The National Interest

Richard Douglas

Guns, Europe

A target shooting gun loaded with features that won’t need much maintenance and offers quality for the price you pay.

The XLR5 is a 12-gauge semi-auto shotgun, created by Italian manufacturer Fabarm. There are nine different AR/FR models available, with the FR model retailing for a few hundred less than the AR model. Here, we’ll be focusing mainly on the Fabarm XLR5 AR.

This shotgun is one of the first high-adjustable comb and high-adjustable rib models available. The rib adjusts up to 90/10 and down to 50/50 to allow you to shoot with your head completely upright. It features a very high-quality Turkish walnut stock, and includes stock shims to adjust the fit as you please.

You can choose from a black anodized or titanium silver frame finish, and all models feature a TRIBORE HP barrel. It’s over-bored in front of the chamber, which extends for several inches. As you move further and further down the barrel and towards the muzzle, the bore tapers down. At the front, it measures .739,” and at the end (behind where the screw chokes begin), it measures .725.”

The XLR5 also features a stainless steel, Pulse Piston gas operation, exceptionally well-made for a gun of this configuration. It shoulders well and provides a surprisingly good balance for such a large shotgun, with the point of balance right at the front of the receiver. It also includes an extended bolt release and oversized bolt-closure button for easy operation. The adjustable rib and fast-handling ability let you acquire and hit targets quickly. It comes with a green fiber-optic rear sight, and the receiver is dovetailed to attach Weaver scope mounts. This way, you can choose a scope or sight that matches your exact needs, reticle type, and all! 

It cycles nearly all rounds perfectly, and can hold three shots in the magazine and one in the chamber. It’s not high-capacity like the UTS-15, but for its intended purpose as a target-shooting gun, four shots should be enough. One unique feature is that it won’t fire unless the shell in the magazine is fully inserted. This is good for safety, but might cause you to lose a few points in a target competition. Another feature that users may have trouble with is the grip-to-trigger distance. Although the trigger is adjustable back and forth, people with smaller hands may find it too long, even in the most rearward position.

The XLR5 includes interchangeable rubber recoil pads that let you adjust the standard 14.75” length of pull. It also features an integrated recoil reducer to further mitigate felt recoil. With a 30” barrel, the gun weighs around 8 lbs 9 oz, and the heavier weight also helps to manage recoil.

In the box, you’ll get five EXIS HP competition choke tubes and a sturdy plastic case along with your XLR 5. The AR model MSRP’s for between $3,110 and $3,725, while the FR model runs around $2,475. Similar to the Benelli Raffaello, you’ll have to pay a premium price for a premium product that holds its value in the long run. You could always build something on your own for less, but it’s nice to have a professionally assembled, high-quality shotgun right out of the box. Plus, you might be able to find a model for cheaper at certain retailers!

The XLR 5 is a target shooting gun loaded with features that won’t need much maintenance and offers quality for the price you pay. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the XLR5 became as popular as the Remington 870 in the future! It’s well-made, well-balanced, and I expect it to hold up well over time.

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.

Ethen Kim Lieser

‘Plus-Up’ Stimulus Payment, Americas

People who are still struggling amid the ongoing pandemic should know that there could be more financial help on the way.

The Internal Revenue Service has confirmed that nearly two million more coronavirus stimulus checks have been disbursed to cash-strapped taxpayers under the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, according to the service’s latest update this week.

To date—including this current fifth batch of payments of 1.2 million direct deposit payments and nearly eight hundred thousand paper checks—roughly one hundred fifty-nine million checks worth a total of $376 billion have been sent out to Americans. 

This now represents 84 percent of the $450 billion total earmarked for stimulus funds, the agency noted. 

People who are still struggling amid the ongoing pandemic should know that there could be more financial help on the way. This particular batch included more than seven hundred thousand “plus-up” or supplemental payments for those folks who only received partial $1,400 checks on an earlier date. 

“This batch includes the first of ongoing supplemental payments for people who earlier in March received payments based on their 2019 tax returns but are eligible for a new or larger payment based on their recently processed 2020 tax returns,” the IRS said in a statement. 

“These ‘plus-up’ payments could include a situation where a person’s income dropped in 2020 compared to 2019, or a person had a new child or dependent on their 2020 tax return, and other situations.” 

Payments were also issued to people who recently filed tax returns in order to qualify for the stimulus money, due to the fact that the IRS did not have their necessary information on record. 

The agency has estimated that it will ultimately send out more than $1.2 billion in “plus-up” payments, many of which should already have landed in bank accounts on April 14. These checks will continue to go out on a weekly basis going forward, as the IRS continues to process tax returns from 2020 and 2019. 

The latest batch also heavily targeted Veterans Affairs beneficiaries who receive Compensation and Pension (C&P) benefit payments but have yet to file their 2019 or 2020 taxes or did not use the IRS “Non-Filer” tool to set up direct payments. More than three hundred twenty thousand checks were sent out to individuals who fit into this category. 

“The IRS continues to review data received from Veterans Affairs (VA), which covers veterans and their beneficiaries who receive Compensation and Pension (C&P) benefit payments who don’t normally file a tax return,” the IRS stated.

In addition, those who didn’t receive either of the first two stimulus payments can still try to claim the money that they’re entitled to. For this tax season, a Recovery Rebate Credit has been added to all returns, so that people in this situation can eventually receive the overdue payments. 

The IRS website states that “if you didn’t get any payments or got less than the full amounts, you may qualify for the Recovery Rebate Credit and must file a 2020 tax return to claim the credit even if you don’t normally file.” 

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

Image: Reuters

Caleb Larson

Missiles, Middle East

Tehran has built the region's largest missile force.

Here's What You Need to Know: Iran’s missile collection is quite remarkable and draws on lessons gained during the Iran-Iraq war.

Missiles are an essential tool of the Iranian regime. They are used for power projection, particularly towards Iran’s neighbors, or for anti-access/area-denial closer to home, in particular over the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf. Tehran’s missile collection is among the most diverse in the Middle East because Iran relies on modifications to Soviet/Russian and Chinese designs—although there are some domestic improvements thrown into the mix. Iran has thousands of short and medium-range missiles, and could very likely hit targets as far away as eastern Africa, Eastern and Southern Europe, Russia, India, and western China. Here are some of their most potent designs. 

Fateh-110

The Fateh-110 development program started in the mid-1990s. Testing continued through the late 1990s and early 2000s, with serial production commencing around 2003. It has a range of about 210 kilometers (about 130 miles), with a suspected 500 kilogram (approximately 1,100 pounds) warhead. It is road-mobile when installed on mobile launchers, which were likely modified from other launch platforms to handle the Fateh-110. 

Iran claims it has the ability to mass produce the Fateh-110. It has also been rumored that Hezbollah was supplied with some number of Fathe-110s from Iran, though this is difficult to confirm, as Israel destroyed a large inventory of Hezbollah munitions in strikes during 2007. 

Shahab-1

Closer to home, the Shahab-1 is essentially a variant of the Russian SS-1 Scud missile, which is itself similar to the Nazi-developed V-2 Rocket that terrorized Britain during the Second World War. Like the SS-1 Scud, it is liquid-fueled, and has a range of about 330 kilometers, or just over 200 miles. 

The Iranian Shahab-1 originated during the 1980s conflict with Iraq. Iran needed something with greater reach than provided by available artillery and wasn’t willing to risk its fleet of aircraft. (Many of Iran’s airframes were—and still are—vintage American planes, so servicing them with spare parts is problematic.)

Iran turned to Libya and Syria for missiles, launchers, and transporters. After the war with Iraq, Iran wanted a domestic production capability and turned to North Korea for expertise. Today, Iran possesses a variety of Shahab-1 variants with differing ranges, payloads, and accuracies. 

Sejjil

The Sejjil series of missiles are among Iran’s most capable — they have a range of 2,000 kilometers (around 1,250 miles) and a warhead in the 500-1,000 kilogram range (about 1,100 to 2,200 pounds).

The Sejjil is speculated to be a domestic Iranian design, in contrast to most of Iran’s missile arsenal, which is wholly or partially based on other countries’ designs. 

One of the advantages of the Sejjil missile is its fuel type—solid-propellant instead of liquid. This is advantageous due to solid fuel rockets greater robustness and speed of deployment. In contrast to liquid-fueled missiles that require a greater deal of preparations and specific launch conditions. (For instance, historically liquid fuel has to be kept quite cool, resulting in a large energy requirement.) If paired with a mobile launcher, the Sejjil would be a large, powerful, and rapidly-deployable threat. 

Armed to the Teeth

Iran’s missile collection is quite remarkable and draws on lessons gained during the Iran-Iraq war. During that conflict, Tehran learned that it’s cheaper and easier to have a strong defense (many varied missiles) than a strong offense, such as airplanes that are expensive, require lots of maintenance, and could result in pilot deaths. 

Caleb Larson is a defense writer for the National Interest. He holds a Master of Public Policy and covers U.S. and Russian security, European defense issues, and German politics and culture.

This article first appeared in 2020.

Image: Reuters

Kyle Mizokami

Soviet Navy, Europe

Due to history, costs, and geography, Moscow was, and remains, redominantly a land power not a naval power.

Key point: Soviet naval planners dreamed of a mighty fleet of super aircraft carriers. However, high costs, technological hurdles, and a lack of political will meant such a fleet was never constructed.

