many within the public and politics, to question the need for expensive new bomber development programs. By 1977, this pervasive line of thought took root in the Carter administration, leading to the cancelation of the supersonic heavy payload B-1 bomber effort.

Boeing, recognizing that this cancelation could leave a gap in America’s strategic capabilities, set to work developing an extremely cost-effective bomber-of-sorts to meet this need at a much lower price point. The firm ultimately settled on plans to load a 747 with as many as 72 AGM-86 air-launched cruise missiles carried in nine internal rotary launchers, allowing this commercial people-carrier to serve instead as a long-range arsenal ship capable of wiping out targets from hundreds of miles away. This design, dubbed the 747 Cruise Missile Carrier Aircraft (CMCA), may sound crazy… but it was actually extremely practical in a number of important ways.

With an unrefueled range of 6,000 miles, the ability carry to 77,000 pounds of ordnance, and pre-existing global infrastructure already established for the 747 line, this CMCA concept would have produced the most cost-effective bombing platform in modern history. Today, the B-52 Stratofortress costs approximately $88,000 per flight hour, the B-2 Spirit rings in around $150,000 per hour, and the B-1B Lancer burns through around $173,000 per hour.

The 747 on the other hand, costs just $30,950 per hour to fly, all while carrying a larger payload than any of America’s in-service bombers.

Ultimately, the 747 CMCA never made it off the drawing board, however, with the Reagan administration pulling the B-1 program out of mothballs and the B-2 entering service shortly thereafter – but we may see the U.S. revisit a similar concept in the future. After all, there are already a number of commercial airliners filling other military roles today, from the Boeing 707-based KC-135 to the 747-based E-4B National Airborne Operations Center.

CONVAIR NB-36: DELIVERING NUCLEAR PAYLOADS WITH NUCLEAR-POWERED BOMBERS

The NB-36 Crusader was an experimental nuclear-powered bomber that actually flew with a nuclear reactor onboard during testing.

The NB-36 was based directly on the absolutely massive Convair B-36 Peacemaker. With a 230-foot wingspan, the B-36 still holds the title for the longest wingspan of any combat-coded aircraft. Its wingspan was so big, in fact, that you could lay a B-52 Stratofortress’ wings over the B-36’s and still have room to throw a Super Hornet on the end for good measure. Thanks to its massive size, the B-36 could fly with an 86,000-pound payload onboard — and in the 1950s, the Air Force experimented with using some of that payload capability to equip the bomber with its own nuclear powerplant — allowing it to fly almost indefinitely like a nuclear-submarine in the sky.

The NB-36 that resulted carried a one-megawatt, air-cooled nuclear reactor that hung on a hook inside its cavernous weapons bay. This reactor then had to be lowered through the bomb bay doors into shielded underground facilities for storage between flights. In theory, a nuclear-powered bomber could stay airborne for weeks at a time (if not longer) and could reach any target on the planet without the need to land or refuel.

At the time, the United States maintained a state of constant readiness in its nuclear-armed bomber fleets to serve as a potent deterrent against Soviet aggression. This policy would later mature in Operation Chrome Dome — an effort that resulted in the U.S. having airborne B-52s armed with nuclear weapons 24 hours a day for eight straight years. As you might imagine, this policy was rather expensive… but it’d get a whole lot cheaper if Uncle Sam didn’t have to pay for fuel.

Rather than using jet fuel, the NB-35’s nuclear reactor would power four GE J47 nuclear-converted piston engines, each generating 3,800 hp, which were then augmented by four additional turbojet engines that produced 5,200 lbs of thrust. The HTRE-3 was a direct-cycle system that pulled air into the compressor of the turbojet and through a plenum and intake that led to the core of the reactor where the air served as coolant. From there, the super-heated air would travel into another plenum that led to the turbine section of the engine before exiting as exhaust out the back.

But despite the effort’s promise, the risks associated with flying a nuclear reactor over American or allied airspace ultimately led it its cancellation in 1961.

LOCKHEED X-24C: A SCRAMJET-POWERED HYPERSONIC AIRCRAFT IN THE 1960S

The X-24C was part of an effort to field a scramjet-powered hypersonic research aircraft beginning in the late 1960s. Taking on the role of lead contractor, Lockheed worked side by side with the Air Force’s National Hypersonic Flight Research Facility and NASA to develop and field two hypersonic test aircraft, with each vehicle slated for 100 flights.

The decision was made to equip this new “L-301” program’s aircraft, unofficially dubbed the X-24C, with a new LR-105 rocket engine found at the time in the Atlas series of rockets. The LR-105 would launch and accelerate the X-24C to hypersonic speeds, not unlike the rocket engine that powered the X-15. From there, a second hydrogen-fueled, air-breathing scramjet (supersonic-combustion ramjet) engine mounted on its belly would fire up and take over.

