The National Interest

Kris Osborn

military,

It is the key to America's modern military. How could they function without it. 

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Here's What You Need to Remember: The military relies on GPS and it would likely be destroyed in a war. This is why backups to GPS are being worked on.

Since the days of the Gulf War debut of a host of new precision weaponry and communications technology, the US military has increasing developed GPS-dependent drones, satellites, force tracking systems and a wide range of weapons.

While such things, such as Air Force Joint Direct Attack Munitions for the Air Force, or the Army’s GPS-enabled Blue Force Tracking succeeded in ushering in a new generation of advanced combat operations – in more recent
years potential adversaries have become adept at closing the technical gap with the US. As part of this, the margin of US military technological superiority is challenged, matched and, in some cases, outdone.

Advanced jamming techniques, electronic warfare and sophisticated cyberattacks have radically altered the combat equation – making GPS signals vulnerable to enemy disruption.

Accordingly, there is a broad consensus among military developers and industry innovators that far too many necessary combat technologies are reliant upon GPS systems. Weapons targeting, ship navigation and even small handheld solider force-tracking systems all rely upon GPS signals to operate.

​As a result there is increased focus within the military community on combat technologies that can provide what the military calls precision, navigation and timing (PNT) for a wide range of systems.

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is working with industry to test and refine an emerging radio frequency force-tracking technology able to identify ground forces’ location without needing to rely upon GPS.

The technology utilizes a ground operated handheld device which uses an algorithm to aggregate signals of opportunity from various radio frequencies, said Mark Smearcheck, AFRL electronics engineer, in a written statement several months ago.

“By receiving and processing various radio frequency sources not designed for navigation purposes, the new system connects to a smartphone and is designed to pinpoint a user’s location without relying on GPS,” Smearcheck said.

The concept, a combined effort between the AFRL and Virginia based Echo Ridge, is to identify and develop position, navigation and timing technologies able to operate in a GPS-denied environment wherein commonly relied upon GPS signals are jammed, attacked or compromised.

In particular, China is known to be testing high tech ASAT, or anti-satellite, weapons intended to knock out or destroy enemy GPS systems.

As a result of this and other threats, the Air Force has been vigorously pursuing resilient, cyber hardened, combat capable communications technology to sustain combat operations and preserve force networking without GPS.

The device connects to a smartphone running the Android Tactical Assault Kit, a device typically carried by Air Force ground operators to display the navigation solution on a map.

With the process developed by Echo Ridge, the errors do not accumulate over time, as they might with a traditional dead reckoning approach, so a valid position can be produced indefinitely, officials explained.

“Multiple signal sources are used simultaneously, which provides redundancy and increased immunity to adversarial attack,” an Air Force statement said.

“We’re measuring signals that have known or discovered geographical locations,” said John Carlson, chief technical officer at Echo Ridge. “Because we’re able to precisely measure those signals, we can accurately estimate position without error growth over time or distance traveled.”

Several months ago, Echo Ridge and the AFRL Sensors Directorate completed a field test and demonstration of the technology at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Developers are now working on improving ruggedness for the device to expand the mission scope of its potential combat uses.

Industry developers are also working with the Army to develop navigation technologies able to function in a GPS-denied environment – combat scenarios where satellite signals are compromised or unable to function due to enemy activity or technical malfunctions.

One promising PNT technology under development is an Orolia-developed device called Versa PNT.

“You may not be aware of how susceptible GPS signals are to jamming or spoofing. The whole issue of interference, detection and mitigation is the focus of our technology,” said Mark Cianciolo, regional vice president for the Americas, Orolia.

The technology comes in a ruggedized box designed to mount on vehicles, drones and other mobile platforms that network combat forces. The device uses encrypted RF signals to both detect and mitigate potential jamming or interference – all while providing key navigation and timing systems for mounted and dismounted units. The Army’s mobile Blue-Force Tracker, for example, is a GPS-reliant system, which provides friendly and enemy force-tracking technology

Orolia is currently working on a prototype Versa for dismounted soldiers, Cianciolo said.

It functions like a Wave Relay (Persistent Systems technology) network with each device able to both transmit and function as a router or node. It uses an iridium receiver and inertial measurement technology to provide guidance, navigation and timing, Cianciolo said. The receiver is a small antenna, which receives RF frequencies. This kind of Wave Relay networking is also being successfully developed by the Army for subterranean combat, allowing soldiers to conduct combat operations underground.

“When you look at our solution in an environment where the timing is jammed, we’ve built in several redundant critical timing solutions,” he added. “Our new Versa product is the only fully integrated flexible platform of its kind that delivers comprehensive PNT solutions. The signal is fully encrypted.”

The Versa PNT system is entirely consistent with existing Army terrestrial, ad hoc software programmable radio networks designed to relay combat-relevant voice, data and video technology across a force in real-time.

These networks, currently used by Army soldiers to connect the handheld Rifleman Radio, operate in an environment without a fixed infrastructure such as a cell tower or satellite network.

Rifleman Radio, used by Army Rangers in Afghanistan in recent years, uses the high-bandwidth Soldier Radio Waveform to transmit info across the force. A software programmable network is based upon the premise that each node or radio on the system functions as a router as well as something which transmits.

Versa PNT is also designed in a small, four-and-a-half inch form factor to ultimately enable use with dismounted soldiers as well as vehicles, drones or other platforms.

This first appeared in Warrior Maven here. 

Image: Reuters

Stephen Silver

Stimulus Check, United States

Many of the checks have already been distributed, but there are complications with some others. For example, what about those who have recently collected unemployment?

The American Rescue Plan Act was signed into law by President Joseph Biden in early March, and in addition to various measures to jump-start vaccine distribution and expand the child tax credit, the package also distributed $1,400 checks to most Americans.

Many of the checks have already been distributed, but there are complications with some others. For example, what about those who have recently collected unemployment? The Bureau of Labor Statistics, after all, has said that over twenty-three million U.S. workers nationwide filed for unemployment in the pandemic year of 2020, per the IRS.

The Rescue Plan changed the rules about how that is handled, while also extending unemployment benefits. Those who earned less than $150,000 in modified adjusted gross income, will be allowed to “exclude unemployment compensation up to $20,400 if married filing jointly and $10,200 for all other eligible taxpayers.” Those benefits apply only to benefits received in 2020.

The IRS announced on March 30 that it “will take steps to automatically refund money this spring and summer to people who filed their tax return reporting unemployment compensation before the recent changes made by the American Rescue Plan.”

“For those taxpayers who already have filed and figured their tax based on the full amount of unemployment compensation, the IRS will determine the correct taxable amount of unemployment compensation and tax. Any resulting overpayment of tax will be either refunded or applied to other outstanding taxes owed,” the IRS continued.

The recalculation will first be done for those eligible for up to the $10,200 exclusion, with those up for the $20,400 exclusion coming next.

What do those affected need to do right now?

“There is no need for taxpayers to file an amended return unless the calculations make the taxpayer newly eligible for additional federal credits and deductions not already included on the original tax return,” the IRS said. Taxpayers are also asked to review their state returns.

Last month, the government agreed to push back the federal income tax filing deadline past the initial date of April 15. This followed a letter from a pair of members of Congress asking the IRS and Acting Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Tax Policy asking for that change to be made.

“We welcomed the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) decision last year, after bipartisan calls from Congress, to provide an automatic filing and payment extension to July 15, 2020,” the letter said.

“Almost a year later, we are still grappling with the massive economic, logistical, and health challenges wrought by this devastating pandemic. Millions of stressed-out taxpayers, businesses, and preparers would appreciate an extension of the deadline to file their 2020 tax returns.”

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

Image: Reuters.

Kris Osborn

M4A1, Americas

The US Army has now produced at least 117,000 battle-tested, upgraded M4A1 rifles.

Here's What You Need to Know: Army developers explain that conversions to the M4A1 represents the latest iteration in a long-standing service effort to improve the weapon.

(This article first appeared in December 2017.)

The US Army has now produced at least 117,000 battle-tested, upgraded M4A1 rifles engineered to more quickly identify, attack and destroy enemy targets with full auto-capability, consistent trigger-pull and a slightly heavier barrel, service officials said.

The service’s so-called M4 Product Improvement Program, or PIP, is a far-reaching initiative to upgrade the Army’s entire current inventory of M4 rifles into higher-tech, durable and more lethal M4A1 weapons, Army spokesman Pete Rowland, spokesman for PM Soldier Weapons, told Scout Warrior in an interview.

“The heavier barrel is more durable and has greater capacity to maintain accuracy and zero while withstanding the heat produced by high volumes of fire. New and upgraded M4A1s will also receive ambidextrous fire control,” an Army statement said.

To date, the Army has completed more than 117,000 M4A1 upgrades on the way to the eventual transformation of more than 480,000 M4 rifles. The service recently marked a milestone of having completed one-fourth of its intended upgrades to benefit Soldiers in combat.

The Army is planning to convert all currently fielded M4 carbines to M4A1 carbines; approximately 483,000,” Rowland said. “Most of the enhancements resulted from Soldier surveys conducted over time.”

Rowland explained that the PIP involves a two-pronged effort; one part involves depot work to quickly transform existing M4s into M4A1s alongside a commensurate effort to acquire new M4A1 weapons from FN Herstal and Colt.

Army developers explain that conversions to the M4A1 represents the latest iteration in a long-standing service effort to improve the weapon.

“We continuously perform market research and maintain communications with the user for continuous improvements and to meet emerging requirements,” Army statements said.

The Army has already made more than 90 performance “Engineering Change Proposals” to the M4 Carbine since its introduction, an Army document describes.

“Improvements have been made to the trigger assembly, extractor spring, recoil buffer, barrel chamber, magazine and bolt, as well as ergonomic changes to allow Soldiers to tailor the system to meet their needs,” and Army statement said.

Today’s M4 is quite different “under the hood” than its predecessors and tomorrow’s M4A1 will be even further refined to provide Soldiers with an even more effective and reliable weapon system, Army statements said.

The M4A1 is also engineered to fire the emerging M885A1 Enhanced Performance Round, .556 ammunition designed with new, better penetrating and more lethal contours to exact more damage upon enemy targets.

“The M4A1 has improvements which take advantage of the M885A1. The round is better performing and is effective against light armor,” an Army official told Scout Warrior.

Prior to the emergence of the M4A1 program, the Army had planned to acquire a new M4; numerous tests, industry demonstrations and requirements development exercises informed this effort, including a “shoot off” among potential suppliers.

Before its conversion into the M4A1, the M4 -  while a battle tested weapon and known for many success – had become controversial due to combat Soldier complaints, such as reports of the weapon “jamming.”  

Future M4 Rifle Improvements?

While Army officials are not yet discussing any additional improvements to the M1A4 or planning to launch a new program of any kind, service officials do acknowledge ongoing conceptual discussion regarding ways to further integrate emerging technology into the weapon.

Within the last few years, the Army did conduct a “market survey” with which to explore a host of additional upgrades to the M4A1; These previous considerations, called the M4A1+ effort, analyzed by Army developers and then shelved. Among the options explored by the Army and industry included the use of a “flash suppressor,” camoflauge, removable iron sights and a single-stage trigger, according to numerous news reports and a formal government solicitation.

The M4A1+ effort was designed to look for add-on components that will "seamlessly integrate with the current M4A1 Carbine ... without negatively impacting or affecting the performance or operation of the M4A1 weapon," a FedBizOpps document states.

Additional details of the M4A1+ effort were outlined in a a report from Military.com’s Matt Cox.

“One of the upgrades is an improved extended forward rail that will ‘provide for a hand guard allowing for a free-floated barrel’ for improved accuracy. The improved rail will also have to include a low-profile gas block that could spell the end of the M16/M4 design's traditional gas block and triangular fixed front sight,” the report says.

Despite the fact that the particular M4A1+ effort did not move forward, Army officials explain that market surveys regarding improvements to the weapon will continue; in addition, Army developers explain that the service is consistently immersed in effort to identify and integrate emerging technologies into the rifle as they become available. As a result, it is entirely conceivable that the Army will explore new requirements and technologies for the M4A1 as time goes on.

This article first appeared in December 2017.

Image: U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Jeremiah Woods

Robert Farley

X-32 Fighter,

Given the struggles of the last decade with the Joint Strike Fighter, it’s impossible not to wonder about what might have been.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The X-32 escaped all of the most significant challenges to the F-35. The X-32 never faced decades of testing and redesign; it never saw massive cost overruns; it was never subjected to an endless series of articles about how it couldn’t out-dogfight an F-16A

The Department of Defense (DoD) didn’t have to opt for the F-35. In the 1990s, both Boeing and Lockheed Martin bid for the next big fighter contract, a plane that would serve in each of the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, as well as grace the air forces of many US allies. Boeing served up the X-32; Lockheed the X-35.

The Pentagon chose the F-35. Given the struggles of the last decade with the Joint Strike Fighter, it’s impossible not to wonder about what might have been; what if DoD had gone with Boeing’s X-32 instead, or with some combination of the two aircraft?

History:

At the end of the Cold War, the Pentagon proposed a joint fighter project in the hopes of reducing the overall logistical tail of fielded forces, as well as in minimizing development costs. Each of the three fighter-flying services needed replacements for the 4th generation aircraft in their inventory; the F-15 and F-16 in the case of the Air Force, and the F/A-18 and AV-8B Harrier in the case of the Navy and the Marine Corps. The new fighter, thus, needed conventional, carrier, and STOVL (short take off vertical landing) configurations.

DoD had not, historically, had good luck with joint programs, but the hope was that increased “jointness” between the services, combined with more advanced production techniques and more carefully refined logistics procedures, would make a shared fighter worth the effort. All parties understood that the winner of the competition would likely enjoy a great deal of export success, as many air forces around the world required a fifth-generation fighter. In short, this was the biggest deal on the horizon of the post-Cold War defense industry.  Boeing and Lockheed Martin won contracts to develop two demonstrators each.

Capabilities:

Built to the same specifications, the X-32 and the F-35 had relatively similar performance parameters. Deciding to compete on cost, Boeing designed the X-32 around a single-piece delta wing that would fit all three variants. The X-32 lacked the shaft-driven turbofan lift of the F-35, instead using the same thrust vectoring system as the AV-8 Harrier. The X-32’s system was less advanced than the F-35’s, but also less complex.

The X-32 was designed to reach Mach 1.6 in conventional flight. It could carry either six AMRAAMs or two missiles and two bombs in its internal weapons bay. Range and stealth characteristics were generally similar to those expected of the F-35, and the body of the aircraft could accommodate much of the advanced electronic equipment that the F-35 now carries.

Decision:

One thing is for certain; the X-32 was a ridiculously ugly aircraft. It looked like nothing so much as the spawn of an A-7 Corsair and a hideously deformed manatee. The F-35 is no prize from an aesthetic point of view, lacking the sleek, dangerous lines of the F-22, but the X-32 made the F-35 look positively sexy by comparison. How much should this matter? Not a bit. How much did it matter? Good question. Fighter pilots don’t like to fly aircraft that look like they could be run over by Florida speed boat.

On more concrete grounds, Boeing’s strategy probably hurt its chances. Instead of building one demonstrator capable of fulfilling the requirements of all three services, Boeing built two; one capable of conventional supersonic flight, and the other of vertical take-off and landing. Lockheed’s prototype could do both. The Pentagon also liked the innovative (if risky) nature of the F-35’s turbolift. Finally, Lockheed’s experience with the F-22 suggested that it could probably handle another large stealth fighter project.

Conclusion:

Chosen in 2001, the F-35 went on to become the largest Pentagon procurement project of all time, and one of the most beset by trouble. The X-32 escaped all of the most significant challenges to the F-35. The X-32 never faced decades of testing and redesign; it never saw massive cost overruns; it was never subjected to an endless series of articles about how it couldn’t out-dogfight an F-16A. Nostalgia for what might have been is common in aircraft competitions, and it’s impossible to say whether the X-32 would have run into the same difficulties of the F-35.  Given the complex nature of advanced fighter projects, the answer is almost certainly “yes.”

But in hindsight, it almost certainly would have made more sense to go with a VSTOL alternative fighter for the Marine Corps. This would have eliminated the most complex aspect of the “joint” project; the need to create an aircraft that shared critical components across three wildly different variants. This also would have helped spread the wealth across different major defense contractors, a practice that has increasingly become a Pentagon priority. Of course, given that the STOVL aspects of the F-35 and X-32 were baked in at the proposal stage, this would have required turning the clock back all the way to 1993, not just to 2001.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is author of The Battleship Book. He serves as a Senior Lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and The Diplomat. This article first appeared several years ago.

Image: Wikipedia.

Robert Farley

Great Power Competition, World

As the world becomes more multipolar, expect to see more and more countries with big economies and advanced militaries looking to flex their newfound might.

Key point: America, China, Russia, and India all come to mind. But which powers will truly be one top over the next deacde?

The focus of ground combat operations has shifted dramatically since the end of the Cold War. Relatively few operations now involve the defeat of a technologically and doctrinally similar force, leading to the conquest or liberation of territory. Preparation for these operations remains important, but ground combat branches also have a host of other priorities, some (including counter-insurgency and policing) harkening back to the origins of the modern military organization.

