Diplomacy & Crisis News

Summary: On May 23, 1941, the German battleship Bismarck, a symbol of Nazi naval power, embarked on Operation Rheinübung to disrupt Allied shipping. After sinking the HMS Hood and damaging the HMS Prince of Wales, Bismarck faced relentless pursuit by the Royal Navy. Despite initial successes, Bismarck was crippled by a torpedo that jammed its rudder, leading to a concerted attack by British forces. On May 27, after sustaining heavy bombardment, Bismarck sank in the North Atlantic. This event highlighted the effectiveness of combined arms and marked a pivotal moment in naval warfare, demonstrating the Royal Navy's commitment to avenging the Hood and protecting Britain.

On May 23, 1941, the Battleship Bismarck was on a roll. The largest and most powerful ship in the German Navy, the mighty Bismarck had broken out into the Atlantic Ocean, sunk a Royal Navy battlecruiser, badly damaged a battleship and was poised to add its guns to a naval blockade that threatened to strangle Great Britain.

Ninety-six hours later, heavily damaged, the battleship was on the bottom of the North Atlantic. Bismarck’s swift reversal of fortune was the result of a heroic effort by the Royal Navy to hunt down and destroy the battlewagon, and avenge the more than 1,400 Royal Navy personnel killed in the Denmark Strait.

The German battleship Bismarck was the the pride of the Kriegsmarine, Nazi Germany’s naval service. Construction began in 1936, and the ship was commissioned in April 1940. It and its sister ship, Tirpitz, were 821 feet long and displaced fifty thousand tons, making them by far the largest warships ever built by Germany. Despite its size, twelve Wagner steam boilers made it capable of a fast thirty knots.

Like any battlewagon, Bismarck’s firepower lay in its main gun batteries. Bismarck had eight fifteen-inch guns in four large turrets, each capable of hurling a 1,800-pound armor-piercing, capped projectile 21.75 miles. This gave it the ability to penetrate 16.5 inches of armor at eleven miles.

The relatively small size of Germany’s World War II navy made it incapable of taking on the British and French navies head-on. Instead, the Kriegsmarine was given a much more limited role, of shepherding invasion fleets and cutting off the flow of commerce to Great Britain. On May 18, 1941, Bismarck and its escort, the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, embarked on Operation Rheinübung, a campaign to sink Allied shipping in the North Atlantic and knock Britain out of the war.

On May 24, southwest of Iceland, Bismarck and Prinz Eugen tangled with the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the aging battlecruiser HMS Hood. Trading armored protection for speed, Hood’s designers had left it dangerously exposed to enemy fire. Hits from the German task force ignited an ammunition fire that raged out of control on Hood. Within ten minutes a titanic explosion shook the Denmark Strait as the fire reached the aft magazine. Hood broke in half and sank, taking 1,418 men with it.

Bismarck, despite its stunning victory, had not emerged from the battle unscathed. Hit three times by Prince of Wales, it lost some of its fuel supply to seawater contamination, sustained damage to its propulsion, and suffered a nine-degree list to port. Its captain, desperate to get away from the site of the battle and a slowly coalescing Royal Navy force eager for revenge, refused to slow down to allow damage control to effect repairs.

Bismarck’s captain was correct. The Royal Navy was assembling a large force to sink it, and indeed had ordered every ship in the area to join in the search to find it. The much larger Royal Navy was able to assemble a force of six battleships and battlecruisers, two aircraft carriers, thirteen cruisers, and twenty-one destroyers to hunt Bismarck. Unfortunately, many of the larger ships were of World War I vintage, and could not catch up with the wounded, but still fast Bismarck.

Although Bismarck outclassed nearly all the heavy capital ships that chased it, naval aviation was another matter. The German task force’s location was betrayed by oil leaking from the battleship and the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious was sent to slow it down. An air strike by six Fairey Fulmar carrier-based fighters and nine Fairey Swordfish carrier torpedo bombers managed a single hit on Bismarck. The torpedo explosion did minor damage, but the evasive maneuvers conducted by Bismarck’s captain to evade the torpedo attack caused even more damage, slowing the mighty battleship to sixteen knots.

Although it was eventually able to get back up to twenty-eight knots, the temporary loss of its speed advantage allowed a Royal Navy task force, Force H, to catch up to it. Established to take the place of the surrendered French Navy in the western Mediterranean, Force H was based at Gibraltar. It consisted of the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, the battlecruiser Renown and a light cruiser.

But Force H had to find it first. British intelligence had decoded some of the Kriegsmarine’s message traffic, which stated that the Bismarck was going to Brest for repairs. Reports from the French resistance that the Luftwaffe was assembling at Brest to provide an air umbrella for the battleship corroborated the report. So did a sighting of the battleship by a U.S. Navy Catalina seaplane that put it a day away from the French port. All of this happened very quickly throughout the morning of May 26.

At 9 p.m. on the twenty-sixth, an initial air strike of Fairey Swordfish torpedo planes was aborted after the strike force mistakenly attacked the light cruiser HMS Sheffield. The bungled attack proved beneficial, however, in that the new torpedo detonators failed to work properly. Had the Swordfishes found their mark, the attack would have been for nothing. The new detonators were swapped out for the older, reliable ones, and a second attack was launched.

The second Swordfish attack correctly located Bismarck. A single torpedo found its target, jamming the ship’s rudder. The mighty battleship was reduced to sailing in circles in the North Atlantic, unable to straighten out and continue onward to Brest. To make matters worse, a combined force of Royal Navy and Polish destroyers made repeated torpedo runs on the ship, exhausting the crew.

Bismarck’s crew proved unable to repair the rudder. At twenty minutes to midnight, Bismarck’s captain radioed German forces in France: “Ship unmaneuverable. We will fight to the last shell. Long live the Führer.”

The next day, May 27, the Royal Navy moved in for the kill. At 8:47 a.m., the battleships HMS Rodney and HMS King George V opened fire on the wounded German battleship, striking it several times. Bismarck returned fire, but its inability to steer and list made accurate return fire nearly impossible. One of Bismarck’s shells landed just sixty feet from Rodney’s bridge, drenching it with water, but the German battleship was unable to damage its assailants in any meaningful way.

Eventually Rodney and King George V defanged the their German counterpart. Turrets A and B were destroyed within the first hour and twenty minutes of the battle, while Turret D was put out of action when a shell exploded inside one of the main gun barrels. The last turret, C, ceased fire ten minutes later, at 9:31 a.m. Bismarck’s main guns were totally out of action.

Still, the fifty-thousand-ton battleship refused to sink. King George V blasted away at a range of 1.5 miles with all ten guns, point-blank range for battleships. The heavy cruisers Norfolk and Dorsetshire joined in the battle. The ship’s superstructure was turned into scrap, and the ship was burning from many fires. Hundreds of crew lay dead or dying, and a pillar of black smoke followed it.

By 10 a.m., Rodney had expended 380 sixteen-inch shells on Bismarck, and King George V 339 rounds of fourteen-inch shells. The secondary 5.5- to 6-inch guns of both battleships, plus the guns of the two heavy cruisers, expended a total of 2,156 shells on the battleship, plus numerous torpedo attacks. While not every shell hit many did, especially after the Bismarck was unable to return fire.

At 10:39 a.m., after two more rounds of torpedo attacks by air and sea, Bismarck finally sank. Its list gradually increased to twenty degrees, then to the point where its port secondary guns were almost submerged. Finally, it capsized to port and sank. Although hundreds of men made it to the water, a U-boat scare sent the Royal Navy ships collecting survivors heading for safety. Of the 2,200 officers and enlisted personnel that manned Bismarck, only 116 survived.

Bismarck’s sinking was an excellent example of combined arms at sea working together to take down a more powerful opponent. No single element of the Royal Navy present at the battle was strong enough to defeat Bismarck singlehandedly, but together a force of aging aircraft carriers and torpedo bombers, twenty-to-thirty-year-old battleships, and more than a dozen scrappy cruisers and destroyers were able to ensure that the mighty German battleship would never reach refuge in France.

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 piece was first featured in December 2016 and is being republished due to reader's interest. 

Summary: The USS Mississippi (BB-41), a New Mexico-class battleship, served the U.S. Navy with distinction from World War I into the atomic age, enduring over forty years of service. Remarkably, it witnessed two major tragedies in the same turret twenty years apart, each resulting in the loss of numerous sailors due to a "flare back" during gunnery exercises. Despite these somber events, Mississippi contributed significantly to naval operations in the Pacific during World War II and later played a crucial role in testing and developing the U.S. Navy's first surface-to-air missile, the Convair RIM-2 Terrier. Decommissioned in 1956 and sold for scrap, the legacy of the USS Mississippi continues in the Virginia-class submarine bearing its name, SSN-782.

The USS Mississippi is home to one of the most intriguing naval coincidences of all time. Built while America was a neutral party in World War I, Mississippi sailed into the atomic age and later served as a massive test platform for surface-to-air missiles. Despite her forty years of service, Mississippi was bound to tragedy, experiencing two major accidents in the same turret, in the same gun, twenty years apart.

USS Mississippi (BB-41) was the second of three ships of the New Mexico-class battleships. Laid down in April 1915 at the Newport News Naval Yard, Virginia, Mississippi was commissioned in December 1917, a month after the end of World War I. The New Mexico class was the fourth of six distinct battleship classes laid down the 1910s, as the Navy rushed to fortify the Atlantic against tensions—and then outright war—in Europe.

Mississippi was a heavily armed battleship by the standards of the day. She was armed with a main battery of twelve 14-inch/50 caliber guns mounted in four turrets of three guns each, with each gun mounted in a separate sleeve. The main battery was distributed two turrets forward and two aft. She also featured twelve 5-inch/51 caliber guns, eight 3-inch anti-aircraft guns and two submerged 21-inch torpedo tubes.

As a battleship, the Mississippi was heavily armored to slug it out with enemy ships. The New Mexico-class ships had 13.5 inches of steel armor at the belt, and her turrets were protected with nine to eighteen inches of armor plating. The deck was armored to 3.5 inches and the conning tower to sixteen inches.

The mighty warship was 624 feet long with a beam of 97.5 feet, and displaced 33,000 tons fully loaded. She was powered by nine Babcock and Wilcox boilers and her four screws were driven by four Curtis turbines producing a maximum 32,000 horsepower. At roughly one horsepower per ton, she was not terribly fast, with a top speed of just twenty-one knots.

On June 12, 1924, Mississippi found herself off the coast of California conducting gun trials. The 14-inch/50 caliber gun was plagued with technical issues, a major problem considering it was the primary armament on the majority of serving U.S. Navy battleships. On the eighth salvo, turret two, gun two suffered a rare “flare back.” The four powder bags inserted into the breech, totaling 470 pounds of explosive powder, caught fire and ignited other bags waiting to be loaded. Forty-eight sailors were killed, and only one of the sailors manning the turret survived.

Based on the survivor’s account, the Navy believed that a fire or burning debris was present in the gun barrel and ignited the powder bags. Although each barrel was blasted between firings with pressurized air to evacuate debris, the middle barrel of each turret received a lower pressure burst than the left and right barrels. This could have led to dangerous debris remaining in the breech when the gun crew assumed it was safe to load.

A bizarre accident occurred afterward while the Mississippi was anchored in San Pedro Bay. The hand of a dead crewman in the number two turret accidentally hit the firing switch for the port gun, firing it. The shell flew harmlessly out to sea.

Nearly twenty years—and a major refit later—the USS Mississippi went to war in the Pacific. In 1943, the big battleship was off the coast of Makin Island, providing naval gunfire support to a landing force preparing to secure the island. After an extensive preliminary bombardment, the Marine assault force headed towards the beach and Mississippi and the other ships increased their rate of fire.

Suddenly, in the midst of the barrage, smoke and gas erupted from the rangefinders on either side of the number two turret. Incredibly it had happened again: in their haste to lay down a rain of shells on the Japanese, the gunners of number two turret had apparently experienced yet another flare back. Debris from firing the big guns had again ignited powder bags, causing the same accident and the same damage. Forty-two sailors were killed and another sixteen wounded. The battleship’s three remaining turrets continued firing until the naval support phase of the invasion had ended.

After the war, Mississippi was effectively defanged, with three of her four main battery turrets removed. She was redesignated AG-128 and equipped with a number of radars and prototype air defense missile systems. Mississippi was instrumental in the testing and eventual fielding of the Convair RIM-2 Terrier, the U.S. Navy’s first surface-to-air missile.

The old warship was decommissioned in 1956, sold for scrap. The aging battlewagon had served longer than most ships at the time, but it had also experienced two rare tragedies, in the same place, under similar circumstances. Today her name lives on in the Virginia class nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Mississippi (SSN-782).

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. 

Summary: The VA-111 Shkval, a Soviet-era supercavitating torpedo, revolutionized underwater warfare with its unprecedented speed of up to 200 knots, thanks to a rocket engine and the phenomenon of supercavitation. By vaporizing water into steam at its nose, Shkval creates a gas bubble that drastically reduces drag, allowing for rapid movement through water.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union placed heavy reliance on its submarine fleet to negate America’s advantage in naval forces. The U.S. Navy was not only tasked to help protect the flow of reinforcements into Europe in the event of World War III, it also threatened the Soviet Union directly and would have hunted down and sunk her ballistic missile submarines. The USSR at first used sheer numbers of diesel-electric submarines, then more advanced nuclear attack submarines, to whittle down the odds.

