Diplomacy & Crisis News

Robert Farley

Security,

Technology matters. 

Here's What You Need to Remember: Even a failed system can have positive repercussions on the future of warfare.

Weapons die for all kinds of different reasons. Sometimes they happen at the wrong time, either in the midst of defense austerity, or with the wrong constellation of personnel. Sometimes they fall victim to the byzantine bureaucracy of the Pentagon, or to turf fights between the services. And sometimes they die because they were a bad idea in the first place. For the same reasons, bad defense systems can often survive the most inept management if they fill a particular niche well enough.

This article concentrates on five systems that died, but that might have had transformative effects if they had survived. These transformations would only rarely have changed the course of wars (countries win and lose wars for many reasons besides technology), but rather would have had ripple effects across the entire defense industrial base, altering how our military organizations approached warfighting and procurement. Not all the changes would have been for the best; sometimes programs are canceled for sound reasons.

AH-56 Cheyenne:

In the early 1960s, the Army was just beginning to appreciate the value of helicopter aviation. The Army had used helicopters at the end of World War II, and used them extensively in Korea for reconnaissance and evacuation purposes.  As the sophistication of the machines grew, however, the Army began to see the prospect for much more advanced helicopters that could conduct a wide variety of missions.

The star of the show was supposed to be the AH-56 Cheyenne, a radical design that combined high speed with punching power. The Cheyenne could escort other helicopters in transport mission, or conduct ground support and attack ops independently. In particular, it contained a magnificent propulsion system that could offer speeds of up to 275 miles per hour.

But the Cheyenne fell victim to its own promise. The technologies that made the Cheyenne possible weren’t yet mature, and the early prototypes suffered from teething problems, leading to a fatal crash. The Air Force hated the whole idea of the Cheyenne, believing that the Army was trying to steal close air support and interdiction missions for itself.  The Air Force went so far as to propose a fixed-wing attack aircraft (which would eventually become the A-10) in its effort to kill the program.  Finally, the Vietnam War put enormous pressure on the defense budget, both in terms of making it harder to sell particular programs, and in diverting funds to directly support the war effort.

And so the Cheyenne never happened. Although, a few years later, the Army would push forward with the AH-64 Apache. In this sense, the cancelation of the Cheyenne merely delayed an advanced attack helicopter capability. But the Apache was also a much safer machine than the Cheyenne, and going with the more conventional system has undoubtedly limited the horizons of Army aviation.

B-70 Valkyrie:

The B-70 Valkyrie deserves its own operatic cycle. Envisioned as the replacement for the B-52 Stratofortress and the B-58 Hustler, the B-70 was designed to penetrate Soviet airspace at high altitude, and upwards of Mach 3. Beloved of the “Bomber Mafia,” a generation of senior officers who had cut their teeth in World War II’s Combined Bomber Offensive, the B-70 represented, to many, the future of the Air Force.

And just to show I’m not a hard-hearted guy, and it’s not all dollars and cents, the B-70 was a beautiful aircraft. Long and sleek, the Valkyrie resembles a space ship more than an aircraft. The surviving prototype remains on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.

But the Valkyrie was enormously expensive, and this expense made it vulnerable. First President Eisenhower, then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara were less than enchanted with the idea of spending enormous sums on another heavy bomber when ICBMs showed great promise in delivering nuclear weapons to the Soviet homeland. Advances in Soviet interceptor and surface-to-air missile technology were also making the B-70’s mission considerably more dangerous than first anticipated.

After constructing only two prototypes (one of which was lost during a PR stunt), the Air Force shut production down. Fifteen years later, the B-1B, with some superficially similar characteristics, would enter service.

The effect of the B-70 on the Air Force would have, on balance, been quite negative. Devoting tremendous resources to the procurement of another strategic bomber would have drawn attention away from both the tactical air force and the missile force. B-70s might (in desperation) have been committed to the bombing of Vietnam during Operations Linebacker I and II, but they would likely have performed no more effectively than the B-52s they were replacing. And both the B-52 and the B-1B have proven remarkably flexible in terms of missions and update technologies, in part because they have space for a larger crew (4 and 5, respectively) than the Valkyrie (2).  McNamara saved the Air Force from itself by preventing a long, deep procurement chasm that would have lasted thirty years.

A-12 Avenger:

What if we had a stealthy strike bomber that could take off from aircraft carriers? In the mid-1980s, the Navy needed a replacement for the beloved-but-venerable A-6 Intruder.  Building on expectations about the progress of stealth technology, McDonnell Douglas developed the A-12 Avenger, a subsonic “flying wing” bomber that visually resembled a miniature B-2 Spirit. Combining stealth with the flexibility of carrier ops, the A-12 promised an unparalleled deep strike capability.  Even the Air Force expressed interest in the A-12 as a replacement for the F-111 Aardvark.

But there were problems. Early expectations about the stealth coating proved optimistic, and the fixes substantially increased the Avenger’s weight.  Expenses soared, but the aircraft did not.  The biggest problem, however, was that the Avenger entered the design and production cycle just as the Cold War came to a close.  Facing a tight defense budget, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney decided to kill the A-12 in favor of less risky programs.

The effects of the cancelation remain with us today. Instead of acquiring an advanced stealth bomber, the Navy settled on the Super Hornet, a significant, but conventional, upgrade on the F-18s it already possessed.  Eventually, the continuing need for a stealthy, carrier-borne strike aircraft would manifest in the F-35C, a program that continues to teeter between “disaster” and “epic disaster.” Even if the F-35C somehow works out, the Navy gave up the deep strike mission when it settled on the Super Hornet. The Air Force is now concentrating on the Next Generation Bomber, a project that closely resembles the A-12 in many ways. The death of the A-12, in effect, transformed the nature of the USN carrier wing for a generation or more.

Future Combat Systems:

In the early 21st century, the body of theory known as the Revolution in Military Affairs resulted in a major Army procurement plan known as “Future Combat Systems.”  In brief, the application of RMA theory to modern operations suggested that the combination of precision-guided munitions, high processing speeds, real time communications, and all-encompassing sensor capabilities would transform the way in which armies fought.  Future Combat Systems envisioned an integrated system of weapons, vehicles, and sensors that could prove lethal and decisive across the combat spectrum.  The Army expected every element of the system to support the goal of linking sensors to shooters, enhancing killing power while reducing footprint. Army planners also intended FCS to result lighter, more deployable brigades.

But then the Bush administration dropped the Iraq War on the US Army.  Iraq created major problems for the development of the FCS program.  Intellectual energy and material devoted to developing the FCS concept to its fullest went, instead, to fighting the war.  The conflict demanded systems (such as the MRAP) that did not fit into the FCS concept.  Perhaps most important, the course of the war threw RMA theory into question, with guerrilla fighters consistently bloodying the nose of their technologically sophisticated American foes.

And so FCS died a slow death.  The vision of a coherent system-of-systems surrendered to the need to get particular capabilities into the field in piecemeal fashion, regardless of their role in the larger puzzle.  The Army fought the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars with a mix of new and legacy systems, combined with weapons that had no place in its future expectations.  While individual parts of the FCS vision survive, the ideal has yielded to budgetary and military reality.

Sea Control Ship:

What if, instead of a few very large carriers, the United States Navy had undertaken to build a large number of small carriers?  In World War II, the Royal Navy and the US Navy (USN) employed large numbers of escort carriers, small flattops that could support anti-submarine and amphibious operations.

In the early 1970s, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt pushed the idea of the Sea Control Ship (SCS), a small carrier that would defend sea-lanes against long-range Soviet strike aircraft and Soviet submarines.  Faced with the growing expense of modern supercarriers (the first Nimitz class carrier would enter service in just a few years) and the impending retirement of the venerable Essex class carriers, Zumwalt sought a low cost option for air operations that did not demand the full capabilities of a major carrier group.  Escort carriers had helped win the Battle of the Atlantic, and Sea Control Ships might make a similar contribution in a NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict.

The USN tried the concept with the helicopter carrier USS Guam for a couple of years, adding Harrier fighters to its complement of choppers.  Eventually, however, the Navy decided that the expense of the new ships, and the risk that they might cut into resources dedicated to supercarriers, were too great, and nixed the idea.

Eventually, the big amphibious ships of the Tarawa and Wasp classes would take over the sea control role. In effect, the USN acquired Sea Control Ships, although we call them amphibious assault ships and delegate to them a broader array of tasks.  We also rely on other countries to build small carriers to fulfill the missions envisioned by the SCS; many of the flattops operated by the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, and Japan essentially fulfill an SCS role.

Pursuit of the Sea Control Ship would obviously have led to a different naval force structure, as well as changes in the composition of naval aviation. The biggest difference, however, might have been conceptual; the Sea Control Ship might have changed the way we think about how naval aviation contributes to international security.  The ability of small carriers to contribute to a variety of different missions and needs might draw us away from the (if incorrectly applied) Mahanian conception of naval power to a more Corbettian “dispersal” concept. And at a time when even strong advocates of the modern CVN have begun to buckle under the enormous cost of the great ships, the SCS might have offered a different way of approaching the projection of naval power.

Conclusion:

Technology undoubtedly matters, but only rarely in the sense that an isolated technological achievement lends decisive advantage in tactical engagements. Rather, technological innovations and choices shape the ways in which military organizations, and the broader defense-industrial complex, approach the prospect of war.  Each of these systems involved a radical rethink of organizational roles and priorities, and the cancelation of each left huge holes in capabilities, holes that continue to be filled in novel ways.

Honorable Mentions:

USS United States class aircraft carrier, USS Montana class battleship, USS Lexington class battlecruiser, B-49, F-23 “Black Widow” and the F-20 Tigershark.

Robert Farley is a senior lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and The Diplomat. Follow him on Twitter:@drfarls. This first appeared in 2015 and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Wikipedia.

Kris Osborn

Security, Asia

Beijing appears poised to sell the CR500 to partners around the globe.

China’s new CR500 Golden Eagle helicopter drone now being prepared for war. It looks like a mini-drone helicopter built to fly at high speeds with coaxial, counter rotating blades and a small, sensor-carrying body structure. The drone is likely intended to find and paint hostile targets ahead of advancing armored units.

The new ready-for-production drone has been cleared for export by Chinese authorities, raising the already large concern that dangerous drone technologies will continue to advance in sophistication and proliferate quickly around the world. Those seeking advanced drones range from large nation states looking to offer reconnaissance support to large mechanized armored units to small groups of rogue, stateless insurgents or even terrorists.

While many of the specifics of the platform, such as its speed or sensor payload, may not be fully known, a Chinese government-backed newspaper writes that the drone is ideally suited to support tanks, self-propelled artillery and other ground combat units advancing to enemy contact.

“The drone can carry a large payload, has a long endurance even when fully loaded, and a compact structure that can be easily stored and transported. It can also resist strong winds, carry different types of electro-optical pods and payloads, and act as a logistics support craft and deliver materials with pinpoint accuracy,” the drone’s maker, a Chinese state-owned firm called NORINCO stated in the Global Times newspaper. 

The paper even goes on to say that the Golden Eagle is “designed to meet the demands of the arms trade,” a scenario likely to fortify or simply add to existing U.S. concerns that China is not only engineering dangerous new technologies but also exporting them to hostile nations around the world. 

The drone is likely armed with standard EO/IR camera sensors and electronic warfare systems, and it may be that its principal advantage or attribute may simply be intended to be its speed. The exact speed may not be known at the moment, however it is clearly built with counter-rotating rotor blades, a well-known compound configuration built to maximize speed. The idea is to offset potentially destabilizing vibrations or flight-path disturbances likely to take place at high speeds. 