What will the balance of ground combat power look like in 2030, presumably after the Wars on Terror and the Wars of Russian Reconsolidation (more to come on this idea below) shake out?

This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Predictions are hard, especially about the future, but a few relatively simple questions can help illuminate our analysis. In particular, three questions motivate this study:

• Does the army have access to national resources, including an innovative technological base?

• Does the army have sufficient support from political authorities, without compromising the organization’s independence?

• Does the army have access to experiential learning; does it have the opportunity to learn and innovate in real-world conditions?

Given these questions, most ground combat forces of 2030 will very much resemble the most lethal forces of today, with perhaps a couple of important changes.

India

The Indian Army is poised to stand alongside the world’s most elite ground combat forces. The Army has dealt with combat operations across the intensity spectrum, contending against a Maoist insurgency at home, a Pakistani-supported insurgency in Kashmir, and a variety of other, smaller domestic operations. At the same time, the Indian Army remains well-prepared for high intensity combat against Pakistan, having long accepted the need for realistic combat training. Altogether, these experiences have helped hone the force into an effective tool for New Delhi’s foreign and domestic policy.

While Indian Army equipment has lagged behind competitors in important ways, India now has access to nearly the entire universe of military technology. Russia, Europe, Israel, and the United States all sell their wares to India, complementing a growing domestic military industrial complex. Despite the need to compete with the air and naval services, the Indian Army should have greater access to advanced technology in the future than it has in the past, making it an ever more formidable force.

(Recommended: 5 Most Powerful Navies in 2030) 

France

Of all the European countries, France will likely retain the most capable, lethal army in the future. France remains committed to the idea of playing a major role in world politics, and clearly believes in the necessity of effective ground forces to fulfill that role. This should continue into the future, and perhaps even accelerate as France takes on greater control of the military and security apparatus of the European Union.

France’s military industrial complex remains robust, both on the domestic and the export fronts. The Army has modern command and communications equipment, and provides the backbone for most multilateral European Union forces. It also enjoys access to excellent field equipment, including tanks and artillery. The commitment of the French government to maintaining a strong domestic arms industry works in the Army’s favor.

The French Army has considerable experience with operations from the low to medium arcs of the combat spectrum. It has served in the Afghan and North African theaters of the Wars on Terror, using regular and elite forces to support locals and defeat enemy irregulars. The Army also enjoys the support of the two other French services; the Marine Nationale has creditable expeditionary capabilities, and the Air Force has increasingly focused on support operations, including battlefield strike, transport, and reconnaissance. The modular, professional nature of the Army makes it easily deployable across a wide range of territory.

Russia

The Russian Army went through a wrenching transformation at the end of the Cold War, losing much of its access to resources, to political clout, and to manpower. The military-industrial complex that had supported the Red Army collapsed in slow motion, leaving the force with outdated and poorly-maintained equipment. Morale dropped, and the Army struggled in combat against irregulars in Chechnya and elsewhere.

(Recommended: China and America Go To War in South China Sea: Who Wins?) 

Not everything has turned, but some things have. Improvements in the Russian economy allowed for more investment in the force. Reform, especially in the elite forces, helped Russia win the war in Chechnya. In 2008, the Russian Army quickly defeated Georgia, and in 2014 it spearheaded the seizure of Crimea from Ukraine. Together, we might call these the Wars of Russian Reconsolidation, a conflict that may not yet have ended. The Russian Army continues to play the central role in Moscow’s management of the near abroad, even as it has ceded some space to naval and air forces over the past couple of years.

The Russian Army will remain a lethal force in 2030, but nevertheless will have serious problems. Access to technology could become a greater problem in the future. The death throes of the Soviet military-industrial complex have finally played out, leaving a system of innovation and production that has struggled on both sides of the coin. Manpower may also prove problematic, as the Army seems stuck between the old conscription model (supported by a dwindling population), and the volunteer system that makes elite forces so special. Still, Russia’s neighbors will continue to fear the size and prowess of the Russian Army (especially in so-called “hybrid” operations) for a long time.

United States

The United States Army has represented the gold standard for a ground combat force since at least 1991. The defeat of the Iraqi Army in 1991, and the consummate destruction of the same in 2003, remain the most impressive feats of ground combat since the end of the Cold War. Over the last fifteen years, the Army has continued field operations in Iraq and Afghanistan; special operators have gone much farther afield.

The US Army continues to have access to a formidable system of military innovation. It shares the pie with the Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, but notwithstanding sluggish growth in the last decade, the pie remains very large. While some of the equipment used by the US Army still dates to the Cold War, almost all such material has undergone a series of upgrades to bring it up to the standards of modern, networked warfare. The Army has the world’s largest array of reconnaissance drones, connecting forward observation with lethal, accurate fires.

 

Moreover, the Army has fifteen years of combat experience in the Wars on Terror; the longest period of consistent combat operations since at least the Indian Wars. To be sure, this experience holds dangers, not least of organizational exhaustion. This is particularly concerning given the apparently endless nature of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nevertheless, the US Army should remain the most powerful ground combat force in the world in 2030, and not by a small margin.

China

Since at least the early 1990s, the People’s Liberation Army has engaged in a thorough-going reform of its ground forces. For decades, elements of the PLA acted as the guarantors of specific political factions within the Chinese Communist Party. As reforms took hold, the PLA became a commercial organization as much as a military one, taking control of a wide variety of small enterprises.

This situation began to turn as the Chinese economy erupted in the 1990s and 2000s. With access to funding and an increasingly innovative technology sector, the ground element of the PLA began to slim down and reform itself, becoming a modern military organization.

Like its American counterpart, the ground force of the PLA must share the financial pie with a pair of voracious partners. The era in which China focused on ground power at the expense of sea and air power has decisively ended. Also, the PLA can never detach itself fully from the factional struggles within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP); the two are too closely intertwined for anything approaching Western style civil-military relations to take hold.

Reform has included massive equipment modernization projects, realistic training, and steps toward the professionalization of the force. While the PLA does not enjoy the same level of funding as the US Army, it does have access to nearly unlimited manpower, and it controls greater resources than almost any other army in the world. The one thing the PLA lacks is real-world experience; it has not conducted live combat operations since the Sino-Vietnamese War, and has played no role in the major conflicts of this century. Still, there is no reason to believe that existing trends in PLA modernization and reform will change direction in the next fifteen years.

Concluding Thoughts

In the end, the answers to “how do we build a powerful army” remain painfully simple. States that have access to enthusiastic populations with high human capital, that can cull the most innovative technologies from robust, modern economies, and that can structure their civil-military relations with just-enough-but-not-too-much independence will tend to do very well. Experience doesn’t hurt, either. The simplicity of the answers does not imply that the prescriptions are easy to achieve, however.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to the National Interest, is author of The Battleship Book. He serves as a senior lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His work includes military doctrine, national security and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money, Information Dissemination and the Diplomat. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Joseph Trevithick

B-58 Bomber,

Convair’s delta-wing Hustler was in some respects a fantastic aircraft.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The B-58 Hustler would never see combat and was never configured for non-nuclear bombing missions. In January 1970, the Air Force retired the aircraft. The flying branch’s nuclear-attack mission would fall to low-flying B-52s, B-1s, F-111s, stealthy B-2s and ballistic missiles — the latter of which were a testament to the success of concurrency.

On Nov. 11, 1956, the first B-58 Hustler took flight. It would never see combat. An exotic, beautiful bomber designed for high-speed nuclear strike missions, changes in Soviet tactics and a development method which dramatically hiked costs conspired to doom the Hustler — intended as a replacement for the jet-powered B-47 Stratojet.

Convair’s delta-wing Hustler was in some respects a fantastic aircraft, and as a supersonic jet bomber was capable of flying significantly faster — at Mach 2.0 — than the B-52 Stratofortress and the Stratojet. With a maximum altitude of 63,400 feet, it flew much higher than both of those bombers.

The Hustler was also small, for a bomber, with its 95.10-foot length and a 56.9-foot-wingspan. A B-52 is 64 feet longer and has 128 more feet of wing.

Speed was everything for the Hustler, as the Air Force aimed to have the bombers — armed with a single nine-megaton B53 nuclear bomb or four B43 or B61 nuclear bombs on four wing pylons — dash into the Soviet Union and China at speeds and altitudes that interceptors and surface-to-air missiles would have difficulty reaching.

In 1964, the CIA determined that the only Chinese aircraft possibly capable of intercepting it was the MiG-21 Fishbed and “even then” the chances of a successful hit would be “marginal.”

This was due in part to the Hustler’s four J79-GE-5A turbojet engines capable of individually producing 10,400 pounds of dry thrust. The delta wing shape also helped increase speed, but the resulting drag pushed the engineers to redesign the fuselage in a curved “coke-bottle” shape. A large bomb-and-fuel pod sat underneath the fuselage.

To reduce heat, Convair designed the B-58’s skin out of honeycombed fiberglass sandwiched between aluminum and steel plates, glued together instead of riveted. This engineering method would later inform future jet aircraft such as commercial airliners.

However, the Hustler’s small size created one of its biggest shortcomings for a jet designed to penetrate Soviet airspace — an unrefueled combat radius of only 1,740 miles. This would require the flying branch to base its Hustlers in Europe or devote substantial numbers of tankers for aerial refueling.

The short range was a serious concern in the Air Force, according to the 2012 book Rearming for the Cold War, 1945-1960 by retired USAF Col. Elliott V. Converse III.

Lt. Gen. Curtis LeMay of Strategic Air Command disliked the bomber and wanted the planes kept away from SAC. “In 1955, Maj. Gen. John P. McConnell, LeMay’s director of plans, commented wryly that as long as the Soviet Union and not Canada was the enemy, range would matter,” Converse wrote.

To make matters worse, the bomber was mechanically complicated, expensive — three times as much to operate than the B-52 — and difficult to develop. To redesign the fuselage into the “coke bottle” forced delays in the program and an increase in costs.

The number of planned B-58s changed — the Air Force would end up buying 116 Hustlers, a third of what the flying branch wanted. And because the bomber traveled so fast, the Air Force needed a new navigation and bombing system — the Sperry AN/ASQ-42 — which proved most troublesome of all to develop.

The J79 engine ran into problems, as did the braking system and ejection seats, the latter of which Convair ultimately swapped out for ejectable pods. “Despite the several speed records that it established, the B-58 may not have been worth its high cost,” Converse wrote.

More than anything else, two factors ultimately doomed the Hustler. The first was the development of better Soviet surface-to-air missiles in the 1950s culminating in the May 1960 shootdown of a high-flying U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers. The weapon, an S-75 Dvina — known by NATO as the SA-2 Guideline — could reach thousands of feet higher than the B-58’s maximum operating altitude.

One solution was to fly low, but flying low also means flying slow given the heavier air. Not only did that defeat the purpose of the Hustler’s design, the plane handled poorly at lower speeds. Twenty percent crashed.

The second problem was inherent to the U.S. Air Force’s demand that the B-58’s development occur concurrently, similar to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter decades later.

“These central principles were that a system should be designed from the outset as an integrated whole and, based upon this plan, work on all of the elements making up the system, including its subsystems and aspects of its employment such as supporting facilities and equipment and training programs, should take place concurrently,” Converse wrote in Rearming for the Cold War.

Problems, when they arose, created cascading problems for the entire project. “When technological monkey wrenches showed up in the B-58 program, the system had to be redesigned or wait for the problems to be solved. As a result, development slowed, some production preparations had to be scrapped, costs rose, and deployment was delayed.”

If this sounds familiar, it should given the repeated delays to the F-35. While the Air Force promised that concurrency would reduce costs for the stealth fighter, it hasn’t. Quite the opposite.

The B-58 Hustler would never see combat and was never configured for non-nuclear bombing missions. In January 1970, the Air Force retired the aircraft. The flying branch’s nuclear-attack mission would fall to low-flying B-52s, B-1s, F-111s, stealthy B-2s and ballistic missiles — the latter of which were a testament to the success of concurrency.

The forgotten B-58’s failure, however, shrouded the reality of how dangerous concurrency can be in radically-new aircraft projects.

Image: Wikipedia.

Kyle Mizokami

Russian Navy,

After more than twenty years of American submarine supremacy, a new challenger has arisen from the deep.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The Virginia class is quieter and has a better sonar rig than its Russian opponent. In the world of submarine warfare, that’s an unbeatable combination. It can move and detect in ways that would give away Severodvinsk.

The United States Navy’s submarine force emerged from the Cold War as the undisputed masters of the undersea realm. The elite, all-nuclear submarine force watched as its Soviet submarine force rivals rusted away pierside, the newly founded Russian Federation unable to maintain them.

After more than twenty years of American submarine supremacy, a new challenger has arisen from the deep. Slightly familiar and almost two decades in the making, it’s an unusual challenge to U.S. naval superiority, but nevertheless one with a long, lethal pedigree. How does this new old upstart, Russia’s Yasen-class submarine, compare with the new backbone of the U.S. submarine force, the Virginia class?

The Yasen (“Ash Tree”) class of submarines was conceived as early as the mid-1980s by the Malakhit Central Design Bureau, one of the Soviet Union’s three main submarine bureaus. Construction of the first submarine, Severodvinsk, began in 1993 in Russia at the Sevmash Shipyards, but lack of funding delayed completion for more than a decade. Severodvinsk was finally launched in 2010, and commissioned into the fleet in 2013.

The Yasen class measures 390 feet long and displaces 13,800 tons. It has a crew of just ninety, far fewer than its American equivalents, suggesting a high level of automation is built into the submarine. In shape it resembles the earlier Akula class, but much longer behind the conning tower and a hump to accommodate vertical launch tubes. According to the authoritative Combat Fleets of the World, Severodvinsk has a OK-650KPM two-hundred-megawatt nuclear reactor, good for the life of the boat, which drives it to speeds of up to sixteen knots surfaced and thirty-one knots submerged. Other reports peg it slightly faster, at thirty-five knots. It can run quiet underwater at twenty knots.

Severodvinsk’s sensor suite consists of a Irtysh-Amfora sonar system, with a bow-mounted spherical sonar array, flank sonar arrays and a towed array for rearward detection. It has a MRK-50 Albatross (Snoop Pair) navigation/surface search radar and features a Rim Hat electronic support/countermeasures measures suite.

Armament for the submarines consists of four standard-diameter 5,333-millimeter torpedo tubes and four 650-millimeter torpedo tubes. The torpedo tubes can accommodate homing torpedoes and 3M54 Klub missiles, which are available in both antiship, land attack and antisubmarine versions. For even more firepower, the Yasen boats are each equipped with twenty-four vertical launch missile tubes behind the conning tower, each capable of carrying P-800 Oniks ramjet-powered supersonic antiship missiles.

The Virginia-class submarines were conceived as an affordable follow-on to the short-lived Seawolf class, which, although extremely capable, were also extremely expensive. In that sense, they have been highly successful, and Virginias are gradually becoming the mainstay of the U.S. Navy’s submarine force.

At 377 feet, the Virginias are only thirteen feet shorter than the Yasen class, but displace only half as much water. They have crews of 113, and are powered by one General Electric SG9 nuclear reactor, driving a propulsor/pump-jet instead of a propeller. Speeds are reportedly twenty-five knots on the surface and thirty-five knots underwater, and the submarines are reportedly as quiet at twenty-five knots as the Los Angeles class is alongside the pier.

Like its Russian counterpart, a Virginia’s main sonar is a spherical, bow-mounted type. However, starting with the Block III series of submarines, the BQQ-10 sonar is replaced with the U-shaped Large Aperture Bow sonar. Complementing them are arrays on the port and starboard flanks, also known as Light Weight Wide Aperture Arrays, comprising two banks of three fiber-optic acoustic sensors. LWWAA is particularly attuned to detecting diesel electric submarines. Rearward detection is covered by the TB-29(A) towed passive array. Finally, a high-frequency sonar array mounted on the sail and chin allows a Virginia to detect and avoid sea mines.

The Virginia class has only four 533-millimeter torpedo tubes, capable of firing the Mk.48 Advanced Capability (ADCAP) heavyweight homing torpedo for use against surface ships and submarines and the UGM-84 Sub-Harpoon antiship missile. Early versions of the class carried twelve Tomahawk land-attack missiles in vertical launch tubes, replaced in Block III by two cylinder launchers carrying the same number of missiles. Block V Virginias will expand the number of launchers to carry up to forty Tomahawks per submarine.

In a head-to-head confrontation between a Virginia Block III—the version under construction when Severodvinsk was commissioned—who would win? Both submarines are the pinnacle of their country’s submarine technology and, pitted against one another, would be fairly well matched. Severodvinsk may be slower, but it can dive deeper. The Virginia may be faster, but according to Combat Ships of the World, the hull has only been tested to 488 meters. Virginia likely has the edge in sonar detection, thanks to the new Large Aperture Bow sonar.

In terms of weapons the two sides are fairly evenly matched, although Severodvinsk has the antisubmarine version of the Klub missile, allowing the Russian ship to quickly engage enemy submarines with a missile-delivered lightweight torpedo, much like the retired American SUBROC system.