The Soviet Union was one of the largest, most industrial proficient countries the world has ever seen. Yet for all of its engineering talent and manufacturing capacity, during the seventy-four years the USSR existed it never fielded a true real aircraft carrier. The country had several plans to build them, however, and and was working on a true carrier, the Ulyanovsk, at the end of the Cold War.

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

After the Communists’ victory in 1917, science and engineering were pushed to the forefront in an attempt to modernize Russia and the other Soviet republics. The military was no exception, and poured resources into then-advanced technologies such as tanks, airborne forces, and ground and aerial rockets. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was linked to several carrier projects, including the first effort, Izmail.

In 1927, the Soviet leadership approved plans to build a carrier by converting the unfinished Imperial Russian Navy battlecruiser Izmail, under construction since 1913, to a full-length aircraft carrier. Completed as a battlecruiser, Izmail was to displace thirty-five thousand tons, making it similar in displacement to (and of the same decade as) the U.S. Navy’s Lexington-class interwar carriers that carried up to seventy-eight aircraft.

Unfortunately for the new Soviet Navy, Izmail’s conversion was never completed and the ship was eventually scrapped. While the idea of a Soviet carrier did have its supporters, others, including the brilliant young Marshal Tukhachevsky, pointed out that as large as it was, the Soviet Union could not afford to build both an army and a navy to match its most powerful neighbors. Tukhachevsky had a point, and the Navy took a backseat to Red Army (and Air Force) ambitions. This was a strategic dilemma that the Soviets had inherited from the tsars and that persisted until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989—one that still affects the Russian government today.

The Soviet Union under Stalin came to measure economic and agricultural output in five-year plans, and in 1938, as part of the third five-year plan, laid the groundwork for a pair of aircraft carriers. The so-called “Project 71” class would be based on the Chapaev-class cruisers, displacing thirteen thousand tons and with a 630-foot flight deck. The carriers would each carry fifteen fighters and thirty torpedo bombers, with one allocated to the Baltic Fleet and one allocated to the Pacific Fleet. The carriers were approved in 1939 but never completed, their construction interrupted by World War II. A second project for a heavier twenty-two-thousand-ton carrier was proposed but never even began construction.

In the mid-1940s, with the Soviet Union locked in a mortal struggle with Nazi Germany, yet another carrier concept was proposed. “Project 72” was described as similar to the previous carrier project but, at thirty thousand tons, more than twice as large. Another, similar design was Project Kostromitinov, which weighed in at forty thousand tons and would have been equipped with sixty-six fighters, forty torpedo bombers and, unusually, sixteen 152-millimeter guns. This suggests that the carrier might have been used to support amphibious landings in Scandinavia or the Baltics had it ever been built. While the Soviet Union was always a land power for which land warfare should take precedent over sea warfare, the wartime situation in 1943 made it crystal clear that resources could not be taken away from the Red Army to build an aircraft carrier of questionable usefulness.

In the aftermath of the war, with the Red Army the dominant land power in Eurasia, the Soviet Navy again pushed for more carriers. The naval staff wanted a force of fifteen carriers, nine large and six small, split between the Pacific and Northern fleets, with six of the large carriers allocated to the Pacific and the rest allocated to the Northern fleet. Stalin, however, did not want aircraft carriers, preferring to put his faith in battleships and cruisers. Soviet industry gave Stalin cover, explaining they did not yet have the capacity to build new kinds of ships.

Recommended: Imagine a U.S. Air Force That Never Built the B-52 Bomber

Recommended: Russia's Next Big Military Sale - To Mexico?

Recommended: Would China Really Invade Taiwan?

Stalin was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev in 1953, but despite Khrushchev’s new ideas in the age of missile warfare the best the Soviet Navy could get out of him was a single light carrier. The carrier, Project 85, would displace just twenty-eight thousand tons and carry forty navalized MiG-19 fighters. This project, too, was canceled even before construction began.

In 1962, the USSR began construction of two aircraft carriers at the Nikolayev shipyards in the Ukraine. The two carriers, Moskva and Leningrad, were compromise ships, with the front half looking like a conventional guided-missile cruiser and the rear half consisting of a flight deck, a hangar and an elevator that transported aircraft between the two. The Moskva class was likely designed to hunt American  and British Polaris missile submarines operating near Soviet waters.

Each Moskva ship carried up to a dozen antisubmarine warfare helicopters, but otherwise lacked offensive armament.

The Moskva class was followed up in the 1970s and 1980s with the Kiev class, which had a similar mission, but the United States was on the verge of fielding the even longer-range Trident missile. This meant that the Soviet Navy would have to operate even farther from its home waters and potentially face off with U.S. Navy aircraft carriers. As a result, the Kievs had an offensive armament in the form of SS-N-12 “Sandbox” antiship missiles, each of which could carry a 350-kiloton nuclear warhead. Four Kievs were built, with a fifth authorized but never completed.

The mid-1980s were a period of major expansion for the Soviet Navy, including aircraft carriers. The USSR began construction on two carriers in the fifty-thousand-ton class and one nuclear-powered supercarrier, Ulyanovsk, that was nearly on par with American Nimitz-class carriers. Of the three super vessels, only one was completed before the end of the Cold War. The completed carrier was inherited by the Russian Navy, with which it still serves today as the Admiral Kuznetsov. The incomplete carrier was purchased by Chinese interests, which forwarded it on to the People’s Liberation Army Navy, where it was refitted and commissioned as the carrier Liaoning in 2012. Ulyanovsk was scrapped by Ukraine, which had inherited the unfinished hull after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.

As a land power, the Soviet Union could never allocate enough of the country’s resources to build a real fleet of aircraft carriers. There was always some other perfectly reasonable—and eminently practical—way to spend the country’s rubles, whether it was on the Army, or the Air Force, and later on nuclear weapons. Even today, the Russian Navy’s nonstrategic forces face stiff competition from land and air forces, and the future of Russian naval aviation is again cloudy at best.

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

Image: Reuters.

Mark Episkopos

F-15 Fighter, Americas

But the Bad News Is Here: The pace of upgrades has slowed significantly in recent years, with the service ordering a 47 percent cut to the number of F-15C fighter aircraft eligible for modernization.

Almost fifty years since its introduction, the F-15 platform has set yet another record.

An F-15C Eagle executed the longest known air-to-air missile shot in March 2021, according to a press statement issued earlier this week by the 53rd Wing of the U.S. Air Force (USAF). “An F-15C Eagle fired an AIM-120 AMRAAM at a BQM-167 subscale drone, resulting in a “kill” of the aerial target from the furthest distance ever recorded,” the statement read. 

“This test effort supported requests from the CAF for ‘long range kill chain’ capabilities,” said Maj. Aaron Osborne, 28th TES. “Key partnerships within the 53rd Wing enabled the expansion of capabilities on a currently fielded weapons system, resulting in warfighters gaining enhanced weapons employment envelopes.” The statement added that the test in question was conducted “at a relatively low cost, showcasing innovation and directly supporting the 2018 [National Defense Strategy’s] calls for increased lethality and affordability.”

The press release does not specify what the new record is. The F-15 platform previously broke as many as eight world-time-to-climb records. The fighter is likewise among the world’s most successful air-to-air combat platforms, achieving an impressive 104 recorded kills while reportedly never having been shot down over the course of air-to-air combat. 

The F-15C is an improved variant of the iconic McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle air superiority fighter, introduced in 1979; by 1985, around 480 F-15C units were built. The F-15C upgrade package initially added expanded internal fuel, an improved central computer, and more robust weapons compatibility. The F-15C supports air-to-air missiles from the AIM-7, AIM-9 Sidewinder, and AIM-120 AMRAAM series spread across nine hardpoints with a total payload capacity of up to 7,300 kilograms. As with its F-14 Tomcat counterpart, The F-15C also carries the M61 Vulcan 20-millimeter Gatling gun.

Although the F-22 Raptor is considered by many to be the best air superiority technology available, there simply aren’t enough F-22 jets to fulfill USAF’s robust rotation commitments across Pacific, European, and Middle-Eastern theaters. This is why USAF’s fleet of around two hundred F-15C/D’s remains a core component of American air superiority capabilities—these fighters continue to be upgraded in order to maintain their battlefield relevance to the present day. Later F-15C models came with an improved engine and, more recently, the AN/APG-63(V)3 AESA radar. It was likewise reported that a certain number of F-15C jets are being fitted with infrared search and track systems. 

Still, USAF is aware that the aging F-15 Eagle platform is getting increasingly more cost-ineffective to maintain and operate. The pace of upgrades has slowed significantly in recent years, with the service ordering a 47 percent cut to the number of F-15C fighter aircraft eligible for modernization.

The Air Force is reviewing plans to retire the F-15C/D fleet around the mid-2020s, though a final decision has yet to be made. The proposal’s supporters argue that the F-16 Fighting Falcon can reproduce much of the capabilities of an F-15C jet at a lower cost. 

Mark Episkopos is a national security reporter for The National Interest.

Image: Reuters

Ted Galen Carpenter

North Korea,

Kim’s language conveys a tacit admission that North Korea’s chronic policy of self-isolation has not served the country, or the regime, particularly well. Minimizing interaction with the outside world did not even shield North Korea from the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic.

Kim Jong-Un’s downbeat and surprisingly candid comments on April 9 caught many U.S. and international observers by surprise. North Korea’s leader called on officials to brace for a prolonged campaign (an “arduous march”) to tackle the country’s worsening economic problems, comparing the current crisis to the 1990s famine that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. He placed much of the blame on the effects of U.S.-led sanctions, but he also conceded that the coronavirus pandemic had taken a major toll.