Also, much like a compound configuration, albeit in a massively scaled back way, the mini-helicopter drone may have some kind of thrusting or propulsion mechanism in the back. It may not be known if the Golden Eagle is faster than the larger, more rounded U.S. Navy helicopter-like Fire Scout drone, yet speed might be a key advantage when it comes to scouting ahead of attacking armored units. As a vertical take-off-and-landing drone, it would not have to rely upon a small landing strip or catapult of some kind to launch and can instead be organic or closely responsive to any ground forces it may support. 

The drone also looks like it has small side pylons or mini-fins which might be able to hold weapons for remote firing, which would allow an aerial attack should targets beyond line of sight for friendly troops be identified. 

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

Image: GlobalTimes.

Sebastien Roblin

Security, Middle East

Think assassinations. 

Here's What You Need to Remember: Israel is known for doing what it thinks it needs to do to remain secure against any threat.

Approaching eight o’clock on the morning of January 12, 2010 Professor Massoud Alimohammadi walked to his car parked next to his house in North Tehran, passing a small motorbike on the side of the road. The fifty-one-year-old elementary particle physicist was a leading Iranian theorist on quantum-field states, and known to his friends as a political moderate.

As the professor’s open his car door, the person who had been observing him pressed a button on a remote control. The bike suddenly exploded with such force that all the windows on Masoud’s four-story apartment building were shattered. Massoud was killed instantly, and two nearby bystanders injured. The triggerman, ostensibly a man named Arash Kerhadkish, strolled over to a car waiting nearby and was driven away.

Initially, some speculated that Iranian hardliners sanctioned the killing of a reformist professor. However, anonymous Iranian and Western intelligence sources eventually told a different story: the professor was an important figure in a nuclear-research program run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Nine months later, on the morning of November 29, a quantum physicist named Majid Shahriari was driving through Tehran with his wife, Dr. Bejhat Ghasemi, in the passenger seat when several motorbikes road up beside him near Artesh Boulevard. While one rider hemmed in Shahriari’s car, another rider (believed to be Arash Kerhadkish), attached a package of C4 explosive to the door beside Shahriari, then drove back and triggered a detonator. The explosion killed Shahriari, injured his wife and colleague, and even knocked over one of the motorbike-mounted hitmen, wounding the hitman.

At nearly the same time, another motorbike assassin rammed the car of Sharhiari’s colleague, Professor Fereydoon Abassi, a prominent leader of Iran’s nuclear-research program as he awaited Sharhiari for an appointment at Shahid Beheshti University. He and his wife jumped out of the car just before the bike exploded, seriously injuring Abassi in the face and the hand.

Eight months later on July 23, 2011, Darioush Rezaeinejad and his wife drove to pick up their daughter Armita up from kindergarten. At 4 p.m., the thirty-five-year-old postgrad in electrical engineering deposited his wife and child on the curb and was returning to his vehicle to park the car when two bearded motorcyclists pulled up next him and opened fire with nine-millimeter pistols. Rezaeinejad was shot five times in the arm, neck and chest. His wife, Shoreh Pirani, attempted to pursue the attackers, but they shot her too. The engineer died shortly after being hospitalized at Resalat Hospital. Shoreh recovered, and later told an interviewer that her five-year-old daughter continued to draw pictures of the moment of her father’s death.

Darioush’s wife would also state in a later interview that the engineer had been a member of the Iranian nuclear program and had received anonymous threats prior to his death. Tehran blamed the United States and Israel for the killing. The United States denied the charge, while Israeli government social-media accounts suggestively expressed that it did not condemn the killings, whoever might have perpetrated them.

Six months later on January 11, 2012—nearly the anniversary of Alimohammadi’s killing—Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, an expert on uranium enrichment, was the next to fall victim while driving to work through Eastern Tehran in his Peugeot 405. Deputy director of the Natanz facility, he had been photographed with Mohamed Ahmadinejad, who was president at the time. Supposedly, he was tailed by multiple assassins, including the ubiquitous Kerhadkish. One of those assassins attached a magnetic mine to Roshan’s car, which detonated and killed him, but spared the life of his wife, who was sitting beside him.

Iranian counter-intelligence operatives in the Ministry Of Intelligence and Surveillance apparently were at work, however. In 2011, reportedly thanks to a tip from a third country, MOIS picked up a twenty-four-year old aspiring kick-boxer named Majid Jamali Fashi, who claimed to have dropped of the explosive motorbike that killed Alimohammadi. Fashi confessed on public television to receiving training and a payment of $120,000 from Mossad (Institute), the Israeli spy agency connected to dozens of assassinations over the years, including German rocket scientists, Olympic terrorist plotters, and the Canadian Gerald Bull, developer of the of the Iraqi Project Babylon “super gun.”

In May 2012, Fashi was hung—and Tehran announced it had captured eight male and six female Iranian nationals involved in the killings. Iranian media subsequently aired a half-hour documentary dramatizing their confessions. The nationals were reportedly drawn from sympathizers or members of the MEK (Mujahedin of Iran), a violent opposition group to the government Tehran. In this account, the agents had received forty-five days of training in Israel, and then operated in multi-cell teams that had meticulously spied on their victims to determine their routines and then executed the hits based on instructions from Israeli handlers.

Iranian security forces are infamous for using torture, sexual assault, and threats to relatives and to compel false public confessions of guilt. However, anonymous sources in Israeli intelligence and American diplomatic circles conveyed to media that Israel really was behind the assassination campaign that Fashi at least had given a generally true confession, and that Israel really was training MEK members to serve as operatives in Iran.

In 2014, a journalist revealed that Washington had pressured Israel to cease the assassinations, which had threatened to derail attempts to negotiate a nuclear agreement with Tehran. Earlier, president Bush was reportedly angered to learn that Israelis posing as CIA agents had recruit Iranian nationals in Pakistan for its sabotage and assassination campaign in Iran.

Of course, both public Iranian and anonymous Israeli accounts may be calculated and less than reliable. It seems possible, for example, that the Iranian nationals implicated in the assassination may have been working besides un-apprehended Israeli operatives from Kidon (Hebrew for “Tip of the Spear”) an elite assassination unit within Mossad. According to some accounts, the attacks may also have stopped because additional killings would have posed too great a risk, and remaining targets were too well guarded.

There are also a few ambiguous cases to consider. Earlier on January 15, 2007, Iranian scientist Ardeshir Hosseinpour died mysteriously in Isfahan due to a “gas poisoning” incident. The journals Stratfor and Haaretz claimed Hosseinpour’s death was the work of Mossad, while the Iranian government and sources in Mossad denied involvement. Years later, Hosseinpour’s sister claimed instead that the professor had been killed by the Revolutionary Guard for refusing to work with the nuclear program. In 2015, Iranian security claimed it had foiled another Mossad hit. Israeli sources don’t appear to have stepped forth to corroborate either claim.

In 2018, an article by Ronen Bergman in Politico sketched out the longer history of the Israeli assassination campaign, identifying it as the “fifth prong” of a four-part strategy devised in 2003 by Tamir Pardo, then serving as deputy head of Mossad under Meir Dagan. The concept was to pressure Iran into abandoning its nuclear program using economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, support for Iranian minorities and opposition groups, and interdiction of key nuclear technologies. Though the wider campaign involved close cooperation with the U.S., which famously collaborated to develop the Stuxnet computer virus responsible for destroying hundreds of Iranian centrifuges, Israel alone was involved in plotting assassinations, which the CIA claims it was unwilling to become involved in and preferred not to be aware of. (Bergman also gives an alternate versions of Rezaeinejad’s killing, claiming he was tailed by a lone motorcyclist, and shot while approaching the fortified Imam Ali facility.)

Bergman alleges that the campaign was effective in terrorizing Iranian scientists into avoiding or disassociating with Tehran’s nuclear program, and caused Iran to institute expensive and highly time-consuming security measures to protect its scientists and attempt to root out traitors and bugs. In his account, Dagan saw the assassinations as potentially heading off a push by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Nethanyahu to directly attack Iranian nuclear sites from the air, a course of action he saw as disastrous.

The Mossad campaign did, however, cause the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to plot a series of retaliatory terrorist attacks across the world using its Unit 400 cover operations branch. Hastily and ineptly planned, all but one of the roughly twenty Iranian plots failed, often in spectacular fashion. The campaign’s only “success” was the killing of five Israeli tourists and a local driver on July 18, 2012, in a suicide bombing executed by Hezbollah at the Burgas airport in Bulgaria.

The Mossad assassination campaign did not continue after 2012, though both U.S. and Israeli intelligence sources allege it was effective in slowing the progress of the Iranian nuclear program. While assassination was disavowed by U.S. diplomatic and intelligence officials, some politicians have voiced their support for the scientist killings. After all, the reasoning goes, such targeted assassinations kill far fewer bystanders than would missiles launched in a wider military conflict.

However, it’s hard to deny that the campaign used tactics that would be labelled “terrorism” or “murder” in the West were they waged against Israeli or American scientists engaged in weapons research. It seems assassinations are condemned or praised not according to the methods used but depending on who is performing them. It remains to be seen whether the U.S. withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal, which can already be linked to an escalating proxy war in Syria, may also see a resumption of the shadowy covert war between Israel and Iran.

Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This first appeared earlier in 2018.

Image: Reuters

Peter Suciu

Security, Middle East

The battle group was there to keep an eye on things while some of America’s troops finally come home.

Less than a month after the USS Nimitz (CVN-68) departed the Persian Gulf to take part in the annual Malabar naval exercises with the Indian Navy, the carrier and its strike group returned to provide “defensive capabilities” during a drawdown of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“This action ensures we have sufficient capability available to respond to any threat and to deter any adversary from acting against our troops during the force reduction,” the Pentagon said in a statement. However, the U.S. Navy’s carrier strike group 11 (CSG 11) return was not triggered by any “threats” after the killing of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, last week.

Tensions in the region have been seen as extraordinarily high following the assassination of Fakhrizadeh, which Tehran has blamed on the United States and Israel. However, Commander Rebecca Rebarich, a spokesperson for the U.S. Fifth Fleet, told the AFP news agency that the return of CSG 11, under the command of Rear Adm. James A. Kirk, was not related to a specific threat but was part of regional security.

“There were no specific threats that triggered the return of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group,” Rebarich said in a statement. “The return of Nimitz is centered on maintaining CENTCOM’s ability to remain postured and prepared to help preserve regional stability and security.”

The deployment to the Gulf came as President Donald Trump announced about 2,000 troops would be pulled from Afghanistan while another 500 would be pulled from Iraq—leaving approximately 2,500 troops in each country. CSG-11 has been deployed to provide combat support and air cover during the drawdown.

The U.S. Navy flotilla including the Nimitz took part in the joint exercises with India as well as with the navies of Australia and Japan in the Arabian Sea.

“We greatly appreciate the dedication of the crew of the Nimitz, who has been serving with distinction at sea since this summer,” the Pentagon also said via a statement.

USS Nimitz, which is one of the eleven super carriers in operation with the United States Navy, left its home port of Bremerton, Wash. in April after a month of quarantine and testing for the coronavirus with the crew on board the ship at Naval Base Kitsap. The Pentagon hasn’t announced when the ship will return to its home port. The U.S. warship had conducted a port visit in Bahrain from Nov. 4 through 8.

“The sailors and Marines of Nimitz Strike Group remain steadfast in their commitment to the free flow of commerce, freedom of navigation, and our regional maritime partnerships,” Rear Adm. Kirk said in a statement according to USNI News. “We are grateful for the support from the Kingdom of Bahrain for our port call.”