The Virginia class is quieter and has a better sonar rig than its Russian opponent. In the world of submarine warfare, that’s an unbeatable combination. It can move and detect in ways that would give away Severodvinsk. One thing to be said for Severodvinsk is that it is more capable of quickly responding to a sudden target opportunity via her supersonic Klub ASW missiles. As for near term prospects, the usability of the Virginia’s sonar improves on a regular basis via software updates. Severodvinsk may not be able to update its sonar suite, and making the Russian submarines quieter may not be easily implemented. Overall, the edge has to be given to the Virginia class.

In the long run, the rivalry between the two submarines will likely see the inclusion of unmanned underwater vehicles and a host of other new technologies. The United States has pursued submarine warfare halfheartedly since the end of the Cold War, and even less so since 9/11. As the United States turns its full attention back to big power warfare and submarine warfare in particular, American submarines will likely once again outsail their Russian rivals.

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

This article first appeared several years ago and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Flickr.

Robert Farley

Israeli Defense Forces, Middle East

Here are some platforms that Israel could likely make good use of or that it would possibly purchase if Washington let it.

Key point: There are still some platforms that are too exclusive or sensitive to sell even to a close ally like Israel. Here are some of those powerful weapons.

With only a few notable exceptions, Israel can buy whatever it wants from the United States, generally on very generous terms associated with U.S. aid packages. Notwithstanding the availability of weapons, however, Israel must still make careful decisions regarding how to spend money. Consequently, Israel can’t have quite everything that it would like, despite the continued good relationship with the United States and its arms industry. Here are a few US military systems that the Israelis could use:

Littoral Combat Ship

For a long time, the sea arm of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has examined the potential for warships somewhat larger than the corvettes that have historically dominated the force. As Israel’s maritime security interests increased (the necessity of maintaining the Gaza blockade, and of patrolling offshore energy deposits), this need has become more acute.

This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Over the last decade, the IDF extensively studied the possibility of acquiring heavily modified versions of the U.S. Littoral Combat Ship design. These would have had significantly different features, mainly making them less modular and more self-sufficient than their American cousins. On paper, the plan made a lot of sense; a high-speed, networked platform would fit in very well with the IDF’s operational concept. However, the necessary modifications drove up the cost of the warship, pricing it out of Israel’s range. Future changes in the market (or in Israel’s perception of need) might well shift the equation, however.

F-22 Raptor

The Obey amendment, which prohibits the export of the F-22 Raptor, was developed with Israel firmly in mind. Concerned about Israel’s transfer of high-technology equipment to Russia or China, the United States decided that domestic considerations meant it could not bar Israel from acquiring the Raptor without a blanket ban.

And so this has meant that only the USAF flies the world’s most advanced fighter aircraft. Historically, Israel has preferred fighter-bombers that can conduct both air superiority and strike missions, and the Raptor doesn’t yet have much in the way of a strike profile. However, the IDF purchased the F-15 when it was still primarily an air-superiority platform, then made the necessary modifications on its own to transform the fighter into a devastating bomber. The F-22, which otherwise serves Israel’s air superiority needs nicely, might have gone through a similar process.

Long Range Strike Bomber

Setting aside the periodic nonsense about Israel acquiring American B-52s, the long-term stand-off with Iran has demonstrated that Israel really could use a plausible long-range strike option. While Israeli F-15s and F-16s can, with refueling, reach targets in Iran, the immense distance would put them at a disadvantage as they tried to penetrate defended airspace. In this context, the Air Force’s B-21 Long Range Strike Bomber might seem attractive.

Of course, Israel hasn’t operated a strategic bomber since it retired a few B-17 Flying Fortresses in the 1950s. Nevertheless, the perceived need for an option that could penetrate Iranian air defenses and deliver heavy payloads might make the IDF reconsider its commitment to fighter-bombers. Whether the United States would ever consider exporting the bomber (which will likely fall under a variety of legal restriction associated with nuclear-delivery systems) is a different question entirely.

Massive Ordnance Penetrator

And what good are planes if they don’t have bombs to drop? Rumors of Israeli interest in the thirty-thousand-pound precision-guided bomb began to emerge at the beginning of this decade, fueling ideas in Congress about transferring the munition and an aircraft capable of delivering it. The MOP interests Israel because of its “bunker busting” capacity, which would give Israel the ability to hit deeply buried weapons facilities in Iran and elsewhere.

The United States has thus far declined to send the bomb to the Israelis, in no small part because the IDF still lacks a plausible delivery system. The Obama administration also worried about giving Israel the tools it needed to strike Iran would upset the regional balance. But geostrategic changes (or domestic political shifts in the US) might alter that calculation.

Ballistic Missile Submarine

Israel’s submarine force teeters on the very edge of presenting a plausible deterrent. The IDF submarine arm has done excellent work with its group of transferred Dolphin-class subs. However, diesel-electric submarines carrying long-range cruise missiles simply cannot match the performance, endurance, or security of nuclear boats.

This is not to say that Israel needs, or could use, something analogous to the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine. However, a more modest boat with a smaller number of missiles of limited range could indeed prove very useful to Israel’s efforts to create a robust second-strike capability. A flotilla of four such boats would provide a nearly invulnerable retaliatory capacity.

Israel has most of what it needs from the United States; in several areas, the technical capabilities of the IDF exceed those of the U.S. military. But in some areas the Israelis could take more advantage of U.S. technology, especially if strategic necessity and financial reality came together in more productive ways. Given the dynamism of Israel’s economy, the IDF may have the chance to avail itself of some of these opportunities in the near future.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to the National Interest, is author of The Battleship Book. He serves as a senior lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His work includes military doctrine, national security and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money, Information Dissemination and the Diplomat. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Matthew Moss

Firearms, Europe

The Walther PPK is still produced today and this gun has quite the colorful history.

Key point: Hitler used the PKK to kill himself and year later James Bond used the gun in his movies. How did this weapon make its name and continue to be used all these decades later?

On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler, leader of the Third Reich, killed himself with a 7.65-millimeter Walther PPK pistol.

Terrified of falling into the hands of the Soviets, who were fighting their way through Berlin, Hitler first swallowed a hydrogen-cyanide capsule and then, at 3:30 P.M., shot himself, possibly firing a round from beneath his chin.

This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

He was found alongside his new wife Eva Braun, who had also swallowed a cyanide capsule. They were slumped on a sofa.

It is believed that Hitler owned several PP & PPKs, but the pistol he used on April 30 is long lost, possibly taken as a trophy by a Soviet soldier or kept and hidden by one of the last people to leave the Fuhrerbunkerbefore the surrender of Berlin and the final collapse of the Third Reich on May 7.

On May 1, Nazi authorities announced that Hitler had died fighting with his men and that Adm. Karl Donitz would become his successor. The bodies of Hitler and Braun were taken out of the bunker to a small garden behind the Reich Chancellery. They were doused with petrol, set alight and then hurriedly buried in a crater.

While the PPK may be infamous for its links to Nazi Germany, it’s famousas James Bond’s weapon of choice — although Bond’s first weapon was the Beretta 418. It was only when a fan suggested the PPK as a more manly weapon that Ian Fleming rearmed his famous character.

Carl Walther Waffenfabrik initially developed the PPK from the slightly larger Walther Police Pistol in 1931. “PPK” is short for Polizeipistole Kriminalmodell — “Police Pistol Detective Model” — and was extremely popular throughout mainland Europe with police and civilians.

During the war, the P-38 was the standard sidearm of the German armed forces. However, the PPK was issued to police, high-ranking officers, members of the Luftwaffe and intelligence services.

The PPK arguably is one of world’s most successful double-action blow-back pistols. It’s also one of the most copied pistols in the world. The Russian Makarov is a popular clone. The PPK is still in production after 80 years.

Image: Reuters.

Robert Farley

China War, Americas

Did the Chinese overstate the implications of the Gulf War? Yes and no.

Here’s What You Need to Remember: In 1991, Chinese military officers watched as the United States dismantled the Iraqi Army, a force with more battle experience and somewhat greater technical sophistication than the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The Americans won with casualties that were trivial by historical standards.

This led to some soul searching. The PLA hadn’t quite been on autopilot in the 1980s, but the pace of reform in the military sector had not matched that of social and economic life in China. Given the grim performance of the PLA in the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, as well as the collapse of the Soviet Union, something was bound to change. The Gulf War provided a catalyst and direction for that change.

Learning: 

To get a sense of why the Gulf War matters for the PLA, we need to take a quick detour into organizational theory. Armies learn in several different ways; experiments, experience, grafting (taking members from other, similar organizations), vicarious learning and scanning. In 1991, the PLA lacked any relevant experience in modern warfare since the disastrous campaign against Vietnam in 1979. It lacked the funds and the political wherewithal to undertake the kind of large-scale exercises necessary for modern war. Grafting is notoriously difficult for modern military organizations, as it’s become awkward to simply hire sergeants and colonels from foreign countries.

(What You May Like: Should America Fear China's Carrier-Killer Missile?) 

This leaves scanning and vicarious learning, both of which involve trying to learn as much as possible from the environment (scanning), and from the experiences of other armies. In 1991, the Gulf War made apparent both what worked (the United States military) and what didn’t work (the Iraqi military). It’s not surprising, in this context, that the Gulf War would have such a big effect on the PLA.

Equipment

One big problem came on the equipment side.

By 1990, the technical sophistication of the PLA had deteriorated to the degree that Iraqi forces enjoyed a considerable advantage over their Chinese counterparts. The Iraqi Air Force included MiG-23s, MiG-25s and MiG-29s, while the PLAAF relied on Chinese-produced copycats of the MiG-21, as well as older aircraft such as the MiG-19. Similarly, the Iraqi air defense system, which had failed to incur major damage on waves of attacking American aircraft, was at least as sophisticated as the systems China was capable of employing.

(What You May Like: Asia's Greatest Fear- A U.S.-China War) 

The Chinese had also discovered, through access to Iraqi tanks captured by the Iranians in the Persian Gulf War, that the Iraqi T-72s that presented no challenge whatsoever to the U.S. Army were considerably superior to extant Chinese tanks. Although the Gulf War didn’t involve serious naval combat, it wasn’t hard to infer that the problems likely afflicted the naval sector, as well.

The balance between quality and quantity has shifted back and forth historically. In the Chinese Civil War and in Korea, the PLA took advantage of numbers and tactical effectiveness to defeat (or at least level the ground with) more technologically sophisticated opponents. In Vietnam, injections of critical anti-access technology had helped blunt U.S. air offensives. Historically, the PLA had hoped that numerical advantage would help even the playing field against one of the superpowers, but the U.S.-led coalition cut through quantitatively superior Iraqi forces like a hot knife through butter. Iraq demonstrated that, at least as far as conventional warfighting was concerned, the balance had shifted heavily in favor of technology.

This understanding of the Gulf War helped drive PLA modernization. Especially in air and naval forces, China took immediate steps to update its military technology, generally through purchasing the most-advanced Soviet hardware. Strapped for cash, Russia was eager to make deals and didn’t worry overmuch about the long-range consequences of technology transfer. China also attempted to acquire technology with military applications from Europe, but sanctions associated with the Tiananmen Square massacre hamstrung this effort. Finally, China accelerated efforts to increase the sophistication of research and development in its own military-industrial base.

(What You May Like: Russia's Military is Back) 

Doctrine

Along with the changes in technology came changes in doctrine and in expectations for how war would play out. The PLA began to emphasize airpower more than ground power, and in particular, investigated the potential for long-range precision strike. Historically, the PLA has never had the opportunity to carry out significant, operationally relevant strikes behind enemy lines, cooperation with guerrilla formation in the Civil War notwithstanding. Indeed, the PLA even lacks experience with traditional, “deep battle” maneuver warfare, in which the exploitation of breakthroughs gives armored spearheads the ability to disrupt enemy logistics and command.

While the Gulf War did not demonstrate that deep strike could decisively win modern wars, it undoubtedly did show that long-range precision strike could help disrupt enemy operations, and even seriously attrite fielded enemy forces. The PLA immediately began to develop its capability in this area. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) grew in importance relative to the ground forces of the PLA (although, this has as much to do with the disappearance of the Soviet threat and the decline in importance of North Korea as it does with a new understanding of technology), and both began to concentrate on platforms that offered long-range strike opportunities. The two services also began to shift towards smaller numbers of higher-technology systems.

For its part, the Second Artillery shifted its focus from nuclear deterrence to long-range precision strike, with both ballistic and cruise missiles. Developing a modern appreciation of military-systems integration, the PLAN, PLAAF and Second Artillery have also emphasized joint operations, with a focus on developing command, control and communications procedures that allow the efficient, coordinated use of military force. However, it’s hard to evaluate the success of such planning in the absence of wartime experience.

Conclusion

Did the Chinese overstate the implications of the Gulf War? Yes and no. Revised scholarship on the Gulf War has made clear that whatever the impact of “shock and awe,” the coalition’s conventional military superiority carried the day. American and British forces had significant technical advantages, but they also had much better training than the Iraqis, the experience of the Iran-Iraq War notwithstanding. The air war set the stage for coalition victory, but the coalition still needed to excel at conventional maneuver warfare in order to succeed.

Still, the Gulf War provided Chinese military and civilian decisionmakers with a ready example of what modern war looked like, and gave some lessons about how to fight (and how not to fight) in the future. The PLA has become a radically more sophisticated organization—with much more effective learning capacity—than it was in 1991. We have yet to see, however, how all the pieces will fall together in real combat.

Robert Farley is a Senior Lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce.

This article was first published in 2014.

Warfare History Network

History, Americas

One of the most widely distributed export fighter aircraft in history, the MiG-21 remains active with many countries.

Here’s What You Need to Remember: Just like Korea, this war was a way for each global bloc to test each other's technologies. Here is what happened.

During the protracted air war in the skies over Vietnam, two fighter interceptor and air superiority planes emerged as the most prominent aircraft of their type. These were the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom and the Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-21. When these supersonic fighters met in combat, the skills of the individual pilots and sometimes sheer luck were often the deciding factors, and more than 40 years after the end of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War debate continues as to the accuracy of kill ratios and claims made by both the sides.

Interestingly, though they were common adversaries, the appearances of the Phantom and the MiG-21 could scarcely have been more different. The big, burly Phantom weighed nearly 19 tons, while the MiG-21 weighed slightly less than 10 tons. The Phantom was 63 feet long with a wingspan of more than 38 feet. The MiG-21 with a much smaller profile and more nimble appearance stretched just under 48 feet in length, and its wingspan was just under 24 feet. Both aircraft were capable of speeds of at least Mach 2.

Relative Strengths & Weaknesses

The MiG-21 was typically armed with air-to-air missiles such as the AA-2 Atoll and a 23mm internal cannon. The Phantom was often armed with the AIM-7 Sparrow or AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. Each was capable of carrying a bomb load as well. Early Phantoms deployed to Vietnam were armed only with missiles. Lacking a cannon, these fighters were often at a disadvantage in dogfights with the MiG-21 and other Soviet- and Chinese-manufactured fighter aircraft. Later models were equipped with an internal 20mm M61 Vulcan internal rotary cannon. The Phantom held the edge with multiple missiles, often up to eight, while the MiG-21 carried only two.

The performance of each aircraft demonstrated relative strengths and weaknesses. The agile MiG-21 was deadly in a turn, and its silhouette was difficult to acquire visually at any great distance. The heavy F-4 was known for jet engines that produced a great deal of smoke, adding to the ease of identification at a distance due to its large size. The MiG-21 was generally considered more maneuverable, while the Phantom was well-armed with missiles and more lethal with the addition of the cannon. The MiG-21 was designed as a short-range interceptor, and the Phantom was a long-range aircraft.

The Phantom Retires, but the MiG Still Soars the Skies

The Phantom was produced in multiple variants and became a primary component of the air superiority, fighter bomber, reconnaissance, and radar jamming air complements of the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force. Developed during the 1950s, it entered service in 1960, and nearly 5,200 were produced during a 30-year run from 1958 to 1981. Its combat service included engagements from the Vietnam era through Operation Desert Storm and beyond. The Phantom has been operated by the air forces of at least a dozen nations, and many remain in service. The U.S. military retired the Phantom from combat use in 1996.

The MiG-21, identified as the Fishbed in NATO nomenclature, was a continuation of the MiG fighter series that originated in the late 1940s. The MiG-21 entered service in 1959, and more than 11,000 in various configurations were completed when production ended in 1985. One of the most widely distributed export fighter aircraft in history, the MiG-21 remains active with many countries.

This article by Michael Haskew originally appeared on Warfare History Network. This first appeared earlier in October 2019.

Image: Reuters

Lyle J. Goldstein

PLA Navy, Asia

Beijing has a lot of missiles and it especially has been doubling down on anti-ship missiles.

Key point: Washington tends to get nervous about China's new missiles, which Beijing rather likes. What have China actually revealed about this new weapon?

Entering the Second World War, the United States dramatically underestimated the effectiveness of certain Japanese naval systems and operations.  The tendency to look askance at Japanese naval prowess during the interwar period obviously impacted the failure to anticipate the Pearl Harbor attack.  But it is less widely understood that U.S. intelligence similarly underestimated the strength of Japan’s primary naval fighter aircraft (the Zero), the dramatic effectiveness of its long-range torpedoes, as well as its dedication to mastering difficult, but essential operations such as night combat.  Remarkably, these problems in assessment occurred despite a plethora of openly available information regarding Japanese naval development during that time.