Kim’s admission creates an occasion for the Biden administration to make a fundamental choice about the direction of its policy toward North Korea. Advocates of a hardline policy could see Kim’s comments as an opening to increase U.S. pressure on the regime, concluding that it is now exceptionally vulnerable. Such a strategy would include adopting even more robust sanctions and being even less willing than previous administration to show any flexibility on Washington’s long-standing demand that Pyongyang agrees to a complete, verifiable, and irreversible end to its nuclear weapons program. Although that approach might seem tempting, given the new signs of North Korean weakness and vulnerability, it would be a serious, potentially tragic, mistake.

Indeed, the Biden foreign policy team should adopt the opposite approach. Kim’s language conveys a tacit admission that North Korea’s chronic policy of self-isolation has not served the country, or the regime, particularly well. Minimizing interaction with the outside world did not even shield North Korea from the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic.

That realization may well make Kim more receptive to productive negotiations on an array of issues. The Biden administration should seize that opportunity by making timely concessions and seeking to achieve some attainable goals. The demand for complete denuclearization, though, is not on the list of such goals; it remains, as it always has, a poison pill that terminates any prospects for constructive diplomacy.

A key timely concession would be the easing of economic sanctions. In addition to being one creative component of a wiser foreign policy, such a move would constitute basic humanitarianism—especially if North Korea is facing a crisis comparable to the horrible famine of the 1990s. That concession also would facilitate negotiations on other important issues.

Beyond easing sanctions, the Biden administration should propose a major breakthrough on the normalization of bilateral relations. One step would be to finalize a treaty to replace the 1953 armistice and formally end the state of war on the Korean Peninsula.  Another would be to establish formal diplomatic relations, open embassies in Pyongyang and Washington, and appoint ambassadors to those new posts.  As an additional confidence-building measure, the administration should propose an indefinite freeze on U.S.-South Korean military exercises and a large reduction in the number of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea in exchange for a freeze on the North’s nuclear and ballistic missile tests and a pullback of North Korean troops and weaponry from the Demilitarized Zone.

Such an agenda would not have the resonance of the dramatic demand for North Korea’s total denuclearization, but it would have the virtue of being feasible. Even achieving a portion of those pragmatic goals would significantly reduce the dangerous, heavily armed stand-off on the Peninsula. Kim’s speech tests whether the Biden foreign policy team is perceptive enough to see an opportunity for conciliation and diplomatic progress or instead embraces a myopic strategy of trying to increase pressure on a beleaguered regime.

Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at the National Interest, is the author of 12 books and more than 900 articles on international affairs.  His books include (with Doug Bandow) The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations with North and South Korea (Palgrave Macmillan)

Todd Bensman

Immigration, Latin Americas

By eliminating the complementary Trump-era turn-back policies and rewarding legal permission to stay to most family units and unaccompanied teenagers, Biden is only incentivizing further illegal immigration.

With virtual diplomacy and in-person delegations, the Biden administration has announced a deal in which Mexico will bolster its troop deployments on its southern border to ease the mounting mass-migration crisis on the U.S. southern border. The deal’s central component is for Mexico to beef up a Donald Trump-era deployment to 10,000 at some fifty road checkpoints while Guatemala deploys 1,500 at twelve checkpoints.

But recent interviews with immigrants who reached Mexico’s northern border with Texas revealed a variety of methods they have used to handily beat that deployment, especially since Joe Biden did away with Trump-era policies that crucially buttressed the deployment. Following are some of the methods that immigrants here in Acuna and the neighboring Mexican city of Piedras Negras said they used to get around the Mexican troops.

Mexican Policies Canceling Each Other Out; the Mexican “Humanitarian Visa” End-Run

When Honduran citizen Danny Zavala Flores first entered Mexico from Guatemala, he made his way directly to the Tapachula office of the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR) and applied for a “humanitarian visa.” The visa authorized him to live and work in Mexico. But Flores knew the visa bestowed a more important gift.

“I just showed it to the soldiers whenever they confronted me, and they just let me go through,” he told me just one hour after U.S. Border Patrol caught and returned him across the Rio Grande under the emergency pandemic expulsion policy known colloquially as “Title 42.” (The Biden administration currently releases the majority of family units that illegally cross, but returns single men and women that Border Patrol apprehends).

The Mexican government apparently routinely issues such visas as well as other travel permission slips that allow foreign nationals, who would otherwise be returned from the roadblocks, to simply flash-pass through.

It’s unclear how many are issued. But other immigrants in Mexico told me they too used the visas to get past them. Haitian citizen Eddyson Mettelis, in Acuna, said a humanitarian visa enabled him to travel to Tijuana, Mexico. He waited there until Biden won and ended Trump policies that would have returned him to Mexico or even Haiti had he been caught.

The Mexican government is issuing other kinds of permission slips besides the humanitarian ones. The Mexican immigration service, INM, on March 10 deemed Dennys Alberto Torrez Gomez a “refugee” in the southern state of Tabasco on the Guatemala border and gave him a permission slip to travel to Piedras Negras on the Texas border. I interviewed him shortly after Border Patrol returned him to Mexico under Title 42.

Gomez said he’ll keep trying, though, knowing his paper will keep the Mexicans off his back until he can get past the Border Patrol on the other side.

The Bribery End-Run

Four immigrants told me they acquiesced to Mexican troop demands for bribes to let them continue north. It usually happened on commercial buses at checkpoints.

Cuban citizen Moefil Poges Silva had just arrived in Acuna from Tapachula, hundreds of miles to the south. He said that once he, his wife, and two children traveled with other Cubans on commercial buses. On three different occasions, national guard soldiers boarded and demanded 1,000 pesos (about $50) per person to continue.

“The soldiers have a communication network going,” alerting one another who was coming on which buses, Silva explained. “They come straight on the bus and say, ‘if you want to advance, you have to pay.’”

Others described the same extortions as they hitched rides in cars and trucks, although some reported a 250-peso price tag.

Whatever the going price, Olbi Orian Dormorel of Honduras said that whenever immigrants came anywhere near the soldiers there were “some who would want to take your money” while others merely neglected their duty. Dormorel described these latter soldiers as “more compassionate. They would give you some snacks and water ... and let you go forward.”

End-Run on the Trains

Five immigrants in Piedras Negras and Acuna said they avoided the national guard by hopping on top of trains that took them into central Mexico.

Juan Farmin of Honduras said he and some other immigrants knew from social media about the national guard problem but also that they could hop freight trains in the small city of Palenque. The soldiers never bothered them.

Ronnie Lopez of Honduras rode the rails past the troops from the Veracruz city of Coatzacoalcos to Tierra Blanca, noting that he chose this method because everyone knows “the military doesn’t stop the trains” and also to avoid paying the bribes on the buses.

Another Honduran immigrant spoke of boarding a train in the southern state of Veracruz, which took them much farther, to Puebla State in central Mexico, well past the “danger” of Mexican troops. From there, they caught commercial buses without any hassle.

End-Run by Foot

Several immigrants avoided paying bribes and riding train rooftops and instead hiked around the checkpoints. They’d collect intelligence from local villagers as to where exactly they were first, then veer off the road, around, and back to the road.

Then they’d simply hike away from the road, work their way past the position by a few hundred yards through trees or brush, and come back to the road beyond the soldiers’ view. Hugo Orlando Castillo of Guatemala said that on nine different occasions he and his group made their way to within eyesight of the roadblock, hike off the road and wait for night.

 ”We would sneak up to them and then we went around them,” he said. “Any time we’d see a checkpoint, we’d bypass it.”

No smuggler or guide was necessary, although one immigrant said he did hire a local guide to get around the soldiers.

A Flying End-Run

At a popular illegal immigrant landing spot on the Texas side of the Rio Grande, just across from Acuna in the Texas town of Del Rio, a recovered and abandoned airline ticket revealed yet another effective evasion method. It was an AeroMexico ticket showing a flight from the Colombian city of Medellin to Mexico City, well beyond the roadblocks.

While it is difficult to know how often immigrants fly over the military operations, the ticket reveals that they can and that others probably have, too.

The fact that I found this round-trip ticket stub on March 24, the day of the return flight, shows the ticketholders were in Texas that morning stripping off wet clothes instead of on their way back to Medellin.

Useless without the Trump Policies

When Trump was in office, the Mexican troop deployment he demanded also suffered from corruption and ineptitudes. But it was fairly effective anyway because it worked in conjunction with Trump’s push-back policies at the American border. The “Remain in Mexico” Migrant Protection Protocols and assertive ICE repatriations of deportable illegal immigrants by air back to home countries made immigrants feel less inclined to defeat the military roadblocks.

But President Biden eliminated the complementary Trump turn-back policies and began rewarding legal permission to stay to most family units and unaccompanied teenagers, incentivizing them to breach the Mexican cordon. These moves have left the already problematic Mexican military deployment to stand alone against a powerful rising wave of people enthused, determined, and ultimately rewarded for doing so.

Short of reinstitution of deterrence-based policies by the United States, the Mexican operation of which the Biden administration is so proud almost certainly will do nothing new to staunch the inexorable tide of humanity.

Todd Bensman is Senior National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.

Image: Reuters.

Temitope Oriola

Race, Americas

After George Floyd’s death at the hands of police in Minneapolis, Minn., protestors all over the United States demonstrated against police brutality. Could the protests develop into something more?

Here's What You Need to Remember: To predict that an armed insurgency may happen in the U.S. is not the same as wishing for it to happen: It is not inevitable, and it can and should be avoided.