One of the most innovative underwater weapons developed by the Soviet Union was the VA-111 Shkval (“Squall”) supercavitating torpedo. Highly classified, Shkval was virtually unknown before the end of the Cold War and only became common knowledge in the mid-1990s. Powered by a rocket engine, it was capable of astonishing speeds of up to 200 knots an hour. But in a world where physics ensured most ships and underwater weapons topped out at 50 knots, how did Russian engineers accomplish such a breakthrough in speed?

Traditionally, torpedoes use propellers or pumpjets for propulsion. Shkval, on the other hand, uses a rocket engine. That alone is enough to make it fast, but traveling through water creates major drag problems. The solution: get the water out of the path of the torpedo. But how, exactly does one get water of the path of an object in the middle of an ocean?

The solution: vaporize liquid water into a gas.

Shkval solves this problem by diverting hot rocket exhaust out of its nose, which turns the water in front of it into steam. As the torpedo moves forward, it continues vaporizing the water in front of it, creating a thin bubble of gas. Traveling through gas the torpedo encounters much less drag, allowing it to move at speeds of up 200 knots. This process is known as supercavitation.

The trick with maintaining supercavitation is keeping the torpedo enclosed in the gas bubble. This makes turning maneuvers tricky, as a change of heading will force a portion of the torpedo outside the bubble, causing sudden drag at 230 miles an hour. Early versions of Shkval apparently had a very primitive guidance system, and attacks would have been fairly straight torpedo runs.

Considering the warhead would have been nuclear, that would probably have been good enough to destroy the target. It’s clear the Soviet Union believes there were times when torpedo speed was more important than maneuverability.

Shkval was originally designed in the 1960s as a means of quickly attacking NATO nuclear missile submarines, delivering a nuclear warhead at previously unheard-of speeds. The torpedo is of standard 533-millimeter torpedo diameter and carries a 460-pound warhead. It has a maximum range of 7,500 yards. Shkval began mass production in 1978 and entered service with the Soviet Navy that year.

Like any weapon, there are drawbacks. For one, the gas bubble and the rocket engine are very noisy. Any submarine that launches a supercavitating torpedo will instantly give away its approximate position. That having been said, such a fast-moving weapon could conceivably destroy the enemy before it has time to act on the information, as the enemy suddenly has a both an enemy submarine and a 200-knot torpedo to contend with.

Another drawback to a supercavitating torpedo is the inability to use traditional guidance systems. The gas bubble and rocket engine produce enough noise to deafen the torpedo’s built-in active and passive sonar guidance systems. Early versions of the Shkval were apparently unguided, trading guidance for speed. A newer version of the torpedo employs a compromise method, using supercavitation to sprint to the target area, then slowing down to search for its target.

Is there a future for the supercavitating torpedo? The U.S. has been working on such a weapon since 1997, apparently without a deployable weapon. Indeed, the U.S. Navy is currently in the process of upgrading the venerable Mark 48 submarine torpedo for service into the foreseeable future. Then again, the Navy’s requirements were far greater than Shkval’s capabilities, including turning, identifying, and homing in on targets.

In the meantime, Russian submarines are the only subs in the world equipped with supercavitating torpedoes, modernized versions of Shval armed with a conventional warhead. Russian industry also offers an export version, Shkval E, for sales abroad. Iran claims to have a supercavitating torpedo of its own it calls Hoot, and which is assumed to be a reverse-engineered Shkval.

In 2004, German defense contractor Diehl-BGT announced the Barracuda, a technology demonstrator torpedo meant to travel up to 194 knots. Barracuda was meant to be launched from submarines and surface vessels, and test models could travel straight and curved paths. However, the program apparently never translated into a marketable weapon.

A noisy—but effective—weapon, Shkval smashes the paradigm of undersea warfare. A 200-knot torpedo is a very attractive capability, and as naval competition heats up in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, we may see even more navies adopting supercavitating designs and adjusting their undersea tactics accordingly. Undersea warfare is about to get a whole lot louder—and deadlier.

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. 

Summary: The Forrestal-class carriers, monumental in the evolution of U.S. naval aviation, were a response to the advent of carrier-based jet aircraft, necessitating larger decks and more fuel and munitions storage. Introduced in the mid-1950s, these sixty-thousand-ton behemoths were informed by earlier designs and marked a significant departure with innovations like the angled flight-deck, optical landing systems, and steam-powered catapults. Serving through the Vietnam War and the Gulf War, their combat roles and operational challenges showcased the complexity of naval warfare and technological advancement. Despite their formidable presence, the Forrestal-class faced issues like catastrophic fires and became subjects of decommission and scrapping by 2017. Their legacy, however, paved the way for modern supercarriers, embodying a critical transition in naval strategy and carrier design.

As the United States prepares to deliver its second one-hundred-thousand-ton Gerald Ford-class supercarrier later in 2019, it’s easy to forget that until the mid-1950s the Navy’s carriers displaced between a third or half that much.

The Essex and larger Midway-class carriers built during World War II were designed to launch smaller, slower piston-engine warbirds. But a new generation of carrier-based jet aircraft took up more deck space, required longer decks to takeoff and land, and consumed more fuel.

In 1948, the country’s first secretary of defense, James Forrestal, ordered the USS United States, a supercarrier displacing seventy thousand tons designed to carry up to eighteen large strategic bombers off its deck. The CVA-58 attack carrier was essentially the Navy’s bid to compete with the Air Force’s plans for a large force of B-36 Peacemaker nuclear bombers. However, mere days after the United States was laid down, Forrestal’s successor Louis Johnson canceled construction, resulting in an inter-service furball detailed in a companion article.

Though the Navy’s reputation emerged battered by United States controversy, months later the Korean War broke out—and the Navy’s Essex-class carriers and their jet fighters more than proved their worth. Thus by 1951 the Navy finally had the prestige and funding to take a second crack at ordering a super carrier, which began construction the following year. By then, new carrier-based jets like the A-3 Skywarrior carrying lighter-weight nuclear weapons had rendered the carrier-strategic-bomber concept unnecessary.

Nonetheless, the sixty-thousand-ton CVA-59, fittingly named the Forrestal, was clearly informed by the canceled CVA-58—including initially attempting to incorporate smokestacks and an island superstructure that could telescope downwards for a ‘flush’ deck during flight operations. This proved too complicated to implement, so the Forrestal ended up with two islands instead, mounting multiple radars and electronic warfare systems.

Like the preceding Midway-class, Forrestal had an armored flight deck—but its deck was more robustly integrated as a load-bearing element of the hull rather than as a superstructure. As the Midway-class had proven infamously top-heavy and unstable, the Forrestal featured a deeper draught, keeping her deck drier and affording her much better handling. Three starboard side elevators served two catapults on Forrestal’s bow; and a lone port-side elevator was situated in front of two additional catapults.

Three critical innovations first developed by the Royal Navy were retrofitted in the middle of the construction of Forrestal and her sistership Saratoga in Newport News, Virginia. These included an angled flight-deck, allowing for longer takeoff distances; an optical mirror-landing system; and steam-powered catapults. Cumulatively, these greatly facilitated operations of faster and heavier jet aircraft.

These technologies were initially tested on Midway-class carriers, but the Forrestal was the first U.S. carrier to launch with them already installed.

The Forrestal’s increased length (326 meters) and displacement equated to drastically greater internal volume. Its cavernous hangar deck could accommodate eighty to one hundred jets, up from the Midway class’s sixty to seventy-five. Compared to the Essex class, the Forrestals carried three times more aviation fuel (1.3 million gallons) and 154 percent more munitions (1,650 tons) for their air wings, as well as 70 percent more fuel for cruising. By one calculation, this meant the Forrestals could remain operational 96 percent of the year, compared to 60 percent for the Essex-class.

Following the launch of Forrestal and Saratoga in 1955 and 1956, construction of the Ranger and Independence began, with an angled flight deck planned from the outset. As a result these two ships have only one island structure instead of two and a slimmer forward deck. The Independence finally launched in 1958, the only one of four vessels to be built in New York. Four more planned Forrestals were instead laid down as part of a revised Kitty Hawk-class.

The gigantic super carriers soon were routinely deployed on diplomatic missions and shows of force in response to the crise du jour. For example, the Independence participated in the blockade of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis, while Ranger cruised by North Korea following the seizure of the USS Pueblo.

However, the large vessels had their flaws. The port elevator’s location forward of two catapults meant it could not be used during landing or takeoff operations. The sponsons for the eight 5” anti-aircraft guns took on water, and were mostly removed in the 1960s. The ships also extensively incorporated asbestos, later resulting in asbestos-related illness among their crews.

Four Decades of Service

The Forrestals all deployed for at least one combat tour during Vietnam. The Saratoga’s air wing launched thousands of sorties bombarding North Vietnamese forces in 1972–1973, losing six aircraft to enemy fire and shooting down two MiGs.

The Forrestal’s Vietnam service is best known for the tragic incident on July 29, 1967, when a Zuni rocket accidentally launched from an F-4 Phantom on the flight line blasted into an A-4 Skyhawk in front of it. The resulting fire caused an unsafe M65 bomb to detonate, triggering chain reaction of explosions and fiery conflagration that nearly destroyed the carrier and killed 134 crewmembers. The Forrestal limped home and had to be extensively rebuilt.

The nightmarish accident, combined with two other cataclysmic carrier fires, forced the Navy to implement major reforms of its safety culture—but the Forrestal experienced additional damaging fires in 1972 and 1978. The Ranger, meanwhile, was sabotaged by sailors opposed to the Vietnam War, culminating in the trial of an anti-war Navy fireman who purportedly disabled one of the carrier’s reduction gears used to generate power.

During the 1970s through 1980s, the Forrestals (save for the Ranger) underwent twenty-eight-month Service-Life Extension Programs. The carriers were re-designated general-purpose CVs as they incorporated F-14 Tomcat interceptors and S-3 Viking anti-submarine aircraft into their air wings which smaller Midway-class carriers could not operate. Eight-cell Sea Sparrow missile launchers and automated twenty-millimeter Close-In Weapon Systems replaced antiquated flak guns.

The 1980s proved eventful for the aging carriers. The Independence spearheaded the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada, dispatching Navy SEAL teams and A-7 Corsair jets for close air support. F-14s from the Saratoga forced down airliner carrying terrorist hijackers in 1986 and accidentally shot down an Air Force Phantom jet in 1987. Her strike planes also destroyed a Libyan surface-to-air missile sight that had earlier opened fire on U.S. aircraft.

During the 1991 Gulf War, the Saratoga deployed to the Red Sea and Forrestal to the Persian Gulf. Between them, the two carriers dispatched hundreds of sorties, but lost one FA-18 Hornet to an Iraqi MiG-25 and two A-6s to ground fire. Saddam Hussein even specifically claimed to have sunk the Saratoga, following an attempted Scud missile attack that missed by over one hundred miles.

As they each approached forty years of service, the Forrestals were decommissioned one-by-one between 1993 and 1998—but stayed busy right until then. In 1993, Ranger deployed off of Somalia and provided photo reconnaissance, logistics and air support for Operation Restore Hope as it faced opposition from warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid.

 In 1992 the Saratoga accidentally fired a Sea Sparrow missile at the Turkish destroyer Muavenet during an exercise, killing five crew.

The Independence concluded her career with forward-deployment to Yokosuka, Japan, and participated in a 1996 cruise down the Taiwan Strait that famously ruffled Beijing’s feathers.

 The Forrestals remained mothballed through 2013 and there were multiple campaigns to transform them into museum ships which all came to naught. Finally, between 2014 and 2017, all four vessels were scrapped in Brownsville, Texas—each operation paid for with a single penny.

 The Forrestal-class marked the point at which U.S. carriers decisively evolved into larger platforms intentionally designed for jet fighter operations, pioneering technologies we now take for granted in today’s super carriers. While the art of super-carrier design would be further refined, the Forrestals marked an influential first step.

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.

Summary: In an innovative operation during World War II, the Soviet Air Force launched a daring raid on the Romanian city of Constanta using a unique "parasite" fighter-bomber combination, what some akin to a flying aircraft carrier. Three TB-3 bombers, carrying I-16 fighters under their wings, targeted critical infrastructure, including the King Carol I bridge over the Danube, vital to Axis supply lines. This operation, part of the Zveno ("Link") project led by designer Vladimir Vakhrimov, demonstrated an early attempt to extend the range and payload of fighter aircraft by hitching them to larger bombers. Despite achieving significant success, the Zveno-SPB program was limited by the availability of suitable aircraft and the arrival of more advanced bombers, leading to its eventual discontinuation. However, the concept of extending operational range through air-to-air refueling lives on in modern military aviation, highlighting the enduring legacy of this innovative approach to aerial warfare.

Early in the morning of August 10, 1941, three boxy Soviet TB-3 bombers took off from the airbase at Yevpatoria in the Crimean Peninsula, bearing a most unusual cargo under their gargantuan wings: two manned, stubby-nosed I-16 fighter planes, their Shvetsov radial engines chortling and propellers spinning to help propel the sluggish four-engine TB-3s they were attached to.