This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

There are many reasons, of course, that contemporary China’s maritime ascendancy is starkly different from that of Imperial Japan almost a century ago.  In particular, there is hardly a shred of evidence (reef reclamation included) to suggest that Beijing is inclined to undertake a rampage of conquest similar to Japan’s effort to bring the whole of the Asia-Pacific to heel from 1931 to 1942.  Still, the complex maritime disputes in the Western Pacific require that American strategists keep a close eye on the evolving military balance.  In that spirit, this installment of the Dragon Eye series turns once again to focus a bright light on one of the newest elements of China’s missile arsenal: the YJ-18 anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM).

A test of the new Chinese YJ-18 supersonic ASCM from November 2014 is visible in this video clip, about one minute into this segment introducing China’s new nuclear submarine design. Even though we know that YJ-18 is part of a whole new generation of new and lethal Chinese ASCMs, it is curious that Chinese ASCMs generally go unmentioned in a recent TNI analysis of the “5 Most Deadly Anti-Ship Missiles of All Time.”  Clearly, Chinese naval analysts, who have labeled the YJ-18 in an early 2015 analysis “最完美的反舰导弹” [the most perfect ASCM] would not agree with that rendering.  A Chinese analysis of the YJ-18 appearing in the naval magazine 舰船知识 [Naval & Merchant Ships] published by the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) in February 2015 is the main basis of this Dragon Eye discussion.

However, before turning to the insights from this recent Chinese analysis, let us return briefly to what has been revealed about this new missile from both the recent U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) report, as well as the annual Pentagon report on Chinese military power.  The ONI report is generally well done, but curiously the new YJ-18 only rates a mention in two spare sentences.  This report notes that the YJ-18 can be vertically-launched (generally from a surface combatant) or alternatively submarine-launched, but there is no discussion of its supersonic sprint vehicle.  Since the U.S. Navy (USN) lacks a supersonic ASCM and will not have one in the foreseeable future, this omission is troubling. Similarly puzzling is the decision not to discuss the recent appearance of another supersonic ASCM, YJ-12, in China’s arsenal. True, such capabilities did exist earlier in other forms, namely as imported Russian systems, but the indigenization (and likely upgrade) of these capabilities is hardly insignificant and will mean they are much more widespread and employed with greater confidence and proficiency.  

The 2015 Department of Defense report does offer a bit more detail and thus draws the proper attention to the YJ-18 threat, but again does not mention its supersonic sprint vehicle.  The YJ-18 ASCM is described as a “significant step” and subsequently as a “dramatic improvement” over current missiles in China’s inventory.  Perhaps most significantly, however, the DoD report puts the range of YJ-18 at 290 nautical miles – more than double that of its likely progenitor, the Russian SS-N-27 Klub ASCM (export version).  If correct, moreover, this new range will, in the near term, more or less quadruple the range of the standard ASCM fired from most PLA Navy submarines.

The February 2015 Chinese analysis of YJ-18 is somewhat cautious in tone and hardly purports to be a comprehensive analysis.  Perhaps fitting for an initial piece on a cutting edge system, the article’s introduction sports the rare caveat “…并不代表本刊观点” [does not represent the viewpoint of this magazine].  However, the title “‘鹰击’18 -- ‘俱乐部’导弹中国版?” [Is the Yingji-18 Simply a Chinese Version of the Klub?] asks the precise question that will be on the minds of many defense analysts examining the YJ-18.  A decent amount of the article just reviews the development of the Russian Klub system and its different variants. It is noted, moreover, that China has had ready access to the Klub missile system since it imported the Type 636 Kilo-class conventional subs about a decade ago.  Indeed, some had remarked that Beijing imported the submarine for the sole purpose of actually acquiring its superior missile system.  Interestingly, the article does not report the much extended range outlined in the new Pentagon report.

This Chinese description relates that the missile’s great strength is its “亚超结合的独特动力” [subsonic and supersonic combined unique propulsion].  Another term applied to this design is “双速制反舰导弹” [dual speed control ASCM].  As explained in the article, it is projected that YJ-18 would have an initial subsonic phase estimated at .8 Mach similar to the Klub of about 180km, but 20km from the target would unleash the supersonic sprint vehicle at speed of Mach 2.5 to 3.  The “dual speed” function allows the system to realize certain advantages of subsonic cruise missiles, such as their “relatively long range, light weight and universality …” but also takes the chief advantage of supersonic ASCMs as well, namely the ability to “大幅压缩敌方的反应时间” [radically compress the enemy’s reaction time].  

The Chinese article relates another advantage of the “dual speed” approach.  Just as the missile comes into contact with the ship’s defenses, it “sheds the medium stage …,” thus simultaneously and dramatically altering both its speed and also its radar reflection, “which would impact the fire control calculation.”  The likelihood that YJ-18 improves upon the Klub missile’s “digitization, automation, as well as providing more intelligent flight control and navigation technology” is attributed in the Chinese article to a recent Jane’s report. A final interesting issue raised in the Chinese article concerns the “hot launch” technique suggested in the test video clip mentioned at the outset of this article (and illustrated in photos accompanying the Chinese article). Indeed, a new vertical launch system for the new 052D destroyer is confirmed as a “共架混装” [common rack for mixed arms] system with a citation in the article to PLA Admiral Qiu Zhiming, director of the Naval Armaments Research Academy.  But it is not clear from the article that YJ-18 will rely on the hot launch versus the cold launch method--the latter being much more common for submarine launched missiles.

The article interestingly discusses recent Russian placement of additional Kilo-class submarines equipped with the Klub-missile systems into the Black Sea.  These new submarines “based on the Crimean Peninsula, operating in harmony with air and land-based missile forces [can] … limit the deployment of NATO fleets into the Black Sea …”  I have noted before in this column the seductive possibilities of the “Russian model” for Chinese strategists. This Chinese author concludes the piece, explaining that, “The YJ-18 will gradually replace the YJ-82 across the PLA Navy submarine fleet.  That development combined with surface ship and air-launched missiles will create a comprehensive attack system of even greater combat power.”  The implication seems to be that for China, in its various maritime disputes, the YJ-18 can play a role similar to the one that nearly identical Russian weapons have played in creating decisive local military superiority in the Black Sea area.

On the other hand, Beijing has been making noteworthy strides in military transparency of late, for example with the most recent white paper or the somewhat unusual discussion of the new Type 093G nuclear attack submarine in China Daily.  Nevertheless, the gap in transparency continues to be quite wide when it comes to some of the most lethal weapons in China’s arsenal, such as the new YJ-18.  Allowing the rumor mill to churn, spreading anxieties regarding Chinese capabilities hither and thither is really not in China’s interest and greater transparency, of course, is necessary.

For Washington, some additional attention seems warranted in future intelligence community studies with respect to Chinese ASCM development. The 2015 ONI study gave some attention to YJ-18, but omitted discussion of the supersonic YJ-12, the long-range subsonic YJ-100 or the CX-1 supersonic ASCM that are apparently now in development, according to Chinese sources.  Renewed attention will help muster the necessary focus for the U.S. going forward to prepare its forces adequately.  For all the ink spilled and Washington seminars convened to discuss China’s expanding coast guard fleet, it is obviously the ever-growing sophistication of the Chinese ASCM arsenal that poses the “clear and present danger” to American sailors.

Lyle J. Goldstein is Associate Professor in the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, RI. The opinions expressed in this analysis are his own and do not represent the official assessments of the U.S. Navy or any other agency of the U.S. Government.

Editor’s Note: The following is part of a unique series we call Dragon Eye, which seeks insight and analysis from Chinese writings on world affairs. You can find all previous articles in the series here. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Jamie Hartmann-Boyce

Health, Americas

Bad science is clouding the issue.

In June 2019, a paper by prominent US academics found that people who used e-cigarettes were at greater risk of a heart attack. The authors concluded that e-cigarettes were just as risky as tobacco in provoking heart attacks, and that using e-cigarettes and traditional cigarettes at the same time was even riskier. Unsurprisingly, this caused a stir in the media – in the form of 35 news stories, to be exact. Also unsurprisingly, it provoked vigorous scientific debate. Eight months later, the paper was retracted.

When a paper is retracted it means we can’t trust its results. It’s like being unpublished. The problem is, the paper still exists – it’s in news stories, it’s on social media, it’s in documentaries. Smokers see these stories and increasingly think e-cigarettes are as harmful as smoking. That’s a problem because smoking is deadly.

In the study, the authors used a large set of information from adults in the US. In particular, they looked at people who smoked and people who used e-cigarettes and at whether those people had heart attacks.

A major problem with studies like this is which came first: if people who use e-cigarettes are also more likely to have heart attacks, what does this tell us? Does it mean that e-cigarettes cause heart attacks? Or that people who have heart attacks are more likely to try vaping? You can test for this by looking at which came first – the heart attack or the e-cigarette.

The journal states that the authors were asked to look at this during the peer-review process. In response, they provided some extra information, which doesn’t appear to be what the reviewers had asked for. This information was not confirmed by the journal, and the paper was published. Concerns were raised after publication, at which point the journal asked the authors to re-evaluate the information. The authors replied that they could no longer access the data. This means we can’t trust the paper.

We can try to learn from this, and it takes several forms. For researchers and the people who fund and publish research, it means not just doing more research, but doing good research, subject to rigorous, critical review. It also means doing open research; it is possible that if the initial data was publicly available, the flawed analysis may not have made it to publication in the first place.

It means being aware of “hot stuff bias” where topics that get a lot of media attention attract more bad science than those that are less on the radar. As readers, it means thinking about what we read and looking to trusted sources for information on health topics. As responsible scientists, it also means sticking to the evidence we have and sharing that information whenever we can.

What we know

There’s so much we don’t know about e-cigarettes, but there are some things we do know:

• We need more research. E-cigarettes are relatively new to the market and the devices are changing all the time.

• Expert consensus is that regulated, nicotine-containing e-cigarettes are considerably less risky than smoking traditional cigarettes.

• That said, e-cigarettes are not risk free. For people who don’t smoke, vaping will probably introduce health risks.

• Not all e-cigarettes are the same. The outbreaks of vaping-related illness in the US over the past year have been largely attributed to vaping cannabis. E-cigarettes that contain cannabis sometimes also contain an additive called vitamin E acetate, which is known to be harmful to lungs. Vitamin E acetate is banned from e-cigarettes in Europe.

• Nicotine is not the harmful ingredient in cigarettes, or in e-cigarettes. It is addictive, so it gets its bad name because it’s part of what makes people keep smoking. But it’s the other ingredients in cigarettes that cause the increased risk of death and disease.

Misinformation can be deadly

It is difficult to talk about retractions and their lasting impact without going back to the infamous – and since retracted – paper linking autism to MMR vaccines. Though withdrawn in 2010, the impact of this long discredited article still looms large, with vaccine scepticism linked to recent outbreaks of diseases, such as measles.

We must all do better to make sure we don’t repeat history when it comes to e-cigarettes. That includes being open and critical about science and thinking twice when we read stories about hotly contested topics in healthcare. With topics that attract a lot of attention, journals may be more likely to publish research with inappropriate methods or conclusions, and investigators may take a less critical approach than they would have otherwise. Alarming headlines are catchy, but misinformation might actually kill us.

Jamie Hartmann-Boyce is a Senior Researcher, Health Behaviours, University of Oxford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. 

Image: Reuters 

Alex Hollings

Yemen War, Middle East

The drone shot down by the F-15 in the footage appears to be a Qasef-1, which is a suicide drone based on an Iranian design.

New video of a Saudi Arabian F-15 taking out a suicide drone launched by Houthi rebels in Yemen surfaced on social media this week. These sorts of intercepts are not uncommon, but getting to watch an F-15 in the wild taking down targets on video is pretty rare indeed.

The footage was first brought to our attention by Joseph Trevithick over at The Warzone.

The video, which appears to have been recorded on a smartphone, opens with a view of the suicide drone motoring along. Suddenly, an explosion tears through the frame–apparently detonating the vicinity of the drone, knocking it out of the sky. Shortly after the explosion, a Saudi F-15 can be seen prowling the area.

Saudi Arabia operates a purpose-built iteration of the famed American dogfighter known as the F-15SA. Although the U.S. stopped making new orders for F-15s nearly two decades ago, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in particular have kept their focus on the highly capable 4th generation fighter, funneling more than $5 billion into improvements over the years. Today, many of those improvements are being leveraged for the U.S. Air Force’s new and improved F-15EX that Boeing recently began delivering to the force.

The drone shot down by the F-15 in the footage appears to be a Qasef-1, which is a suicide drone based on an Iranian design. Houthi rebels in Yemen have been operating these and a number of other kinds of suicide drones for years now, thanks to their low cost and high-destructive capability. Over that time, the Saudis have become extremely proficient at intercepting these drones, but at a significant cost. While the suicide drones cost practically nothing, the surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles the Saudis shoot them down with can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece, not including the operational costs of highly capable fighters like the F-15SA.

Iran is believed to have outfitted Houthi rebels with a variety of drones, some with ranges in excess of 1,300 miles. The United States has provided the Saudis with varying degrees of support in their war against the Houthi rebel group currently engaged in a longstanding civil war with the Yemini government since before 2015. If you’re interested in reading an in-depth explanation into who the Houthi rebels are and what led to this conflict, this article by Bruce Riedel for Brookings is a must-read.

If you want to learn more about the F-15EX, check out our video on it below:

 

This article first appeared at Sandboxx.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Richard Douglas

Guns,

Easy to pick up quickly, the Ruger Police Carbine was designed to be the best for officers of all sizes and skill levels.

When it comes to choosing a long gun, police departments have to select a weapon that will be the best for officers of all sizes and skill levels and that’s quite a challenge. Ruger’s Police Carbine has been tailor-made to address the unique use for law enforcement. 

In all of my years, I have tracked the evolution of long gun choices in police departments. The quite long-standing choice of a pump-action shotgun was standard for decades. The shortcomings of the shotgun are relatively obvious. Wide spray patterns and heavier damage to target surroundings are combined with one heck of a kick. The introduction of the AR-15 was a welcome move for many police departments. Lower recoil was combined with accuracy on target. Paired up with quality red dot optics, maintaining optimum distance from a threat was more feasible.

However, officers tend to struggle with the use of the AR-15, especially novice shooters. So, Ruger took note and made some excellent choices when designing the Ruger Police Carbine. One of the most impactful choices for the Ruger PC is the 9-millimeter ammo used in this long gun. Thanks to an included Glock magazine well, the PC can use Glock magazines. Glock 17, 19, and the extended thirty-three-round mag all function in the Ruger PC. The sharing of ammo and mags from pistol to carbine can make an incredible difference for police officers. 

Easy to carry goes beyond the ammo advantage. The compact build of the Ruger PC packs all of the protection in this 34.5-inch long carbine. A sixteen-inch barrel is combined with a Picatinny top rail for optics and an under-barrel Picatinny for lights/lasers. Light, at six pounds and ten ounces, the Ruger Police Carbine is not a burden to carry for even the smallest framed officers. In use, the PC is weight balanced to the middle, thanks to integrated tungsten secured in the bolt. 

This good balance of weight reduces recoil and allows for an easier balance than the front-heavy ARs. Qualifying patterns at more than fifty yards no longer have the tell-tale diagonal pattern of the officers who struggle to control the AR-15. Even the best optics can’t help when the rifle is too much for the shooter. Easy to pick up quickly, the Ruger Police Carbine was designed to be effortless on target. Ruger PC is also built for use by left or right-handed officers. The ambidextrous cross-bolt safety is placed directly behind the trigger, and the mag release button is positioned on the left side of the receiver. For further tailoring to lefty’s, the department Armorer can change the mag release over to the right if needed. 

Empty brass ejects directly to the right, and not into the officer’s face. I can’t tell you how many right-handed command staff officers have never realized what a big impact this makes for the fifteen percent of left-handed officers. Even the price tag is well-suited for purchase by police departments on a limited budget. The $649 MSRP is quite affordable for a sticker price. In truth, that high of a dollar amount is rarely what police departments actually pay per carbine. 

So, for the police agencies working towards moving forward from the pump-action shotgun, the trendy AR-15 is a great rifle. However, the AR has proven it is not the best universal choice for police officers. The Ruger PC has taken the challenges of police department use for safe and effective law enforcement head-on. Excellent design, ease in carry, and intuitive use for police officers of all sizes and skill levels make the Ruger Police Carbine the best long gun for police departments.

Richard Douglas writes on firearms, defense and security issues. He is the founder and editor of Scopes Field, and a columnist at The National Interest, 1945, Daily Caller and other publications.

Image: Wikipedia.

Warfare History Network

P-38 Lightning, Americas

They were a stalwart part of the Pacific air campaign.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Photo reconnaissance Lightnings played important roles in both Europe and the Pacific. In fact, the first P-38s to fly combat missions in the Pacific Theater were converted reconnaissance planes that were sent to Australia early in 1942.