The killings of African Americans at the hands of police officers has continued unabated in the United States. In the past year, the deaths of Breonna Taylor in her bed and George Floyd by public asphyxiation are two of the most egregious.

As the officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck was being tried for the killing in court, another officer shot and killed Daunte Wright.

Scholarly research has begun to document the traumatic consequences of police killings on African Americans. One study finds the effects on Black males meet the “criteria for trauma exposure,” based on the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, used for psychiatric diagnoses.

Besides police use of force in North America, one of the trajectories of my research focuses on armed insurgency in sub-Saharan Africa. I am beginning to observe in the U.S. some of the social conditions necessary for the maturation and rise of an armed insurgency. The U.S. is at risk of armed insurgencies within the next five years if the current wave of killings of unarmed Black people continues.

Conditions for insurgency

To begin, the armed insurgencies would not have a defined organizational structure. They may look like Mexico’s Zapatista movement or the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta in Nigeria.

Entities operating independently will spring up, but over time, a loose coalition may form to take credit for actions of organizationally disparate groups for maximum effect. There will likely be no single leader to neutralize at the onset. Like U.S. global counter-terrorism efforts, neutralizing leaders will only worsen matters.

Using research and contextual experience from the developing world to make predictions about the U.S. in this regard is apt. There are many interrelated conditions for the rise of an armed insurgency. None of them in and of itself can lead to an armed insurgency, but requires a host of variables within social and political processes.

Transgenerational oppression of an identifiable group is one of the pre-conditions for an armed insurgency, but this is hardly news. What the U.S. has managed to institute on a national and comprehensive scale is what sociologist Jock Young calls “cultural inclusion and structural exclusion.”

A strong sense of injustice, along with significant moments, events and episodes — like the killings of Taylor and Floyd — are also important.

Historically, police officers are not held to account for the extra-judicial killings of Black people.

The racialized trauma from police killings adds to the growing sense of alienation and frustration felt by African Americans, but police killings aren’t the only way they experience disproportionate death rates.

African Americans have the second highest per capita death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic: 179.8 deaths per 100,000 (second only to Indigenous Americans with 256.0 deaths per 100,000). They are also at a higher risk of death from cancer, for example. The pandemic has compounded these deaths, adding to the disproportionately high unemployment rate and the impact of layoffs during the pandemic.

Potential insurgents

There is another, related variable: The availability of people willing and able to participate in such insurgency. The U.S. has potential candidates in abundance. Criminal records — sometimes for relatively minor offences — that mar Black males for life, have taken care of this critical supply. One study estimates that while eight per cent of the U.S. general population has felony convictions, the figure is 33 per cent among African American males.

Some of these men may gradually be reaching the point where they believe they have nothing to lose. Some will join for revenge, others for the thrill of it and many for the dignity of the people they feel have been trampled on for too long. Although 93 per cent of protest against police brutality is peaceful and involves no major harm to people and property, there is no guarantee that future protests about new police killings will remain peaceful.

The legitimacy of grievances of Black Americans among their fellow citizens is also an important variable. Their grievances appear to have found strong resonance and increasing sympathy within the broader population. Many Latino, Native American and white people see the injustices against Black people and are appalled. Black Lives Matter protests are now major multicultural events, particularly among young adults.

A sense that there are no legitimate channels to address the grievances or that those channels have been exhausted is also crucial. This is evident in the failure to convict or even try police officers involved in several of the incidents. A grand jury could not indict the officer whose chokehold led to the death of Eric Garner, despite video evidence. Such cases have led to a troubling loss of trust in the criminal justice system.

Mode of operation

Any anti-police insurgency in the U.S. will likely start as an urban-based guerrilla-style movement. Attacks may be carried out on sites and symbols of law enforcement. Small arms and improvised explosive devices will likely be weapons of choice, which are relatively easy to acquire and build, respectively. The U.S. has the highest number of civilian firearms in the world with 120.5 guns per 100 persons or more than 393 million guns.

Critical infrastructure and government buildings may be targeted after business hours. The various groups will initially seek to avoid civilian casualties, and this may help to garner a level of support among the socially marginal from various backgrounds. The public would be concerned but relatively secure in understanding that only the police are being targeted. Escalation may ensue through copycat attacks.

The U.S. government will seem to have a handle on the insurgency at first but will gradually come to recognize that this is different. African American leaders will likely be helpless to stop the insurgency. Anyone who strongly denounces it in public may lose credibility among the people. Authenticity would mean developing a way to accommodate the insurgents in public rhetoric while condemning them in private.

Moving forward

I am often amazed that many people appear unaware that Nelson Mandela was co-founder of uMkhonto we Sizwe, the violent youth wing of the African National Congress, which carried out bombings in South Africa. The rationale provided in court by Mandela regarding his use of violence is instructive. Mandela told a South African court in 1963:

I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness, nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation, and oppression of my people…. We chose to defy the law. We first broke the law in a way which avoided any recourse to violence; when this form was legislated against, and then the government resorted to a show of force to crush opposition to its policies, only then did we decide to answer violence with violence.

To predict that an armed insurgency may happen in the U.S. is not the same as wishing for it to happen: It is not inevitable, and it can and should be avoided.

Police reform is a first step. A comprehensive criminal justice overhaul is overdue, including addressing the flaws inherent in trial by jury, which tends to produce mind-boggling results in cases involving police killings. Finally, the judgment in the trial of Derek Chauvin for George Floyd’s death will have an impact on the trajectory of any possible future events.

Temitope Oriola is an Associate Professor, Sociology, University of Alberta

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

Image: Reuters

 

Kris Osborn

6th Generation Stealth Fighter,

A massive and still largely unknown technology breakthrough may be upon us, by virtue of the apparent Air Force decision to not only fast-track a new 6th-Gen fighter platform but actually fly it. 

A massive and still largely unknown technology breakthrough may be upon us, by virtue of the apparent Air Force decision to not only fast-track a new 6th-Gen fighter platform but actually fly it. 

While of course technical details and specifics regarding the kinds of 6th-Gen platforms which have been in development are closely held or not public for security reasons, that fact that one is here now seems to suggest that sufficient technological breakthroughs have occurred to inspire a decision to actually “build and fly” a new stealth fighter jet platform. 

Developers have for many years now been immersed in technological exploration, prototyping, and conceptual work related to 6th-Gen fighter technology, looking at things like building stealthier airframes, applications of AI, miniaturized long-range sensors, targeting technology and drones operating with ever-increasing levels of autonomy.

Does the fact that a 6th Gen aircraft has already flown suggest that, perhaps, some of the most essential ingredients of long-term transformational technologies are, in effect, already here? 

For instance, some now-in-development next-gen stealth technologies, including new radar-evading configurations, coating materials, and advanced thermal-signature reduction have for many years been fast-approaching levels of combat readiness. Maybe some of these things are here now, given the pace of technological innovation?

New long-range, high-speed, course-correcting or even self-guiding weapons, combined with new stealth attributes or AI-enabled sensors could indeed help a U.S. 6th-Gen platform achieve overmatch for decades to come, Navy and Air Force developers have for quite some time been pushing the boundaries of the “art-of-the-possible” to the maximum extent, so perhaps certain major breakthrough have happened? Would not seem unlikely given the extent to which digital engineering, weapons guidance technology, autonomy, and AI-enabled integrated systems and networking have been progressing in recent years. 

The challenge of trying to discern the optimal time to actually build a new airframe is something that has been explored for many years, as evidenced by a Naval Postgraduate School essay from 2016 called “The 6th-Generation Quandry.” The essay poses the question as to whether it might be equally if not more effective to postpone formal 6th-generation development until truly breakthrough advances emerge, while pursuing advanced variants of current, yet upgradeable platforms in the interim.

Could this question having been anticipated years ago, have yielded answers to a degree such that the Air Force did indeed go ahead and fast-track a new platform? It does appear that way. 

The 2016 paper, from the Naval Postgraduate School Acquisition Research Program, cites a handful of “at-the-time” cutting edge developmental items showing significant long-term promise. The paper cites “new models of the F-35 optimized for air combat,” the emerging B-21, drone-launching C-130 “mother ships” and “weapons truck arsenal planes” are positioned to optimize current technological progress. However, none of these kinds of technology are disappearing by any estimation, given the long-term plans in place for promising F-35 modernization.

Given that so many key elements of modernization can be achieved through mission systems, avionics, AI-enabled targeting, and surveillance, and of course weapons guidance, Pentagon and Lockheed developers recognize that the F-35 can in future decades can achieve new breakthrough levels of performance with software upgrades and other kinds of technological adaptations. This may be why many envision integrated connectivity between the F-35 and 6th-Gen fighters as they potentially fly together into the 2080s. 

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

Caleb Larson

Lasers, Americas

The program may have ultimately failed, but laser research continues.

Here's What You Need to Know: The Air Force wanted lasers to shoot down ICBMs.

Missile defense is really hard. It has been compared to hitting a bullet with another bullet, and is inherently unreliable. According to Scientific American, the U.S. Ground-based Midcourse Defense ”remains the sole system designed to counter intercontinental ballistic missiles. Its 44 silo-based interceptors in Alaska and California are designed to be guided by space, ground and sea-based sensors to collide with an incoming warhead and destroy it with the force of impact.”

The GMD system has a poor track record. “Only about half of the 18 intercept tests since 1999 successfully destroyed their targets, and the test record has not improved with time: only two of the last five tests were successful—and GMD has still has not been tested under operationally realistic conditions.” Not exactly reassuring.