One of the aircraft-carrying motherships had to abort mission due to technical problems. The six remaining aircraft assumed an eastward course across the Black Sea towards the Romanian city of Constanta roughly 250 miles away, cruising at roughly 155 miles per hour.

Six weeks earlier, Romanian troops had joined Nazi Germany in a surprise invasion of the Soviet Union that had steamrolled unprepared border defenses. As Axis forces steadily advanced towards the critical Soviet ports of Odessa and Sevastopol, the beleaguered Soviet Air Force and Navy did their best to strike back. One key target was the King Carol I bridge spanning the River Danube, which measured over a miles long and up to seventy meters high, and also stood over a vital pipeline connected to the Ploesti oil fields.

Soviet DB-3 bomber had repeatedly attacked the bridge with high-altitude horizontal bombing runs without landing any hits. The older, slower TB-3s themselves would likely have fared little better had they tried.

But these special TB-3s, called Sveno (“Link”)-SPBs, were not carrying any bombs at all. Instead, the I-16 Type 24 fighters braced under the bomber’s wings each carried two 250-kilogram bombs.

Ordinarily, an I-16 loaded with nearly third of its weight in bombs could not have taken off, let alone have possessed the range for a round-trip mission across the Black Sea. But these I-16s were drawing on the fuel supply of the TB-3 bombers they were latched onto.

The Sveno-SPBs were the ultimate product of a decade-long research program run by designer Vladimir Vakhrimov, who experimented with numerous ways to mate ‘parasite’ fighters onto bombers to extend their range and payload, as described in a companion article.

This was the second raid undertaken by Shubikov’s Circus, as the 2nd Special Squadron of the 32nd Fighter Regiment was known. The first on July 26 had taken the Axis defenders by surprise and resulted in the destruction of an oil depot. But the Soviet raiders were unlikely to benefit from surprise a second time.

At 5:50 AM, as the TB-3 pilots flew within nine miles of the Romanian coastline, they flipped a switch and yellow light flashed next to the cockpits of the I-16s. Seconds later, the fighter pilots released the latches clamping their I-16s to their motherships.

The bomb-laden fighters surged towards the bridge and then from slightly over a mile high, nosed down at a near ninety-degree angle, causing them to accelerate to nearly four hundred miles per hour.

The bridge’s defenders were on alert, as described by I-16 pilot Boris Litvinchuk in The Angry Sky of Tauris by fellow aviator Vassily Minakov.

Squalls of fire shot up towards the heavily loaded warbirds. Automatic guns bristled with fire from both sides of the Danube, from the islands, from the special cradles suspended from the trusses of the bridge, even from the tops of the seventy-five-meter-high spans . . . Nevertheless, the I-16s broke through to fly directly above the bridge. It raced towards them . . . just four hundred meters away. Bombs came rushing down . . .

A direct hit in the central span! A gigantic steel span breaks like a giraffe’s neck, and plunges into foaming water. Burning oil gushes out of a broken pipeline under the flooring, a continuous flame raging downstream on the water . . .

All four I-16s escaped unscathed and landed and refueled at Odessa at 6:40 AM, where they were promptly redirected towards an incoming formation of Ju-88 bombers headed for the Soviet port city. The Junkers dumped most of their bombs in the sea and belted for home, and Shubikov and his comrades then rejoined their TB-3 motherships at their home base in Yevpatoria.

Three days later a strike by three Zveno-SPB’s scored five direct hits, destroying one of the bridge spans completely. On their return flight, the I-16s nosed back down to low altitude to strafe assembling Romanian infantry at Sulina.

The same day, the SPB’s designer Vladimir Vakhmistrov requested diverting additional TB-3 bombers to Shubikov’s Circus. The unit received two. However, Stalin personally ruled against further reinforcement: the TB-3 was out of production, and the Sveno used a rare, late-model variant with higher-power AM34 engines that were urgently needed for transport duties.

Shubikov’s Circus nonetheless continued launching long-range precision strikes,as detailed in Vakhmistrov’s Circus by author Mikhail Maslov. On August 17, six I-16s destroyed floating dry dock in Constanta’s harbor. Then, on August 28, four I-16s blasted a bridge crossing the Dniepr River near Zaphoroshye, Ukraine two hundred miles to the north.

Still the Axis war machine ground closer and closer to the Crimean Peninsula, and the unit specialized in long-range strikes was increasingly thrust into frontline ground support roles. Even though range became less of a problem, the unit still depended on the TB-3s to lift the bomb-laden I-16s into the air.

By September 8 the unit was hitting a bridge crossing at Berislav only one hundred miles away, covered by Yak-1 fighters when it was bounced by German fighters. A Yak and I-16 went down in flames. The following day, four I-16s of Shubikov’s circus claimed two 109s in a swirling dogfight following another raid. This was quite an achievement as the Bf 109 was much faster and more heavily armed than the I-16, though not quite as maneuverable.

Finally, on October 1, Shubikov’s luck ran out on October during a raid striking German heavy artillery at Ishun that was bombarding Soviet troops defending Perekop—one of the narrow land bridges connecting the Crimean Peninsula to Ukraine. The unit leader was shot down by enemy fighters, and posthumously awarded the Order of Lenin. Odessa fell later that month.

Apparently, the 2nd Special Squadron continued flying sorties into 1942, totaling thirty combat mission altogether. The Zveno-SPBs were finally withdrawn, ostensibly due to their vulnerability to enemy fighters, as well as the fact both the TB-3 and I-16 were outdated, out-of-production airframes.

Nonetheless, unlike most experimental weapons with brief combat careers, the Zveno-SPB proved surprisingly effective—consistently inflicting significant damage to key targets deep behind enemy lines and suffering relatively light loss rates compared to most VVS units.

Vakhmistrov had invented an ingenious solution to squeezing longer range out of increasingly outdated aircraft—but his idea was decisively overtaken by the advent of more advanced airplanes. New twin-engine Pe-2 and Tu-2 bombers were faster, could carry much heavier payloads, and had longer-range than the I-16 and were sufficiently maneuverable to perform dive-bombing attacks.

After World War II, the United States experimented unsuccessfully with the XF-85 Goblin parasite escort fighter, and briefly operationally deployed RF-84K Thunderflash reconnaissance jets attached to B-36s bombers in the 1950s.

However, Vakhmistrov was farsighted in seeing the inherent potential of using larger planes to keep smaller but more agile fighters airborne over longer distances. While the parasite fighter may have amounted to a blind lead, jet fighters today routinely “dock” with airliner-like tanker planes to multiply their operational radius several times over.

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.

Aside from concerns that Donald Trump will want to emulate the autocrats that hold his fascination, the visit from Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban has some worried that the impressionable Trump is being manipulated by Vladimir Putin with Orban as a conduit. National Interest Editor Jacob Heilbrunn, author of "America Last: The Right's Century-long Romance with Foreign Dictators," joins MSNBC's Alex Wagner to discuss.  

Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of The National Interest and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. He has written on both foreign and domestic issues for numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Reuters, Washington Monthly, and The Weekly Standard. He has also written for German publications such as Cicero, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Der Tagesspiegel. In 2008, his book They Knew They Were Right: the Rise of the Neocons was published by Doubleday. It was named one of the one hundred notable books of the year by The New York Times. He is the author of America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators.

Image: Public Domain. 

Summary: The situation in Ukraine is not merely a regional conflict; it's a litmus test for the international order post-World War II, which has largely succeeded in preventing major conflicts through a balance of power and deterrents. 

I get why MAGA Republicans don’t care about Ukrainians. Ukraine is far away; its problems are even further away; and there are tons of other things closer to home to worry about. And besides, most Ukrainians probably feel the same way about MAGA Republicans and the Midwest.

Sure, there are the moral issues. Russia is committing genocide, violating human rights, and destroying democracy—things that all Americans claim to care about. And Ukraine is fighting for its survival. But, hey, you can’t solve all the world’s problems, can you? Especially those that don’t directly affect you.

The problem with this line of reasoning is simple. Today, Ukrainians are doing all the dying. If they lose to Vladimir Putin, tomorrow Americans will do the dying. And the Americans who’ll do the dying won’t be the privileged sons and daughters of east or west coast liberals. They’ll be the underprivileged, underemployed, and embittered folks who support Donald Trump and want to make America great again. In all likelihood, they’ll succeed—but not without giving up their lives for the president who stumbled into a war with Putin’s Russia in the first place.

As the former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich recently put it, “A defeat for the West in Ukraine would send a catastrophic signal to Mr. Putin — and every aggressive dictator on the planet — that the system which has kept peace for nearly 80 years is collapsing. Overnight, predatory behavior would become the norm. Since a Russian victory would profoundly change history and lead to more global violence, we must help defeat Mr. Putin despite political challenges.”

Gingrich doesn’t speak of war, but it follows from his statement that, once the system that has kept the peace collapses, war will be the inevitable result. Nor does Gingrich say that the United States will become embroiled in war, but that conclusion also follows from his analysis. As his very first sentence states: “If Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine becomes a victory for Russian aggression, it will have disastrous consequences for America and the world.”

What can be more disastrous than war? And what can be more disastrous for American than a war or wars waged by Americans? If it comes to that, the death and destruction will make the ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine look like child’s play.

Gingrich is right to emphasize that Russia wouldn’t be the only country looking to engage America in a war: “Communist China’s general secretary and president, Xi Jinping, will recalculate the risk of invading Taiwan. Kim Jong-un will question whether the United States would really intervene if he attacked South Korea. North Korea has an estimated 30 nuclear weapons — likely many more by the end of the decade.”

How many Americans would be likely to die in major wars with Russia in, say, Poland or with China and North Korea, over Taiwan or South Korea? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? A million? We have no way of knowing, but it’s clear that the numbers would be extremely high. Putin has amply demonstrated that he’s more than willing to suffer staggering casualties in order to kill a few Ukrainians. Beijing and Pyongyang are likely to be even less restrained by concern for their citizens. And keep in mind that all three countries have nuclear weapons and that Putin’s and Kim’s attitudes to first use are at best cavalier.

Would the volunteer army suffice to fight the Russians, Chinese, and North Koreans or would a draft have to be reinstituted? According to a 2018 study, “the top five for recruitment in 2018 were California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and New York.” Next in line were Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Arizona. Except for California and New York, none of these states is or was a Democratic stronghold. A draft would spread the pain more evenly, but, unless college deferments aren’t permitted, high school graduates will likely predominate in the pool of draftees and, thus, among battlefield casualties.

Naturally, Gingrich and the many other serious analysts, on both the left and the right, could be wrong about the Russian war and the consequences of a Ukrainian defeat. It’s possible that the accused war criminal Putin is really a pussycat eager for peace and rousing choruses of Kumbaya. It’s also possible that Russia will abandon its centuries of expansion and retreat into isolationism. Just as it’s possible that Beijing will abandon Taiwan and Pyongyang will demilitarize. But the odds of such happy developments seem slim at best. Would you bet your livelihood on any of these eventualities?

And yet, that’s exactly what Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson are doing. They’re betting the lives of tens of thousands of MAGA Americans on the Pollyannaish possibility that Putin, Xi, and Kim are really great guys or, as Trump just called Hungary’s tinpot authoritarian leader, Victor Orban, “fantastic” leaders. The alternative is obvious: arm the Ukrainians and let them stop Putin’s hordes.

Alexander Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia, and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires, and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, including Pidsumky imperii (2009); Puti imperii (2004); Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires (2001); Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities (1999); Dilemmas of Independence: Ukraine after Totalitarianism (1993); and The Turn to the Right: The Ideological Origins and Development of Ukrainian Nationalism, 1919–1929 (1980); the editor of 15 volumes, including The Encyclopedia of Nationalism (2000) and The Holodomor Reader (2012); and a contributor of dozens of articles to academic and policy journals, newspaper op-ed pages, and magazines. He also has a weekly blog, “Ukraine’s Orange Blues.”

Image Credit: Shutterstock. 

During the early phase of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, India faced tremendous pressure from the West, particularly the United States, to align with the United States-led Western bloc and condemn Russia in unequivocal terms. However, India maintained its principled strategic neutrality, calling for an “immediate cessation of hostilities,” an “end to the violence,” and a “return to the path of diplomacy and dialogue.” India’s position is uncomfortable for many Western capitals, particularly Washington, DC.

In today’s polarized world, India’s hallmark “tightrope” balancing between rival power blocs and nations does not always sit well with the Western foreign ministries. The discomfort and unease in bilateral relations can be witnessed in the India-U.S. relationship. With an array of technological and strategic agreements like BECA, LEMOA, and COMCASA, as well as the common consensus on the emerging challenge of Chinese revisionism, there is nonetheless an acute sense of misunderstanding and lack of trust between New Delhi and Washington. This friction is visible in several instances, be it the U.S. legislators sermonizing India on so-called democratic backsliding, press freedom, minority issues, and human rights, the recent diplomatic stand-off between Canada and India over the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, an alleged Sikh-separatist terrorist, with the alleged Indian involvement, and U.S. accusations against Indian agencies for conspiring to murder Khalistani extremist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.