Due largely to their use in the postwar U.S. Army Air Forces and present proliferation among the air show community, the North American P-51 Mustang is thought of by many as the most important American fighter of World War II. In reality, however, the P-51 was a relative latecomer to the war, and even though it achieved a remarkable record during the last year of the war in Europe, it was not the fighter that first allowed Allied forces to gain air superiority over the Axis. By the time the redesigned Mustang made its appearance in the skies in Europe in the late winter of 1944, the Allied air forces were already clearing the skies in both Europe and the Pacific of German and Japanese aircraft and were in the process of gaining complete air superiority. This was all due to the twin-boomed, twin-engine Lockheed P-38 Lightning and the single-engine Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. And in the Pacific Theater, the P-38 was the preferred fighter right up to the end of the war, even above the soon-to-be-famous Mustang.

Lockheed began developing the P-38 Lightning in 1937 as the company’s first venture into the military airplane market at a time when the U.S. military was modernizing its air forces in response to developments in Europe. Although the Army was somewhat skeptical of Lockheed’s promise of a 400 mph-plus airplane, the twin-engine fighter design was approved in mid-1937, and in January 1939 the prototype made its maiden flight. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had just ordered an increase in the production of new fighter designs, and the Army gave Lockheed an order for 13 test airplanes in April 1939. A followup order for 69 production aircraft was awarded by the Army in September. In spite of the company’s failure to deliver the first of the test airplanes, Lockheed was given a huge order for 607 P-38s in August 1940, as events in Europe indicated possible future U.S. involvement in the war that had increased in fury only a few weeks before. Production problems caused deliveries to lag. By December 7, 1941, only 69 Lockheed P-38s were in service with the U.S. Army Air Corps.

Because of the airplane’s value as a high-altitude interceptor, P-38s were held in the United States for homeland defense during the early months of American involvement in the war, except for a handful that were sent north to Alaska in the late spring of 1942. Consequently, it was in the Aleutians that the famous Lightning made its combat debut. Eleventh Air Force P-38s were assigned primarily as escorts for long-range Consolidated B-24 Liberator bombers, but also served in ground attack and reconnaissance roles.

The First Lockheed P-38 Lightning Fighter Groups to Deploy Overseas

Plans were made to deploy several squadrons of P-38s to England, but the logistics of delivery were difficult. The 1st, 14th, and 82nd fighter groups were the first P-38 groups to go overseas, joining the Eighth Air Force in England. The 1st remained in Iceland for a time, then continued on to England where the three groups flew a few missions over France without engaging the Luftwaffe.

In the fall of 1942, all three groups were ordered to deploy to North Africa to join the newly organized Twelfth Air Force, which had been created to support American forces assigned to Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa. A fourth group, the 78th Fighter Group, was held in “strategic” reserve in England. When the three groups deployed to Africa, none of them had engaged in air-to-air combat and there were no indications of how the P-38 was going to perform in that role.

The P-38 Lightning groups were plagued with problems—two were lost to enemy air attack on November 20, and on the night of November 21, six airplanes were lost when they tried to land at an advance base after dark. Three days later the P-38s had their first successes, as they shot down several German and Italian transports near Gabes in Tunisia. The P-38s were used in a variety of roles in North Africa. In addition to their normal fighter duties of intercepting enemy formations and escorting friendly bombers, they were also used in a ground attack role, strafing enemy vehicles and troop concentrations. Their longer range and endurance made the P-38s the only fighters in the theater capable of the longest missions.

By early 1943, the P-38 groups in North Africa were desperately short of airplanes, forcing Twelfth Air Force commander General James H. Doolittle to scour the United Kingdom for more Lightnings. When Army Air Forces commander General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold came to Casablanca for a high-level conference, he recognized the seriousness of the situation. He ordered that all remaining P-38s in England be sent to North Africa and that additional P-38s should be sent directly to North Africa by ship from the United States. His order also brought the 78th Fighter Group’s planes and pilots down from England to reinforce the three Twelfth Air Force groups; other group personnel remained in England to re-equip with P-47s.

Due to British naval control of the Mediterranean, the German Army in North Africa depended heavily on air resupply and reinforcement. In the early spring of 1943, the Allied air forces elected to make the German transports a major target. P-38 Lightning sweeps over the Mediterranean became the order of the day.

“Palm Sunday Massacre”

On the morning of April 5, a group of 26 Lockheed P-38s intercepted a German formation of 50 to 70 Junkers Ju-52 transports escorted by about 30 other aircraft, including Messerschmitt Me-109 fighters and Junkers Ju-87 dive-bombers. The action resulted in claims of 11 of the transports and four other German aircraft shot down for a loss of two P-38s.

Another P-38 formation escorting North American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers on a low-altitude attack on shipping claimed 15 German fighters. Over the next week the P-38s claimed scores of German transports and dozens of fighters. The successes of the P-38s set the stage for the “Palm Sunday Massacre,” when Curtiss P-40 Tomahawk and Supermarine Spitfire fighters intercepted a large formation of German transports and claimed one hundred, effectively cutting the German supply lines to the Afrika Korps, which was battling for its life in North Africa.

The diversion of the P-38s to North Africa left American fighter forces in England at a very low level—in fact, the P-47-equipped 4th Fighter Group was the only U.S. fighter unit in England in the spring of 1943. Plans for Torch called for the original P-38 groups to be replaced by P-47 groups in England, but the heavy single-engine P-47 lacked the range for long-range escort. New fighter groups were organized in the United States and equipped with P-38s, then moved to England for escort duty with the Eighth Fighter Command. Their longer range made the P-38s the only fighters capable of staying with the bombers on the deep-penetration raids into Germany, and P-38s were the first Allied fighters over Berlin.

The versatility of the P-38 made it a suitable airplane for many missions, one of which was a daring low-level attack that was a repeat of the Operation Tidal Wave mission against the oil fields and refineries of Ploesti, Romania, made by B-24s on August 1, 1943. On June 10, 1944, a formation of 36 P-38s carrying 1,000-pound bombs was sent to Ploesti, escorted by 39 other P-38s not carrying bombs. Twenty-three Lightnings were lost on this disastrous mission, many to the deadly flak that made Ploesti second only to Berlin as the most heavily defended target in Europe.

The P-38 was also badly needed in the Pacific War, but the low priority of the theater kept the twin-engine fighter out of the region until late in 1942. The first American fighter squadrons in the Pacific were equipped with the Bell P-39 Airacobra and the P-40, both of which were decidedly inferior to the best Japanese fighters.

When General George C. Kenney received his orders to report to Australia to assume command of air units in the Southwest Pacific Area of Operations, he asked General Henry H. Arnold for P-38s to replace the older designs. Kenney also asked for a particularly aggressive young lieutenant named Richard Ira Bong who he had called on the carpet for unauthorized low-altitude aerobatics in a P-38, including looping the loop around the Golden Gate Bridge. Bong would later become the U.S. ace of aces with 40 confirmed kills in a P-38.

When the first P-38s arrived in Australia, they were discovered to have some design problems, and their combat debut was delayed. But by late 1942, P-38s had replaced some of the P-39s in the 35th Fighter Group and were soon to make their presence known to the Japanese in the skies over New Guinea. The 49th Fighter Group was still equipped with P-40s but would soon transition to the Lightning as well.

Victory by Accident: Lockheed P-38s in the Pacific Theater

The first P-38 victory in the Pacific came about as more of an accident than a deliberate attack. For several weeks the P-38 pilots had little success at encountering Japanese aircraft; the Japanese pilots seemed to be avoiding the twin-boomed fighters. In late November, a flight of P-38s was patrolling over the Lae Airdrome and issuing taunts to the Japanese over the radio when one of the Japanese fighter pilots decided to take off. A young P-38 pilot from New Orleans named Ferrault went down to attack the Japanese fighter, then remembered he was carrying bombs and quickly jettisoned them. His plan was to come around and attack the Japanese fighter as soon as its wheels were retracted. The bombs fell in the water off the end of the runway. The unfortunate Japanese pilot flew into the water that had been tossed skyward by the explosions and crashed into the bay. General Kenney kidded the young Cajun that he did not deserve the promised Air Medal that was to go to the first P-38 pilot to achieve a victory since he had not shot the Japanese plane down, but later that evening he went over to the squadron and gave him the medal.

December 27, 1942, was the day the P-38 began to take over the skies of the Southwest Pacific. A flight of 12 Lightnings was sitting strip alert at Laloki Aerodrome at Port Moresby when they got word that a large Japanese formation was headed their way. Captain Thomas J. Lynch, who had already achieved some success in P-39s, led the P-38s off the ground and climbed to intercept the formation of 25 Japanese fighters and dive-bombers.

When the battle ended, 15 of the Japanese formation had been claimed (the official history of the Army Air Forces in WWII lists nine Japanese fighters and two dive-bombers destroyed). Lynch himself claimed two, as did Bong. Lieutenant Kenneth Sparks also claimed a pair of Japanese fighters.

Reportedly, Bong’s two victories came about as a result of his aggressiveness. Although he had innocent good looks—Kenney referred to him as a “cherub”—Bong was very aggressive on the inside. He was not a particularly good shot, but he was an exceptional pilot and he achieved most of his earlier victories by pulling in as close as possible to his quarry and “putting the guns right in the cockpit.”

In his first action Bong reportedly was separated from the rest of the formation and found himself surrounded by several Japanese planes. He promptly shot two down and escaped unscathed. Bong achieved all 40 of his aerial victories in P-38s, but died at the end of the war while testing a new jet fighter.

The twin engines and longer range of the P-38s made them the ideal fighter for the South Pacific Area of Operations, and General Millard Harmon constantly pressed General Arnold for P-38s for his theater. In the late fall and winter of 1942, Allied forces struggled to wrest control of Guadalcanal from the Japanese. Henderson Field had been the major objective of the Marines who initially landed on the island, and a major struggle took place for control of it.

Japanese aircraft staged constant raids on American-held Henderson Field, which was defended by obsolete Marine Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters and U.S. Army P-39s and P-400s; the P-400 was an export version of the P-39 Airacobra. Both the F4Fs and the P-39/P-400s were lacking in performance and were unable to meet the Japanese fighters on their own terms.

In November 1942, General Douglas MacArthur ordered the temporary assignment of some P-38s to Guadalcanal due to the uncertain nature of the situation. A flight of eight P-38s from the 39th Fighter Squadron left Milne Bay on New Guinea on November 13 and flew directly to Henderson Field, where they remained for a week. A major air and naval action against the Japanese Navy began on November 14 and prevented the Japanese from resupplying their troops on Guadalcanal, thus deciding the final outcome of the campaign, though the island would not be clear of Japanese until February.

Which Lockheed P-38 Pilot “Got” Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto?

In early 1943, Headquarters, Army Air Forces finally began releasing a few P-38s for assignment to the Pacific to replace the performance-limited P-39s and P-40s. Once Guadalcanal was secure, the South Pacific Area of Operations began making plans to move northward through the Solomon Islands. In March the 18th Fighter Group moved to the South Pacific from Hawaii and joined the 347th Fighter Group, which was in the process of converting from P-40s to Lightnings. Shortly after their arrival at Henderson Field, pilots from the 18th joined with others from the veteran 347th for one of the most famous missions of World War II.

In early April, Allied code-breakers learned that Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Japan’s leading naval strategist and the architect of the air attacks on Pearl Harbor and Midway, would be flying on an inspection visit of Japanese installations in the South Pacific. American cryptoanalysts had determined Yamamoto’s exact itinerary, including the information that he was due to arrive at the airfield at Ballale on the island of Bougainville at 0945 on April 18.

No doubt still chafing over the humiliation of the Japanese victory over the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor nearly a year and a half before, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Ernest J. King ordered Admiral William Halsey, commander of U.S. forces in and around Guadalcanal, to “Get Yamamoto.” Halsey relayed the order to the new Commander for Air, Solomons, a naval officer, Admiral Marc Mitscher.

Since the only Allied fighters in the theater capable of making the interception were P-38s, the order went to the Army. Eight pilots were chosen from the 18th Fighter Group’s 12th Fighter Squadron, two were chosen from the 70th Fighter Squadron, and eight more came from the 347th Group’s 339th Fighter Squadron. Captain Thomas Lanphier of the 70th Fighter Squadron was chosen to lead the four P-38s of the attack section. Major John Mitchell was in command of the operation and led the other 14 P-38s in the cover role.

The 18-airplane formation took off from Henderson Field on Guadalcanal at 0725 hours on the morning of the 18th and flew at wave-top height for more than two hours. As they neared the coast of Bougainville, the formation of P-38s sighted Admiral Yamamoto’s entourage. The two Mitsubishi G4M Betty bombers carrying the admiral and his staff tried to escape while six Zeros attempted to intercept the attack force. Captain Lanphier shot down one Zero then attacked one of the Bettys and sent it into the jungle in flames. Lieutenant Rex Barber shot down the other Betty.

Lanphier was credited with shooting down Yamamoto, but a controversy erupted between him and Barber over who “got Yamamoto” that continued for more than half a century. Regardless of who shot down whom, the flight of P-38s shot down Yamamoto and killed him and most of his staff. The Navy Cross was awarded to flight leader Major Mitchell and to each of the four pilots in the attack section.

In May 1943, the 475th Fighter Group was activated in Australia and planned to become the first group in the Southwest Pacific to be equipped solely with P-38s. At this time other groups were operating mixed bags of aircraft, including P-39s, P-40s, and P-47s as well as P-38s. Pilots and other personnel were drawn from other groups already fighting in New Guinea and sent back to Australia to form a nucleus around which the group would be built. Additional personnel arrived from the States to fill out the squadron while new airplanes were delivered by boat. By July 118 P-38s had arrived in Australia and were going through the modification program at Eagle Farms to bring them up to combat standards. By mid-August, the group was ready for combat and moved back up north to Dobodura, to join the 49th Fighter Group, which was operating P-38s and P-40s.

Range was one of the major problems facing the fighter commanders of the Fifth and Thirteenth Air Forces. Unlike the war in Europe, which was waged over a comparatively confined area and mostly over land, the war in the Pacific Theater was fought over great distances that required long flights over water. The twin engines of the P-38 made it the ideal candidate for over-water flying. With a single-engine fighter, an engine failure meant that the airplane was coming out of the sky. A twin-engine fighter or light/medium bomber could lose one engine and still continue back to base.

Charles Lindbergh’s History with the P-38

General Kenney and his fighter commanders pondered the problems of their theater and constantly thought of new ways to extend the range of the combat squadrons. Extended-range fuel tanks afforded increased range, but in the summer of 1944 a godsend came to the theater, a man who would significantly increase the range and combat radius of the P-38.

In the spring of 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh singlehandedly extended the barriers of aviation when he flew the Spirit of St. Louis, a single-engine Ryan monoplane that he had helped design, across the Atlantic from New York to Paris. After the epic flight, Lindbergh, who was a trained fighter pilot and a member of the U.S. Army Reserve, continued making very long-range flights, sometimes accompanied by his wife, Anne.

Although he held a colonel’s rank in the Army Reserve, Lindbergh had resigned his commission in order to take a leadership role in the American isolationist movement. Having lived for several years in Europe, during which he visited with the air forces and flew the top fighters of many European nations, Lindbergh was strongly opposed to American involvement in the war. Lindbergh’s isolationism irked many prominent members of the Roosevelt administration, and when he applied to return to active duty after the Pearl Harbor attacks, his application was turned down by President Franklin Roosevelt, who commented to his staff, “I have clipped the wings of the Lone Eagle.”

A Lockheed P-38 Lightning carrying two 1,000 lb bombs in March 1944.

Even though he was not allowed to return to the military, Lindbergh nevertheless contributed greatly to the American war effort, first as a consultant with Ford Motor Company helping to work out the bugs of their contract production of Consolidated Liberator bombers and transports, then with United Aircraft, particularly in the F4U Corsair program. Lindbergh went to the South Pacific as a civilian technical representative for United Aircraft, assigned to the Marine F4U Corsair program, but he had not been in the region long before he became associated with the P-38.

Lindbergh was in the Pacific on U.S. Navy orders, but one of his personal missions was to make a comparison of the single- and twin-engine fighters in combat, so he obtained orders allowing him to go to New Guinea. When he got there, he went to General Whitehead and gave him a copy of his orders; he was told to join the 475th Fighter Group. Somehow, word of his arrival failed to reach General Kenney’s headquarters until after he had flown several missions.

When he learned that Lindbergh was in his theater—and flying combat missions in P-38s—Kenney invited the famous aviator down to Brisbane. When Lindbergh arrived in Australia, Kenney took him in to see General Douglas MacArthur, telling his boss that he had “an important job” for Lindbergh. MacArthur authorized Lindbergh to work for Kenney, who promptly sent the Lone Eagle back to New Guinea to teach the young fighter pilots how to get more range out of their airplanes.

Lindbergh’s solution to the problem was fairly simple. The Army pilots—and Marine pilots flying F4Us who also profited from his instruction—had been taught to fly their airplanes at high propeller rpm and high manifold pressure, which allows maximum power from a turbo-charged engine. Lindbergh told them to continue to fly at high manifold pressure, but to reduce propeller rpm, a technique that significantly reduces fuel consumption while allowing high power from the engines. The Army pilots thought such a technique would “burn up” their engines, but Lindbergh convinced them that this was not so. Kenney had authorized Lindbergh to fly combat missions on the condition that he not participate in the fighter escort missions against the most heavily defended Japanese targets. Soon Lindbergh was flying and teaching Army pilots to fly missions that previously had been far beyond the published range of the P-38.