Space-based ICBM interceptors are another unviable alternative. Once placed in Low-Earth Orbit, space interceptors would be traveling so fast, they wouldn’t be in position for a long enough time to intercept an ICBM. In order to reliably target a missile, the space-based interceptor fleet would have to number in the thousands—making the system prohibitively expensive. But what about a laser, rather than a physical interceptor?

Laser Power

The U.S. Air Force decided to build on laser intercept research done in the 1980s and bought a retired Boeing 474, lopped of the nose cone, and added a ball turret—to shoot down missiles. 

The laser emitted from the ball turret was powered by a chemical oxygen iodine laser, or COIL. COIL is an almost-infrared laser that is produced by harnessing chemical reactions. The setup was huge—six COIL modules were needed to power the laser, and each module weighed over 6,000 pounds.

In actuality, the laser didn’t really shoot missiles down. The laser beam’s ball turret focused on a missile and heated the outside, compromising the missile body’s integrity. One scientist likened the laser to a magnifying glass, saying, “it’s like taking a magnifying glass and burning a hole through a piece of paper, but airborne lasers do it through metal.” In-flight stress and turbulence would cause the missile to break up and fail in flight before it could reach its target.

Though powerful, the system was more effective against smaller tactical ballistic missiles which are less robust than larger intercontinental ballistic missiles. Still, range was an issue. Depending on atmospheric conditions, missiles could only be targeted from about 180 to 370 miles away, limiting the platform’s effectiveness to in-theatre operations and limiting flexibility, dooming the project.

Canceled

In 2009, then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had the following to say about the program, “The ABL program has significant affordability and technology problems and the program’s proposed operational role is highly questionable.” It was canceled shortly thereafter.

All is not lost for air-based laser weapons though. Laser research is once again being done to arm F-35s—and might arm them sooner than we think.

Caleb Larson holds a Master of Public Policy degree from the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy. He lives in Berlin and writes on U.S. and Russian foreign and defense policy, German politics, and culture.

This article first appeared in 2020.

Image: REUTERS/Larry Downing

Caleb Larson

World War II, Americas

One woman and five of her children were killed in Oregon after finding a balloon that had likely lain on the ground for weeks.

Here's What You Need to Know: Tokyo tried to find new weapons as it grew more desperate.

Sitting on the far eastern rim of the Pacific, the United States mainland was virtually invulnerable to Japanese attack during the Second World War. Even long-range bombers didn’t have the necessary range to fly from mainland Japan or the many islands under Japanese control to the West Coast. Rather than increasing bomber range, the Japanese decided to get create and equip rubberized silk balloons with bombs, and float them through the air to the United States. 

Jet Stream

In 1920, a jet stream was observed Japan. A jet stream is a fast-moving band of air that moves similarly to ocean currents. It was noticed that in winter, the jet stream moved fast, and in a westerly direction over Japan, the Pacific, and to the North American continent. Japanese engineers realized that balloons could be launched to carry bombs across the Pacific and hit the United States. 

Over the course of the war, over 9,000 balloons were launched. Their payload was either a 15-pound anti-personnel fragmentation bomb or a heavier 26-pound incendiary device. They were cheap to make and simple to use—their goal was to start forest fires, kill U.S. citizens or damage infrastructure. 

High Tech

The technological problems that had to be overcome were substantial. The large balloons would expand when exposed to sunlight, causing them to rise. At night, cooler ambient temperatures would make the rubberized silk contract, and the balloon would fall. 

In order to keep the balloon’s altitude constant, a nozzle was fitted to the balloon that could vent hydrogen if it rose too high. The balloon also carried onboard ballast, bags of sand that would be automatically jettisoned by an altimeter-controlled firing mechanism. These bags were attached to a metal ring—bags were dropped in opposite pairs to keep the ring and balloon vertically balanced. 

This being pre-GPS, the balloon was fitted with a three-day timer, at which point the balloon would likely be somewhere over North America. On the third day, a small explosive charge would detonate, sending its explosive payload to the ground. 

Strange Payload

The U.S. military was worried. Balloons, shrapnel fragments, and reports of mysterious explosions were reported up and down the West Coast, and in places as far away as Canada’s Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan, Yukon, as well as Texas, Wyoming, Montana, Mexico, and even Detroit. 

One newspaper article described a balloon found in Montana by a woodchopper and his son. “The bag itself is of high grade processed paper. There appeared on the balloon Japanese characters indicating completion of construction at the factory on Oct. 31, 1944. Attached to the side of the balloon was an incendiary device with a fuse apparently intended for its destruction. A typical balloon rope structure attached to the flange around the bag ended in an elastic type cable at the bottom which had been severed.” 

Though the description of the bag was accurate, its purpose was unclear. “No determination has been made of the use for which it was intended,” perplexing American officials. 

It was initially suspected that the balloons must have been launched from the West Coast by Japanese submarines, or even German prison of war camps, or Japanese internment camps. An examination of the sand in the ballast bags established their Japanese origin, settling the mystery. 

Aftermath

Although the balloon bombs did not do much damage, a press blackout prevented news agencies from reporting on the balloon phenomena to protect the American public from any adverse psychological effects. One woman and five of her children were killed in Oregon after finding a balloon that had likely lain on the ground for weeks. It was the only fatal incident caused by the balloons.

Caleb Larson holds a Master of Public Policy degree from the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy. He lives in Berlin and writes on U.S. and Russian foreign and defense policy, German politics, and culture.

This article first appeared in 2020.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Damian Purcell

Coronavirus,

mRNA vaccines are good for preventing more than just the coronavirus. 

Here's What You Need to Remember: mRNA vaccine technology has been described as disruptive and revolutionary. If we can overcome these challenges, we can potentially change how we make vaccines now and into the future.

The world’s first mRNA vaccines — the COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna — have made it in record time from the laboratory, through successful clinical trials, regulatory approval and into people’s arms.

The high efficiency of protection against severe disease, the safety seen in clinical trials and the speed with which the vaccines were designed are set to transform how we develop vaccines in the future.

Once researchers have set up the mRNA manufacturing technology, they can potentially produce mRNA against any target. Manufacturing mRNA vaccines also does not need living cells, making them easier to produce than some other vaccines.

So mRNA vaccines could potentially be used to prevent a range of diseases, not just COVID-19.

Remind me again, what’s mRNA?

Messenger ribonucleic acid (or mRNA for short) is a type of genetic material that tells your body how to make proteins. The two mRNA vaccines for SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, deliver fragments of this mRNA into your cells.

Once inside, your body uses instructions in the mRNA to make SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins. So when you encounter the virus’ spike proteins again, your body’s immune system will already have a head start in how to handle it.

So after COVID-19, which mRNA vaccines are researchers working on next? Here are three worth knowing about.

1. Flu vaccine

Currently, we need to formulate new versions of the flu vaccine each year to protect us from the strains the World Health Organization (WHO) predicts will be circulating in flu season. This is a constant race to monitor how the virus evolves and how it spreads in real time.

Moderna is already turning its attention to an mRNA vaccine against seasonal influenza. This would target the four seasonal strains of the virus the WHO predicts will be circulating.

But the holy grail is a universal flu vaccine. This would protect against all strains of the virus (not just what the WHO predicts) and so wouldn’t need to be updated each year. The same researchers who pioneered mRNA vaccines are also working on a universal flu vaccine.

The researchers used the vast amounts of data on the influenza genome to find the mRNA code for the most “highly conserved” structures of the virus. This is the mRNA least likely to mutate and lead to structural or functional changes in viral proteins.

They then prepared a mixture of mRNAs to express four different viral proteins. These included one on the stalk-like structure on the outside of the flu virus, two on the surface, and one hidden inside the virus particle.

Studies in mice show this experimental vaccine is remarkably potent against diverse and difficult-to-target strains of influenza. This is a strong contender as a universal flu vaccine.

2. Malaria vaccine

Malaria arises through infection with the single-celled parasite Plasmodium falciparum, delivered when mosquitoes bite. There is no vaccine for it.

However, US researchers working with pharmaceutical company GSK have filed a patent for an mRNA vaccine against malaria.

The mRNA in the vaccine codes for a parasite protein called PMIF. By teaching our bodies to target this protein, the aim is to train the immune system to eradicate the parasite.

There have been promising results of the experimental vaccine in mice and early-stage human trials are being planned in the UK.

This malaria mRNA vaccine is an example of a self-amplifying mRNA vaccine. This means very small amounts of mRNA need to be made, packaged and delivered, as the mRNA will make more copies of itself once inside our cells. This is the next generation of mRNA vaccines after the “standard” mRNA vaccines seen so far against COVID-19.

3. Cancer vaccines

We already have vaccines that prevent infection with viruses that cause cancer. For example, hepatitis B vaccine prevents some types of liver cancer and the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine prevents cervical cancer.

But the flexibility of mRNA vaccines lets us think more broadly about tackling cancers not caused by viruses.

Some types of tumours have antigens or proteins not found in normal cells. If we could train our immune systems to identify these tumour-associated antigens then our immune cells could kill the cancer.

Cancer vaccines can be targeted to specific combinations of these antigens. BioNTech is developing one such mRNA vaccine that shows promise for people with advanced melanoma. CureVac has developed one for a specific type of lung cancer, with results from early clinical trials.

Then there’s the promise of personalised anti-cancer mRNA vaccines. If we could design an individualised vaccine specific to each patient’s tumour then we could train their immune system to fight their own individual cancer. Several research groups and companies are working on this.