The port visit came after Nimitz had been operating in the Persian Gulf for almost two months, the longest amount of time that a U.S. aircraft carrier had spent in the waters of the Middle East since 2018. USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) had been deployed to the Persian Gulf from December 2017 until late March 2018 as part of the U.S. anti-ISIS effort Operation Inherent Resolve.

In October, the U.S. Navy announced that it was considering an extension to the service lives of the aging Nimitz-class carriers. USS Nimitz was commissioned in May 1975, and it had its refueling and overhaul completed from 1998 to 2001.

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

Image: Reuters.

James Stevenson

History, Europe

It’s hard to blame strategic bombing advocates for crediting the aerial onslaught for the surrender — and credit it they did. But the fallacy in this post hoc thinking derives from the belief that the order of events was the cause of the result without considering other factors.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The concept of "strategic bombing" is a good one - deprive an enemy of his ability to manufacture military equipment, and you deprive him of his ability to wage war. If used correctly, strategic bombing could shorten wars without costing soldiers' lives. That was the theory, anyway.

In the years after World War I, the brain trust of the U.S. Army evolved two conflicting opinions on how best to apply air power in the next war.

The Army Air Corps’ emerging bomber faction believed directly attacking the vital centers of a country, instead of bombing combat troops, was the best solution. This theory held that destroying an enemy’s war-making capabilities, its will to wage war, would lead to victory without the need to risk soldiers or even spend money on them.

These beliefs were incorporated into the phrase “strategic bombing,” pioneered by Giulio Douhet, an Italian military theorist who in the 1920s argued — horrifyingly — for the widespread use of chemical and biological weapons. Douhet later served as chief of aviation under Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

The second group looked to aviation as a kind of mobile artillery to support ground troops. After all, no one ever won a war without troops conquering territory — so the addition of aerial artillery would make soldiers that much more effective.

This thinking coalesced around the phrase “army cooperation” in the United Kingdom and “close air support” in the United States.

In the spring of 1943, American and British forces successfully defeated the German and Italian armies in North Africa. This experience informed U.S. Gen. Pete Quesada and others who wished to experiment in the unperfected art of “close air support” that would pay off once the invasion of France began.

But first, the Allies’ strategic bombing advocates wanted to put their theories to the test.

The occasion came during planning for the invasion of Sicily and mainland Italy. The first stop was Pantelleria, an island that been occupied in the distant past by Carthaginians, Romans, Moors and Normans, and which Mussolini had made into a penal colony.

The onslaught on this small, 32-square-mile island — 10 square miles larger than Manhattan — was known as Operation Corkscrew. It would have been a trivial footnote in history except that it appeared to offer an opportunity to provide ostensible evidence that bombing alone can win wars.

Thus, the bombing of Pantelleria became an experiment, one anticipated to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that bombing would ratify what up to then had been a matter of faith, but would soon offer proof that through bombing alone, surrender was a certainty.

“All these forces were assembled to test the assertion that if you destroy what a man has, and remove the possibility of his bringing more in, then in due course of time, it becomes impossible for him to defend himself,” Maj. Gen. Jimmy Doolittle said.

If bombing alone did not force a surrender, the Allies planned to invade the island by June 11. In an attempt to avoid the need for an invasion, the Allies generated 5,284 sorties, dropping a total of 12.4 million pounds of bombs on Pantelleria.

The Allies’ rain of bombs began on May 8, 1943. As June 11 approached, cannons from five British cruisers and seven destroyers intensified the downpour.

In some respects, the presence of warships contaminated the results of the strategic bombing test, but one could look the other way and pretend the ships’ guns were the functional equivalent of small bombs.

“I want to make the capture of Pantelleria a sort of laboratory to determine the effect of concentrated heavy bombing on a defended coastline,” Gen. Dwight Eisenhower told Gen. George Marshall.

“When the time comes we are going to concentrate everything we have to see whether damage to material, personnel and morale cannot be made so serious as to make a landing a rather simple affair.”

The person in charge of the aerial operation, Lt. Gen. Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, had been convinced of the strategic bombing theory for a long time. He believed that if you knew where to drop enough bombs, you could have a decisive result.

“Spaatz … committed to the assault the entire Strategic Air Force and part of the Tactical Air Force, an armada of four heavy-bomber groups, seven medium-bomber groups, two light-bomber groups, and eight fighter groups, a total of … [1,017] operational aircraft,” Wesley Craven and James Cate wrote in the official history Army Air Forces in World War II.

“Against this concentration the Axis had 900 operational combat planes within range of the island, most of them committed to tasks other than defending Pantelleria.”

On June 11, the Italians surrendered — 33 days after the bombing began.

It’s hard to blame strategic bombing advocates for crediting the aerial onslaught for the surrender — and credit it they did. But the fallacy in this post hoc thinking derives from the belief that the order of events was the cause of the result without considering other factors.

For one, the Allied bombers were virtually unopposed for more than a month. Allied bomber crews would face a far bloodier situation during the strategic bombing campaign in the heavily-defended skies above Germany.

The results were also unanticipated. The 11,000 defending Italian soldiers on Pantelleria dug in deeper and twice refused requests to surrender. However, when Allied troops finally began their approach to the island, the Italians gave up.

Secondly, the Italian troops — along with a handful of Germans — did not mount a robust anti-aircraft defense.

“In the opinion of a small group of captured Luftwaffe technicians, a company of German soldiers would have made a better showing than” all the Italians, a 1959 Air Force historical review stated. Had the defenders been all German, the bombers would have “been less successful.”

But the bombing itself was hardly successful. It inflicted little damage on the island’s coastal defenses and anti-aircraft batteries, and the damage which did exist could have been repaired by a determined crew.

Around 22 percent of the B-17 Flying Fortresses involved in the bombing hit their targets within a 100 yard radius. “For the medium bombers,” the review noted, “approximately 6.4 percent, … [and] for light and fighter-bombers about 2.6 percent.”

The abysmal and unopposed performance should have been a warning of how much worse bombing accuracy would become over Germany with fighter and flak opposition, particularly in the winter months, rather than a celebration of the proof that strategic bombing alone would force a surrender.

Claiming Pantelleria was a strategic bombing success is like a basketball team bragging about successfully making unopposed layups.

According to one of Eisenhower’s biographers, the bombing of Pantelleria was “one of the greatest examples of overkill of the war.”

Eisenhower’s comments to Britain’s Fleet Adm. Andrew Cunningham aboard the cruiser HMS Aurora tends to confirm the “overkill” comments. “Andrew, why don’t you and I get into a boat together and row ashore on our own,” Eisenhower said. “I think we can capture the island without any of these soldiers.”

The experience on Pantelleria also refuted one of Gen. Henry “Hap” Arnold’s “truisms” scattered throughout his autobiography, Global Mission. “Normally it takes five years from the time the designer has an idea until the plane is delivered to combatants,” Arnold wrote.

Pantelleria was an exception. A group of A-36 Apaches — a ground support variant of the P-51 Mustang — took part within seven months of the plane’s first flight and less than three years after the P-51’s first flight. A-36s would make 138 sorties over the island, dropping 57.5 tons of ordnance.

Finally, Eisenhower clearly wasn’t convinced that bombers alone could win wars — because he continued to rely on massed ground forces for the invasion of France the following year.

The Allies landed in Sicily and continued to the Italian mainland, landing there on Sept. 3, 1943. Italy capitulated five days later.

The speed with which Italy surrendered, six times faster than Pantelleria, might also be an insight into a country’s “will to wage war.” Forty days prior, Mussolini had been ousted and arrested. That likely had more to do with collapsing Italy’s will to wage war than bombing from above.

This article by James Stevenson originally appeared at War is Boring in 2016 and first appeared on TNI several years ago.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Peter Suciu

Security, Asia

With more than 100,000 soldiers deployed across a border stretching nearly 550 miles (872 km) at heights well over 15,000 feet above sea level where temperatures could soon drop to minus 30 degrees Celsius, it has been described as a frontline without parallel in modern military history. After months of a build-up of forces at the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the Indian Army and China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) fortunately aren't fighting one another – but now as winter has set in both sides are battling an extreme cold as well as boredom and increased fatigue.

With more than 100,000 soldiers deployed across a border stretching nearly 550 miles (872 km) at heights well over 15,000 feet above sea level where temperatures could soon drop to minus 30 degrees Celsius, it has been described as a frontline without parallel in modern military history. After months of a build-up of forces at the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the Indian Army and China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) fortunately aren't fighting one another – but now as winter has set in both sides are battling an extreme cold as well as boredom and increased fatigue.

In addition to the extreme cold, where even touching bare metal can be hazardous, soldiers must deal with equally extreme wind chills brought on by the high-speed winds that whip down from the mountains across the Ladakh Valley. According to a report from The Indian Express, all of this is exacerbated by the rarefied atmosphere, which comes from a combination of lack of oxygen and a function of the altitude. Past deployments of Indian forces along the LAC saw an attrition rate as high as 20 percent, mostly due to medical-based non-fatal causalities.

The falling temperatures can bring on frostbite, snow-blindness, chilblain, and even peeling of skin due to the extremely dry conditions – while most soldiers will still face nausea, headaches, and disorientation. Maintaining readiness is a challenge both the Indian Army and the PLA face.

On the Indian side of the LAC, soldiers wear bulky layers of clothing to stay warm but that can impact efficacy and notably affect mobility. Keeping the soldiers fed is a problem, as it is impossible to bring in fresh fruit or vegetables, but even canned food is a problem as it is difficult to consume too much in the altitudes. Instead, soldiers rely on a very high caloric diet of fruits, dried fruits, and even chocolates.

The Chinese PLA forces may have it slightly better, as Beijing has rushed in pre-fabricated dormitories to address the extremely low morale that comes with the extremely low temperatures. To bolster the spirits of the men serving along the LAC, the PLA has provided recreation centers that include fitness facilities, heated swimming pools, hot tubs, and even libraries with computers and video game systems to help address the boredom and general malaise that have set in.

Both sides are reportedly facing a shortage of specialized cold climate clothing.

Despite the harsh conditions, neither side has shown a break in their resolve even as talks to deescalate have continued. Instead, India and China have continued to deploy more units and heavy equipment to the poorly demarcated border region. By some accounts, Indian and Chinese tanks are just 400 meters apart at some spots.

India has reportedly deployed numerous T-72 and T-80 tanks, along with BMP-2 armored personnel carriers (APCs) that can run on a special fuel mix designed specifically for the high altitudes and low temperatures. China meanwhile has deployed its specially-designed T-15 light tank and T-99 main battle tank to the region.

While neither side seems ready to escalate the standoff into a full-blown war, as neither side will back down, the biggest threat now is the extreme cold. There will likely be only losers this winter, even if neither side actually fires its guns in anger.

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

Peter Suciu

Security, Europe

What does the Greek military plan to do with the armored vehicles?

The Greek military could soon have some slightly used “Guardians” to help protect its rugged countryside. Over the summer the U.S. Congress approved the sale of 1,200 used 4x4 M1117 Guardian Armored Security Vehicles (ASV) at what can only be described as a truly discounted price, and those vehicles could soon be headed to Greece. The ASVs had been used by U.S. Army military police units, and were offered to Greece for around 70,000 euros ($83,700) each—which is a considerable savings for cash-strapped Athens, as the vehicles originally cost $800,000 a piece to produce.

However, the sale price to the Greek military didn’t include the platform’s armaments, so Athens will have to supply its own machine guns and grenade launchers. Yet, even in used condition and without armaments the M1117 could be just what the Greek military needs—an affordable platform with plenty of spare parts to ensure that the Guardians will remain operational for years, even decades, to come.