The scramjet engine would propel the X-24C to sustained speeds in excess of Mach 6, reaching intended peak speeds that were higher than Mach 8, or more than 6,130 miles per hour. The aircraft itself resembled the lifting body design leveraged by the Martin Marietta X-24A and B programs that tested unpowered reentry flight characteristics.

In a real way, the L-301 program and its X-24C could be seen as the precursor to ongoing legends about Lockheed Martin’s combined cycle turbofan/scramjet SR-72, the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Mayhem program, and even Hermeus’ combined cycle turbofan/ramjet hypersonic aircraft efforts. Had the X-24C program continued, it would have given the U.S. a scramjet-powered hypersonic aircraft in the 1960s. Instead, the U.S. now appears to still be years away from fielding a reusable, airbreathing aircraft for testing, let alone service.

But by the end of 1977, however, the L-301 program and its notional X-24C were canceled in favor of a different Lockheed developmental effort that would change the value proposition associated with sheer speed. That effort, of course, was Have Blue, which later matured into the F-117 Nighthawk.

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

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

Image: VanderWolf Images / Shutterstock.com

My recommendations to the next Chief of Naval Operations are based on the difference between the kind of navy we have today and the kind of navy our nation needs. Today we have a forward-based navy, not an expeditionary navy. This distinction is important for remaining competitive against modern threats and guiding force design.

Due to the unique geographical position of the U.S., the Navy has the luxury of defending the nation’s interests “over there.” Since World War II, it developed and maintained a navy that was able to project power overseas; to reconstitute its combat power while still at sea or at least far from national shores; and continuously maintain proximity to competitors. This expeditionary character minimized the dependence of the fleet on shore-based and homeland-based infrastructure to sustain operations, allowing the fleet to be more logistically self-sufficient at sea.

However, late in the Cold War, the U.S. Navy started to diminish its expeditionary capability, and became more reliant on allied and friendly bases. A key development was subtle but consequential – the vertical launch system (VLS) for the surface fleet’s primary anti-air, anti-submarine, and land-attack weapons. While a very capable system, reloading VLS at sea was problematic and soon abandoned. While an aircraft carrier can be rearmed at sea, surface warships cannot, which constrains the ability of carrier strike groups to sustain forward operations without taking frequent trips back to fixed infrastructure. The Navy is revisiting the issue of reloading VLS at sea, and those efforts should be reinforced.

The next step the Navy took away from an expeditionary capability was in the 1990s, when it decommissioned most of the submarine tenders (AS), all of the repair ships (AR), and destroyer tenders (AD), and moved away from Sailor-manned Shore Intermediate Maintenance Centers (SIMA). Not only did this eliminate the ability to conduct intermediate maintenance “over there,” but it destroyed the progression of apprentice-to-journeyman-to-master technician that made the U.S. Navy Sailor one of the premier maintenance resources in the military world. Combat search and rescue, salvage, and battle damage repair are other areas in which the U.S. Navy no longer has sufficient capability for sustaining expeditionary operations.

The Navy needs a new strategy that highlights the kind of fleet the nation needs. This strategy would argue the Navy needs to be able to use the sea when needed, to deny it to the nation’s enemies, and to project force ashore when required. To accomplish this, the Navy would maintain a tempo of operations using the necessary multi-domain forces, wherever in the world they are required. The Navy’s operations and force posture should always be based on the logic that naval operations will principally be conducted “over there,” far from the nation’s borders, and with a minimum of dependence on shore-based infrastructure.

The Navy also needs a different overall force structure to return to a more balanced and expeditionary force. The modern fleet is top-heavy in large surface combatants, light in smaller combatants, and insufficient in auxiliary ships. In summary, a new force structure calls for: 11 Aircraft carriers, 10 LHA/LHDs, 21 Amphibious warfare ships, 71 Large surface combatants, 78 Small surface combatants, 66 Attack submarines, 12 Ballistic missile submarines, 34 Combat logistics forces, and 48 Support vessels.

This overall battle force of 351 ships is a more balanced and affordable force structure than what is currently under consideration.

The top thing the next CNO can do to affordably improve the U.S. Navy as a fighting force is to reduce operational tempo. Returning to predictable six-month-long deployments would improve force material readiness, morale, and retention. The tempo necessarily increased after 9/11 and the war in Iraq, but those efforts are largely over and the Navy needs to return to a rational and sustainable level of effort. The Navy will be able to make numerous and far-reaching changes to its warfighting readiness and expeditionary capability if it can manage to create a stable foundation of predictable deployment cycles.

Anthony Cowden is the Managing Director of Stari Consulting Services, co-author of Fighting the Fleet: Operational Art and Modern Fleet Combat,  author of The Naval Institute Almanac of the U.S. Navy,  and was a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy for 37 years.

This article was first published by CIMSEC.

Image: Shutterstock.