Yes, there are challenges ahead

However, there are several hurdles to overcome before mRNA vaccines against other medical conditions are used more widely.

Current mRNA vaccines need to be kept frozen, limiting their use in developing countries or in remote areas. But Moderna is working on developing an mRNA vaccine that can be kept in a fridge.

Researchers also need to look at how these vaccines are delivered into the body. While injecting into the muscle works for mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, delivery into a vein may be better for cancer vaccines.

The vaccines need to be shown to be safe and effective in large-scale human clinical trials, ahead of regulatory approval. However, as regulatory bodies around the world have already approved mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, there are far fewer regulatory hurdles than a year ago.

The high cost of personalised mRNA cancer vaccines may also be an issue.

Finally, not all countries have the facilities to make mRNA vaccines on a large scale, including Australia.

Regardless of these hurdles, mRNA vaccine technology has been described as disruptive and revolutionary. If we can overcome these challenges, we can potentially change how we make vaccines now and into the future.

Archa Fox is an Associate Professor and ARC Future Fellow, The University of Western Australia

Damian Purcell is a Professor of virology and theme leader for viral infectious diseases, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity

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

Image: Reuters

Peter Suciu

Tanks,

After more than 100 years since the first tanks rolled into action during the Battle of the Somme in the First World War, the tank continues to evolve.

Here's What You Need To Remember: While the MBT will remain a key component of the U.S. Army, the days of tanks in the United States Marines Corps are numbered, after it was announced that the Marines would eliminate its entire tank force within the next decade. The USMC, which is undergoing a transformation to be a more nimble force, will have closer integration with the U.S. Navy – and thus will increase rocket artillery and anti-ship missiles.

After more than 100 years since the first tanks rolled into action during the Battle of the Somme in the First World War, the tank continues to evolve, but it is unlikely that these metal behemoths will likely disappear anytime soon. As the weapons systems improve and more autonomous functionality comes into play, the main battle tank (MBT) is proving that it is going to be hard to replace.

Simply put, the tank can do things only a tank can do. Despite the increasingly high price tags, research suggests tanks are a worthwhile investment. A new poll from the UK-based Army Technology found that 74 percent of respondents believe a main battle tank is worth the cost, while only 26 percent disagreed.

The main battle tank, which has been a mainstay of militaries around the world, essentially grew out of the medium tank in the 1960s. However, in recent years with the focus on the Global War on Terror and asymmetric counter-insurgent operations, the tank was seen by many to be a relic from the Cold War.

Now due to changes in geopolitics, the tank is once again being seen as a necessary weapon – both as a deterrent and a potential offensive platform – with is why many militaries are either developing a new generation of MBT or upgrading existing tank forces. As Army Technology noted, there is a Franco-German effort to develop a replacement for the French Leclerc and Leopard tanks respectively, while the UK are planning to extend the service life of its Challenger II.

The U.S. Army began upgrading the M1 Abrams in 2017 and the plan is to have the long-serving MBT able to fight through 2020. It has seen a steady stream of upgrades meant to keep it at least on par, if not ahead of the adversaries, and this included the addition of a larger and more powerful 120mm gun in 1986, while a layer of depleted uranium was added to the armor in 1988.

The latest version, now designated M1A2C (formerly the M1A2 SEPV3), could be the final upgrade, it did offer some twenty-first-century enhancements to the Cold War-era tank. This included an ammunition datalink that allowed the crew to set the distance for a shell to explode – ensuring that it detonates within a building rather than going straight through it. The –C model also features better infrared sights, a remotely-operated .50 caliber machine gun and auxiliary power unit.

However, while the MBT will remain a key component of the U.S. Army, the days of tanks in the United States Marines Corps are numbered, after it was announced that the Marines would eliminate its entire tank force within the next decade. The USMC, which is undergoing a transformation to be a more nimble force, will have closer integration with the U.S. Navy – and thus will increase rocket artillery and anti-ship missiles.

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

Image: Flickr.

Doug Bandow

North Korea Nuclear Weapons, Asia

If the DPRK creates a nuclear arsenal numbering in the hundreds, then the consequences could be cataclysmic for the United States, unless Washington abandons its interventionist addiction.

The Day of the Sun, North Korea’s celebration of the birth of the country’s founder, Great Leader Kim Il-sung, passed without international incident. However, the future might not be so pacific.

The latest report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) warned that North Korea will remain a potential nuclear threat, given the living Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un’s active nuclear weapons program. ODNI warned that the North might resume testing of either long-range missiles or nuclear weapons this year, abandoning the moratorium imposed three years ago along with the first Kim-Trump summit.

Even more sobering is the joint report from the Rand Corporation and South Korea’s Asan Institute about potential North Korean nuclear developments. Obviously, the future is uncertain, but the assessment is ominous: “by 2027, North Korea could have 200 nuclear weapons and several dozen intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and hundreds of theater missiles for delivering the nuclear weapons.”

This would move the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea into the second rank of the world’s nuclear powers. Although lagging behind the United States and Russia, its arsenal would approach that of China and France, approximate that of the United Kingdom, and exceed those of India, Israel, and Pakistan. That would make the DPRK the most powerful, problematic state on the planet.

It is worth considering what the North could do with such a force. Pyongyang enjoyed conventional superiority when invading South Korea in 1950 and threatening a repeat for years afterward. However, the DPRK’s eventual economic malaise and the Republic of Korea’s market-oriented “miraculous” growth transformed the peninsula’s power balance.

North Korea retains a quantitative military edge, and the mass of even older artillery and tanks concentrated on the capital of Seoul would wreak enormous damage. However, the apparent conventional advances unveiled in the North’s October military parade could not disguise the Kim regime’s essential weakness when facing modern, technologically advanced adversaries. Wartime is full of surprises, but there is no doubt that the ROK and United States, and perhaps even South Korea alone, would defeat the North, though the “collateral damage,” as mass death and destruction is commonly called, would be enormous.

However, the North Koreans are raising the stakes by developing nuclear weapons and seeking to reach the U.S. mainland. Observed the Rand/Asan report: “their nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs have become their means for empowering their regime and working toward dominance. Today, even a few of the likely dozens of North Korean nuclear weapons could cause millions of fatalities and serious casualties if detonated on ROK or U.S. cities.” To that could be added the possibility of strikes on Tokyo and other Japanese cities, as well as Guam, an American territory that hosts U.S. military forces.

The increase in both quantity and sophistication would increase Pyongyang’s malign options. To the good, nothing suggests that Kim or anyone else in the DPRK’s leadership is suicidal. They do not desire to leave this earth atop a radioactive funeral pyre in Pyongyang.

However, in most wars, at least one participant miscalculates badly and often disastrously. Desperation would increase the likelihood of poor judgment and obvious blunders. The report raises the fearsome possibility of calculated recklessness: “the North Korean regime faces internal instabilities and is determined and ruthless; we cannot rule out North Korea trying to manage its internal problems by waging a limited or major diversionary war in which it would use nuclear weapons.” Such would be a prescription for escalation and destruction.

What to do in response? The authors offer a couple of remarkably bad ideas. For instance, “The ROK and the United States need to strengthen the ROK-U.S. alliance.” Is there anything more common than a public policy organization, especially one receiving U.S. government funding, advocating the “strengthening” of each and every alliance? Washington could be paired with Monaco or Eswatini, and op-eds, studies, and books would pour forth proposing ways to expand, extend, improve, advance, and, of course, strengthen the absolutely vital relationship at issue.

However, the U.S.-Korean alliance, along with the presumed American nuclear umbrella, is the problem in this case. Promising to use nuclear weapons on Seoul’s behalf works as long as the North does not have nuclear weapons or at least the capability to hit the United States with them. During the Cold War Moscow believed Washington’s threat to use nuclear weapons to protect Europe: the superpower confrontation was global and America believed that its security required preserving the continent’s independence from Soviet control.

The United States and North Korea are not similarly locked in a conflict, let alone one worldwide, and South Korea does not play a similarly critical role in the global balance of power. No U.S. interest in the ROK is worth risking a nuclear exchange involving the American homeland. Far from being an answer to an increased DPRK nuclear threat, the alliance could scarce survive it. Even a conventional war could go nuclear if South Korea and America appeared set on liberating the North, like in 1950. Then Kim would risk little demanding an allied halt and withdrawal or else.

Another Rand/Asan suggestion is even more frightening. The authors wrote: “The ROK and the United States also could use threats to pressure North Korea. For example, the United States could warn the North that if it appears to have fielded an unacceptable number of nuclear weapons (maybe 80 to 100), the ROK and U.S. might be forced to prepare to execute preemptive counterforce or decapitation attacks, or both.”

Such a policy would make the regime more suspicious and fearful. Pyongyang would have reason to act in even greater secrecy, more fully hiding weapons and disguising leadership movements. And emphasize more survivable weapons, such as submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Kim and his successors also might reduce already limited international contact, including future summitry.

Even worse, such an approach would make clear to the North what today it might merely suspect, that its military forces, conventional and nuclear alike, are essentially “use it or lose it.” Thus, in any conflict, real or imminent, the DPRK might decide that it must act quickly and decisively, and perhaps preemptively.

The possibility of North Korea becoming a serious nuclear power should energize diplomatic efforts to cap its arsenal. Whether or not Washington is willing to publicly admit that its effort to prevent the North from becoming a nuclear state is kaput, the Biden administration should focus on freezing North Korean efforts.