Light Rugged Vehicle

The 4x4 wheeled armored vehicle platform was developed by Textron Marine & Land Systems’ (TMYL) Cadillac Gage in the late 1990s for the United States Military Police Corps, and the first prototypes were delivered in 1997. The M1117 entered serial production in late 1999 and was ready for deployment just as the United States became involved in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Guardian was widely deployed in the early stages of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, where it was involved as mission essential equipment, and provided operational capability in both missions.

In fact, it was serendipitous that the M1117 was actually one of the first American military vehicles to be built with a specialized mine-resistant hull. It was produced with armor that can withstand a 5kg mine explosion and even stand up to 155mm artillery blasts that are as close as fifteen meters from the vehicle. The floor shield was also sloped to expel any explosive power generated by mines, while the sloping also helped the vehicle to traverse through water and mud.

The Guardian was developed with rugged terrain in mind and this included an 8.3-liter Cummins diesel engine that produces 260 hp, and offers top speed of around sixty mph off road, while it was also fitted with run-flat tires. The vehicle provides 360-degree vision for the crew, features an air-conditioning system to ensure comfort in extreme summer heat—all features that were welcome in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The vehicles provided protection to military police crews from small arms fire and mines but also offered quick insertion capability and maneuverability in urban areas. The M1117 was developed with worldwide deployment in mind, and was made to be compatible with the C-130 cargo plane. In fact, five of the vehicles could be accommodated in a single C-17 aircraft. Even today it has continued to be the only combat vehicle that can roll on and off while remaining combat loaded.

M1117 Variants

Textron has produced several variants of the M1117 Guardian including an infantry carrier, which has a crew of two and can carry eight passengers; a command and control vehicle, which is also able to carry a crew of two as well as four battle staff; a recovery vehicle; a Reconnaissance Surveillance & Target Acquisition (RSTA); and ambulance version.

Additionally, Textron developed the M1200 Armored Knight FiST-V (Fire Support Team Vehicle), which was designed using the Guardian ASV as a base. It featured a sensor package, which can locate and assign targets for indirect fire and laser-guided weapons. Most of the M1200 variants have been used in operations in Iraq.

It isn’t clear which of the M1117 Guardian ASVs could be heading to Greece, but it has been reported that those will be able to carry five soldiers. Regardless of which model(s) Athens receives, it is clearly getting a serious vehicle on the cheap.

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

Image: Wikimedia.

Ethen Kim Lieser

Public Health, Americas

Given the number of deaths in nursing homes, this move makes sense.

Health-care personnel and residents of long-term care facilities have been tabbed as the first groups that will have access to a coronavirus vaccine, according to a new proposal from an independent advisory committee within the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On Tuesday, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices met virtually to discuss who would receive the long-awaited first vaccine doses once they are cleared for public use, and the proposal eventually passed thirteen to one.

The recommendations now must be approved by CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield before the vaccine can be distributed to states.

There are roughly twenty-one million health-care workers and three million long-term care facility residents in the United States, according to the committee.

“To date, more than 240,000 health-care workers have contracted COVID-19 and 858 have died. According to estimates, deaths in long-term care facilities account for 40 percent of all COVID-19 deaths nationwide,” the CDC said in a statement.

“These factors contributed to the committee’s recommendation to prevent spread by protecting those on the front lines, health-care workers treating COVID-19 patients, and protect the most vulnerable, those elderly persons living in long-term care facilities. The committee intends to meet again following (the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s) authorization or approval for vaccine-specific recommendations.”

The committee defined health-care workers as paid and unpaid individuals serving in health-care settings who have the potential for direct or indirect exposure to patients or infectious materials. Long-term care facility residents were defined as adults who reside in facilities that provide a variety of services, including medical and personal care, to people who are unable to live independently.

Meanwhile, children and young adults are expected to get the vaccine last.

The panel meeting comes as states are busy preparing to distribute the vaccine in as few as two weeks. Moderna and Pfizer both requested emergency use authorization for their respective vaccines last month. The FDA reviews are expected to take several weeks—although the agency has scheduled a meeting for December 10 to discuss Pfizer’s request specifically.

Last month, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said that about forty million doses of coronavirus vaccine will be available by the end of 2020, enough to inoculate about twenty million people since the vaccine requires two doses.

Trump administration’s vaccine chief Moncef Slaoui contended on Tuesday that the entire U.S. population of 330 million could be vaccinated by June, and that there could be enough doses to immunize the rest of the world’s population of 7.8 billion by early to mid-2022.

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

Image: Reuters.

Peter Suciu

Security, Europe

Moscow is pushing foward with developing a variety of new weapons.

The Russian military has been busy conducting numerous tests of its latest military hardware in its northern waters. Just days after a Mach 9 Tsirkon hypersonic missile was launched from a Project 22350 frigate in the White Sea against a target in the Barents Sea, a cruise missile was test-fired from a nuclear-powered submarine in the same region.

According to Tass, the nuclear-powered submarine Kazan successfully launched the missile while in the White Sea as part of the final stage of state trails the Russian Defense Ministry reported earlier this week.

“Today, the Project Yasen-M lead nuclear-powered underwater missile-carrying cruiser Kazan successfully fired an anti-ship cruise missile against a sea target,” the Defense Ministry said. “The target position was successfully struck by the warhead of an Oniks cruise missile.”

The test launch was conducted on Monday afternoon, and vessels of the Northern Fleet’s Belomorsk naval base provided security of the water area during the test-fire. The Kazan is the second Yasen-class nuclear-powered attack submarine to enter service with the Russian Navy. It is an upgraded Project 885M design that has been described as being far more capable than the lead boat of the class, K-560 Severodvinsk.

The Yasen-M is part of a modernization effort that was meant to account for the sixteen-year gap between the commissioning of the Severodvinsk and Kazan. The Yasen-M line is expected to occupy the same performance league as the U.S. Navy’s Virginia-class of fast-attack submarines.

Lessons Learned, Technology Upgraded

The Project 885M lead nuclear-powered submarine Kazan was laid down on July 24, 2009 and floated out on March 31, 2017. The Russian Navy took delivery of Kazan in 2018, and in addition to incorporating new technological developments that emerged since the construction of her sister submarine began in 1993, the upgraded boat also takes advantage of lessons learned that came from tests of the platform.

According to state media, the submarine entered the final stage of state trials with the crew and the acceptance team on November 21. During the combat training naval ranges, the submarine’s crew will practice maneuvering in the surface and submerged positions at various depths, and additionally will check the operation of the submarine’s basic systems. When it is deployed to the sea, specialists will check the Kazan’s systems and assemblies and shipborne armament.

The submarine is currently undergoing trials and is expected to join the Russian Navy as early as the end of this month. The nuclear-powered submarine will operate in the Northern Fleet. The Project 885 and 885M nuclear-powered boats carry Kalibr-PL and/or Oniks cruise missiles as their basic armament.

The addition of Kazan is part of the Russian Navy’s major efforts to modernize its submarine force and equip its Northern Fleet. This comes as the Arctic region has become ever more militarized in the context of global Russian-North Atlantic Treaty Organization competition. Five additional boats of the class are currently in various stages of construction at the Sevmash Shipyard, which is part of the United Shipbuilding Corporation.

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

Image: Reuters.

A viable immunization is good news, but it won’t mean the end of masks and social distancing.

Michael Rubin

Security, Europe

Simply put, too often, the United States plays checkers while other countries play chess. It is time for Washington, Paris, and others in the international community to think several steps ahead and anticipate the next war in the Caucasus if only to prevent it. Diplomats may value quiet, but they should be wary when past precedent and current evidence suggests quiet is not the foundation for peace, but rather the calm before an even greater storm.

The guns are silent, Russian peacekeepers both separate Armenians and Azeris and guard ancient Armenian monasteries to prevent their destruction by Azerbaijani soldiers and Syrian mercenaries. The joint Turkey-Russia truce monitoring center will soon begin operations in Azerbaijani-controlled portions of Nagorno-Karabakh. American and French diplomats assigned to the Minsk Group, meanwhile, seek to return to a diplomatic process shredded when Azerbaijani forces backed by Turkey launched a surprise attack on Artsakh, as Armenians called the self-declared independent entity in Nagorno-Karabakh.

It might seem the war is over but Western diplomats should be wary: The modalities surrounding the Lachin corridor—the land route connecting Armenia to Armenian-held portions of Nagorno-Karabakh through Azerbaijani-controlled territory—are not been fully resolved, and the route remains dangerous for civilians who are subject to sniper fire and kidnapping, Russian peacekeepers notwithstanding.

Lachin might be an irritant, but it is not the major problem. The November 10 ceasefire was a barebones document, written in a hurry. The clause which may sow the seeds for a new war is the last: “The Republic of Armenia shall guarantee the safety of transport links between western regions of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic with a view to organizing the unimpeded movement of citizens, vehicles and cargo in both directions.”

There are two problems: First is the use of the plural “links” to connect the two portions of Azerbaijan separated by Armenia. That suggests more than one road or railroad and the further bifurcation of Armenian territory. That might be a diplomatic spoiler to any hope that peace will quickly follow the ceasefire, but it is unlikely alone to be a casus belli.

Rather, the second problem will be the Turkish truck traffic which will use the new route both to consolidate Turkish influence in Azerbaijan and extend Turkey’s economic and cultural ties to Central Asia. Should the traffic flow normally, there will be no issue. But should a sniper, for example, kill a Turkish truck driver, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will both blame Armenia and demand a buffer zone to ensure safe passage along the routes. Such a scenario is not far-fetched: Whether with regard to the “Reichstag Fire” coup or false flag terrorism, too often elements within Turkey seek to spark a crisis which Turkey then seeks to use to its advantage.

That Erdoğan has previously converted demands for “counter-terrorism” buffer zones into territorial gain will only encourage him to try the same tactic again. Turkish forces remain entrenched in northeastern Syria, where they issue Turkish identity cards, impose Turkish education, and build Turkish post offices.

And just as ethnic chauvinism toward Kurds appears to have motivated Erdoğan’s moves into northern Syria, so too does Erdoğan’s disdain for both Armenians and Christianity color his moves now. Indeed, it was no coincidence that when Erdoğan picked the date for Turkey and Azerbaijan to launch their assault on Nagorno-Karabakh, he chose the closest Sunday to the 100th anniversary of the 1920 Turkish invasion of Armenia.

No Armenian government, neither that of incumbent Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan nor any opposition figure, will be able to accede to a Turkish ultimatum to cede control over wide swaths of Armenian territory. Any buffer zone demand will, in effect, partition Armenia. The Armenian military, however, will be unable to match Turkey in either equipment or manpower. The only wildcard in such a scenario is Russia but the events of the past month suggest Erdoğan’s overconfidence trumps his fear of Russian deterrence.

Simply put, too often, the United States plays checkers while other countries play chess. It is time for Washington, Paris, and others in the international community to think several steps ahead and anticipate the next war in the Caucasus, if only to prevent it. Diplomats may value quiet, but they should be wary when past precedent and current evidence suggests quiet is not the foundation for peace, but rather the calm before an even greater storm.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a frequent author for TNI. 

Image: Reuters.

David Axe

Security,

It couldn’t figure out how to sink one of its own.

Here's What You Need to Remember: To even try to sink an American flattop, you first must hit it. That's not easy, either. No carrier sails without an air wing with as many as 50 fighter aircraft plus several escorting destroyers, cruisers and submarines. A virtual wall of defensive weaponry surrounds the flattop out to a distance of several hundred miles.