The ambitious dreams of the grand U.S.-India strategic partnership and bonhomie always get punctured by Washington, DC’s discomfort with India’s independent stance on issues of critical geopolitical importance to the United States. Today, when Chinese revisionism presents a common challenge to both the United States and India, both countries do not see eye to eye on many issues. One hardly finds any steam in the India-U.S. partnership besides purely transactional technology, defense, and intelligence-sharing agreements. It seems that the United States cannot understand the nature of India’s diplomatic behavior. This lack of understanding comes from the fundamental difference in the international relations thought of India and the Western World. The expert voices in the Indian establishment feel that due to this lack of understanding on the part of the United States, it cannot accept India’s geopolitical posturing. At the same time, when the United States government is at odds with India on the issues of democracy, human rights, minorities, and the recent Canada-India row, it is perceived as a bully by Indians.

The United States must understand that India’s stance on the Ukraine issue is not a novelty; it has existed since India emerged as a sovereign nation. During the Cold War, India adopted a non-alignment policy, refusing to align with the Western and Soviet power blocks. However, by the 1970s, India came closer to the USSR because of the overt U.S. support to Pakistan over the Bangladesh issue and the resultant India-Pakistan war. India also shared socialist sentiments and a rich civilizational connection with Russia. But, despite this tilt, India reasonably maintained its strategic autonomy. 

India’s history and civilizational ethos suggest that the Indian worldview on statecraft, diplomacy, and war tends to reject rigid binaries. India’s historical and civilizational experience has not witnessed the division of the world into alliances and blocs based on ideological differences. Ideological “isms” and the “us versus them” mentality were not absent. However, they were never the dominant vectors. Likewise, a hegemon exercising an overarching influence over the weaker states based on sheer and brute power is not a characteristic feature of India’s strategic thought.

Indian strategic thought places a high premium on multipolarity in global affairs, where states retain strategic autonomy and the freedom to pursue independent foreign policy based on their geography, core national interests, and values. In such a set-up, a unipolar hegemon lording over weaker states, conquering them by force, interfering in their internal affairs, forcing humiliating treaties and alliances, and dictating values and beliefs is an aberration. This is not to say that there were no aggressive hegemons in Indian history, but such behavior was not accepted as the norm for a powerful state. 

The best example of India’s multipolar ideal comes from the sixteen Mahajanpadas of the legendary Vedic era. The sixteen Mahajanpadas were sovereign states sprawling from Afghanistan to today’s Bengal two and a half millennia ago. Among them were powerful kingdoms like Kurus, Panchalas, and Magadhas. However, the powerful kingdoms did not gobble up the smaller kingdoms as a standard practice. It was primarily symbolic even when the smaller states were defeated in wars and subjugated. In rare cases, the conquerors deposed the ruler and occupied the territory to rule. Wars were fought for specific reasons, and great importance was accorded to the idea of Dharma-yuddha (“the righteous war”). Restoring moral order, not economic gain or territorial aggrandizement, was the object of conflict. 

Bilateral diplomacy was the most preferred and effective tool for conducting foreign policy instead of over-arching and divisive military alliances. On the other hand, in the West, alliance systems and great power competition have been a fundamental part of international relations since at least the seventeenth century, culminating in the First World War, the Second World War, and the Cold War.

Delving deeper into the history of diplomacy, war, and statecraft in the West and India is not the key focus of this piece. However, suffice it to say that some of the fundamental tenets of India’s foreign policy, particularly the importance of strategic autonomy, aversion to military alliances, strong displeasure and resilience against the pressure tactics of global powers, and preference for bilateral diplomacy and multipolarity in the world order emanate from its strategic subconscious rooted in its collective civilizational-historical experience and ethos.

Today, India has successfully bypassed the pressure from the West. While fearlessly guarding its strategic autonomy, it has maintained an independent foreign policy based on national interests, values, history, and geography. Be it the Russia-Ukraine conflict, China-U.S. rivalry, or the Israel-Hamas war, India has taken a principled stand of neutrality. 

At the same time, India’s posture is not the pessimism of fence-sitters. New Delhi is making reasoned, pragmatic, and value-based judgments on various global conflicts, listening to its moral conscience and rationality amid the external pressure and polarization of the dominant power blocs. India’s activism on global affairs is based on enlightened self-interest, evident in its stance on various international issues.

Also, India has found an effective way of navigating the polarized geopolitical landscape through its successful bilateral diplomacy. Over the last two years, India has developed robust bilateral strategic, defense, and economic ties with Greece and Armenia. India also enjoys strong bilateral relations with Germany, France and Italy. Recently, when President Biden declined to attend India’s Republic Day ceremony as a chief guest, French President Emmanuel Macron replaced him. India enjoys an excellent relationship with Russia based on trust and mutual respect. Even with China, its archrival, despite the recent military stand-offs in Galwan and Eastern Ladakh, India has not closed the bilateral channels. India-China trade ties continue to grow more robust, and on boundary issues, New Delhi continues to engage China in negotiations to resolve long-standing disputes amicably. 

Though India and the United States are on the same page vis-à-vis China’s revisionist ambitions of world domination, and both countries do subscribe to the idea of a strong India-U.S. strategic partnership to counter China, India carefully maintains a guarded distance from the United States and does not wish for an alliance.

In another interesting example, India maintains strong bilateral ties with archrivals Iran and Israel. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has built an excellent economic and strategic relationship with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, and Bahrain in West Asia. Most recently, India’s successful bilateral diplomacy resulted in Qatar releasing eight Indian nationals facing death sentences on charges of espionage. 

Prime Minister Modi’s personal chemistry with many heads of state and government gives heft to his bilateral diplomacy. Five Arab states have bestowed their highest civilian awards to Prime Minister Modi, and the UAE has allotted land to construct a Hindu temple, which Modi recently inaugurated. For his Hindu constituency, convincing a monarch of a Muslim state to allow the building of a Hindu temple is a terrific achievement. Last but not least, India is taking its successful bilateral diplomacy experiment to the next level by investing in minilaterals in West Asia and the Indo-Pacific. India’s twentieth-century policy of non-alignment has transformed into “multi-alignment” in the twenty-first.

Most countries mentioned above have accepted and respected India’s independent foreign policy. Many of my informal conversations with New Delhi’s diplomatic community have suggested they highly regard India’s strategic autonomy. Most believe India is a powerful nation that can sustain its independent foreign policy. Also, it enjoys a unique position to do so because of its history of taking a principled and non-aligned stand on global issues. However, the United States must be more perceptive and understand India’s unique approach toward international relations. Such an approach is an effective way to prevent the world community from falling into rival military alliances and escalating to war.

Dr. Abhinav Pandya is a founder and CEO of Usanas Foundation, an India-based geopolitical and security affairs think-tank, and the author of Radicalization in India: An Exploration. His second book, Terror Financing in Kashmir, will be released soon. He has a Ph.D. from OP Jindal University and an MPA from Cornell University.

Image: Shutterstock.

Summary: The USS North Carolina, an iconic World War Two battleship and the most decorated American battleship of the conflict, now serves as a floating museum in Wilmington, North Carolina. As a testament to the sacrifices of North Carolinians in the war, it attracts approximately 250,000 visitors annually. However, the battleship faces challenges from climate change, with rising water levels threatening accessibility and, consequently, its financial sustainability and contribution to the local economy. Efforts are underway to protect and preserve this historical monument.

The USS North Carolina is the most decorated battleship to have served in World War Two. Today, it is a floating museum to the memory of the approximately 11,000 North Carolinians who fought and died in the largest war in human history. 

However, the venerable warship is facing an uncertain future as climate change and the passage of time threaten its existence. 

The USS North Carolina is berthed in Wilmington, North Carolina, and remains a very popular war monument, attracting about 250,000 visitors in 2022. However, climate change is raising the water levels in the river next to the battleship, and the parking lot has nearly flooded. Without access, tourists can’t visit the battleship. Without tourists, the warship can’t survive since it depends on the approximately $3.5 million revenue that comes from these visits to survive. The battleship also fuels the local economy, bringing close to $250 million over a decade. 

Local organizations and state officials are making efforts to protect the USS North Carolina and preserve it for the public.  

Recently, two historic battleships, the USS Texas and USS New Jersey, went back to the shipyard for important maintenance work. These venerable warships represent another era, and it is important to keep them alive so younger generations can understand what it takes to fight for freedom. 

The lead ship of the North Carolina-class battleships, the USS North Carolina, served in World War Two with distinction. The warship was laid down in 1937 and completed in April 1941, just a few months before the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor forced the United States into World War Two. 

In terms of weaponry, the USS North Carolina could carry nine 16-inch (406mm) main cannons, 20 5-inch (127mm) secondary guns, 16 1.1-inch (28mm) anti-aircraft guns, and scores of heavy and light machine guns for air defense.

When it came to defense, the USS North Carolina had 12-inch (305mm) armor in the belt of the ship, 16 inches (406mm) on the main gun turrets, and 5.5 inches (140mm) on the deck to protect against air bombs. 

Fully loaded, the USS North Carolina weighed almost 45,000 tons and was about 729 feet long. It could reach speeds of 28 nautical knots (about 32 miles per hour) and had a range of approximately 20,100 miles at moderate speeds. The battleship required 1,800 officers and men to operate. 

The USS North Carolina saw extensive service in World War Two. It began its service with a mission to counter the German battleship Tirpitz in the Atlantic Ocean but was soon thereafter transferred into the Pacific. There, the USS North Carolina fought in Guadalcanal, Eastern Solomon Islands, Gilbert and Marshall Islands, Mariana and Palau Islands, Philippine Sea, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. At one point, she was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine but survived the hit. Following the end of the war, the USS North Carolina was decommissioned, and in 1962, it became a floating museum in Wilmington, North Carolina.  

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned defense journalist specializing in special operations and a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ). He holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University and an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His work has been featured in Business Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP. Email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.

Image Credit: Shutterstock. 

Summary: The Iowa-class battleships, once the pride of the U.S. Navy and designed for Pacific warfare against Japan, found their roles shifting across different conflicts, from World War II to the First Gulf War, transitioning from direct naval engagement to serving as formidable artillery platforms for sea-to-land bombardment. Despite being decommissioned after Desert Storm, recent strategic challenges, particularly the rise of anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities by potential adversaries like China, have sparked debates on whether Iowa-class battleships should be revived for modern warfare. However, the reality of modern conflict, characterized by long-distance engagements, advanced A2/AD systems, drone swarms, and space power, questions the viability of reintroducing such century-old platforms.

The Iowa-class battleship was the cream of the United States Navy’s crop when they were commissioned. Designed to fight—and win—a war in the Pacific against the Japanese Empire, by the time the Second World War had been concluded, the battleships in the US Navy’s fleet had been relegated to serving as mostly giant artillery platforms. 

Before the war began, it was assumed that these behemoths would square off in an epic surface battle that would determine whose navy was superior in one, massive engagement. As is so often the case, though, what the eggheads who design these weapons envision and what they can actually be used for are very different things.

The Iowa-class came from an era where firepower was everything. Possessing massive 16-inch guns and heavy armor, these battleships were more useful for the United States—notably during later wars, such as the Korean and Vietnam Wars, as well as the First Gulf War—for sea-to-land bombardment missions. 

At one point, during the Vietnam War, the military became so concerned about the rate they were losing aircraft carrier pilots during bombing runs over North Vietnam that they deployed the U.S.S. New Jersey to bombard targets that aircraft carrier pilots scouted for the battleship.

When former President Ronald Reagan promised to build a 600-ship navy, the Iowa-class battleships (there were a total of four in the fleet at that time) were modernized with Harpoon antiship missiles and given what was at that time an advanced close-in weapons system (CIWS) for point defense. That meant that these old battlewagons could give, as well as take, quite a wallop. 

After Desert Storm, the Iowa-class was again decommissioned. These historic war machines with such honorable service to the country are now museum ships in Hawaii, California, and New Jersey. 

Today, there are calls to bring these war beasts back into the service. This is especially so because of the rise of sophisticated anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities designed to stunt the most potent weapon in the US Navy’s fleet today: its aircraft carrier. And because the heavily armored and armed battleship can still pack quite a punch, some believe it’d be a better weapon to retaliate against Chinese forces if—and when—Beijing launched an invasion of neighboring Taiwan, an American ally.

Certainly, if a third world war with China erupts over Taiwan, the Americans will have to get creative. The problem is that the Iowa-class battleship is almost a century old. Sure, they can be modernized. Yet, no real study has been conducted into how the battlewagons could be upgraded for modern warfare. What’s more, these warships require over 2,000 sailors to operate them, making them a very expensive and unwieldy alternative to US aircraft carriers (though, the crew requirements for the battleship are still less than what the flat tops require). 

Plus, those who are calling for the restoration of the battleship are missing the bigger picture here: warfare has changed even more than when the battleships were unceremoniously replaced by the aircraft carrier.

The reason that the battleships lost their primacy in the US fleet was because carrier-based airpower allowed for longer-range combat. During the Battles of the Coral Sea and, a month later, of Midway, the carriers from the US side and the Japanese side never once sighted each other. The naval war was fought in the air, at distances far removed from the ships themselves. 

It was the aircraft that spotted and conducted attacks on the opposing side’s fleet. 