Equally important, the United States must consider the price it is willing to pay to defend its allies. Especially in a world in which most of America’s friends are well able to protect themselves and are not critical to America’s survival. The only existential military threat facing the United States today is nuclear war. Thus, there is nothing more important for Washington than precluding, deterring, thwarting, or otherwise defeating such an attack. Which requires avoiding involvement in any war which the DPRK perceives as posing an existential threat, meaning any conflict with America.

Despite a world filled with conflict and upheaval, the United States is more secure today than at virtually any other point in American history. The primary dangers come from getting entangled in other nations’ conflicts, such as on the Korean Peninsula. The results were awful in 1950. If the DPRK creates a nuclear arsenal numbering in the hundreds, then the consequences could be cataclysmic for the United States, unless Washington abandons its interventionist addiction.

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World and co-author of The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations with North and South Korea.

Image: Reuters

Peter Suciu

military, Asia

Chinese submarines pose a serious threat and should not be underestimated.

Here's What You Need to Know: The Type 093A Shang-II isn’t the world’s best attack submarine, but it should highlight the fact that Beijing continues to make progress on all fronts. Just as China’s PLAN is becoming a force to be reckoned with in terms of carriers, so too could it be a serious submarine force.

The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is now the largest naval force in the world, and a lot of attention has been paid to its two aircraft carriers, while a third flattop is reportedly on the way. This is in addition to its naval expansion, which includes assault carriers, cruisers and destroyers.

However, the more significant threat from Beijing may not be the carriers or other surface vessels, or even its aircraft carrier “killer” missiles—but rather its Type 093A attack submarine.

The first iteration of the Type 093 dates all the way back to 2005, but it was not without problems—and it offered little improvement over its problem-plagued, noisy predecessor, the Type 091. However, the Type 093 has been steadily improved.

It now seems that with the enhancements the Type 093 is well on its way to being a world-class attack submarine.

According to submarine expert H I Sutton, writing for Naval News, the Type 093A Shang-II class is the most powerful attack submarine in China’s arsenal today. The roughly 7,000 ton nuclear-powered submarine is roughly the same size as the Royal Navy’s Astute-class, which puts it in between the French Navy Suffren-class and the U.S. Navy’s Virginia-class.

While nuclear-powered submarines tend to be louder than their diesel-electric counterparts, the Type 093A reportedly uses some of its larger size for noise-reducing features including acoustic stealth. Improvements in reactor coolant pump design may have helped reduce the Shang-class’ acoustic signature.

Beijing hasn’t shared any specific details, but Chinese sources have reported that its teardrop hull with a wing-shaped cross-section provides both improved speed and stealth. A 2009 U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) report listed the Chinese Type 093 as being noisier than the Russian Navy’s Project 671RTM submarines, which entered service with the Soviet Navy in 1979. However, the Type 093A could be far quieter due to its altered hull form.

The Type 093A is also reported to be quite well armed, and is capable of carrying the YJ-18 anti-ship cruise missiles. It is a solid-fuelled rocket that can be launched from a buoyant launch canister. The missile lacks a solid booster and has an operational range of only about forty-two kilometers, but it is still a serious threat to enemy warships.

The submarine can also carry the YJ-82 anti-ship missile, rocket mines and torpedoes including the Yu-6 thermal torpedoes. The heavyweight thermal torpedo, which is essentially the Chinese counterpart of the American Mark 48 torpedo, is wire-guided and has active/passive acoustic-homing and wake-homing sensors.

The Type 093A Shang-II isn’t the world’s best attack submarine, but it should highlight the fact that Beijing continues to make progress on all fronts. Just as China’s PLAN is becoming a force to be reckoned with in terms of carriers, so too could it be a serious submarine force.

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

This article is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

Warfare History Network

, Europe

United States antisubmarine aircraft played an unsung but vital role in this campaign.

Here's What You Need to Remember: This triumph came with a heavy cost. During their time in England, USAAF antisubmarine squadrons lost 12 planes and 102 men due to enemy action, accidents, or causes unknown. Navy patrol bomber losses over the bay amounted to 16 aircraft and 157 crewmen. In return, American sub hunters received credit for sinking 13 U-boats from February 1943 to the end of Biscayan operations 18 months later.

“Am over enemy submarine in position …”

Cut off in mid-transmission, this contact report came from a U.S. Navy patrol bomber operating over the Atlantic Ocean some 95 miles north of Cape Peñas, Spain, at 0316 hours on November 12, 1943. Repeated attempts to restore radio communications with the Consolidated PB4Y-1 Liberator, nicknamed Calvert n’ Coke, all went unanswered. Controllers finally listed the aircraft as overdue—presumed missing.

When Air Sea Rescue planes reached the Liberator’s last reported position, no evidence of the bomber or its 10-man crew could be spotted. Searchers did discover two fresh oil slicks—one large and one small—five miles apart. A fight to the death had occurred there, but it would take years for investigators to learn the truth about this fateful nighttime encounter.

The mysterious disappearance of Calvert n’ Coke marked just one incident in the three-year Bay Offensive, fought between Allied antisubmarine forces and the U-boats of Admiral Karl Dönitz’ Kriegsmarine during World War II. From June 1941 until August 1944, thousands of airmen and sailors patrolled the Bay of Biscay, an Atlantic gulf along the coast of France and Spain. Most of these sub hunters wore British Commonwealth uniforms, but several groups of American aviators also played an important role in this campaign.

Ugly interservice rivalries, however, almost grounded the effort before it began. Senior officers in the U.S. Navy and Army Air Forces, deeply suspicious of each other and at odds over even the most minor matters of doctrine and tactics, seriously undermined the nation’s antisubmarine effort. Hard-pressed British commanders stood by helplessly while their American counterparts quarreled and postured. In the meantime, long-range strike aircraft pledged by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to join the Bay Patrol instead sat parked on U.S. runways.

The Bay of Biscay: “the Trunk of the Atlantic U-Boat Menace”

Following the fall of France in 1940, German submarine forces started operating from bases along the Biscayan coast. As the war intensified, upward of 100 U-boats sailed to and from massive concrete-roofed pens at Brest, Lorient, St. Nazaire, La Pallice, and Bordeaux every month. These undersea predators proved extraordinarily difficult to defeat and by 1941 were sinking a large percentage of the war matériel, fuel, and food that Great Britain needed to stay in the war.

Something had to be done about Germany’s U-boats, and soon. Air Chief Marshal Sir Philip Joubert, in charge of the Royal Air Force (RAF) Coastal Command, put his Operational Research Section (ORS) to work on the problem. The ORS consisted of British scientists and mathematicians charged with advising operational commanders on technological solutions. Already, ORS’s out-of-the-box thinkers could claim credit for developing a reliable magnetic detonator fitted to aerial depth charges and a more effective camouflage pattern for low-flying patrol aircraft. Their work on increasing the lethality of air-delivered antisubmarine munitions through improved explosive filler and shallower detonation settings had, by the middle of 1941, begun to pay dividends in angry North Atlantic waters.

Noting that a large percentage of U-boats transited the 300- by 120-mile Bay of Biscay en route to or returning from their patrol areas, Coastal Command analysts recommended launching an air campaign to catch them as they moved across this narrow sea corridor. Enemy submarines surfaced often to charge their batteries; it was while on top that these U-boats were most vulnerable to attack.

Air Marshal Joubert’s staff further observed that air patrols need not destroy subs to successfully combat them. The mere presence of Allied planes overhead would cause a prudent U-boat commander to crash dive immediately. Constantly submerging to avoid patrol bombers slowed a boat’s progress across the Bay (surfaced, a Mark VIIC U-boat could make 17 knots while its top speed submerged averaged only 7.3 knots), thus markedly reducing its overall operating range.

The Bay of Biscay, then, was where Allied airmen would most likely find a regular concentration of German submarines. Air Marshall Sir John Slessor, who replaced Joubert as air commander of Coastal Command in February 1943, described it as “the trunk of the Atlantic U-boat menace, the roots being in the Biscay ports and the branches spreading far and wide to the North Atlantic convoys, to the Caribbean, to the eastern seaboard of North America, and to the sea lanes where the faster merchant ships sail without escort.”

Finding the Right Aircraft For the Mission

Coastal Command’s No. 19 Group, flying from bases along England’s southwestern tip, took on the task of chipping away at that trunk. First, they needed proper tools for the job. Due to the distances involved (Cape Finisterre on the bay’s southernmost point measured 800 air miles from British airfields in Cornwall), long-range aircraft were essential. Patrol planes also needed to carry an adequate payload of 250-pound depth charges and fly fast enough to catch a surfaced U-boat before it could dive.

Multi-engined bombers, therefore, answered No. 19 Group’s requirements. Unfortunately, the Wellington, Whitley, and Halifax aircraft most suited for Coastal Command’s Biscay Offensive were also greatly sought after by RAF Bomber Command and its influential commander, Air Marshal Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris. Joubert’s Coastal Command fared poorly in obtaining the necessary number of heavy bombers for antisubmarine work.

Flying boats like the Short Sunderland and American-designed Consolidated PBY Catalina possessed the necessary range, but their bulk and poor maneuverability limited these patrol planes’ utility against fast-diving U-boats. Coastal Command employed both types throughout the war with some success; however, another bomber then coming off U.S. assembly lines seemed a perfect fit for No. 19 Group’s Bay Offensive.

This aircraft was the Consolidated B-24 Liberator. Designed as a high-altitude strategic bomber, the Liberator’s impressive range, speed, and ordnance-carrying capacity also distinguished it as an ideal antisubmarine weapons system. In 1941 it represented the cutting edge of warplane technology; consequently, air chiefs everywhere wanted the Liberator for their own missions or theater of operations.