Lindbergh’s time with the P-38s in the Southwest Pacific came to an end after he did, in fact, become involved in a fight with Japanese fighters and was credited with shooting down a Sophie, a Japanese float-plane fighter. A second aerial combat a few days later found Lindbergh with a Zeke on his tail and several others getting ready to gang up on him. Fortunately, Lindbergh was in the company of a trio of experienced fighter pilots, and they quickly broke up the fight and saved Lindbergh’s bacon.

When news of the aerial combat reached Kenney, he ordered Lindbergh grounded. Lindbergh went back to fly with the Marines on a few more missions, then returned to the United States with approximately 50 combat missions under his belt and one Japanese airplane to his credit. But he had left the fighter commanders in the Pacific with a priceless gift—the ability to greatly increase the range of their airplanes. On July 27, while Lindbergh was still flying with the 8th and 475th Fighter Groups, a P-38 formation had flown an unprecedented 1,280-mile mission escorting B-24s attacking Japanese positions in the Halmehera Islands northwest of New Guinea. Without Lindbergh’s instructions, such a mission would have been impossible.

It was among the P-38 pilots of the Fifth and Thirteenth Air Forces that the number of aces was growing. Their longer range, especially after their effective combat radius was increased thanks to Lindbergh, allowed the P-38s to venture well into Japanese territory where the likelihood of encountering enemy aircraft was greatest. The P-38 groups were blessed with some highly skilled and aggressive fighter pilots, including Tommy Lynch, Tom McGuire, and Dick Bong. Lynch was the most experienced of the lot, having started his combat career against the Japanese in the under-performing Bell P-39 Airacobra. He and Bong became close friends shortly after Bong arrived in the theater in 1942, and the two teamed up.

Lynch, Kearby, and Bong: Who Shot Down More Enemy Fighters? 

Another top-scoring fighter pilot in the theater was Colonel Neel Kearby, a P-47 pilot and commander of the 348th Fighter Group. Until March 1944, Lynch, Kearby, and Bong were in a neck-and-neck race for the top ace slot. Kearby and Lynch died within days of each other, Kearby on March 4 and Lynch on the 8th. Kearby was shot down by a Japanese fighter, while Lynch was hit by ground fire during a strafing run. Bong, alone, remained of the three top scorers. Kenney allowed him to continue to fly combat until April 10 when he broke World War I ace Captain Eddie Rickenbacker’s score of 26 enemy aircraft. A second enemy aircraft shot down the same day brought Bong’s official score to 27. Kenney promoted the young pilot to major and promptly sent him back to the United States to attend a gunnery school.

In mid-October, Major Dick Bong returned to the Far East Air Forces. During his absence, Major Thomas McGuire had been racking up a pretty good score and was within eight kills of tying Bong.

The Lockheed P-38 Lightning was a Mainstay of U.S. Fighter Squadrons in Europe and the South Pacific.

Bong told Kenney he had learned a lot in the gunnery school and wanted to put the knowledge to use. Ironically, Bong was not a very good shot and had never attended gunnery training prior to coming to the Southwest Pacific. Now that he had learned the tactics of aerial gunnery, he wanted to put it to the test. Kenney denied his request to return to a squadron but put him on his staff and assigned Bong to go around to the various squadrons and teach them what he had learned in the States.

Bong was allowed to fly missions and continued shooting down Japanese planes until he reached 40, at which point Kenney decided that he was too valuable to lose and sent him back to the States permanently. By this time, McGuire was within two kills of Bong’s score. On January 7, 1945, McGuire was killed when he stalled and spun into the ground while trying to get in position to help a fellow pilot who was under attack by an especially aggressive Japanese fighter pilot.

What Made the P-38 an Ideal Reconnaissance Aircraft

Because of its long range and twin engines, the P-38 was the favored airplane in the Far East Air Forces. When General Arnold notified Kenney that P-38 production was scheduled to cease in favor of P-51s, Kenney sent word back that he did not want or need any more P-51s, but that he wanted more P-38s. Kenney told former General Motors president General William Knudsen that the reasons he had given for wanting P-38s in September 1943 still held. Knudsen promised Kenney that P-38 production would continue. By war’s end, more than 10,000 Japanese aircraft had fallen to the guns of P-38s.

While the fighter version of the Lightning was taking on the Japanese and German Air Forces, the photo reconnaissance version of the airplane was also playing an important role. Early in the war, Army maintenance depots began converting P-38s into F-4 photo reconnaissance aircraft by removing the guns from the nose and replacing them with cameras. A production model of the Lightning reconnaissance aircraft was designated as the F-5.

Steve Hinton flies “Glacier Girl,” a Lockheed P-38 Lightning dug out from 268 feet of ice in eastern Greenland in 1992. The aircraft was part of a heritage flight during an air show at Langley Air Force Base, Va., on May 21. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Ben Bloker)

Photo reconnaissance Lightnings played important roles in both Europe and the Pacific. In fact, the first P-38s to fly combat missions in the Pacific Theater were converted reconnaissance planes that were sent to Australia early in 1942. In early 1944, the modified P-51 Mustang was introduced to the European theater. The inclusion of additional fuel tanks in the wings and fuselage greatly extended the airplane’s range, and the P-51 soon became the favored fighter in Europe. Not so, however, in the Pacific, where the P-38 continued its reign right up to V-J day.

This article was first published by the Warfare History Network. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.  

Image: Wikipedia.

Lyle J. Goldstein

Russian Navy, Americas

U.S. aircraft carriers are the envy of the world, but they are also very costly and might be too easy to take out in battle.

Key point: Moscow has an incentive to play down the might of the American navy. However, that does not mean that they are completely wrong or that Russia would not love to get some of its own super aircraft carrriers.

The 2019 iteration of the naval exercise Sea Breeze, which brought together nineteen nations (mostly from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and thirty-two ships, ended in the Ukrainian port of Odesa on July 12. The exercise was apparently conducted without incident. The Black Sea has indeed become fraught with tension since the November 2018 Kerch Strait skirmish, which witnessed Russia’s violent seizure of three Ukrainian vessels, whose crews remain in Russian captivity.

If some nationalists in Kyiv thought that crisis would cause Ukrainians to “rally round the flag” and support Petro Poroshenko’s continuing hard line regarding Russia and the fate of the Donbas, they were utterly mistaken. Now, if Moscow is serious about dealing constructively with the new administration in Kyiv, then Kremlin needs to cut the gamesmanship and release the captive crews and vessels as a gesture of goodwill.

This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Washington has not helped matters by “upping the ante” with Sea Breeze and such demonstrations of force on Russia’s doorstep. In the best case, such measures could be viewed as helping to give Kyiv the confidence to negotiate with Moscow. Yet, the risks of such maneuvers have not been adequately realized in Washington. To take but one example, it is asserted that no less than 18,000 mines left over from WWII still exist in the waters of the Sea of Azov and also along the Black Sea coasts. “They lie somewhere on the bottom and await their moment [Они где-то лежат на дне и ждут своего часа.].” It is actually not hard to imagine a U.S.-Russia war initiated by the accidental sinking of a NATO vessel participating in the Sea Breeze exercise with an unexploded mine in such hazardous waters. Remember the USS Maine?

In such a conflict, of course, NATO forces (excluding Turkey) in the Black Sea would constitute a mere “tripwire”—military parlance for a force with some political value at “phase zero,” but with little actual military significance. They would be wiped out in the first few hours of a war. Perhaps, it is fortunate, therefore, that the U.S. is forbidden to bring aircraft carriers through the Turkish Straits by the Montreux Convention. In a hypothetical situation in which they were allowed to transit the Straits, they would likely be rapidly destroyed by a robust combination of diesel submarines, shore-based mobile missile forces, and small but lethal Russian missile boats. All of this, of course, does not even mention land-based aircraft equipped with hypersonic anti-ship missiles, such as the new Kinzhal system.

If aircraft carriers have limited utility in a regrettably conceivable war over the future of Ukraine, what are the U.S. Navy’s capital ships actually good for in a conflict against Russia? It is true that many decades ago, America’s flattops faced off against the Soviet Navy in a significant naval stare down in the Eastern Mediterranean. Back in 1973, however, some U.S. Navy officers had serious misgivings about employing U.S. aircraft carriers against the Soviet Union’s so-called “Fifth Eskadra,” which even then was bristling with lethal anti-ship missiles.

A mid-July 2019 study in the Russian military newspaper Military Review [Военное Обозрение] takes up the following question in the headline “The future U.S. Navy: nuclear ‘super’ or light aircraft carriers [Будущее ВМС США: атомные ‘суперы’ или лёгкие авианосцы?]?” The piece is historically grounded and the Russian author understands that the value of aircraft carriers has been questioned since the dawn of the Atomic Age. Yet, it is explained that “American admirals categorically disagreed” with that skepticism. In U.S. military doctrine, it is assessed that airpower “always played first violin … and that command of the air has been viewed as an essential precondition for victory in war [всегда играли первую скрипку … господство в воздухе почиталось ими абсолютно необходимой предпосылкой для победы в войне.].”

A certain degree of envy is apparent in this analysis. A clear contrast is visible when this Russian analyst talks about the “rich experience” that the U.S. Navy gained in the Pacific War in the employment of aircraft carriers. Thus, even as the size and cost of aircraft carriers have increased precipitously, the Russian author maintains that American strategists “believed it to be criminal to economize on this critical system of naval armament [полагали преступным экономить на ключевой системе морских вооружений].” One can sense more than a little jealousy when the author reminds his readers that, after all, “America is a rich country.”

The U.S. Navy’s newest aircraft carrier is briefly assessed. It is noted that the Gerald D. Ford aircraft carrier has electromagnetic catapults, an expanded aircraft capacity, and a smaller crew due to automation. Moreover, the Russian analysis notes both new nuclear reactor technology, as well as enhanced stealth. At the same time, it is realized that the vessel, as a first in its class, may suffer from certain “childhood illnesses [детскими болезнями],” and it remains unclear if these kinks can be resolved or are of a chronic character. What is beyond dispute, the author writes, is that the ship is “expensive. Very expensive.” Coming in at a cool $13 billion without counting the costs of the air wing or the escorts for the behemoth, “it makes sense in these conditions” that some in the U.S. are calling for smaller aircraft carriers that are less costly, according to the Russian analysis. 

Much of the second half of the Russian article explores a RAND report on “Future Carrier Options.” It is explained that this study evaluated building either 70,000-ton, 40,000-ton, or 20,000-ton alternatives to the 100,000-ton supercarriers. For these smaller and cheaper ships, the Russian analyst notes, of course, that they would have “significantly limited combat potential [боевой потенциал существенно ограничен],” of course. Ultimately, it is concluded that the Americans are unlikely to sacrifice combat power in order to save money due to the admirals’ objections. The Russian analysis ends with a joke, wishing the Americans good luck with developing smaller carriers. It is explained that recent American experience shows that the U.S. Navy is likely “to receive ships 1.5 times smaller, two times less effective and three times more expensive as a result of efforts to make the carrier fleet less expensive.” [что в результате попытки удешевления авианосного флота ВМС США получат корабли в полтора раза меньше, в два раза хуже и втрое дороже существующих].

One could even be inclined to agree with the Russian strategist’s wry humor, and perhaps to even sympathize with the predicament of a Russian fleet that has seen some ups and perhaps more than its share of downs in recent decades. No doubt many Russian leaders still dream wistfully about gazing upon a shiny Ford-type supercarrier bearing the Russian naval ensign—the blue-cross flag of St. Andrew. Apparently, the idea is not quite dead, moreover, and may live on within a China-Russia partnership, although that “bilateral option” still seems rather far-fetched.

Nevertheless, the envy of other navies does not necessarily make the supercarrier the ideal capital ship for the U.S. Navy going forward. More than a few American naval strategists have pronounced the aircraft carrier to be obsolete for modern naval warfare. While reasonably useful in conflicts from the Korean War to Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, it must be said that these conflicts were notable in that they featured opponents lacking the means to contest the seas. It’s sad to say, but unfortunately even the smaller and more backward militaries of Iran or North Korea could have a chance of putting a flattop down these days. Never mind the determined efforts of both China and Russia, which have both been working energetically to solve this problem for now more than half a century. 

Carrier advocates will often make the dubious claim that a couple of missiles or even a torpedo could not actually sink these hulking ships. Perhaps not, but please try to imagine the armada that would have to be assembled to rescue a disabled ship of this stature. To continue logically in this nightmare, now imagine the immense and vulnerable target that such a rescue operation would represent for an adversary. Such a scenario could result in the loss of a significant portion of the U.S. Navy. Regrettably, sometimes one must imagine a tragedy in order to prevent it.

Indeed, it is well past time to shelve the pervasive big deck culture that has persisted against all evidence and common sense within the U.S. Navy and Congress too. Let us instead act decisively to pursue a more rational naval force structure that strongly emphasizes undersea capabilities, along with unmanned and highly distributed networks of sensors.

Lyle J. Goldstein is Research Professor in the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) at the United States Naval War College in Newport, RI. In addition to Chinese, he also speaks Russian and he is also an affiliate of the new Russia Maritime Studies Institute (RMSI) at Naval War College. You can reach him at goldstel@usnwc.edu. The opinions in his columns are entirely his own and do not reflect the official assessments of the U.S. Navy or any other agency of the U.S. government. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Warfare History Network

History, Americas

George Patton’s unique upbringing was the correct formula for bringing out the best in a dyslexic person. It provided the only way for him to become a historic figure of his stature.

Here’s What You Need to Remember: General George S. Patton, Jr., was one of the most flamboyant and controversial figures of World War II. His career was also one of the most thoroughly documented of any of the war’s great commanders. Historians have had a treasury of material at their disposal as Patton was a prolific writer, kept personal diaries, and saved virtually every scrap of paper he ever handled. Additionally, his family and heirs have gone to great lengths to preserve the artifacts of his existence. Even with such voluminous, detailed, and often extremely personal material available on Patton, it was not until the 1980s that historians began to form a clear picture of the hidden elements that made up the man.

“A Genius of War”

Historians will inevitably examine the past through the lens of their own time; likewise, historical figures present themselves to their contemporaries according to the knowledge and prejudices of their epoch. Patton, who was always concerned about shaping his public image according to his own lights, did not care to call attention to his dyslexia; nor did those who wrote about his swashbuckling exploits as a tank commander in the aftermath of World War II care to investigate the subject, despite such red flags as the frequent symptomatic idiosyncrasies in his spelling and punctuation. Given the state of medical science in the 1940s and the postwar era, Patton could not have been aware that he may have also suffered from an affliction known today as attention deficit disorder (ADD), which afflicts many dyslexics; nor could historians have identified the condition until recently. Even the importance of Patton’s early family life, which led him to valorize war and model himself as the heir of his heroic Confederate ancestors, was neglected until recently.

Martin Blumenson brought the general’s dyslexia to attention in his 1985 biography Patton: The Man Behind the Legend. Historian Carlo D’Este enlarged upon Blumenson’s pathfinding work in his 1995 study Patton: A Genius for War, painting more clearly a picture of an oddly functioning Patton family that had shaped Patton’s entire life and ultimately enabled him to overcome, or a least deal with, his dyslexia and embark on a storied military career.

In trying to understand Patton’s career, we cannot afford to discount those aspects of his life that had long been hidden behind his martial bluster. Patton’s dyslexia and perhaps ADD, his immediate forebears, his unusual upbringing, and his early socialization developed the young Patton into what D’Este called “a genius for war.”

Evidence of Patton’s Conditions

The fact that Patton had dyslexia is supported by his family and documented by both Blumenson and D’Este. That Patton also had ADD will probably remain a matter of conjecture and speculation, although in his public life he exhibited many of the disorder’s behavioral symptoms: his flexibility and willingness to shift strategy, such as the quick deal he cut in Casablanca permitting the formerly Vichy forces to continue governing Morocco under Allied auspices in November 1942; his tirelessness when in pursuit of a tangible goal, as when he took command of the moribund II Corps in Tunisia in February 1943 and rapidly transformed it into a formidable fighting force; his boredom with mundane tasks, expressed in a 1916 letter during the garrisoning of the Mexican town of Dublan when he wrote his father, “We are all rapidly going crazy from lack of occupation and there is no help in sight”; and his startling ability to visualize and make ideas concrete.

Other ADD symptoms include poor impulse control, extreme mood swings in response to events, and short excessive tempers, all of which Patton displayed as a commanding officer, sometimes notoriously, as with his infamous slapping incidents during World War II in which he was accused of abusing enlisted men. The frustrations experienced by a person dealing with either dyslexia or ADD can be overwhelming and can often lead to serious self-doubt, feelings of inadequacy, bouts of uncontrollable anger, and emotional hypersensitivity.