Thanks to the advent of sophisticated A2/AD defenses, the rise of automated (or semi-automated) drone swarms, and even space power, warfare has become even more long-distance than it became in 1941. 

For the battleship to operate effectively, it’d be as exposed to China’s (or Russia’s) A2/AD systems. Maybe the Navy could make the battleships’ defensive systems better able to hold back the A2/AD fusillades that China will deploy against these ships. 

Ultimately, however, the kind of swarming tactics that China plans to use against US surface warships—whether they be destroyers, aircraft carriers, or even battleships—would likely swamp whatever self-defense systems are on these warships. 

That’s the point of the Chinese A2/AD strategy. 

Therefore, the US Navy should not waste its time, money, or people developing more aircraft carriers (unless they’re medium-sized carriers) or restoring the battleships of yore. Instead, the Navy should be focused on developing weapons platforms that can fight far beyond the reach of China’s A2/AD systems. American naval strategists should also expand their investment and reliance on submarines. 

Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

President Joseph Biden delivered a strong State of the Union address last night, drawing sharp contrasts with former President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans.

Opening with a forceful defense of America’s NATO allies, Biden called on Congress to approve more funding for Ukraine’s defense against Russian invasion. Biden took Americans back to 1941 when the United States was about to enter World War II and had to summon the political will to rebuild its armed forces.

Today presents a similar moment and similar test. The president repeatedly reminded Americans that “history watches” how the nation responds to crises. “Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have our freedom and democracy been under attack at home like they are today,” Biden said.

“What makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack simultaneously at home and abroad.”

It was a critical moment for Biden, who is working hard to advance his foreign and domestic agenda through a divided Congress.

Biden's most significant announcement came near the end of his speech when he confirmed that the U.S. military would establish a “temporary Mediterranean pier on the coast of Gaza” to receive shipments of water, food, and medicine.

Biden promised the mission would not involve deploying U.S. troops on the ground while allowing life-saving supplies to flow into Gaza.

While reiterating his belief in Israel's right to defend itself against Hamas, Biden condemned the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. “To Israel, I say this: humanitarian aid cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip. Protecting and saving innocent lives must be a priority,” he said. “As we look to the future, the only real solution to the situation is a two-state solution over time.”

Washington and its Arab partners realize that amid the traumatic events since October 7, Israelis and Palestinians are in no mood to consider a peace deal now or soon. Likewise, they recognize that the Palestinian Authority, undermined by successive Netanyahu governments and despised by its voters for its incompetence and corruption, is not up to the task of governing Gaza.

But in the modern Middle East, political vacuums still invite violence and terrorism. We, therefore, need a realistic and, above all, pragmatic solution that can withstand the unrest that will inevitably follow the war.

Since even a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority, as advocated by the White House, could not legitimately govern Gaza after the war without the approval of Hamas. Even with the complete destruction of Hamas’ strategic assets, the radical ideology will remain, and Iran will continue to support whatever political form it takes.

In short, Iran’s grip on Gaza will remain, no matter how many bombs are dropped. Loosening that grip is America’s biggest challenge. The United States needs a clear and unmoving policy towards Iran that recognizes that Tehran’s strategic goals—driving America from the Middle East and shattering Israel’s democracy—are fundamentally antithetical to U.S. interests. 

Thomas Friedman described it wonderfully in the New York Times: “We should have no illusions about the risks because the shadow war playing out there could come screaming out of the shadows at any moment.”

Finally, we need a realistic and courageous American approach that recognizes that the Palestinians need an alternative to Hamas’ ideology and the perpetual conflict it feeds. That alternative must provide real hope for jobs, housing, schools, and hospitals. Out of Palestinian prosperity will come lasting peace that ensures security and dignity for Israelis and Palestinians.

Ahmed Charai is the Publisher of Jerusalem Strategic Tribune and serves on the boards of directors of the Atlantic Council, the International Crisis Group, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the Center for the National Interest.

Image: Shutterstock.com. 

Summary: The USS New Jersey, a historical Iowa-class battleship and the embodiment of an era when battleships dominated naval warfare, is currently undergoing a significant $10 million refurbishment. This once-in-a-generation maintenance cycle includes repainting, applying a new protective coating, repairing the cathodic protection system, and conducting inspections for leaks to preserve the ship for future visitors. The maintenance work offers a unique opportunity for dry dock tours during weekends. Post-refurbishment, the USS New Jersey will return to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, where it was originally constructed in the 1940s.

Once upon a time, battleships ruled the waves. These giant steel behemoths could weigh up to 70,000 tons and pack enough firepower to obliterate an entire coast. World War Two was the last dance of the battleship, and since only a small number of these warships survive.

The USS New Jersey is one of them undergoing an important maintenance cycle to ensure its survival. 

The battleship is heading for significant repairs that will ensure that it is suitable for visits well into the future. As part of a $10 million refurbishment, the USS New Jersey will get a repainting, new coating, and repairs on the warship’s cathodic protection system.

In addition, it will be inspected for potential leaks that might endanger the structure. The USS Texas, an older battleship that serves as a floating museum, is undergoing major repairs after leaks listed the warship six degrees. 

“We will be offering a dry dock tour on the weekends when work is not being done at the shipyard, and information about that will be announced in conjunction with an announcement that will hopefully be forthcoming very soon about when, in fact, the ship is actually going to move here from Camden,” said Marshall Spevak, CEO of the Battleship New Jersey Museum and Memorial.

Once the repairs are over, the USS New Jersey will return to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, where it was initially built in the 1940s.

The USS New Jersey has an interesting history. As an Iowa-class battleship, the USS New Jersey is part of the last batch of battleships ever built by the U.S. Navy. It was designed in an era when battleships ruled supreme and before aircraft carriers became the center of attention.

However, with the end of World War Two, battleships became obsolete. Aircraft carriers and the scores of fighter jets they could carry meant that battleships could no longer survive in the seas. 

In total, the battleship was commissioned and recommissioned an impressive four times. This rather unusual fact is due to the fluctuating ship numbers of the Navy in the years after World War Two and the perceived needs of the Cold War. When Ronald Reagan became president in 1980, he launched an intense defense program that sought to build a 600-ship navy. To reach that number, the Navy recommissioned older ships like the USS New Jersey and equipped them with the necessary modern tools to make them relevant.

For example, after its 1982 refurbishment, the USS New Jersey packed nine 16-inch (406mm) main guns, 12 5-inch (127) secondary guns, 32 BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles, 16 RGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missiles, and four 20mm Phalanx CIWS autocannons. The battleship could also land four helicopters. 

The USS New Jersey was decommissioned for the last time in the early 1990s and has been serving as a floating museum since then, keeping naval history alive. 

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned defense journalist specializing in special operations and a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ). He holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University and an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His work has been featured in Business Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP. Email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.

Image Credit: Shutterstock. 

Summary: The McDonnell XF-85 Goblin, a unique "parasite fighter" designed during the late 1940s, was an innovative yet ultimately unsuccessful attempt to extend the defensive capabilities of U.S. strategic bombers. Intended to be deployed from the bomb bays of the B-35 and B-36 bombers, the Goblin was envisioned as a compact, deployable defense against enemy fighters. Despite its futuristic design, including stubby wings, three tail stabilizers, and a distinctive hook for reattachment to its mothership, the XF-85 faced significant operational challenges, particularly in re-docking with the carrier aircraft. Turbulence and technical difficulties during test flights led to multiple crash landings and ultimately, the cancellation of the program in 1949.

Its manufacturer called it the “Goblin”—and by looks alone, the egg-shaped jet certainly deserved the name. The McDonnell XF-85 jet resembled little more than a pressurized cockpit on top of a bulbous J34 turbojet engine, with small stubby swept-back wings that could fold inwards. Rounding out its ghastly appearance were an unusual three tail stabilizers, three shark-like belly-mounted fins, and a giant extendable hook rising from the open snout of its jet intake.

To top off the Goblin’s disreputable looks, it lacked landing gear, and had to make do with a retractable steel skid for emergencies. That’s because the XF-85 was a “parasite fighter.” It was designed to be carried aloft by a huge nuclear bomber and air dropped to defend its ponderous mothership from attacking enemy fighters. Upon accomplishing its mission, the Goblin was supposed to use its protruding hook to snag a ride back to home base attached to its mothership.

The XF-85 was intended to protect gigantic B-35 fly-wing and B-36 Peacemaker strategic bombers designed to fly thousands of miles carrying nuclear weapons in their capacious bomb bays. These had fuselages large enough to fully enclose a Goblin in their bomb bays.

Though it may sound like a concept strait out of a Rescue Rangers cartoon, parasite fighters actually had a long but obscure history. The first were British biplanes that were tested hooking up to military airships during World War I. Then during the 1930s the Navy deployed F9C Sparrowhawk biplanes on board 239-meter-long helium-filled rigid airships Akron and Macon. The Sparrohawks also used hooks to “land” onto a trapeze extended from the airships. However, both scouting airships had crashed by 1935.

During World War II, the Soviet Union briefly mounted I-16 fighters onto a hulking TB-3 bombers for air strikes in 1941, and Japan deployed rocket-powered Okha (“Cherry Blossom”) kamikaze plans on G4M bombers.

The Air Force’s formally requested its own parasite fighters in January 1944 at time its long-range strategic bombers were experiencing heavy losses to German fighters in World War II. In the short term, the Air Force would develop effective long-range piston engine P-47 and P-51 fighters with drop-tanks to accompany the bombers all the way to target.

But the Air Force knew new jet fighters would soon enter service that would dramatically outperform piston-engine fighters—while also guzzling fuel at a much faster rate. Thus, the theory went that having a bomber lift parasite jet fighter into enemy airspace would overcome the range problem.

However, only the St. Louis-based McDonnell aircraft company responded to the Air Force’s request for proposals in March 1945. That October the Air Force ordered two XP-85 prototypes (later re-designated XF-85s) and additionally planned for parasite-carrying capability in its forthcoming B-36 bombers, some of which were planned to trade away their bombloads entirely to carry three XF-85s.

The Goblin actually exhibited decent handling characteristics and theoretically could attain respectable speeds of 650 miles per hour on its lone axial-flow turbojet. Four .50-caliber machine guns in the side fuselage were to constitute its relatively light armament.

As the B-35 never entered service and the B-36 was still being developed, in 1948 the Goblin was instead “nested” in the yellow-painted belly of a specially converted EB-29B bomber named “Monstro.” The little jet was attached via a retractable trapeze based on the type used on the Akron-class airships, with the lower half of the Goblin protruding from it.

 As Goblin #46-523 was damaged in a crane accident during wind tunnel testing, #46-524 would fly all but one of the trial flights.

At first the XF-85 was carried aloft and retracted into launch position but not deployed. Finally on August 23, McDonnell test pilot Edwin Schoch launched the XF-85 from the extendible trapeze it was mounted on. The Pennsylvanian was an experienced Navy Helldiver pilot decorated for damaging a Japanese battleship during the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

However, turbulence from Monstro’s air-cushion buffeted Schoch as he attempted to gently guide the Goblin back onto the hook for recovery. The two-ton fighter weighed less than half the weight of the F-80 jet he had practiced hook-up approaches with earlier.

After ten minutes of unsuccessful hook-up attempts, to the horror of the B-29 crew the XF-85’s canopy smashed into the hook, shattering the glass and ripping off Schoch’s flight helmet and oxygen mask.

The Goblin tumbled downwards, but Schoch managed to regain control of the Goblin and skid-land it on a dry lake bed in the Muroc desert below in southern California.

Undeterred, Schoch recommenced testing on October 14–15 with a repaired Goblin modified with upward-folded wingtips for more precise control.

On three occasions, he successfully managed to hook bizarre jet back on to the EB-29 mothership. But two subsequent hookups failed, with the skyhook actually breaking on the last attempt. Schoch was forced to crash-land his XF-85 each time. XF-85 46-523 also failed to hook up on its only flight in April 8 the following year.

Though McDonnell sought to devise an improved trapeze system, news of the XF-85’s difficulties, combined with constrained budget, led the Air Force to promptly cancel the project in October 1949, leaving Schoch the only pilot to have ever flown the Goblin on its seven flights.

The Pentagon’s faltering interest stemmed from several new development. Excellent Soviet MiG-15 jets already promised to outperform the XF-85. The Air Force had already ordered a new long-range escort fighter drawing upon wingtip fuel pods resulting in the XF-88 and XF-90 prototypes. And improving aerial-refueling technology promised to soon extend the combat radius of its short-range fighters.

The Air Force wasn’t entirely done with parasite fighters, however. The service’s Fighter Conveyor program (FICON) focusd on pairing F-84 Thunderjet fighter-bombers with the B-36.

Project Tip Tow involved having two modified EF-84Ds towed by the wingtips of an EB-29, but turbulence and wing-strain complicated the project. A fatal F-84 on B-29 crash ended the program.

Project Tom-Tom alternately sought to implement the wingtip approach using a specially modified GRB-36 Peacemaker and two RF-84F Thunderflash swept-wing reconnaissance jets, was also terminated after a nearly fatal decoupling.