A Chinese admiral and pundit told a trade-show audience that Beijing could resolve China's territorial disputes by sinking two U.S. Navy aircraft carriers and killing thousands of American sailors.

Rear Adm. Lou Yuan's threat isn't an empty one. The Chinese military has deployed an array of weaponry that it acquired specifically to target American flattops.

But a U.S. Navy test in 2005 proved that even if you hit them, carriers are really hard to sink.

Lou made his provocative comment on Dec. 20, 2018 at the Military Industry List summit, according to media reports.

“What the United States fears the most is taking casualties,” declared Lou, an anti-American author, social commentator and military theorist at the PLA Academy of Military Science.

Sinking just one carrier could kill 5,000 Americans, Lou pointed out. Sink two, and you double the toll. "We’ll see how frightened America is" after losing 10,000 sailors, Lou crowed.

Leaving aside the likelihood of a full-scale war breaking out between the world's two leading military powers and economies, sinking a carrier is easier said than done. History underscores the difficulty of the undertaking.

In 1964 Viet Cong saboteurs managed to damage and briefly sink the former U.S. Navy escort carrier Card while the vessel, then operating as an aircraft ferry for U.S. Military Sealift Command, moored in Saigon.

But the last time anyone permanently sank a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier in combat was during World War II. Twelve American carriers sank during the war, usually following intensive air attacks. The last to sink, USS Bismarck Sea, fell victim to Japanese kamikazes in February 1945.

In subsequent decades, American flattops suffered serious accidents including collisions and fires, but none sank. It's very difficult to sink a buoyant, thousand-feet-long ship that's mostly made of steel.

The U.S. Navy knows this from experience. In 2005, the Navy itself targeted the decommissioned carrier America in order to determine just how much punishment the vessel could withstand before slipping beneath the waves.

"The ship was pummeled by explosions both above and below the waterline," The War Zone reporter Tyler Rogoway explained in 2018. "After nearly four weeks of these activities, the carrier was scuttled. On May 14, 2005, the vessel's stern disappeared below the waterline and the ship began its voyage to the seafloor."

"America stood up to four weeks of abuse and only succumbed to the sea after demolition teams scuttled the ship on purpose once and for all, it's clear that America was built to sustain heavy damage in combat and still stay afloat."

Consider also the carrier-shaped pontoon ship that Iran built as a scale target for a 2015 war game. While small and flimsy compared to a real flattop, the pontoon vessel itself endured an intensive assault. "Iran struck the faux carrier with a barrage of anti-ship missiles, then swarmed it with small boats and then landed commandos on it," Rogoway reported.

Still, the fake flattop apparently remained afloat.

To even try to sink an American flattop, you first must hit it. That's not easy, either. No carrier sails without an air wing with as many as 50 fighter aircraft plus several escorting destroyers, cruisers and submarines. A virtual wall of defensive weaponry surrounds the flattop out to a distance of several hundred miles.

Still, China or another country could attempt to target the carriers with submarines, cruise missiles and ballistic rockets. 

"They will employ multiple systems in order to confuse and overwhelm U.S. defenses," naval historian Robert Farley wrote in 2017. "They will rely on the threat of attack to keep U.S. carrier battle groups as far as possible from the main theaters of operation."

"But the observation that the enemy has a missile or torpedo that can kill a carrier only begins a conversation about carrier vulnerability," Farley continued. "Shooting anything at an aircraft carrier is a costly, difficult operation."

The carrier's attackers could face withering counterfire from the vessel's defenders. "Beyond the monetary cost, launching an open attack against an American carrier strike group, with its own cruisers, destroyers and submarines, is almost certainly a suicide mission."

And if the United States' reaction to the 9/11 terror attacks is any indication, Washington surely would deploy all its remaining military might, including its surviving eight or nine carriers, against country behind the sinking.

"So there are two questions that remain for anyone who thinks they even have a shot at taking down one of these enormous steel behemoths," Farley explained. "Can you do it? And even if you can, is it worth it?"

David Axe serves as the new Defense Editor of the National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels War Fix, War Is Boring and Machete Squad. (This first appeared last year.)

Image: Reuters.

Robert Farley

Security,

The Cold War revisited.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Both the Soviets and the Americans had options in Asia. The strategic environment was far more fluid than in Europe, allowing a variety of different choices to disrupt and destabilize the opponent. This made the course of war far less predictable. At its (nonnuclear) worst, war could have raged across Asia on multiple fronts, from Korea to Japan to the Sino-Soviet border.

Nearly every analyst during the Cold War agreed that, if Moscow and Washington could keep the nukes from flying, the Central Front in Europe would prove decisive in war between the United States and the Soviet Union. The NATO alliance protected the Western European allies of the United States from Soviet aggression, while the Warsaw Pact provided the USSR with its own buffer against Germany.

But when the Cold War really went hot, the fighting took place in Asia. In Korea and Vietnam, the Soviet Union waged proxy struggles against the United States, and both sides used every tool available to control the destiny of China. However, while few believed that the Pacific theater would determine the victor of World War III, both the United States and Soviet Union needed to prepare for the eventuality of war there.

Scholars have devoted far less attention to the planning of World War III in East Asia than to the European theater. The two classic novels of the Third World War (Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising and John Hackett’s The Third World War) rarely touched on developments in Asia. However, in the 1970s and 1980s, the Naval War College traced the potential course of war in East Asia as part of a series of global war games. These games lend a great deal of insight into the key actors in the conflict, and how the decisive battles of a Second Pacific War might have played out.

The Players:

China

How would China have reacted to the onset of a war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact? Beijing certainly regarded the survival of NATO as critical to its security from the 1970s on. The existence of NATO prevented the USSR from concentrating the bulk of the Red Army and of Soviet strategic aviation against China; a Soviet victory in the West would have put China in great peril. By the 1980s, China stood at a massive technological disadvantage against the USSR. Moreover, Beijing worried (perhaps rightly) that even if the USSR held its nuclear fire against NATO, it would view a strategic exchange with China as less risky. Thus, there was no guarantee that China would open a second front against the USSR.

Japan

Japan combined extraordinary economic strength with significant military power and a crucial geographic position. A Japan committed to the United States could effectively prevent the sortie of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, while enabling attacks against the Soviet Far East. A neutral Japan limited these options, but still provided the NATO alliance with a strong economic foundation in case of a protracted war. Washington had the advantage; it only depended on how and how much.

Korea

Would North Korea have joined a general Soviet war against NATO by invading South Korea? Such a move would have put extraordinary pressure on U.S. forces, although by the 1980s South Korea could probably survive with only measured U.S. assistance. However, Pyongyang answered to two masters; it required the support of both Beijing and Moscow. Given the unlikelihood that China would support a Soviet war against NATO, the prospect of Beijing’s acquiescence in a second Korean War would have been extremely sketchy.

Southeast Asia

The Soviets had an ally in Hanoi, but no means to support that ally against either China or the United States. Moreover, the Vietnamese had little to gain from joining a conflict; they were substantially controlled by Laos and Cambodia, and could do little more than harass shipping lanes in the South China Sea. However, given the bloody nose that Vietnam had inflicted on both countries in 1975 and 1980, neither Washington nor Beijing would have had much interest in reopening the conflict, especially with far more pressing issues at hand. That said, Vietnam could still make some mischief with U.S. allies in the region, and the PRC still had scores to settle.

The Chess Pieces:

Soviet Pacific Fleet

The Soviets took the Pacific seriously. By the 1980s, the fleet included two Kiev class aircraft carriers, and one Kirov class battlecruiser. In peacetime, the ships of the fleet sailed widely, regularly visiting Southeast Asia and even the Indian Ocean. Wartime, however, would have tightly constrained their operations. The Sea of Okhotsk served as a bastion for the SSBNs of the fleet, and naturally as a target for U.S. attack. Soviet objectives would have included the neutralization or defeat of Japan, the defense of the Russian Far East and potentially the penetration of the Pacific in order to attack maritime supply networks and distract U.S. attention from Europe.

U.S. Pacific Fleet

The United States Pacific Fleet commanded the balance of power in the region. With several carrier battlegroups supported by a variety of amphibious assault ships, battleships, nuclear attack submarines and a large array of land-based aircraft, the U.S. Navy could have undertaken both offensive and defensive operations to control the pace and course of the war. Moreover, the Japanese Maritime Self Defense force and the Royal Australian Navy could have both offered extensive support to the Americans. The central objectives for Allied naval forces would first have been to detect and defeat any Soviet efforts to penetrate attack submarines into the Pacific or Southeast Asian shipping lanes. Second, the U.S. Navy had taken upon itself a mission of attacking the periphery of the USSR directly, in order to distract the Red Army from the Central Front in Europe. At a minimum, this would have involved missile and airstrikes against Soviet installations throughout the Far East. At a maximum, it could have involved amphibious assaults against lightly defended Soviet targets.

The War Games

The Naval War College examined the potential for World War III in Asia as part of its global war game exercises in the 1970s and 1980s. Played annually between 1979 and 1988, each of the games explored alternative strategic and technological aspects of a confrontation between the superpowers. Although generally focused on Europe, the games always included an East Asian component. While the early wargames saw some variance (informed to some degree by the Sino-Vietnamese War), they held to a basic pattern; the Soviets hunkered down, while U.S. and allied naval forces chipped away at the bastions and tried to distract the Russians from Europe.

The 1984 wargame played out much differently. Instead of sitting on its hands, the Soviets opened the war with a massive air and missile assault against Japan. This assault destroyed most Japanese air assets on the ground, along with those of the US. special operators delivered by submarine and by clandestine civilian ship-launched unconventional attacks against U.S. bases across the Pacific, including Guam and Pearl Harbor.

The Soviets unleashed Pyongyang early in the conflict, redirecting U.S. attention towards the Korean Peninsula. Washington had effective answers; it quickly undertook offensive anti-submarine operations in the Sea of Japan, decimating Soviet SSN and SSBN forces. Soviet surface ships also came under attack. Nevertheless, in a daring move the Soviets launched a successful amphibious assault against Hokkaido. Although the operation suffered heavy losses, it succeeded in establishing a beachhead in Japan (though this was later withdrawn under fire).

The United States took a more aggressive stance in the 1988 wargame. Instead of waiting for a Soviet attack, Washington immediately began air and unconventional offensives against installations in the Soviet Far East, designed to decimate Soviet air defenses and threaten the survival of military-industrial installations. For their part, the Soviets hoped that a reticent military stance and a diplomatic offensive could keep Japan out of the war. This gambit succeeded to a point, as the Japanese suspended active military cooperation with the United States. American pressure eventually forced Tokyo to yield, and the Soviet opened offensive operations against the archipelago. By this time, however, the U.S. Navy had devastated Soviet naval forces, confining the Pacific fleet to its bastion in the Sea of Okhotsk.

Late in the war, the Soviets gave Pyongyang the green light to invade South Korea. However, this operation backfired, as the North Koreans failed to make substantial progress against combined U.S. and South Korean forces. Moreover, the Soviet move confirmed the U.S.-Japanese alliance, and helped drive Beijing into a much more hostile disposition towards the Soviets.

Both the Soviets and the Americans had options in Asia. The strategic environment was far more fluid than in Europe, allowing a variety of different choices to disrupt and destabilize the opponent. This made the course of war far less predictable. At its (nonnuclear) worst, war could have raged across Asia on multiple fronts, from Korea to Japan to the Sino-Soviet border. At its best, the combatants might have observed an uneasy quiet, at least until it became necessary to outflank a stalemate in the West. But as was the case in Europe, everyone concerned is fortunate that tensions never led to open combat.

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

Kyle Mizokami

Security,

The ultimate Cold War nightmare scenario.