Dyslexia, which is often characterized by difficulty reading and by the transposition of letters or numbers, is considered to be a learning disorder. Having dyslexia, however, does not mean that a person lacks intelligence. Quite the contrary, many dyslexics are extremely intelligent and struggle mightily with the symptoms of the disorder. The dyslexic often has a different or unique mind-set, is often gifted and productive, but learns and perceives in a way different from others.

Both dyslexia and ADD have a genetic component. They are hereditary and run in families. In this light, perhaps George Patton’s genealogy is more important that even he imagined.

Growing up in Lake Vineyard

Patton was born on November 11, 1885, in San Gabriel, California, near Los Angeles, to doting parents from a financially comfortable background. His father spent several terms as district attorney of Los Angeles and ran unsuccessful campaigns for other public offices, including one as a Democratic candidate for Congress. In 1885, the year of George’s birth, he gave up the practice of law to take over the affairs of his deceased father-in-law’s business empire in an attempt to save it from the mismanagement of another relative. By 1899, the business was in foreclosure and new owner retianed the elder Patton as manager for many years. Despite all difficulties, no effort was spared by Patton’s father in providing a “proper” and, indeed, aristocratic upbringing for his children.

During George’s youth, the Patton family lived both in Los Angeles and at Lake Vineyard, the estate of his late grandfather, Benjamin “Don Benito” Wilson, an early American pioneer in California before the territory became part of the United States.

Blumenson credits Don Benito with some of the genetic makeup of the future general, including looks, driv, and tenacity. D’Este’s work reveals Don Benito as an extremely eccentric and physically rugged individualist. His exploits included lassoing and killing grizzly bears, surviving the poison-tipped arrow of an American Indian, and delivering the heads of rebellious Indians in a wicker basket to California’s governor. Patton would replicate that feat when he presented General Pershing with the bodies of three of Pancho Villa’s men during the Punitive Expedition of 1916. Like his ancestor, George Patton enjoyed and displayed a zest for combat, which contrasted sharply with his more low-key superior in World War II, General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Don Benito was a man of frightful temper who did not suffer fools and finally gave up carrying a gun lest he do something rash. There is more than just a suggestion that George S. Patton, Jr., owed a great deal genetically to Don Benito.

His environment shaped the young Patton as much as his heredity. The atmosphere of his childhood included the continual repetition of family lore that glorified participation in lost causes such as the Confederacy and the struggle for Scottish independence among his more distant forebears and emphasized the Pattons’ ties to the Southern planter aristocracy. There was also an ongoing exposure to the great military leaders of history and literature, of whom George learned while being read to by his family from Walter Scott, Rudyard Kipling, Homer, and other authors. In addition, a parade of famous martial figures visited his home as guests of his parents.

The building blocks of the general’s personality were laid out in Lake Vineyard, a place of open spaces, horses, and outdoor action.An expert horseman at an early age, George established himself as an accident-prone risk taker in his riding and childhood war games. He remained a magnet for accidents through his military career, from a tent fire that singed his face during the 1916 Mexican Expedition to auto accidents in the waning months of World War II. Patton’s military proclivity became evident at an early age. His father carved him a wooden sword, and the boy played continually with his sister and an abundance of cousins and friends who visited the Vineyard estate. Patton once said, “I must be the happiest boy in the world.”

Aunt Nannie

One of the more eccentric fixtures in the Patton household was George’s Aunt Nannie. When Ruth Wilson married the boy’s father, George Patton II, her sister, Annie, was devastated. Annie had fallen deeply in love with George II. Her sanity not quite intact and her love unrequited, Aunt Nannie, as she was known, nevertheless attached herself to the newly married couple and never left them. D’Este tells us that she shared everything in their marriage except the bed.

While his parents doted on George, Aunt Nannie was obsessed with him. She became a surrogate mother who shamelessly spoiled him. Nannie was the uncontested, often tyrannical ruler of the Patton household, often trying the Pattons’ patience with her refusal to allow George to be punished.

While George’s father amused him by reading the Iliad and the Odyssey, Aunt Nannie, having decided that George was “delicate,” began reading aloud to him classics such as Plutarch’s Lives and The March of Xenophon and stories about Alexander the Great and Napoleon. D’Este asserts that it was Nannie who deeply influenced his early education. George was a willing participant who listened attentively and absorbed deeply. The most influential work Nannie presented to George was the Bible, which she read him three or four hours a day. Jesus emerged from her exegesis as the quintessential example of human courage.

Nannie was never certain if her efforts were having any effect on her nephew and even came sadly to the conclusion that he was dim-witted. Until he started school at the age of 11, he was unable to read or write. Surprisingly, he could quote from memory not only lengthy Bible passages, but also entire volumes of poetry and long passages of history. Nannie’s unrelenting Bible readings caused the book to become the foundation on which George’s life was built. God dominated Patton’s speeches and his writings throughout his life and especially during the peaks and valleys of his career.

The Pattons’ Civil War Prestige

Where Aunt Nannie left off, Papa took over with vivid, lavish, and probably exaggerated tales of Confederate heroes of the Civil War. The dead colonels, George and Waller “Taz” Tazewell Patton, came back to life as Papa told and retold the stories of their heroic lives given willingly, tragically, in the cause of the South. The Pattons might now live in California, but emotionally they never left the Virginia plantations. It was Papa who taught George of his family heritage through the lives of Patton military men from the Revolution through the Civil War.

As assiduously as Aunt Nannie thumped the Bible and force-fed the classics, so with military history and family lore did Papa stoke George’s all-consuming fires. Papa was vicariously living his own truncated military career through his son. Sometimes he produced actual heroes for his son to emulate. Colonel John Singleton Mosby, the Confederate guerrilla who by the 1890s was a lawyer for the Southern Pacific Railroad, was a frequent visitor to the Patton home. He regaled the young boy with tales of the Civil War and the bravery of the Confederate Pattons.

Also among the living touchstones was George’s own beloved step-grandfather, Colonel George Hugh Smith, whose quiet counsel and tales of the Civil War instilled a profound sense of destiny in the boy. Blumenson and D’Este have noted that Smith may have been the greatest influence on Patton’s decision to become a soldier and continue the family’s martial legacy.

Papa was also willing to get down and play soldier with George. On occasion, the boy would wield his wooden sword against Papa, who would match his own father’s sword against his son’s. Papa also made sure that George learned to ride a horse sitting in the saddle from which Colonel George S. Patton had fallen fatally wounded during the Civil War. All told, the relationship between father and son was such that minor transgressions were willingly admitted and just as readily forgiven by the indulgent parent.

Learning with Dyslexia

George’s childhood prepared him to become a secure adult who knew what he owed the world and what he wanted from it. His place was securely at the top of respectable society, and although flawed and tormented, he never doubted his status. Blumenson writes that Patton’s position brought him a sense of superiority, a tinge of snobbery and racism. Patton was determined to realize his exalted, noble heritage. All his life, he honed his mannerisms—the profanity, arrogance, aristocratic bearing, the scowl, and the ruthlessness. And Blumenson says, “… the process killed his sensitivity and warmth and turned a sweet-tempered child into a seemingly hard-eyed and choleric adult.”

George’s early education was not unusual in his time, when children of privilege often were tutored at home until a relatively advanced age. Early on, however, his parents discovered their child had a learning disability that hampered his ability to read. Today that disability is recognized as dyslexia, a malady first identified in 1896, one year before the 11-year-old George entered the Classical School for Boys in Pasadena, unable to read or write. Dyslexia did not become widely recognized in the United States until the 1920s, well into Patton’s career as a military officer.

Dyslexia is not simply a matter of reversing letters or numbers but is a complicated disorder whose symptoms include hyperactivity, obsessiveness, mood swings, difficulty in concentrating, impulsiveness, and compulsiveness. Because of their effort to overcome difficulty in reading and writing, dyslexics can be driven by a compulsion to succeed. Yet, they often harbor feelings of inferiority. Virtually every common symptom of dyslexia can be found in the adult Patton. “I am either very lazy or very stupid or both for it is beastly hard for me to learn,” he told his future wife, Beatrice Banning Ayer, while still a cadet at West Point. This was despite his prodigious intellectual powers and ability to recall enormous bodies of text and information.

The Classical School for Boys, where Patton spent six years getting his first formal education, catered to children of the Southern California gentry. Patton was a diligent student who nevertheless struggled and faltered with algebra, geometry, and arithmetic because of his dyslexia. Drawing from his family-tutored knowledge, his marks in ancient and modern history were consistently high.

Patton at the Virginia Military Institute

His family was hardly surprised when George announced in 1902 that he would become an Army officer. Given so many years of indoctrination in the family heritage, his father surely would have been shocked if George had chosen any other profession. The family encouraged George to seek admission to West Point rather than Virginia Military Institute, the alma mater for three generations of Pattons. VMI remained an alternative, however, as entry into West Point was hardly guaranteed. Given the Patton presence at VMI since its founding, admission there was a certainty despite George’s mediocre school record.

Although his father attempted to pull every political string within reach, George was unable to secure a spot at West Point, and in September 1903 he started classes at VMI. This would give Papa another year to line up the political assistance he would need to crack the West Point barrier.

The trip to VMI was by train, and the strange and obsessed Aunt Nannie was part of the entourage, along with his parents. She set up housekeeping near VMI for the entire school year. The ritual of Aunt Nannie following her “son” from place to place was to become one of the more bizarre aspects of Patton’s family life.

VMI and George Patton suited each other well, partly because his father had prepared him impeccably, but also because George applied himself with a vengeance. His military work rose above that of his classmates, and his academic marks were good, even if he was struggling. Knowing that his dream of West Point could slip away, he redoubled his efforts, and his grades steadily improved. He was aided by the dyslexic’s need to strive hard to overcome all impediments.

Meanwhile, Papa worked tirelessly to win George’s appointment to West Point, and on March 4, 1904, he received a telegram informing him of success. Upon tendering his resignation from VMI, Patton learned that he would have been appointed first corporal at VMI had he returned. This signal honor was conferred on the outstanding plebe. By the time he entered West Point, Patton had taken a passable performance at the Classical School and forged it into an impressive one at VMI. The first real and significant challenge of Patton’s life had been conquered by dint of hard work and perseverance.

Pompous Patton

As at VMI, Aunt Nannie remained for the duration in close proximity to West Point and her beloved George. George believed that most of his fellow cadets at the academy were socially inferior to his classmates at VMI. He never lost his aversion to those of alleged inferior social status, a snobbish trait his grandson Robert ascribes to Patton’s father, who “considered himself to be of better stock, therefore of better character than most other men.” Patton himself wrote to his father that most “were nice fellows but very few indeed are born gentlemen…. The only ones of that type are Southerners.”

Patton’s caste consciousness was exceeded only by his bouts of mood swings, self-doubt, and self-aggrandizement. In numerous letters and conversations with his father, George alternately berated and then praised himself for one deed or another. All the while, Papa gave patient, judicious, and loving counsel to his son and provided support, advice, and reassurance whenever asked. Never judgmental, always analytical, he was the lens that allowed George to see his problems clearly. The only other people who could fulfill this need were Beatrice Ayer, the future Mrs. Patton, and the doting Aunt Nannie, whose odd presence George did not seem to mind at all. She provided a more immediate springboard for his emotions, doubts, and rages than the letters of Papa or Bea.

D’Este concluded that Patton was torn between an ability to see future greatness for himself and the possible effects of his dyslexia, which served unceasingly to implant the notion that he was both ordinary and stupid.

Patton’s classmates perceived him as pompous and overambitious. His penchant for self-promotion, honed razor sharp at West Point, lasted intact for a lifetime. His goal was glory, and any means to that end was fair. He aspired to become the first general from his class, an admirable goal but a tactless gaff when announced. His first command at West Point, as first corporal, was short lived. He was busted back to sixth corporal when he made himself foolish by putting more men on report than any other corporal. He could not understand why his over-the-top military style would be punished and vowed that he would never allow any slack under his command. Yet, in doing so he moderated his behavior so that the same fate would not befall him again. Throughout his career, he cultivated friendships and unabashedly called in markers, using his social status and whatever tools he could muster to promote himself.

Thriving with his Dyslexia

There were setbacks. Failing math, a typical hurdle for dyslexics, Patton was forced to repeat his plebe year, something he desperately wanted to avoid. This served two purposes: first to reinforce his feelings of inadequacy, and second to drive him to new heights of perseverance. It was at about this time that Patton began keeping a diary. He and his family had a habit of saving virtually every scrap of paper, every souvenir, and every trophy he ever acquired. The diary carried this a step further. When combined with volumes of his letters, pamphlets, poetry, and other communications, it has left historians with detailed indicators of the man. Even this was not without design on Patton’s part. The first diary carried a note from Patton that it would be important to a biographer some day. Prescience or arrogance? Perhaps both.

In his final year, Patton was named to West Point’s second highest rank, corporal adjutant. He was now in his element. In the class of 1909, Patton would graduate 46th out of 103 cadets. Upon graduation, he would marry Beatrice, the daughter of a Boston Brahmin and textile magnate, thereby validating his own aristocratic upbringing and instantly making him the wealthiest officer in the U.S. Army. Patton had survived into adulthood and, if he had not overcome his dyslexia, he had at least learned to thrive in his dyslexic world.

George Patton’s unique upbringing was the correct formula for bringing out the best in a dyslexic person. It provided the only way for him to become a historic figure of his stature. It would have been far more likely, given the extent of his disability, that Patton would become anonymous and marginal. Each person in George’s life played a vital role in his development, and the absence of any one of them could have left him unfavorably equipped for any meaningful career in a society that misunderstood his condition. Each of them, no matter how eccentric, outrageous, perfect, or flawed, provided a learning environment tailored for the combination of brilliance and disability that was George Patton.

This article by Glen Jeansonne, Frank C. Haney, and David Luhrssen first appeared in the Warfare History Network several years ago.

Image: Wikimedia

Warfare History Network

World War II Tank, Europe

The weird and less than martial names assigned to this 68-ton fighting vehicle were oddly fitting.

Here's What You Need to Remember: While the United States and the Soviet Union settled early on basic, proven, armored fighting vehicles (the Sherman and the T-34 respectively, along with families of supporting tank destroyers), Nazi Germany produced an ultimately bewildering and industrially wasteful variety of machines.

World War II tanks usually had aggressive- or ferocious-sounding names, such as Hellcat, Panther, or Tiger. Yet the tendency was not universal, as with British Cruisers or the American M-3 Honey. But perhaps there was never a more unfortunately named beast than the German assault gun Sd Kfz 184, first known as the Ferdinand and later modified, as if it was an improvement, to the Elefant.

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The weird and less than martial names assigned to this 68-ton fighting vehicle were oddly fitting. Technically a member of the formidable Tiger family, the Ferdinand’s history is rather strange. To know the Ferdinand, one has to begin with the history of its better-known cousin, the Tiger, Germany’s first successful World War II heavy tank.

Germany entered World War II without a true heavy tank, relying on a mixture of light and medium vehicles and the superb and revolutionary military doctrine of the blitzkrieg. Nonetheless, German interest in a heavy “breakthrough tank” predated the invasion of Poland, and as early as 1937 the Reich authorized the Henschel Company to begin work on a prototype. This project does not seem to have been a high priority; the success of the panzer divisions obviated the need to do more than buy additional Mark III and Mark IV medium tanks. By May 1941, however, a design order had been issued to Henschel for the heavy tank designated VK4501 (H) and another to Porsche, VK4501 (P). Any German complacency was banished dramatically when, during Operation Barbarrosa, the invasion of Russia in June 1941, Hitler’s elite panzer units confronted superior Soviet T-34 medium tanks and KV-1 heavy tanks.

Tigers, Hellcats and Elefants

By April 1942, both the Henschel and Porsche heavy tank prototypes were ready for trials, with initial production planned for July. Evidently the Henschel design proved superior to Porsche’s and was selected for production. This tank became the excellent Tiger I, 1,354 of which were built by the end of the war. But Dr. Porsche did not wait for the completion of the trials before beginning production of his own heavy tank, with the result that 91 Porsche hulls had been completed by the time Henschel was awarded the contract.

In Nazi Germany, private defense contractors flourished, provided they produced a decent product and had the right political connections. This was true in the democracies as well, but under the Nazis a convoluted web of ideological intrigue and corruption further muddled the process. Ultimately, gaining favor with the top contracting official, Hitler, trumped all else. Hitler took a personal interest in the development and trials of the Tiger, as well as many other weapons. Did Dr. Porsche think the heavy tank contract was his, based on his favored relationship with Hitler? Or was Porsche instructed to start production of the Tiger as a hedge against an unsuccessful debut by the Henschel model?

Some sources presume the latter, despite the wasteful logic of producing a castoff design, both from the manufacturer’s and the regime’s standpoint. Porsche’s turning out Tiger hulls well after Henschel won the contract and had entered full production seems unlikely. Rather, Porsche plausibly gambled that his complex but innovative design, coupled with good connections, would secure the contract. When the gamble failed, Porsche and the Reich were left with 91 heavy-tank hulls and no contract to fill. Hitler decided to make use of the rejected tank hulls by converting them into assault guns. But this was not the simple solution it appeared to be. Nazi assault guns had their own peculiar politics.