The Air Force instead returned to the Goblin-like concept of belly-mounting jets from retractable trapeze hooks. They successfully tested mating F-84s to a GRB-36, though the Thunderjets couldn’t fit all the way inside the Peacemaker.

The scheme worked well enough that ten GRB-36s and twenty-five RF-84K Thunderflash armed reconaissance fighters were operationally deployed from 1955–1956 before being replaced by U-2 spy planes.

As for the Goblins, the parasite jets went on to enjoy a quiet retirement and can be seen at the U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio and the Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum in Ashland, Nebraska.

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.

Summary: The United States boasts an extensive history of developing stealth aircraft, far beyond the widely recognized F-22 Raptor, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and B-2 Spirit. Numerous stealth projects, including those that never reached operational status or were intended solely for technology demonstration, have contributed to America's stealth capabilities. Among these, Boeing's Bird of Prey served as a cost-effective stealth technology demonstrator, influencing future designs with its innovative production techniques.

The United States operates more stealth aircraft than any other country on the planet, both in terms of volume and variety, with three publicly disclosed stealth platforms in service and at least three more at some stage of development.

But for every F-22 Raptor, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, or B-2 Spirit, there are a number of stealth jets that never found their way into operational hangars either because of program cancellations or, often, because they were never intended for combat service at all: Sometimes, programs aim to prove advanced new technological concepts, test classified new systems, or prove the efficacy of a capability meant for inclusion in other aircraft.

Because of the very nature of the technology, new stealth aircraft are usually developed under the utmost secrecy. The F-117 Nighthawk, as one famous example, was operational for years before the American government acknowledged its existence. Likewise, prototypes, technology demonstrators, and even programs meant for service but canceled for various reasons often remain shrouded in mystery for years, even after they stop flying.

Still commonly referred to as “Black Programs,” the Pentagon has a long and illustrious history of funding the classified development of advanced technologies. Today, the most secretive efforts fall under what’s commonly referred to as “Special Access Programs,” or SAPs, for which the distribution of information is limited even among those with the highest-reaching security clearances. But even within the world of SAPs, there remains another, even murkier designation: Unacknowledged SAPs, or USAPs. These efforts are so secretive that briefings are kept off paper and delivered by word of mouth only to the highest levels of government.

As we discussed in our in-depth coverage of the legend surrounding America’s seemingly mythical Aurora reconnaissance plane, many of these aircraft may never be revealed at all… But a few of these highly secret stealth aircraft have managed to peek out from behind the Black Budget veil, and some may have slipped beneath your radar since their disclosure.

Throughout the 1990s, a team of engineers from McDonnell Douglas’ Phantom Works (which later came under Boeing when that company acquired McDonnell Douglas) developed and tested a unique stealth aircraft shrowded in the secrecy of Area 51. This aircraft was known to most as the Bird of Prey. Unlike most stealth programs, the Bird of Prey, developed under the alias “YF-118G,” wasn’t aiming for operational service, but was a stealth technology demonstrator: elements of its design and production process are still working their way into Uncle Sam’s hangars to this very day.

Perhaps the most lasting contribution this incredible and exotic airframe made to America’s defense apparatus was in its audacity and subsequent success. While most stealth aircraft are known for their high cost, the Bird of Prey went from a pad of paper to the skies over Area 51 for less than the cost of a single F-35 today. The entire program cost just $67 million from start to finish.

Powered by a single Pratt & Whitney JT15D-5C turbofan engine, which produced just 3,190 pounds of thrust, the Bird of Prey wasn’t a fighter, but it did prove that Boeing had the chops to produce a stealth aircraft while advancing technologies linked to rapid prototyping, and single-piece composite material construction.

On 13 January 1988, a joint team from McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics was awarded a development contract by the Navy for what was to become the A-12 Avenger II (not to be confused with Lockheed’s proposed A-12 of the 1960s). Once completed, the Navy’s A-12 would have been a flying-wing design reminiscent of Northrop Grumman’s B-2 Spirit or B-21 Raider, though much smaller. The sharp triangular shape of the A-12 eventually earned it the nickname, “the flying Dorito.“

The Navy planned to saddle the platform with an “A” prefix to demonstrate its use against ground targets despite actually having the ability to engage air targets with its two internally stored AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles. In other words, the A-12 Avenger II would have been America’s first real stealth fighter.

By 1991, however, the A-12 was significantly overweight, over budget, and behind schedule, leading to its unceremonious cancellation.

The largely forgotten Model 853-21 Quiet Bird is a prototype stealth aircraft that predates the first flight of the Have Blue – F-117’s precursor – by nearly 15 years.

The effort began as a study into developing a low-observable aircraft to serve as an observation plane for the U.S. Army.

Throughout 1962 and 1963, Boeing experimented with stealth aircraft design concepts for the Quiet Bird, incorporating different shapes and construction materials in an effort to reduce the jet’s radar cross section (RCS) long before Denys Overholser at Lockheed’s Skunk Works would develop the means to accurately calculate an RCS without placing the aircraft in front of a radar array.

Although Boeing’s tests did indeed prove promising, the Army didn’t fully appreciate the value a stealth aircraft could bring to the fight and the program was ultimately shelved. However, Boeing has credited lessons learned in the development of the Quiet Bird for some of the success it would later find with the AGM-86 Air Launched Cruise Missile.

Like the Bird of Prey, the X-36 program wasn’t about fielding a new stealth aircraft for combat, so much as for maturing the technologies that may eventually find their way there.

Today’s stealth fighters are extremely difficult to target, but are not very difficult to spot and track using even dated radar arrays. Because of the performance requirements of a fighter, jets like the F-35 and F-22 need components like large jet inlets and vertical tail surfaces; yet, these can be omitted from less aerobatic stealth aircraft like the B-2 Spirit. These components don’t compromise a stealth fighter’s low-observability against high-frequency targeting arrays, but do so against low-frequency early-warning radars that aren’t capable of providing a target-grade lock.

In the mid-’90s, NASA and McDonnell Douglas (later Boeing) teamed up to try to bridge the gap between the stealth capabilities of flying-wing designs like the B-2 and aerobatic fighters like the F-22. Their X-36 was designed to fly without the empennage, or tail assembly, found on most fighters.

The X-36 was built to a 28-percent scale of a full-sized fighter, measuring just 19 feet long. It used a canard forward of the wing, split ailerons, and thrust vector control to help compensate for the missing tail. A pilot on the ground controlled the aircraft using a heads-up display connected to a nose-mounted camera.

The X-36 flew a total of 31 successful flights over just 25 weeks, racking up 15 hours and 38 minutes of flight time utilizing four different flight control software iterations.

While no subsequent aircraft has been directly linked to the X-36 program, it’s worth noting that nearly all official renders coming from the Air Force’s NGAD and the Navy’s F/A-XX fighter programs in development show stealth aircraft without conventional tail surfaces, suggesting the X-36’s legacy may simply still be shrouded in secrecy.

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

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

Main Image: Creative Commons. 

Summary: The Kirov-class battlecruisers, once envisioned as the crown jewels of the Russian Navy, failed to live up to their formidable reputation. Despite being among the largest warships, second only to America's aircraft carriers, their operational effectiveness has been questioned. Launched in 1977, these nuclear-powered giants were heavily armed but struggled to match the enduring capabilities of their U.S. counterparts. With only two of the original four ships remaining by 2023, and one stuck in drydock since 1999, their future seems uncertain amid ongoing modernization efforts. This scenario mirrors a broader trend where traditional surface warships face obsolescence due to advanced anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) systems and hypersonic weapons. Both Russian and American navies have heavily invested in these large platforms, potentially at the expense of other, more relevant capabilities like submarines. The sinking of the Moskva, a smaller Russian battlecruiser, by Ukrainian forces underscores the vulnerability of such assets in modern warfare. The focus, instead, should shift towards developing effective countermeasures against emerging threats and enhancing the reach of offensive systems beyond A2/AD bubbles, ensuring naval forces remain competitive in contested environments.

If the centerpiece of the United States Navy’s offensive strategy was the aircraft carrier, since the Cold War era, the Russian Navy’s main offensive system was their battlecruiser. Heavily armed, nuclear-powered, and seriously armored, the Kirov-class battlecruiser was to be the most important strategic asset in the Russian fleet. 

Yet, as my colleague, Peter Suciu, outlined in an article in these pages last year, the Kirov-class “never lived up to the hype.” 

Of course, one could say the same about America’s vaunted aircraft carriers in the age of anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) defensive systems of the kind that both China and Russia possess (as well as their partners in Iran and North Korea).

The fact of the matter is that the era of surface warships might be at an end because of how sophisticated A2/AD has become (and how ubiquitous these systems have become). As for the Kirov-class, they struggled in ways that America’s flat tops never did. The Soviets and, later the Russians, envisaged these beasts raging across the world’s oceans in ways that sent shivers down the spines of even the Americans. 

Launched in 1977, the Kirov-class’s eponymously named warship was the second largest warship to traverse the oceans (next to America’s aircraft carriers). Four of these behemoths were built since then. They inspired so much fear-and-loathing among the US Navy’s brass that the Iowa-class battleships were refurbished and brought back into service in the 1980s as a counterweight to the Soviet battlecruiser threat. The Kirovs were loaded with potent long-range missiles rather than the traditional “big guns” that usually armed the decks of similar sized warships.

These warships carried an assortment of other missiles as well as torpedoes. They also housed three helicopters. 

Despite these beastly armaments, the Kirov-class lacks the staying power those other systems, such as those belonging to the US Navy, enjoy. Four warships were built between 1977-1988. 

Of those four, only two remained until 2023. The Admiral Nakhimov has been languishing in drydock since 1999! The other battlecruiser, the Pyotr Veliky, was slated to be modernized but the Russian Navy ultimately announced it was being retired last year. 

As for the Admiral Nakhimov, it has been undergoing “modernization” in port for years. There is real concern among Russia’s military planners that the warship will never leave port; that it will simply be constantly upgraded. Nevertheless, the Russians appear committed to refurbishing this weapon of war—giving it all new and deadlier weapons, to boot!

Although, this gets back to a point raised earlier: are large surface warships even relevant in today’s era of A2/AD and hypersonic weapons? 

The Americans have overcommitted to their aircraft carrier capability to the detriment of other, more relevant capabilities, such as their submarines. Meanwhile, the Russians appeared to have done something similar with their Kirov-class battlecruisers. 

In fact, the Russians should have gotten the wake-up call when their warship, the Moskva, which belonged to the smaller and cheaper Russian battlecruiser Slava-class, was sunk by the Ukrainians at the outset of the Russo-Ukraine War.  

Investing heavily into modernizing the remaining Kirov-class battlecruisers is a waste. 

A similar fate which befell the Moskva could easily befall the Kirov-class, modernization notwithstanding. A better use of resource for any navy today would be to spend its money on developing effective countermeasures against drone swarms, hypersonic weapons, and massive numbers of antiship missiles. 

At the same time, being able to deploy offensive systems far beyond the range of A2/AD systems would ensure that a navy remained relevant in this age of contested environments. 

The Russians are making the same mistake that the Americans are in investing so heavily into their surface prestige weapons. These systems will not prove decisive. They are boondoggles. 

Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

Summary: The aircraft carrier, a dominant force since World War II, has long been the centerpiece of American naval strategy, symbolizing unmatched maritime power. However, the rise of sophisticated anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities, particularly by China, poses significant threats to these carriers. China's investment in antiship missiles and hypersonic weapons is designed to counter the strategic advantages of U.S. carriers. Despite the carriers' defense mechanisms and support from their battle groups, the U.S. lacks effective defenses against hypersonic missile attacks. Given the evolving threat landscape, it's crucial for the U.S. Navy to adapt by keeping carriers away from A2/AD bubbles and focusing on modifications that enhance their survivability and operational reach. This strategic pivot is necessary to maintain the relevance and effectiveness of carriers in the face of emerging challenges, ensuring they continue to serve as a vital asset rather than a liability in potential conflicts with major state rivals like China.

The advent of the aircraft carrier during the Second World War was one of the most significant events in the annals of modern warfare. A floating airbase that could be moved close to enemy positions, or wage naval combat at great distances, as occurred in the Pacific Theater of the Second World War, was revolutionary. 

After the Second World War, the US Navy internalized the offensive strategic value of the aircraft carrier and made that system, rather than heavy cruisers or battleships, the lynchpin of their naval strategy. For 80 years, the American advantages in both aircraft carrier technology—and the strategic advantages these systems conferred upon the US Navy—made it the hegemon of the high seas. 

Not even the mighty Soviet Navy could compete with the Americans in this arena.

But 80 years is a long time to depend upon a weapon system—even one as complex and massive as an aircraft carrier.

Eventually, a challenger will arise who seeks to defeat the American power by creating strategies to defeat some of its most potent weapons. The Chinese have led the way in building a sophisticated arsenal of relatively cheap (compared to the cost of US aircraft carriers) antiship missile and advanced hypersonic weapons that negate many (if not all) of the advantages that aircraft carriers once conferred upon the US military.

In the last decade, the world’s militaries have shifted their focus from developing offensive means to exert their will upon the world to creating ingenious defensive methods to prevent the world’s sole remaining superpower from meddling in what these rival states, such as China, view as their backyard. 