Here's What You Need to Know: The projections are devastating.

It is no exaggeration to say that for those who grew up during the Cold War, all-out nuclear war was “the ultimate nightmare.” The prospect of an ordinary day interrupted by air-raid sirens, klaxons and the searing heat of a thermonuclear explosion was a very real, albeit remote, possibility. Television shows such as The Day After and Threads realistically portrayed both a nuclear attack and the gradual disintegration of society in the aftermath. In an all-out nuclear attack, most of the industrialized world would have been bombed back to the Stone Age, with hundreds of millions killed outright and perhaps as many as a billion or more dying of radiation, disease and famine in the postwar period.

During much of the Cold War, the United States’ nuclear warfighting plan was known as the SIOP, or the Single Integrated Operating Plan. The first SIOP, introduced in 1962, was known as SIOP-62, and its effects on the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact and China were documented in a briefing paper created for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and brought to light in 2011 by the National Security Archive. The paper presupposed a new Berlin crisis, similar to the one that took place in 1961, but escalating to full-scale war in western Europe.

Although the war scenario was fictional, the post-attack estimates were very real. According to the paper, the outlook for Communist bloc countries subjected to the full weight of American atomic firepower was grim. The paper divided attack scenarios into two categories: one in which the U.S. nuclear Alert Force, a percentage of overall nuclear forces kept on constant alert, struck the Soviet Union and its allies; and a second scenario where the full weight of the nuclear force, known as the Full Force, was used.

Under SIOP, “about 1,000” installations that were related to “nuclear delivery capability” would be struck. The scenario, which assumed advance warning of a Soviet attack and an American preemptive strike, would see the Alert Force attacking 75 percent of these targets. The attack would be a largely “counterforce” strike, in which U.S. nuclear forces attacked Soviet, Warsaw Pact and Chinese command-and-control and nuclear forces. The report states that 83 to 88 percent of all targets would be destroyed with 70 percent assurance.

In an Alert Force attack, 199 Soviet cities with populations of fifty thousand or greater would be struck. This would turn 56 percent of the urban population and 37 percent of the total population into casualties, most of whom would eventually die due to a post-attack breakdown of society. In China, forty-nine cities would be struck, turning 41 percent of the urban population into casualties and 10 percent of the overall population. In eastern Europe, only purely military targets would be struck, with a projected 1,378,000 killed by American nuclear attacks.

An all-out Full Force attack would be much worse. A Full Force attack would devastate 295 cities, leaving only five cities with populations of fifty thousand or more unscathed. 72 percent of the urban population and 54 percent of the overall population would become casualties—as the National Security Archive points out, that amounts to 108 million likely killed out of a total population of 217 million. In China, seventy-eight cities would be struck, affecting 53 percent of the urban population and 16 percent of the overall population. Casualties in eastern Europe would more than double, to 4,004,000.

Overall, an all-out U.S. attack on the Soviet Union, China and satellite countries in 1962 would have killed 335 million people within the first seventy-two hours.

The SIOP-62 report does not attempt to estimate U.S. casualties in a nuclear war. However, a 1978 report prepared for the Pentagon’s Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), “The Effects of Nuclear War,” spelled out in grim detail what would happen if the Soviet Union unleashed its arsenal on the United States.

The OTA report states that, in the event of a Soviet attack against U.S. nuclear forces, other military targets, economic targets and population targets, an attack could be estimated to kill between sixty and eighty-eight million Americans. With enough warning, major cities and industrial areas could be evacuated, but that would only lower the number of dead to between fifty-one and forty-seven million. Attacks on U.S. allies, including the NATO nations, Japan and South Korea, would undoubtedly occur but are not modelled in the study.

Another report, “Casualties Due to the Blast, Heat, and Radioactive Fallout from Various Hypothetical Nuclear Attacks on the United States,” postulated a Soviet attack against “1,215 U.S. strategic-nuclear targets. The attack involves almost 3,000 warheads with a total yield of about 1,340 megatons.” Because the attacks are carried out against hardened facilities, particularly MX and Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic-missile silos, the attacks are envisioned using SS-18 “Satan” ICBMs, each carrying ten 550-to-750-kiloton warheads. Attacks against U.S. bomber and refueling forces are carried out by ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles fired from off the coastline.

The result of even this modest attack, which largely spares U.S. cities to attack nuclear forces in the Midwest, is thirteen to thirty-four million deaths and twenty-five to sixty-four million total casualties. Still, bombarded by 1,215 nukes, the United States would lose far fewer people than Strategic Air Command estimated the Soviet Union would lose in 1962.

The discrepancy is probably because of the larger yields of U.S. nuclear weapons in the 1960s versus Soviet nukes in the 1980s, but also because at the time of the SAC report, Soviet nuclear forces were primarily bomber-based. The Soviet Union had between 300 and 320 nuclear weapons in 1962, all but forty of which were bomber-based. Bomber bases may have been closer to major population areas. A major draw of U.S. nuclear weapons to Soviet cities would have also been the presence of local airports, which would have functioned as dispersal airfields for nuclear-armed bombers. On the other hand, the Soviet attack would largely hit ICBM fields and bomber bases in low-population-density regions of the Midwest, plus a handful of submarine bases on both coasts.

As devastating as these projections are, all readily admit they don’t tell the entire story. While these three studies model the immediate effects of a nuclear attack, long-term problems might kill more people than the attack itself. The destruction of cities would deny the millions of injured, even those who might otherwise easily survive, even basic health care. What remains of government—in any country—would be hard pressed to maintain order in the face of dwindling food and energy supplies, a contaminated landscape, the spread of disease and masses of refugees. Over a twelve-month period, depending on the severity of the attack, total deaths attributable to the attacks could double.

While the threat of nuclear war between the United States and Soviet Union has ended, the United States now faces the prospect of a similar war with Russia or China. The effects of a nuclear war in the twenty-first century would be no less severe. The steps to avoiding nuclear war, however, are the same as they were during the Cold War: arms control, confidence-building measures undertaken by both sides and a de-escalation of tensions.

Kyle Mizokami is a defense and national-security writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in the Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and the Daily Beast. In 2009 he cofounded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch. You can follow him on Twitter: @KyleMizokami.

This article first appeared in 2017.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Kyle Mizokami

Security,

The USS Halibut was a one-of-a-kind submarine.

Here's What You Need to Know: Halibut was the perfect ship for the task.

One of the most unusual submarines of the Cold War was named after one of the most unusual fish in the sea. Halibut are flatfish, bottom-dwelling predators that, unlike conventional fish, lie sideways with two eyes on the same side of the head and ambush passing prey.

Like the halibut flatfish, USS Halibut was an unusual-looking submarine, and also spent a considerable amount of time on the ocean floor. Halibut was a “spy sub,” and conducted some of the most classified missions of the entire Cold War.

USS Halibut was built as one of the first of the U.S. Navy’s long-range missile ships. The submarine was the first built from the ground up to carry the Regulus II missile, a large, turbojet-powered cruise missile. The missile was designed to be launched from the deck of a submarine, with a ramp leading down into the bow of the ship, where a total of five missiles were stored. This resulted in an unusual appearance, likened to a “snake digesting a big meal.” Halibut also had six 533-millimeter torpedo tubes, but as a missile sub, would only use torpedoes in self-defense.

Halibut was a one-of-a-kind submarine. At 350 feet long, with a beam of twenty-nine feet, she was dimensionally identical to the Sailfish-class radar picket submarines, but her missile storage spaces and launch equipment ballooned her submerged displacement to five thousand tons. Her S3W reactor gave her an underwater speed of more than twenty knots and unlimited range—a useful trait, considering the Regulus II had a range of only one thousand miles.

Regulus II was quickly superseded by the Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missile, whose solid rocket fueled engine made for a more compact missile with a much longer range. The combination of the Polaris and the new George Washington–class fleet ballistic missile submarines conspired to put Halibut out of a job—Regulus II was canceled just seventeen days before the sub’s commissioning.

Halibut operated for four years as a Regulus submarine. In 1965 the Navy, recognizing that a submarine with a large, built-in internal bay could be useful, put Halibut into dry dock at Pearl Harbor for a major $70 million ($205 million in today’s dollars) overhaul. She received a photographic darkroom, hatches for divers to enter and exit the sub while submerged, and thrusters to help her maintain a stationary position.

Perhaps most importantly, Halibut was rebuilt with spaces to operate two remotely operated vehicles nicknamed “Fish.” Twelve feet long and equipped with cameras, strobe lights and sonar, the “fish” could search for objects at depths of up to twenty-five thousand feet. The ROVs could be launched and retrieved from the former missile storage bay, now nicknamed “the Bat Cave.” A twenty-four-bit mainframe computer, highly sophisticated for the time, analyzed sensor data from the Fish.

Post overhaul, Halibut was redesignated from nuclear guided-missile submarine to nuclear attack submarine, and assigned to the Deep Submergence Group, a group tasked with deep-sea search-and-recovery missions. In mid-July 1968, Halibut was sent on Velvet Fist, a top-secret mission meant to locate the wreck of the Soviet submarine K-129. K-129 was a Golf II–class ballistic missile submarine that had sunk that March, an estimated 1,600 nautical miles off the coast of Hawaii.

K-129 had sunk along with its three R-21 intermediate-range ballistic missiles. The R-21 was a single-stage missile with a range of 890 nautical miles and an eight-hundred-kiloton nuclear warhead. The loss of the submarine presented the U.S. government with the unique opportunity to recover the missiles and their warheads for study.

Halibut was the perfect ship for the task. Once on station, it deployed the Fish ROVs and began an acoustic search of the ocean floor. After a painstaking search and more than twenty thousand photos, Halibut’s crew discovered the ill-fated Soviet sub’s wreckage. As a result Halibut and her crew were awarded a Presidential Unit Citation, for “several missions of significant scientific value to the Government of the United States.” Halibut’s contribution to efforts to recover K-129 would remain secret for decades.

In 1970, Halibut was again modified to accommodate the Navy’s deep water saturation divers. The following year, it went to sea again to participate in Ivy Bells, a secret operation to install taps on the underwater communications cables connecting the Soviet ballistic missile submarine base at Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula with Moscow’s Pacific Fleet headquarters at Vladivostok.

The taps, installed by divers and their ROVs, allowed Washington to listen in on message traffic to Soviet nuclear forces. Conducted at the bottom of the frigid Sea of Okhotsk, the Ivy Bells missions were conducted at the highest level of secrecy, as the Soviets would have quickly abandoned the use of underwater cables had they known they were compromised.

Halibut was decommissioned on November 1, 1975, after 1,232 dives and more than sixteen years of service. The ship had earned two Presidential Unit citations (the second in 1972 for Ivy Bells missions) and a Navy Unit Citation. The role of submarines in espionage, however, continued: she was succeeded in the role of special missions submarine by USS Parche. Today, USS Jimmy Carter—a sub with a particularly low profile—is believed to have taken on the task. The role of submarines in intelligence gathering continues.

Kyle Mizokami is a defense and national-security writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in the Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and the Daily Beast. In 2009 he cofounded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch. You can follow him on Twitter: @KyleMizokami.

This article first appeared in 2016.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Kevin Knodell

History, Asia

How did German soldiers find themselves in a war in Asia in the 1930s?

Here's What You Need to Know: The strange tale of the Germans in China’s wars demonstrates how quickly loyalty and national interest can shift—and alliances with them.

Most people who stayed awake for at least half of their high school history class knows that the Axis Powers in World War II consisted of Germany, Italy and Japan. But few know that German tactics and weapons—not to mention some actual Germans—helped the Chinese Nationalists stall Imperial Japan’s conquest of China.