Weaponry Upgrades Begin a Tank Arms Race

Germany pioneered the assault gun as a weapon type and was its chief exponent during the war. Originally assault guns, such as the ubiquitous Stug III, were intended to support the infantry detachments of panzer divisions. The Stug was a Mark III tank with its turret removed, enabling it to accept a larger 75mm gun, more powerful than the 37mm or 50mm guns in the turreted tank. This insight, that a turretless vehicle could carry a much larger gun, allowed the Germans to keep otherwise obsolescent designs, such as panzer Marks I through IV, in action throughout the war.

All manner of armaments and designs were utilized to build the vehicles, including captured weaponry such as the Russian 76.2mm guns used on the successful Marder assault vehicles. As the war progressed, the role of the assault gun changed from infantry support to mobile tank destroyer. Throughout the war the terms were used interchangeably, which is not to say that every assault gun was an effective tank destroyer, or vice versa.

The Henschel Tiger (Tiger I) entered service in the autumn of 1942, armed with the powerful 88mm L/56 gun, and eventually earned a formidable reputation as one of the war’s great tanks. But Hitler still sought a vehicle that could carry the longer and more powerful 88mm L/71. The bigger gun did not fit into the Tiger I’s turret. A solution availed itself in the Porsche hulls, which could be converted to build a turretless tank destroyer to accommodate the bigger gun. The result was the Ferdinand, named in honor of Dr. Ferdinand Porsche. Orders were placed in September 1942, and 90 Ferdinands were completed by May 1943, in time for the German summer offensive in the East.

Enter the ‘Ferdinand’

The Ferdinand was a powerful and technically impressive weapon. Atop the rear half of its hull sat a high, fully enclosed armored superstructure containing the big 88mm gun. Like all German assault guns, the forward-facing weapon had only a limited traverse.

Overall, the Ferdinand looked like a modern self-propelled gun, but was more heavily armored. Designers bolted an additional 100mm of armor to the hull, giving the Ferdinand twice the frontal armor of the Tiger I. With the larger gun and extra armor, the Ferdinand topped the scales at a massive 68 tons, which was 11 tons heavier than the Tiger I. Moving the machine required mounting a pair of Maybach HL 120 engines in the central hull. These replaced original Porsche air-cooled engines that, while innovative, proved unreliable in the Tiger trials.

Despite the tandem engines, the Ferdinand was still ponderous and had an inferior power-to-weight ratio than either the Tiger I or the later and heavier Tiger II. The Ferdinand required a crew of six, one more than usual in a German tank, and the vehicle lacked any mounted secondary armament, such as a bow machine gun.

The Ferdinand’s designers, with Hitler’s apparent blessing, intended the assault gun to serve as a heavy-tank destroyer capable of using its gun to hit Soviet tanks at safe ranges, and well-armored enough to absorb the heaviest counterfire. Its great weight limited its mobility and thus restricted its effective use to tactical defense, but the operational and political demands of the German 1943 summer offensive, Citadel, would demand an additional role.

Operation Citadel, on the Eastern Front, was conceived amid ambivalence and controversy within the German High Command. Hitler, for once, was unenthusiastic, reeling under the triple blows of Stalingrad, defeat in North Africa, and the increasingly deadly Allied bomber offensive. Citadel was not to be a grand strategic throw of the dice, but rather an operation in which the Germans planned to “pinch off” a huge Russian salient centered on the city of Kursk. Some German commanders wanted to launch the attack in May, but the army was exhausted, and Hitler and elements within the High Command favored an offensive only after units could be increased in strength and reinforced with new weapons, among them the Ferdinand.

The Iron Willed General’s Tank Army

Marshaling and organizing the German tank arm was the responsibility of General Heinz Guderian, in many ways the father of the panzer forces. Guderian had fallen from Hitler’s grace in 1941, but by 1943 the Führer needed Guderian and reinstated the strong-willed general. Guderian faced the difficult task of gathering sufficient German armor to launch a successful summer offensive. He wanted authority over both tanks and assault guns, the latter now making up about a third of German tank production. But assault guns were technically the province of the artillery, and the artillerists were loath to surrender authority over these prized weapons, the only means, they claimed, by which an artillery officer might win the Knight’s Cross. The parties struck a compromise, placing only the heavy assault guns under Guderian. This meant that the Ferdinand, the heaviest assault gun, was a “tank” again.

While the Germans assembled their armies, the Soviets developed their defenses around Kursk in depth. Multiple defensive lines featured thick belts of trenches, minefields, and antitank gun batteries, plus local, operational, and strategic armored reserves. A great mass of mortars and heavy artillery supported the defenses at every level. The Soviet positions were designed to defeat the classic German blitzkrieg by first savaging the German “breakthrough” infantry divisions then wearing down the follow-on panzer divisions. Ultimately, mobile reserves would exploit the depleted German attackers.

The southern arm of the German pincer, Fourth Panzer Army and Detachment Kempf, contained the cream of the German Army. Both forces fell under the command of Army Group South, led by Field Marshal Erich von Manstein. Fourth Panzer Army was particularly strong. Its strike force included units of the SS Panzer Corps, consisting of three SS panzer divisions, and the Army’s elite Grossdeutschland panzer division. These troops were equipped with most of Germany’s operational Tiger Is (about 120 vehicles) and all of the new but unproven Panther tanks (about 300). In addition to these, the Fourth Army panzer units had large numbers of older but upgraded Mark IV tanks. Manstein planned to take advantage of his troops and equipment by throwing the panzer divisions directly at the tough Russian lines, counting on their mobility, determination, and firepower to force a breakthrough—using his infantry to “mop up” rather than lead the attack.

The Ninth Army Begins Its Offensive

The northern pincer fell under the command of Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge, Manstein’s rival. Kluge’s strike force, Ninth Army, commanded by General Walther Model, consisted of ordinary divisions and contained more infantry and less armor than Fourth Panzer Army and Detachment Kempf. Unlike the SS divisions and Grossdeutschland, Model’s panzer units were almost uniformly understrength. They lacked modern equipment and first-rate troops. Most panzer regiments contained a mix of Mark IV tanks and obsolete Mark III tanks. The divisions lacked half-tracked personnel carriers and mobile artillery. To make up for this shortfall, about 30 Tigers and all available Ferdinands were assigned to Ninth Army.

The infantry-heavy Ninth Army, unlike Fourth Panzer, would attack in classic blitzkrieg fashion, sending its infantry straight into the maw of the Soviet defenses. Model planned to use the Ferdinands and his few Tigers as assault guns, advancing with the infantry divisions into the Soviet defensive belts to pry them open for the panzer divisions in reserve.

The offensive began on July 5, 1943, with heavy artillery bombardments by both sides. The Ferdinands, organized as Tank Destroyer Regiment 656, led the German attack on the northern front, advancing with engineers and infantry into the Soviet mine belts. These cheap but effective weapons destroyed many of the big assault guns. For the infantry, the conditions were similar to the Western Front during World War I, as dug-in machine guns and artillery ripped into the gray-clad ranks.

“Quail Shooting With Cannons.”

Without personnel carriers, the infantry fell behind the slow but heavily armored Ferdinands. Yet, as the Ferdinands and their crews advanced their difficulties increased. Some machines broke down crossing the scarred and rugged terrain; others, separated from the German infantry and without secondary weapons, became easy prey for Soviet infantry. Many were destroyed by placed magnetic shaped charges on their rear or sides. Without machine guns, the Ferdinands could hardly defend themselves or each other against the infantrymen. Guderian later remarked that the Ferdinands had gone “quail shooting with cannons.” And the guns, which had to carry the larger L/71 shell, quickly ran low on ammunition.

The Ferdinands, however, were successful in places. Ferdinands of the 653rd Battalion, supporting the 292nd Infantry Division, quickly pushed several miles into the Soviet line, reaching their initial designated objective. The second Ferdinand battalion, the 654th, effectively supported the 78th Infantry Division in its attack, though this attack stalled inside the Soviet defensive system. Where Ferdinands encountered Soviet tanks, they destroyed them with aplomb. Their big guns were able to shred the lighter Soviet T-34 at long ranges, with slight fear of riposte. Some accounts credit the Ferdinands with the destruction of over 800 Soviet vehicles. Such claims are surely exaggerations, but both the Tigers Is and Ferdinands dominated Soviet tanks at all but the shortest ranges.

When Hitler finally called off Operation Citadel on July 12, Model’s Ninth Army had advanced a mere 12 miles at its deepest penetration, barely a third of the way toward its objective at Kursk. In the south, Fourth Panzer Army’s tank-heavy assault had more success, but not enough to justify further bloodletting in the offensive. About half the Ferdinands were lost in the battle and during the subsequent retreat. The surviving Ferdinands were ordered back to Germany in the fall of 1943 for modifications and redeployment. The modifications involved adding a bow machine gun, a new commander’s cupola, and applying Zimmermit antimine paste on the front and sides of the vehicles.

A Sophomore Slump for the Elefant?

The giant Ferdinands had long been called Elefants by their crews and were now formally renamed after the pachyderm. In February 1944, the refurbished and redesignated tank destroyer went to Italy and joined German forces attempting to repel the Allied attack at Anzio.

Although better armed and protected, the Elefants appear to have had little success in the muddy and mountainous conditions of Italy. They fought at Anzio and Nettuno without notable success. Challenging terrain, mechanical difficulties, and mobility problems seem to have doomed most of the Elefants, much the way Hannibal’s elephants finally floundered after successfully crossing the Alps. Most Elefants were lost in combat or abandoned by their crews during the German retreat. Little is reported about the fate of the surviving Elefants. Tank Destroyer Regiment 656 itself was broken up and its crews reassigned to other units. A few Ferdinands apparently survived and were grouped in a single company that returned to the Eastern Front, where they fought in dwindling numbers to the end of the war.

It is reasonable to assume that if Nazi Germany had possessed a rational arms procurement policy, the Ferdinand would not have been built. Germany’s tank designs displayed both creativity and effectiveness, and no other major combatant produced such a wide variety of vehicles. While the United States and the Soviet Union settled early on basic, proven, armored fighting vehicles (the Sherman and the T-34 respectively, along with families of supporting tank destroyers), Nazi Germany produced an ultimately bewildering and industrially wasteful variety of machines.

The German leadership’s fascination with weapons and close involvement in procurement matters better left to experts, along with the Byzantine internal politics of the murderous regime itself, were direct causes of this aimless policy. There was no reason but politics for Porsche to produce 90 expensive tank hulls for a machine doomed to fail in trials. But then again, the essence of the Nazi regime was its fickle and irrational favoritism and prejudices, which extended into all areas of endeavor.

The Ferdinand Earns Its Place In Military History

The effectiveness of the Ferdinand depended upon its optimum deployment, and politics intruded to ensure its ultimate failure in combat. The Ferdinand probably would have had a successful and relatively long-lived career on the Eastern Front if it had simply been deployed as a long-range tank destroyer. Instead, because Nazi politics dictated that SS troops would receive virtually all new German tank production in 1943, and the artillery branch wanted its share of glory, the Ferdinand was foolishly deployed in the first rank of the assault on the Kursk salient.

The big machines alone could not reverse the calamity that befell Model’s Ninth Army in the north. The transfer of the surviving Elefants to Italy again placed them in an inappropriate tactical setting, requiring the large, awkward vehicles to traverse difficult roads and terrain in hopes of acquiring a dominating position from which to finally shoot.

Yet, for one year the Ferdinand was the most powerful mobile land weapon ever fielded. Armed with the world’s best tank gun and protected by the thickest armor, it held this distinction until the arrival of the Tiger II and related tank destroyers in mid-1944. Despite its flaws, the Ferdinand was an impressive weapon in a world where the immobile stalemated trenches were less than 20 years in the past. This was no mean accomplishment and has ensured the Ferdinand its place in military history.

Originally Published September 30, 2018.

This article originally appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia

WarIsBoring

Vietnam War, Asia

This iconic weapon has been used across the world, including during the Vietnam War.

Key point: The AK-47 is one heck of a reliable rifle, able to function well in a variety of harsh conditions. Given the problems with some of America's weapons, some U.S. servicemembers picked up the enemy's rifle for use in the field.

While the Soviet Avtomat Kalashnikova has become the iconic weapon of bad guys in Hollywood blockbusters and big-budget video games, U.S. commandos made good use of the rugged rifles in Vietnam.

This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

By the end of the conflict, the American military had reissued captured Ak-47s, made new ammunition for them and came up with a few other surprises.

It’s often because the commandos hated their own U.S.-made guns.

“Initially, the AK-47 was available in only small numbers to the Viet Cong fighting in South Vietnam,” historian Kevin Dockery explained in his book Special Warfare Special Weapons. “This resulted in the AK-47 being something of a prestige weapon.”

This extended to the Americans.

The practice of taking enemy weapons from the battlefield as trophies was hardly new in the 1960s. But captured weapons—especially AK variants—quickly became important parts of U.S. Army Special Forces and U.S. Navy SEAL Teams’ combat arsenals. These new additions offered a number of practical and psychological benefits.

For one, the American M-16 rifle was pretty crappy. The early design was a maintenance nightmare, and the guns often jammed in battle. The AK-47 was far more dependable, and had a larger 30-round magazine to boot.

An American soldier might confuse his enemies by using their own guns against them, especially in the dead of night. The AKs had a distinctive report and their tracer rounds glowed green instead of red — the standard color in Western armies.

“With the few men we had, we just didn’t have the firepower to take on an enemy unit,” Dockery wrote, quoting an unnamed SEAL officer. “An M-16 … would stand out to the VC or NVA, telling them where and possibly who we were.”

And the Pentagon’s battle plans called for American troops to scour the Vietnamese countryside for insurgents and their supplies. So there was no shortage of these foreign firearms or ammunition to go with them.

Commandos and regular forces both seized contraband—from food stores to heavy weapons—on a regular basis. With the stroke of a pen, senior officials redirect the captured AKs and their 7.62-millimeter bullets to troops in the field.

For instance, one SEAL report of captured items simply stated “7,400 rounds of AK-47 [ammunition] retained for SEAL Team Two,” according to Dockery. “The most common source of supply for … ammunition was from the original people who made it.”

The Pentagon also began developing its own secret supply chain for the seized weapons. Government contractors made cartridges devoid of any identifying markings. The foreign weapons and “sanitized” rounds were perfect for commando missions in North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

Washington was not officially involved in the fighting in any of these countries.

Nevertheless, the Pentagon’s top secret Military Assistance Command, Vietnam-Studies and Observation Group—a.k.a., MACV-SOG—and their South Vietnamese counterparts routinely crossed these borders to hunt North Vietnamese supply convoys, gather intelligence and sabotage enemy infrastructure.

MACV-SOG’s personnel became among the most notable users of captured gear. In September 1970, the group even asked the Army’s Land Warfare Laboratory to modify six of its captured AKs.

Less than a year later, the technicians returned the guns with silencers and modified sights, according to official progress reports. The weaponeers also created 10 silenced Walther PPKS pistols — the famed sidearm of fictional super-spy James Bond — as part of the project.

MACV-SOG distributed AKs to special units of North Vietnamese defectors and South Vietnamese special operators. With faked enemy uniforms and captured weapons, American commanders figured Hanoi’s forces would be less likely to uncover these teams, codenamed Earth Angels.

“As proposed, recruitment of these personnel would be of a highly selective nature amongst NVA officers and NCOs who had surrendered their units or turned in caches of arms and equipment,” a now declassified study of MACV-SOG’s operations noted.

“Once selected, they were to be trained in intelligence collection techniques, observation, reporting, radio communication, demolition [and] prisoner capture,” the report added.

As American forces captured even more enemy ordnance, the Pentagon approved more … creative tactics. In 1967, the Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on plans—initially dubbed Eldest Son, but later nicknamed Pole Bean—to sneak booby-trapped ammunition into Viet Cong supply dumps.

“The object of the program was to cause incidents and casualties among the enemy, thus instigating doubt, fear and lack of confidence in the reliability of Soviet and CHICOM weaponry,” the MACV-SOG review explained, using the acronym for Chinese communists.

The near indestructible AKs were one of the primary targets of this psychological campaign. A year after the project got under way, American commanders even warned reconnaissance teams not to pick up the rifles while in the field, except in emergencies.

Pole Bean became one covert program the Pentagon was perfectly happy for the press to hear about. “A news item in The New York Times … indicated that the contaminated ammunition program was having considerable success,” the MACV-SOG report noted.

Even as Washington’s involvement in Southeast Asia waned, the Pentagon still made use of its captured stockpiles.

After a coup deposed Cambodia’s King Norodom Sihanouk in 1970, the Pentagon turned over more than 27,000 AKs and three million bullets to Phnom Penh, which had previously received military aid from Moscow.

When Pres. Richard Nixon agreed to a “peace with honor” two years later, American forces brought a number of the captured weapons home with them. While some of the Kalashnikovs ended up in museums, a number of them remained in U.S. special operations arsenals for training purposes.

But America’s affair with AK-47s on the battlefield didn’t end. Today, with the Cold War over and the rifle still in widespread service around the globe, the Pentagon is once again buying the guns on the open market to ship to Washington’s allies — particularly in the Middle East.

This first appeared in WarIsBoring here. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.