The goal is to draw the Americans into a fight near China, where they have established these sophisticated A2/AD “bubbles” meant to deny America access to these regions, while also threatening the survival of key American weapons platforms, like the expensive aircraft carriers. 

Sure, US aircraft carriers have a coterie of self-defense capabilities primed at preventing antiship missiles from sinking them or damaging their important flight decks. And US carriers are usually protected by a battle group consisting of submarines, destroyers, and other ships capable of adding to the protection of these carriers. 

Yet, for years China has laid the groundwork for building out defensive systems specifically aimed at destroying US aircraft carriers. For example, China leads the Americans (and the Russians, technically, lead both the Chinese and Americans) in the critical area of hypersonic weapons. Whatever defenses that US aircraft carriers and their attendant battle groups possess, the US military lacks the capabilities to defend itself against hypersonic missile attacks. 

What’s more, as Bill Gertz reported in his 2006 book, Enemies: How America’s Foes Steal Our Vital Secrets—and How We Let It Happen, in the 1990s, Chinese spies stole the classified plans for how the Navy trains its sailors to keep its warships afloat, even after having been hit with enemy weapons. 

The reason this development is important for understanding China’s threat to our warships—especially the aircraft carrier—is because Chinese war planners have had decades to develop weapons and tactics for hitting US warships in such a way that their crews would be unable to save their stricken ships. 

Beijing is prepared to decimate the US carrier fleet while the US Navy’s carriers are not defended against the systems China (and its autocratic allies) have amassed to stunt the power of US aircraft carriers.

For now, US aircraft carriers need to be kept back from these hotspots. Because so much money has been spent on building and maintaining these war leviathans, they should still be used. But not for going after great state rivals, notably China, who have an A2/AD arsenal capable of ending the aircraft carrier threat to their forces. 

Modifications should be made to the existing fleet of aircraft carriers to give them a real chance of being able to survive the flurry of Chinese antiship ballistic missiles and hypersonic weapons that will be lobbed their way if they come too close to what China considers their strategic area of interest. 

American flattops and the ships belonging to their battle groups should be modified to carry longer-range weapons and drones that would allow for power projection into contested domains while mitigating the physical threat to those carriers.

Until these changes are made, the US aircraft carrier will be more of a strategic liability than an asset in any conflict (which is coming soon) with China over Taiwan. 

Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

Summary: The strategic landscape's evolution, marked by robust anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) defenses from adversaries like China and Russia, challenges the U.S. Navy's reliance on its traditional, large aircraft carriers for power projection. Given the vulnerabilities of Nimitz-class and Ford-class carriers to such threats, the Navy could benefit from pivoting towards medium-sized aircraft carriers or adopting Japan's helicopter carrier concept. The concept of medium-sized carriers, once considered in the 1970s but abandoned during the Reagan-era defense buildup, offers a potentially more cost-effective, less complex alternative to the "monstrosities" currently favored. With defense budgets under scrutiny and the imperative of maintaining operational capabilities in contested zones, smaller, less sophisticated carriers could enhance the Navy's agility and survivability. The Izumo-class "helicopter-destroyer" from Japan, capable of operating F-35B Lightning II stealth fighters, exemplifies this approach with its significant cost savings and operational flexibility compared to the exorbitant Ford-class carriers. As the strategic value of massive aircraft carriers wanes in the face of evolving threats, exploring alternatives that balance power projection with survivability and cost-effectiveness becomes crucial for the Navy's future.

Because the United States Navy has invested so much of its resources into its aircraft carrier program, letting go of the flat top as a key element of its fleet will be difficult to do. So, rather than totally abandoning the carrier program in the age of the contested battlespace, it might be best to compromise. 

Aircraft carriers certainly allow for immense power projection (so long as the area these warships are being deployed to can be penetrated by naval airpower without significant risk to the expensive carrier). As it stands now, however, China, Russia, and some other American rivals have robust anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) defenses in their respective regions of the world that would likely negate the power projection advantages that the US Navy’s aircraft carriers provide. What’s more, the Nimitz-class and new Ford-class aircraft carriers are so large that they might provide an easy target for those A2/AD systems.

The Navy might want to invest instead in building up its medium-sized aircraft carriers. Or, look at the Japanese helicopter carrier concept. The US military has previously explored the concept of medium-sized carriers (designated “CVV”). Back in the 1970s, the Navy was interested in building a fleet of these medium-sized carriers as opposed to the costlier, more complex Nimitz-class carriers. 

Yet, the Reagan era defense buildup of the 1980s allowed for the Navy to sink these plans for more cost-effective, less complicated medium-sized carriers, and continue to build the monstrosities that it (and the defense contracting community) prefers.

Today, just as with the 1970s, the United States cannot afford to lavish its tax dollars on the defense department—or any government program, really—the way that it has done for the last 30 years. Interestingly, it is precisely because Congress and successive presidents from both parties have lavished gobs of tax dollars on the Department of Defense that we are now at risk of losing a major war. 

These expensive weapons systems, such as the aircraft carriers the Navy relies upon, have become so complex and costly that we lack the means to replace them or even repair them in a timely, affordable manner if they are lost or damaged in combat. If these systems are taken out of the fight, as America’s rivals plan to do early in any conflict, then America would risk losing a war, as there are few other offensive systems that could project power the way that US flat tops can.

America’s rivals understand that the sophisticated and expensive systems, such as the aircraft carriers, are now at least as much of a liability for the US Navy in the face of their robust A2/AD capabilities as these systems are an advantage for the US military looking to project power. 

Therefore, building less sophisticated, smaller, and harder-to-destroy systems will be key for the United States. Because, right now, the aircraft carriers that once played such an important role for maintaining America’s deterrence against its foes are no longer performing that function. Rival states, notably China, do not fear the American aircraft carrier as they did during the 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis.

According to Stavros Altamazoglou, “The Navy is exploring ‘Lightning Carriers’ that can operate the F-35B Lightning II stealth fighters, offering a versatile and risk-mitigated approach to maintain operational capability in contested regions like the South China Sea and near Taiwan.” 

Again, this is precisely the concept underlying Japan’s investment in helicopter carriers (from where vertical-takeoff warplanes, like the F-35, can be deployed). Japan’s Izumo-class “helicopter-destroyer” cost around $1.2 billion to build and is widely considered the most advanced indigenously built and operated warship in Asia today. 

Compare that to the $13 billion-a-pop Ford-class aircraft carriers (which, again, might not even be deployable in a contested environment, like the South China Sea or the Taiwan Strait).

The Navy is steadfast in its commitment to the concept of aircraft carriers. If they won’t abandon this cultish obsession with a weapons system that could easily be proven to be too valuable to fight, at least they could invest in cheaper, more maneuverable, harder-to-hit medium-sized carriers, like the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force has been doing.

Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

Summary: During Desert Storm, an operation less commonly associated with naval might, the USS Missouri (BB-63) and USS Wisconsin (BB-64), both Iowa-class battleships, played a pivotal role. Originally commissioned during World War II and decommissioned thereafter, these vessels were brought back into service as part of President Ronald Reagan's initiative to build a 600-ship navy in response to the Soviet Union's military expansion during the 1980s. These battleships underwent modernization to become relevant in the late 20th century. Deployed to the Persian Gulf during the Gulf War, the Missouri and Wisconsin conducted bombardments against Iraqi positions, marking the last combat use of American battleships. Their deployment was part of a broader military strategy to liberate Kuwait and demonstrated the adaptability and enduring capability of naval firepower in modern warfare.

Specific weapons systems tend to become associated with specific conflicts. Americans, for example, tend to associate the smoothbore musket with the Revolutionary War; rifled musket with the Civil War; mustard gas with the Great War; P-51 Mustang and B-17 Flying Fortress with World War II; ICBM with the Cold War; Napalm with Vietnam; et cetera.

What Americans do not associate is the battleship with Desert Storm. Rather, Desert Storm tends to conjure images of M1 Abrams tanks, tomahawk missiles, and Apache helicopters.

Yet, two battleships did indeed participate in Desert Storm, firing ordnance from the Persian Gulf in what would mark the US’s last use of a battleship in combat.

The Americans used two battleships in Desert Storm, the USS Missouri (BB-63) and the USS Wisconsin (BB-64). Both ships belonged to the famed Iowa-class, which were commissioned during World War II and decommissioned long before Saddam Hussein ever invaded Kuwait.

The Soviet Union deserves credit for the recommissioning of the battleships, and their subsequent use in Desert Storm. President Ronald Reagan, in an effort to augment US military forces amidst a 1980s arms race against the Soviet Union, pressed to create a 600-ship navy. Creating a 600-ship navy is easier said than done; however, bridging the gap by building new ships was not a viable option.

The most expedient way to augment the navy’s ship strength was to recommission mothballed vessels – like the Missouri and the Wisconsin. Again, recommissioning wasn’t as simple as dusting off the dashboard and firing up the engine. Modernizing retrofits were required to make the World War II era battleships relevant in the age of Madonna, Ozzy Osbourne, and Sylvester Stallone.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August of 1990, President George H.W. Bush sent troops and naval forces to Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf, respectively, to support Kuwait. (Sidebar: the deployment and perpetual stationing of US forces in Saudi Arabia motivated Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to launch multiple attacks against American targets.) Two of the ships deployed: the Missouri and the Wisconsin.

In January 1991, the Missouri participated in her first bombardment action of Desert Storm, shelling an Iraqi command and control bunker near the Saudi border. The bombardment marked the first time the Missouri had fired her guns in combat since March 1953 off the coast of Korea.

The Wisconsin relieved the Missouri in February 1991. Then, the Wisconsin fired her guns for the first time in combat since March 1952, sending shells 19 miles away, to destroy an Iraqi artillery battery in southern Kuwait.

In sum, the Iowa-class battleships performed admirably during Desert Storm. Granted, the Iraqis lacked the capacity to pose much threat to a US naval vessel. And granted, the Navy took a backseat to both the Army and the Air Force during Desert Storm.

But the fact is that the Iowa battleships were essentially raised from the graveyard, from a bygone era, and performed admirably in a modern conflict.   

Harrison Kass is a defense and national security writer with over 1,000 total pieces on issues involving global affairs. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.

Water scarcity may seem like an oxymoron in Oceania, but access to drinking water remains challenging for many small island nations in the South Pacific region. This is partly due to the remoteness of the various archipelagos, atolls, and islands, as well as the underdeveloped water treatment infrastructure. The United States has more than one reason to offer humanitarian aid to this thirsty region in the Pacific. 

Although islands and atolls such as Palau, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia may seem unimpressive, the United States has a significant strategic interest in maintaining regional development aid through the Compacts of Free Association (COFAs) at a time when China has become increasingly aggressive in expanding its regional sphere of influence by funding its own infrastructure and water development projects. Although many Americans are skeptical of foreign entanglements like the war in Ukraine, the COFAs allow the United States to deprive China of the islands by occupying the power vacuum in the region at a meager cost. The Senate should follow the House in renewing COFA with a greater emphasis on funding infrastructure projects that secure the island’s inhabitants and U.S. military assets. 

China has made engagement in the Pacific region a key priority as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seeks to control key shipping lanes and island chains vital for protecting their largest coastal cities. China classifies eight countries in the region as “comprehensive strategic partners,” the highest rank within China’s diplomatic agencies. These small islands contain the few remaining countries in the world that recognize Taiwan, with China directing more than  $3.9 billion in aid to island nations in a bid to isolate the country further. The Solomon Islands recently awarded a contract to a Chinese state-owned firm to upgrade the port in the capital city of Honiara after inking a security pact with China in 2022.

The Solomon Islands, as well as other COFA nations, need more critical water infrastructure. Many towns in the Solomon Islands’s interior are forced to fetch water for homes and farms, while an ongoing drought means freshwater supplies for Micronesia will remain stretched thin. Farms in Micronesia rely on groundwater for crops. In a country where agriculture employs almost half its workforce, low groundwater supplies could result in farms being shut down and many people losing their jobs. As the sea level rises, other countries like Tuvalu must keep freshwater from being contaminated by seawater, alongside upgrading existing seawalls and other infrastructure to keep the rising tides at bay.

Infrastructure assistance through the COFA agreements will help make these island nations more resilient to rising sea levels and drought while further securing U.S. military assets in the region from environmental damage. “Ultimately, the COFA agreements serve as a backbone for the U.S. defense architecture in the Indo-Pacific. COFA allows the U.S. to sustain military preparedness and deny China a foothold in the Pacific,” said Andrew Harding, a Research Assistant at The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center. 

Preparedness is the primary objective of the Marshall Islands’ Roi-Namur atoll, which hosts a U.S. military ballistic missile testing site. Rogue waves damaged large portions of the atoll’s infrastructure earlier this year, resulting in the U.S. military pointing to a monthslong recovery, impacting military readiness in the region. The Marshall Islands also struggles with maintaining consistent freshwater supplies, with the government rationing gallons of water daily during severe droughts. COFA grants for further development of reverse osmosis systems that allow saltwater to be converted into safe drinking water will allow the Marshall Islands’ government to be less reliant on groundwater since their Laura groundwater reservoir has to be recharged with rain. Having a source of freshwater removed from the risks of drought will help the islands become more self-sufficient and require less direct support from the United States to import crucial water supplies. 