For about a decade, German soldiers advised Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek in his campaigns against Chinese Communists … and also against Germany’s future allies, the Japanese.

It’s one of history’s most unexpected—and frankly unknown—wartime partnerships. It all began in the aftermath of the Chinese revolution of 1911, as warlords carved up the country and battled each other for power.

European and American arms dealers, unable to find customers in the war-weary countries of the West in the years after World War I, found enthusiastic buyers in the Chinese. The warlords imported firearms and heavy weaponry and, in some cases, manufactured their own copies.

One of the most powerful, the Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin had his own private air force of almost 100 of the latest aircraft, including light bombers. He also maintained close ties with Japan, in particular courting investment from the Japanese South Manchuria Railroad Company.

Some warlords hired foreign military instructors, many of them World War I veterans. The advisers made their way to China in both official and unofficial capacities. The influx of foreign soldiers would soon include Germans.

Rise of the Nationalists: 

The greatest threat to the warlords were not each other, but revolutionaries under the banner of the Chinese Nationalist Party, also known as the Kuomintang. Led by Sun Yat-Sen, a republican and educated medical doctor, the Kuomintang sought to unify China and transform it into a modern state.

The Kuomintang, aligned with the Chinese Communist Party and backed by Soviet advisers under the command of Vasily Blyukher, launched the Northern Expedition to defeat the warlords.

Under the military leadership of Chiang Kai-Shek, the Nationalist army scored victory after victory against the warlords. With the death of Sun Yat-Sen of liver failure, Chiang began to consolidate control of the movement. That put him at odds with the Communists, several of whom were themselves plotting to take control of the revolution.

When the army reached Shanghai in 1927, Chiang enlisted local crime syndicates, notably the powerful Green Gang, to crack down on labor unions and violently purge Communists from the ranks. He then expelled Blyukher and the other Soviet advisers, unceremoniously sending them back to Moscow.

The last major warlord was Marshal Zhang Zuolin. Failing to protect Japanese investments, Zhang had fallen out of favor with his backers in Tokyo.

On June 4, 1928, while traveling an SMR rail line, a bomb detonated underneath Zhang’s armored train, killing him. Most believe the Japanese Kwantung Army planted the explosive device.

Zhang was succeeded by his son Zhang Xueling, the Young Marshal. The Young Marshal, whom the Japanese expected to be a spineless puppet they could easily control, surprised everyone by quickly aligning himself with the Nationalists. The warlord era was fast ending.

But Chang realized he had a problem. Severing ties with the Soviets had left him without any significant foreign backer. There were still a few warlord holdouts—who often did have foreign backing—plus a growing Communist insurrection. Japan also loomed just across the China Seas.

On the advice of a German-educated friend, Chiang looked to Berlin to fill the void the Soviets had left. Germany was an attractive partner to Chiang. Berlin had lost all of its holdings in China after World War I and would be less likely to interfere in China’s politics than comparable Western powers.

And the forced downsizing of Germany’s once-mighty army also resulted in a wealth of highly experienced but unemployed German soldiers who’d be eager for work in China.

Here Come the Germans!: 

Chiang sent an invitation to Gen. Erich Ludendorff to bring military and civil experts to China. Ludendorff declined the invitation, fearing his high profile would attract unwanted attention. Still, he saw potential in the offer, and recommended retired Col. Max Bauer—a logistics specialist with war experience—to lead a proposed German Advisory Group.

After a quick tour of China, Bauer returned to Berlin and handpicked a team of 25 advisers. Immediately upon arriving in November 1928, the advisers set to work training young Chinese officers.

Despite most of the advisers being retired—and technically civilians—in the employ of the Chinese government, the activities of German military men abroad was a touchy subject due to post-war limitations on what Germany could legally do.

As a result, Bauer gave strict orders to the group to avoid diplomats and journalists. Despite this, American military observers in 1929 reported seeing Chinese troops undergoing close-order drill under German supervision.

Bauer worked to standardize the acquisition of equipment and weapons, urging Chiang to cut out expensive middlemen and buy directly from manufacturers.

Unsurprisingly, many of these manufacturers were German, resulting in increased business for German companies. But the retail boom was cut short by Bauer’s unexpected death in May 1929.

Bauer was succeeded by Col. Hermann Kriebel, a Nazi fanatic. He had been a member of the paramilitary Freikorps and had a long record of putschist activity with Hitler in Bavaria. One rumor has it that as a member of the German 1919 Armistice delegation, his parting words were, “See you again in 20 years.”

Kriebel was arrogant, contemptuous of the Chinese and clashed with Bauer’s selected officers. His attitude almost doomed the mission, and Chiang demanded he be replaced.

Kriebel was succeeded by Gen. Georg Wetzell. He helped plan anti-Communist operations and advised Gen. Ling during the 1932 Shanghai War against the Japanese. He also convinced Chiang to set up an artillery school. Chinese artillery would play a huge role years later against Japanese invaders.

Gen. Hans von Seeckt, an influential German army staff officer and Wetzell’s successor, built Chinese capacity further. Seeckt, vividly recalling the bloody cost of static trench warfare, believed in a war of movement.

He used his connections with German industrialists to bring in a huge influx of modern German equipment, ranging from helmets to artillery. One journalist suggested that as much as 60 percent of Chinese war material at this time was imported from Germany.

The last and arguably best chief adviser was Gen. Alexander von Falkenhausen. He had been military attaché in Tokyo from 1910 to 1914 and traveled to China to observe the revolution in 1911. During World War I, he served in France, East Prussia and Turkey and as a commander was credited with two victories over the British in East Jordan in 1918.

As a world traveler and professional soldier who’d worked in a variety of cultures, Falkenhausen was immune to the extremism that drove many of his predecessors. He also had little love for the Nazis, having lost his brother to a violent internal struggle in the party that solidified Hitler’s control.

As a result, he was better able to develop close personal and professional ties with the Chinese.

Chinese in Germany: 

With Germans increasingly entrenched in China, some of their Chinese counterparts found themselves in Germany. Chinese businessmen, government officials and students hoped to learn from Germany’s rapid rebound from an economically crippled failed state into a world power. German industry was of particular interest.

The Nazis were split on their opinion of the Chinese. Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Goering in particular were in bitter disagreement. Goebbels was decidedly pro-China and favored continuing German business interests—he also viewed Chiang as a burgeoning fascist.

Goering, however, saw the Japanese as the stronger and most worthy power in Asia—especially considering their disdain for the Soviets—and pushed for the Anti-Comintern Pact between Germany and Japan.

One of the most notable Chinese in Germany at the time was Chiang Kai-Shek’s adopted son Chiang Wei-Kuo. He went to study military tactics with the German army, training in military schools and taking part in military operations.

He even commanded troops during the annexation of the Austria.

As Falkenhausen took over the group in 1936, tensions between Japan and China were escalating. Around the same time, The Young Marshal Zhang Xueling, tasked by Chiang to eradicate the communists, was fed up with battling fellow Chinese while the Japanese only grew stronger.

Zhang conspired with Communist leader Zhou Enlai and proceeded to kidnap Chiang and force him into a truce with the Communists. Upon his release, he promptly had Zhang imprisoned. Falkenhausen set to work advising Chiang on how best to resist Japanese aggression. One of the great ironies of this episode is that Falkenhausen and Chiang’s interactions were always in Japanese, their only common language.

Japan Invades: 

The July 1937 Marco Polo Bridge Incident marked the beginning of Japan’s full-scale invasion of China. The poorly-trained Chinese troops in the north were quickly routed. When the fighting broke out in Shanghai, Tokyo expected a quick victory.

However, among the Chinese troops dispatched to Shanghai was the German trained — and equipped — 88th Division. Against all expectations, the division’s infantry inflicted heavy casualties on the Japanese in vicious urban combat. The Japanese responded by shelling and bombing the Chinese troops—and by sending in tanks.

During this time, German advisers including Falkenhausen were often near or in the fight in Shanghai, despite Berlin’s preference that they not get directly involved.

“We all agreed,” Falkenhausen wrote, “that as private citizens in Chinese employment there could be no question of leaving our Chinese friends to their fate. Therefore I assigned German advisers wherever they were needed and that was often in the front lines.”

Despite being present for some heavy combat, no Germans advisers are known to have died.

The Chinese held out until November, but eventually retreated in the face of Japanese armor, air and naval attacks. Tokyo was badly bruised by the Chinese defensive and livid at being defied by an “inferior” race.

Particularly embarrassing was the showdown at Sihang Warehouse, in which a lone battalion from the 88th Division held out against Japanese attacks in full view of the international district.

But now the Japanese were ready to strike at the Chinese capital of Nanjing. En route they took out their frustration on Chinese civilians, killing and looting wantonly. Even Kriebel, who had been so contemptuous of the Chinese before and was back in China as the German consul general in Shanghai, expressed his disgust at the atrocities.

But the march on Nanjing was just a preview of how ugly things were to become.

Fall of Nanjing: 

Chiang called a meeting of his generals with Falkenhausen to plan their next move. Generals Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi—the latter a favorite of Falkenhausen—advocated withdrawing forces from Nanjing to regroup.

Next, the generals proposed declaring Nanjing to be an undefended city so that the Japanese wouldn’t have any excuse to slaughter civilians.

Falkenhausen backed Li and Bai. The only dissenter was Gen. Tang Shengzhi, who demanded a last stand against Japan in the capital. Chiang, wanting to preserve his prestige and at least make an effort to defend Nanjing, deferred to Tang.

John Rabe, a German businessman and prominent Nazi living in Nanjing, was aghast “[Nanjing] cannot be effectively defended,” he wrote. “Sitting in this crook in the Yangtze is like sitting in a mousetrap.”

“I continue to hope that Hitler will help us,” Rabe continued. “A man of firm will and steady eye — the same as you and I — has deep sympathy not only for the distress of his own people, but for the anguish of the Chinese, as well.”

Rabe speculated that if Hitler were to demand a stop to the Japanese advance, it would halt immediately.

The consequences of this last stand were disastrous. The Chinese defenders were obliterated. Many of the remnants of the elite 88th Division were destroyed in the fighting, though some were able to rejoin the army in the west or blend into guerrilla bands in the countryside.

However, the worst consequence was one of history’s bloodiest massacres, today known as the Rape of Nanjing. Japanese troops entered the city in December 1937 and indulged in an orgy of rape of pillage that lasted until late January.

Although exact numbers are disputed, most historians agree that thousands of women and girls were raped by Japanese troops—and somewhere between 180,000 and 300,000 civilians died.

Rabe, along with other Western residents of the city, labored hard to aid the refugees and was instrumental in setting up the International Safety Zone. He was known for wearing his Swastika armband as he escorted Chinese nationals around, standing up to Japanese soldiers and officials.

Despite the initial hesitance of other American and European expats to work with an avowed Nazi, Rabe earned the respect of both westerners and the residents of Nanjing.

Unfortunately for Rabe’s faith in Hitler and in Germany’s commitment to China, the defeat at Nanjing led Hitler to believe that China was a lost cause. It was the beginning of the end for Sino-German ties. To Hitler, the Japanese had proven to be a superior race to the Chinese.

But one more battle was to take place before Germany quit China for good.

In the Battle of Taierzhuang in early 1938, Chinese troops under Generals Li and Bai engaged Japanese troops in the small town of Shantung. The Chinese troops, led by German-trained battalion commanders, maneuvered at night to avoid Japan’s superior air assets and used German-built howitzers to smash Japanese entrenchments.

German Legacy:

The Chinese prevailed at Taierzhuang. After the battle, the Japanese demanded that the Germans withdraw the advisory group. Hitler complied without reservation. German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop told Falkenhausen to withdraw, which he did only under extreme pressure.

Falkenhausen and his staff reluctantly returned to Germany. Unlike former Italian advisers who profited by selling detailed aerial surveys of China to Japan, many of the Germans refused to divulge Chinese secrets to Japan, even under pressure from the Nazis. Chiang Wei-Kuo, by that time commanding a panzer on the border with Poland, was recalled back to China.

Westerners were horrified by the devastation in China. Urban warfare up to this point had been a fairly rare occurrence in modern warfare. Certainly the scale of death and destruction, particularly among non-combatants, seemed new. In a few years, such bloodshed would all too common all over the world.

After the German Blitzkrieg tore through Western Europe beginning in late 1939, Falkenhausen was appointed to serve as the German military governor of Belgium—a position in which he took neither joy nor pride. Among his tasks were the suppression of Belgian resistance and the rounding up of Jews and other undesirables.

Throughout much of his tenure in Belgium, Falkenhausen was secretly in touch with anti-Nazi conspirators and those helping to rescue Jews.

The rescuers included Qian Xiuling, a Chinese woman who had married a Belgian man she’d met while studying chemistry at the Catholic University of Louvain. Qian’s cousin was an officer in the Chinese army and had been trained by Falkenhausen. He told her through correspondence that if she needed anything, she should go to Falkenhausen.

The general helped Qian save the lives of many Jews and dissidents. After an attempt on Hitler’s life in July 1944, Falkenhausen was imprisoned and spent the remainder of the war in concentration camps, at one point being interned in Dachau.

He was eventually liberated, but then subsequently arrested by U.S. troops. He was sent back to Belgium to be put on trial for crimes against humanity. Qian and others he had aided came to his defense, but he was nevertheless sentenced to 12 years hard labor.

He was pardoned after only three years and moved back to Germany. Chiang, having heard of his fate, began sending money and gifts to his old comrade. But Faulkenhausen was so embittered by his experiences that he lived out the rest of his life a jaded, reclusive old man. He died in 1966 at the age of 88.

In 2001, when a journalist asked an aging Qian how she saw Falkenhausen, she replied simply, “A man with morals.”

Rabe fared little better after the war. Living in Germany again by then he was arrested first by the Soviets and then by the British. Although never directly implicated in any crimes, his history as a high profile party member meant he had to be declared “de-Nazified.”

Unable to find work, he sold off his collection of Eastern art to buy food and quickly became destitute. According to some accounts, he received aid from prominent citizens of Nanjing who had heard of his plight. This help ceased after the Communists took Nanjing from the nationalists.

Rabe died of a stroke in 1950. His headstone has since been moved to Nanjing and his house made into a museum.

The strange tale of the Germans in China’s wars demonstrates how quickly loyalty and national interest can shift—and alliances with them. It also reveals that personal ties formed in the crucible of combat can transcend these shifts and last a lifetime.

Unfortunately for men like Falkenhausen, the saga also shows how steep the price of integrity can be.

This first appeared in WarIsBoring here.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

TNI Staff

Security, World

Buying a fighter is less about aircraft performance or even military requirements than pure simple geopolitics. Buying a jet means you as a military are tying yourself into a strategic alliance with another country and its hardware.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The F-35 will continue to dominate the skies - but the F-15, particularly with its impressive upgrades pack, isn't going anywhere.

Editor's Note: This article was first published several years ago. In the time since, the United Arab Emirates has requested to purchase F-35 fighters, though the contract has not yet been approved.

When the Boeing F-15A first flew in July 1972, the Eagle was the ultimate air superiority fighter. Fast, high-flying, agile and built around a massive APG-63 pulse-doppler radar, the Soviet Union had nothing that could match it. Overtime, McDonnell Douglas—the F-15’s original manufacturer before its merger with Boeing—adapted the airframe into a potent multirole fighter that eventually became the F-15E Strike Eagle. While both the air superiority oriented F-15C and the strike-oriented F-15E will remain in service with the U.S. Air Force for decades to come, by far the most advanced current version of the Eagle has been ordered by Saudi Arabia. But will that be enough compete with Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter?

Saudi Arabia has ordered some 84 new-build F-15SAs and 70 upgrade kits to retrofit their existing Strike Eagles to the new standard. When the massive $29.5 billion contract was signed December 2011, it was the largest foreign military sale in the history of the United States. In the ensuing years, Boeing has developed and tested the upgraded jets, which are powered by General Electric F110 engines rather than Pratt & Whitney F100s. The company is finally starting to get ready to deliver the aircraft. The first of the new jets rolled out of the Boeing plant in Saint Louis, Mo., earlier this earlier in April.

Perhaps the single most significant upgrade found in the F-15SA package is a fly-by-wire flight control system—previous versions of the Eagle used a hybrid computer augmented stability system. The addition of the fly-by-wire system allowed Boeing to reactivate the F-15’s two dormant outboard wing hardpoints that had always been present, but never used. The problem previously had been stability differences induced by carrying weapons on stations one and nine.

Additionally, the F-15SA is equipped with the advanced APG-63 v.3 active electronically scanned array (AESA)—though, potentially, future customers might order the more capable APG-82 that is being retrofitted to U.S. Air Force’s own Strike Eagles. The F-15SA is also equipped with BAE’s advanced Digital Electronic Warfare System (DEWS), which has digital radio-frequency memory jamming capability.

The new digital system looks across an entire frequency band continuously rather than scanning through a frequency band—which means that even low probability of intercept (LPI) signals might be detected (radars on stealth fighters like the F-22 and F-35 use LPI techniques to try mask their emissions for electronic support measures suites). Further, its interferometric antennas can generate far more accurate bearing measurements than the current system.

The DEWS’ performance is probably comparable to the F-22’s or F-35’s electronic support measures suites since it is based on those systems. It’s head and shoulders better than anything currently fielded by the U.S. Air Force’s own Strike Eagles. U.S. Air Force jets won’t have anything comparable until the Eagle Passive/Active Warning and Survivability System (EPAWSS) is fielded.

The F-15SA is also equipped with Lockheed Martin’s AN/AAS-42 infrared search and track system. And all of that information from the radar, infrared search and track and the electronic warfare system are fused together—similar to the F-22 and F-35—into a coherent picture. That picture is displayed on large-format color displays that are similar to those found on the F-35—in both the front and rear cockpits. Both aviators are equipped with the Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System. Taken together, the F-15SA is an extremely formidable multirole fighter—possibly the single best fourth generation fighter the United States has ever produced.

But is that enough to compete with the F-35 on the open market place? Longer-term, it looks like the F-35 will be the dominant player on with fighter market—at least in parts of the world aligned with the West. Stealth is a major selling point with the inevitable proliferation of advanced Russian and Chinese-built surface-to-air missile systems. Further, the F-35 has the backing of the United States government—which is a huge trump card for the program. In the short-term, Boeing may have opportunities to sell the F-15 to wealthy customers who need a very capable long-range jet and who can afford the Eagle’s hefty price tag. Those customers are likely to be in the Middle East or Asia—nations that are not likely to be cleared to receive the F-35 in the near term.

But one also has to remember that buying a fighter is less about aircraft performance or even military requirements than pure simple geopolitics. Buying a jet means you as a military are tying yourself into a strategic alliance with another country and its hardware. For many nations, making sure they are able to tie seamlessly into the Pentagon’s forces is of paramount importance. So even if you buy American, unless it’s a variant operated by the U.S. military, you might end up with an expensive boutique fleet with a lot of expensive maintenance bills.

Image: Reuters.

Charlie Gao

Security, Russia

While the Su-57 is fast, it does represent a step backward in speed compared to the MiG-31.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The MiG-31 is the standard long-range interceptor of the Russian Air Force.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union’ s Air Defense Forces (VPVO) needed a series of heavy interceptors to patrol its massive borders. Most regular “light” fighters like the early MiGs were not up to the task, as they lacked the range and speed to intercept to rapidly climb and intercept supersonic American bombers, who were expected to zoom over the Arctic to drop bombs on the Soviet Union.

As a result, a specialized class of aircraft was created for this purpose. The first was the Tupolev Tu-28 and Tu-128. These aircraft would lay the template for later interceptors: they were large for good endurance, fast, and were armed solely with missiles.

This design was obsolete from the time it entered service in the 1960s, as the B-58 Hustler that was in service at the time could outpace it. However, the MiG-25 “Foxbat” was also in development at the time. This aircraft would go on to become the definitive interceptor of the VPVO.

Blisteringly fast and armed with the massive R-40 air-to-air missiles, the Foxbat stood ready to defend the Soviet Union’s borders against all threats. Its airframe also saw adaptation into more tactical roles, photo reconnaissance and strike versions of the MiG-25 were created for the Soviet Air Force (VVS).

In the 1980s, the MiG-25 was followed up by the MiG-31, which added in a second weapons systems officer on all models and increased the flight performance, radar and weapons of the craft. Early versions also featured a cannon, but this was quickly deleted once it was determined that such extras were not necessary on a pure interceptor.

Nowadays the MiG-31 is the standard long range interceptor of the Russian Air Force (the VPVO was merged with the VVS in the 1990s) and is expected to serve into the 2030s. A “mid-life upgrade” of the MiG-31 is currently being procured: the MiG-31BSM. This modification integrates many new strike weapons onto the MiG-31 and modernizes most systems. The MiG-31 was also chosen as the primary carrier aircraft for the Kinzhal hypersonic missile.

But in August 2018, Russian outlets announced that experimental design work was beginning on a next generation pure interceptor that is meant to replace the MiG-31. Following the naming convention of Russia’s other next generation aircraft projects (PAK (XX)), the new interceptor project is called PAK DP, or Prospective Aviation Complex Long-range Interceptor.

The continuation of a line of dedicated interceptors is interesting because the existing PAK-FA/Su-57 fighter in many ways could fulfill the same role as the MiG-31. It has a highly advanced radar, it can supercruise (maintain Mach 1+ flight without the use of afterburners), and it could be armed with long range air-to-air missiles.

While the range is less than a MiG-31, air-to-air refueling can make up the gap. But since the capabilities as they stand are so similar, why the need for a separate airframe? Sukhoi fighters have also served in the interceptor role before, the Su-27P variant of the Flanker was meant explicitly for the VPVO. There are a couple reasons why the Russian government still considers the PAK DP to be necessary.

The first is that the PAK DP might build off the multirole nature of the earlier MiG-31 and MiG-25 conversions. An aircraft close to the original conception of the F-111 could be in the cards for Russia in the PAK DP: something that can carry a ton of long-range missiles and also perform strike with a wide range of munitions (including hypersonic ones)while moving very fast.

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Another possible reason is that Russia wishes to keep the heritage of MiG alive within United Aircraft Corporation (UAC). Since Sukhoi has done the majority of the design work and has had its name attached to the PAK FA (in the Su-57 designation), MiG needs a next generation project of their own to work on. The MiG-35, while advanced, is still not of the PAK family of next-generation craft and MiG not have an aircraft to work on in the future.

The last reason is that the VVS might want to future proof their interceptor force against future developments in UAV technology. While the PAK FA is fast, it does represent a step backward in speed compared to the MiG-31. While the SR-71 Blackbird is retired, UAVs incorporating some of its technology may come online in the future. Russia might need a plane that can really push the limits of speed to intercept them and keep its airspace safe.

Charlie Gao studied political and computer science at Grinnell College and is a frequent commentator on defense and national-security issues. This first appeared in August 2018.

Image: Wikipedia.

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