The previous COFA agreements provided the United States with crucial monitoring, resupply, and transportation hubs critical in supporting regional allies. Palau is set to host a new Air Force radar station that will allow the United States and its allies advanced warning of missile launches and tests by the Chinese military, adding to assets already in the region. While the Chinese army is pulling out all the stops to secure a permanent military outpost in the region, the United States may let funding for the COFA agreements lapse. Renewing the COFA agreements and assisting Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands in increasing their freshwater reserves and hardening physical infrastructure gives the United States a strategic advantage while being cheaper than constructing whole islands in the Pacific, as China is already doing. 

Since the first COFA was signed in 1986, the agreements have provided critical economic and infrastructure assistance to Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands. If the United States chooses to forgo renewing these agreements, Pacific Island nations will find that China is more than willing to assist them in securing freshwater supplies and upgrading infrastructure. 

The current cost to renew the COFA agreements is less than one-tenth the cost of the United States’s assistance to Ukraine since 2022. Policymakers should renew the compacts to get the most strategic bang for their buck, assisting these islands and securing their future and our security.

Roy Mathews is a Writer for Young Voices. He is a graduate of Bates College and a 2023 Publius Fellow at The Claremont Institute. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Examiner, and Law & Liberty. Follow him on X.

Editor's Note: Shortly after this article was published, the Senate passed the COFA renewal. It now awaits President Biden's signature.

It is a truism across administrations: Unexpected crises define foreign policy legacy. For Jimmy Carter, it was Iran’s Islamic Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Ronald Reagan faced the Marine Barracks bombing in Lebanon, followed two years later by a humiliating withdrawal. For George H.W. Bush, it was Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Bill Clinton faced the “Black Hawk Down” crisis in Somalia, followed by wars in the Balkans. The September 11, 2001 terror attacks catapulted George W. Bush into wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Barack Obama promised to end “dumb wars,” but not only did he return troops to Iraq and remain in Afghanistan, but he also joined fights in both Libya and Syria. Donald Trump was the first president since Carter not to engage troops in a new conflict, but COVID—and the Chinese Communist Party—transformed his presidency.

Joe Biden ran on his foreign policy credentials. He proclaimed, “diplomacy is back,” while surrogates declared, “the adults are back in charge.” As Biden’s term winds down, wars, not peace, will define his presidency. Spin aside, the Afghanistan withdrawal confirmed defeat. And, while Biden is not to blame for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ambition, the humiliation and abandonment of allies Biden was willing to accept in Afghanistan colored Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.

His legacy in the Middle East will be poor. Just days before Hamas set the region aflame, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan credited Biden diplomacy for making “The Middle East region … quieter today than it has been in two decades.” However the war ends, its reverberations will ripple through the region for years. These wars may just be beginning. With the Islamic Republic of Iran even threatening Antarctica, the liberal order is under assault on every continent.

Consider the following conflicts that could become hot at any moment:

Venezuela vs. Guyana

Over four decades have passed since a transnational war erupted in South America. In 1982, Argentine dictator General Leopoldo Galtieri took a page from failing dictators worldwide: instigate a conflict to distract the public with jingoism. With the economy in shambles, he reignited dormant claims to the Falkland Islands, ruled by the British for almost 150 years. Galtieri calculated that the United Kingdom, riven with domestic discord, no longer had the will to defend a few thousand sheep farmers in the far reaches of its empire. He was wrong. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher rallied and roundly defeated Argentina.

Today, the pattern repeats; it is only the fortitude of the White House, not 10 Downing Street, under challenge. Socialism has transformed Venezuela, once South America’s richest country, into one of its poorest. As President Nicolás Maduro has little charisma and few friends, he takes a page from Galtieri, reviving a territorial dispute that Venezuela settled more than a century ago and then reaffirmed a half-century ago. Maduro’s claims to Guyana’s Essequibo region are groundless. It was Dutch territory that the Netherlands ceded to Great Britain during the 1815 Congress of Vienna to form British Guyana, and it never belonged to Venezuela.

In 2009, as vice president, Maduro briefly resurrected the claim. At the time, it was an empty threat; today, it may not be. The situation in Venezuela is exponentially worse. On December 3, 2023, Maduro sponsored a referendum to demonstrate popular support for using the Venezuelan military to seize oil-rich Essequibo. While Biden’s team condemned the move and rushed some troops to Guyana to participate in joint exercises, White House attention was scattered. Over the last month, the White House has sent Jon Finer, Sullivan’s deputy and chief messenger, to pledge support for Guyana. Still, just a week later, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby downplayed Venezuelan troop movements as being “of a small nature and size and scale and scope.”

Kirby reflects the White House’s wishful thinking. Satellite imagery shows significant Venezuelan military preparations. During a meeting with visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on February 20, 2024, Maduro signaled his desire to meet with Putin after the Russian elections in March; Maduro likely seeks a green light.

If Maduro orders troops into Guyana, there may not be much Guyana can do. Its military numbers only 3,400 men, roughly the size of Washington, DC’s police force. Unlike Ukraine, it is unclear whether Guyana can fight or, Finer’s assurances notwithstanding, the United States will engage militarily. While defending Guyana’s offshore oil infrastructure is easier, Maduro may calculate he can either compel Exxon-Mobil to suspend operations or lead the White House to bend to pressure. That is, after all, what both Special Envoy Amos Hochstein did with Lebanon’s expansive maritime claims and what Secretary of State Antony Blinken has done by promising arms to Turkey even as it doubles down on its illicit claims to Cypriot waters.

Azerbaijan vs. Armenia

Guyana is not the only small state under threat. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may not be Europe’s last war on Biden’s watch. Biden entered office promising to recognize the Armenian genocide. He, unlike his predecessors, followed through and deserves credit. There is no doubt that more than one million Armenians died during and immediately after World War I. Nor, despite what the Bernard Lewis School of Turkish Studies teaches in the United States, were their deaths the result of the fog of war. The Young Turks planned and then executed genocide. For all President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s bluster, Turkey (Türkiye) is a paper tiger. When successive countries recognized the genocide, Turkey did nothing.

Unfortunately, Biden’s team believed it could play both sides. Just two days after Biden recognized the Armenian genocide, Blinken waived sanctions on Azerbaijan despite its attack months before on millennia-old Armenian communities in Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan’s claim that Nagorno-Karabakh belonged to it did not justify its military action. Nor, for that matter, was Azerbaijan’s sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh as cut-and-dry as its supporters claim.

Both before the September 2023 seizure of Nagorno-Karabakh and after, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev signaled his goal both to eradicate Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh and to conquer Armenia proper under the notion that present-day Armenia is Western Azerbaijan. “Present-day Armenia is our land,” he declared on December 24, 2022. Aliyev may believe he can get away with murder because of the emptiness of the State Department’s red lines. Four days before Aliyev ordered his forces to complete Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic cleansing, for example, Acting Assistant Secretary Yuri Kim declared, “We will not tolerate any attack on the people of Nagorno-Karabakh” only then to do just that.

Aliyev’s belligerence is proportional to his belief he can act without consequence. Blinken and Sullivan compound the problem with a rush to peace. Forcing concessions from democratic Armenia and allowing Aliyev to avoid demarcating the Azerbaijan-Armenia border while he undertakes a multibillion-dollar military build-up guarantees renewed conflict and may lead Aliyev to believe he can overrun Armenia.

Congo vs. Rwanda and Ethiopia vs. Somalia

Ossified State Department policy has pushed the Horn of Africa and Africa’s Great Lakes region to the brink of war. It need not have been like this. Somaliland and Rwanda are African miracles. Both Somaliland’s Isaaqs and Rwanda’s Tutsis survived the genocide. Both emerged stronger and became regional oases. Somaliland even became the first country in the world to secure voter registration with biometric iris scans.

In a region where insecurity is permissive, Somaliland and Rwanda are exceptions. Both states deny space to terrorists, weapons smugglers, militant groups, and foreign militaries. Both host multi-billion dollar companies and investments. Somaliland’s Berbera port can compete with Djibouti and Dubai’s Jebel Ali. Rwanda, meanwhile, has become Africa’s Silicon Valley. Both are among the world’s greatest success stories in the war against corruption. Today, Rwanda ranks alongside Slovakia, Poland, and Greece in terms of levels of corruption, while its neighbors Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo are among the world’s most corrupt states. Somaliland’s e-economy enables transparency.

Neighbors, however, now threaten both countries. Somaliland became independent in 1960 and, after a failed merger with Somalia, re-declared independence in 1991. While “Blackhawk Down” seared Somalia’s failure and anarchy into the American mind, Somaliland remained at peace. Democracy and government capacity matter. When drought hit the Horn of Africa in 2006, 2011, and 2017, Somalis suffered, but Ethiopia and Somalilanders rallied, transporting food where the population needed it most and saving their citizens’ lives. Much of the population of Somaliland escaped starvation as, local government officials explained to me, they were able to transport food across the country without fear of looting.

Somalia’s warlords, however, are not far away. Using billions of dollars in aid, Mogadishu purchased Chinese weaponry and Turkish drones. In December 2022, China sponsored a localized insurgency in the Somaliland Sool district to punish Somaliland for choosing Taiwan over China.

The threats Rwanda today faces are likewise rooted in 20th-century genocide. What many Americans know about Rwanda’s anti-Tutsi genocide is from the Hollywood film Hotel Rwanda. Few know the aftermath. When the Rwandan Patriotic Front took Kigali and drove the French-backed Hutu génocidaires across the border into the Democratic Republic of Congo, conflict continued.

Here, the United Nations is to blame. Just as it established refugee camps for Palestinians just across from Israel’s borders and refused to disarm the militants inside them, so too did the UN allow génocidaires to establish camps within sight of Rwanda’s borders. In 2021, I surveyed the Rwanda-Congo border from Goma northward for several dozen miles; I could see the smoke of rebel camps just two miles away. Just as armed Palestinians destabilized Lebanon, so too have Hutu génocidaires undermined eastern Congo’s stability. As a result, Africa’s Great Lakes region remains a tinderbox like the Horn of Africa.

Enter Team Biden with a match. Whereas the United States once treated the Somalia-Somaliland issue in parallel to China’s one country, two systems policy, today Blinken treats Somaliland as a pariah to appease Somalia. By signaling blind support for Somalia, Washington encourages Somali revanchists to choose force.

Faced with U.S. efforts to appease its tormentors, Somaliland has turned to Ethiopia, striking a bargain in which Somaliland leases landlocked Ethiopia a port in exchange for recognition. On cue, the State Department condemned the deal. Many in Mogadishu see the condemnation as a green light to act militarily. Today, a fight looms just a stone’s throw across the Bab el-Mandeb from where Houthis attack global shipping.

Rwanda, too, faces a war born out of American incompetence. The Democratic Republic of Congo is, by area, Africa’s second-largest country. Theoretically, it should be one of its wealthiest, with $24 trillion worth of strategic minerals within its borders. Decades of war and dictatorship, however, took a toll, killing more than five million. While many Congolese blame Rwanda, failure to disarm Hutu militias and the Congolese government’s effort to co-opt the génocidaires catalyzed the fight.

Enter Michael Hammer, the U.S. ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo until recently. Regional diplomats say that he pressed for Washington to accept the end of a UN-mandated military purchase reporting requirement to ingratiate himself with local leaders while still in Kinshasa. UN Security Council Resolution 2641 passed in June 2022 with U.S. acquiescence,  lifting the requirement. President Félix Tshisekedi then went on an opaque shopping spree that coincided with his turn to ethnic politics in eastern Congo, a reality acknowledged by both sides during research trips to both Kigali and Kinshasa. 

Over the past fifteen months, approximately 1,200 mercenaries from two companies—the Bulgaria-based Agemira and the Romania-based Asociatia-RALF—have arrived in Goma, eastern Congo’s major city. The mercenaries today deploy across the region. In June 2023, regional sources say approximately 200 mercenaries arrived in Goma and traveled to Bukavu by boat. In October 2023, a Boeing 737 arrived in Goma from Bucharest, Romania, via Luxor, Egypt, to supplement the existing deployment and rotate out some private contractors. Blackwater founder Erik Prince is also in Congo.

The mercenaries train the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo snipers and supplement the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FLDR), which grew out of the exiled génocidaires. They also help train the Congolese army to operate recently purchased unmanned aerial vehicles, many of which are of Chinese origin.

While Congo undertakes an unprecedented military build-up, Blinken and U.S. Agency for International Development Administration Samantha Power blame the victim and criticize Rwanda instead. This may lead Tshisekedi to believe Washington would turn a blind eye should Congo attack. Additionally, he confuses possession of advanced platforms with military competence. His new Chinese toys and misplaced State Department encouragement have created a perfect storm that may soon erupt into war.

Entering the Eye of the Storm

Adversaries are sophisticated. They study the American political calendar and time operations to coincide with American distractions. Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia and Azerbaijan’s 2020 attack on Nagorno-Karabakh both coincided with American election season. As the 2024 campaign crystalizes, danger looms. Uncertainty about American leadership has encouraged dictators to believe war works. Forces of altruism do not fill the vacuums of leadership. Biden may be about to learn that lesson the hard way.

Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum. Follow him on X @mrubin1971.