Hap Arnold’s Plans For an Independent Air Force

General Henry “Hap” Arnold, commanding the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF), was the man responsible for allocating land-based aircraft production. Arnold had an unenviable position—until American industry fully mobilized for the war there were never enough Liberators being built to satisfy global demand for these versatile bombers. And behind his amiable public façade, Hap Arnold kept a secret agenda regarding the Liberator.

For years, Arnold had been seeking to form an air force independent from the U.S. Army. The approaching conflict presented him with a unique opportunity to demonstrate how such a strategic bomber command could destroy the enemy’s industrial means to fight, thus decisively affecting the war’s outcome. To accomplish this mission Hap Arnold needed bombers, and plenty of them.

The first few Liberators sent to Great Britain through Lend-Lease went immediately to RAF Bomber Command. Only in late 1941 did Coastal Command receive a small allotment, which it immediately modified into very long-range (VLR) patrol aircraft. By this time U-boats were wreaking havoc on Allied merchant shipping, especially within a region called the Mid-Atlantic Air Gap, an area unreachable by land-based planes. One 12-plane squadron of VLR Liberators, each boasting a remarkable 1,150-mile patrol radius, soon began covering that gap.

But it soon became clear to the British that Hap Arnold was not about to offer up large numbers of Liberator aircraft despite an urgent need for them over the Eastern Atlantic. After the United States entered World War II, Arnold saw as his priority the need to build up the American strategic bomber force. Other users, such as the RAF and U.S. Navy, would have to wait until Liberator production capacity grew to meet their demands.

Allied Submarine-Fighting Technologies

The trickle of Consolidated Liberators flowing into Great Britain was paralleled by an exchange of British technological innovation with their American allies. One such device that greatly affected future operations in the Bay of Biscay was Air-Surface-Vessel (ASV) radar. In 1940, scientists at Oxford’s Clarendon Laboratories invented a microwave radio transmitter far superior to the long wave radar set then in use by British patrol planes and warships. Their “cavity magnetron” produced a 9.7 centimeter radio wave—a focused, high-resolution beam that, when mounted on an aircraft, proved highly effective at detecting surfaced submarines. As British manufacturers then lacked the capacity to mass produce this microwave radar, Prime Minister Winston Churchill agreed to share the technology with American engineers.

Called the Mark III by the British and the SCR-517 by American aviators, this new radar went into large-scale production by mid-1942. It came as a nasty surprise to the U-boat fleet as German warning receivers, calibrated for long-wave radar, could not detect its emissions. It took the Kriegsmarine two years and dozens of submarines lost before it fielded an effective countermeasure.

The Allies shared other sub-hunting innovations as well. The British Leigh Light, named for its inventor, a Coastal Command squadron leader, enabled Allied patrol planes to illuminate and attack U-boats at night. American-made radio altimeters proved crucial for maintaining a safe altitude over water during conditions of low visibility. Long-range navigation aids produced by both Allies assisted aircrews in accurately plotting their position over the vast Atlantic Ocean.

More top-secret antisubmarine devices in development included the Magnetic Anomaly Detector (MAD), which recorded variations in the Earth’s gravitational field caused by a submerged U-boat. An air-dropped sonar sensor called the sonobuoy showed great promise, as did an acoustic homing torpedo nicknamed Zombie. But the sub hunters’ most effective technological breakthrough was also the most highly classified: ULTRA, the decryption of German military signal ciphers.

Thanks to ULTRA, Allied codebreakers could read nearly every order that Admiral Dönitz gave to his U-boat commanders. Consequently, Coastal Command knew when enemy submarine traffic in the Bay of Biscay was likely to increase. Further, a chain of radio receivers called Huff-Duff (which stood for High Frequency Direction Finding, or HF/DF) helped triangulate a U-boat’s location to within a few miles whenever it broke radio silence to report in or request orders.

Initially, production delays and reliability issues limited the effectiveness of these new weapons. By June 1942, only five Vickers Wellington bombers had been fitted with Leigh Lights, and British-built Mark III centimetric radar would not appear until March of the following year. Worse still, Air Chief Marshal Joubert’s Bay Offensive was in danger of collapsing due to an inadequate number of long-range, radar-equipped patrol bombers. In 1941, RAF Coastal Command warplanes managed to sink just one U-boat in the Bay of Biscay. By the end of 1942, that number climbed to a mere seven submarines killed for thousands of flight hours spent patrolling the bay.

If Coastal Command did not yet possess suitable sub-hunting aircraft, there was an organization that did. The USAAF Antisubmarine Command began to receive in the autumn of 1942 factory-new B-24D Liberator bombers specially equipped to combat U-boats. Fitted with SCR-517 ASV radar, radio altimeters, and long-range navigational equipment, these aircraft were badly needed to reenergize Air Marshal Joubert’s Bay Patrol. It would, however, take British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s personal intervention to get them into the fight.

Bringing the USAAF To St. Eval

Writing to Harry Hopkins, President Roosevelt’s personal emissary, Churchill asked for a force of USAAF Liberators equipped with microwave radar to work with Coastal Command against U-boats in the Bay of Biscay. Roosevelt deferred the question to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, then commanding Allied forces in North Africa. Ike agreed to Churchill’s request with one caveat: that he reserved the authority to transfer USAAF antisubmarine aircraft from England to Mediterranean bases at any time. Starting on November 6, 1942, U.S.-marked sub-hunter B-24s started winging their way across the Atlantic Ocean toward Great Britain.

Just getting there proved no easy task. While the first three Liberators crossed without incident, ferocious winter storms battered another flight of six planes so badly that five of them had to turn back. One B-24 disappeared without a trace, while the remaining four regrouped to make an arduous but safer journey along the South America-Africa-England route. By November 27, the 1st Antisubmarine (A/S) Squadron occupied its new home, RAF Station St. Eval in Cornwall. Its sister unit, the 2nd A/S Squadron, would arrive in early January.

Conditions at St. Eval proved less than ideal. First, no one knew the Americans were coming. Living and working conditions were Spartan; wartime RAF rations of brussels sprouts and cabbage were described by one USAAF airman as “unbelievably bad,” while gloomy English weather made staying warm a constant struggle. Compounding matters, St. Eval’s ramps and parking areas were already clogged by three squadrons of Coastal Command bombers as well as other RAF aircraft. No hangars existed for maintenance, so mechanics had to work outside. Darkness came early, as did winter winds that numbed the ground crews struggling to keep their planes operational.

Equally challenging was St. Eval’s distance from U.S. supply depots. Couriers drove all day to reach the nearest USAAF warehouse, which may or may not have had on hand the required replacement part. The newly arrived sub-hunter outfits also lacked trained radar repair specialists, postal clerks, and other administrative staff necessary to keep a flying squadron running smoothly. Eighth Air Force lent the A/S units some 66 support personnel until their own ground echelons landed in mid-January.

Readying the American Flyers For Combat

The 1st and 2nd Antisubmarine Squadrons quickly adapted to Coastal Command’s tactics and procedures. The Americans learned they would operate under No. 19 Group, flying missions of 10 to 11 hours in duration out to the Bay of Biscay and back. Veteran British aircrews advised the novice sub hunters on how best to approach a wily U-boat, using low cloud cover or the sun to avoid observation. The RAF also warned their USAAF colleagues about a dangerous new threat, long-range Junkers Ju-88 fighters that had been spotted over the bay recently.

After a brief settling-in period, USAAF Liberators began flying operational patrols on November 16. The Americans’ first attack on a U-boat took place on December 29, when Captain Douglas Northrop dropped 12 250-pound depth charges on a rapidly submerging sub. That vessel escaped unscathed from Northrop’s strike, as did another U-boat attacked by Lieutenant Walter Thorne’s B-24 two days later. In both cases, the U-boats were detected by ASV radar but managed to crash dive under a barrage of aerial explosives.

January was spent readying the 2nd A/S Squadron for combat. Also that month the 1st Antisubmarine Group (Provisional) was organized with Lt. Col. Jack Roberts (formerly of the 1st A/S Squadron) taking command. The group received administrative support from the USAAF’s England-based VIII Bomber Command but took operational direction from RAF Coastal Command’s No. 19 Group.

Operation Gondola

Coastal Command had big plans for the American sub hunters. From February 6-15, 1943, the Liberators participated with other No. 19 Group warplanes in Operation Gondola, a high-density patrol over the Biscayan approaches. Intelligence suggested that during this period the Bay of Biscay would be filled with as many as 40 U-boats, all unprepared for the long-legged B-24s and their powerful new radar. Ranging far out into the bay, these U.S. Liberators were likely to surprise the enemy in areas they previously believed were safe from air attack.

This new tactic paid off immediately. On February 6, 1st Lt. David Sands caught a U-boat on the surface but overshot the target in his excitement and missed. Sands then made a second pass but managed to drop only two depth charges due to jammed bomb racks. Three days later, another B-24 piloted by 1st Lt. Emmett Hunto dove on a submarine too late. Hunto’s ordnance detonated behind the rapidly submerging boat, which survived unscathed.

February 10 saw several attacks made by 2nd A/S bombers. First Lieutenant John Kraybill pressed in three times on a sub despite heavy antiaircraft fire, only to be frustrated by malfunctioning bomb racks. Lieutenant William Sanford’s Liberator, nicknamed Tidewater Tillie, enjoyed better luck. Catching an unwary U-boat off the Spanish coast later that same morning, Sanford dropped nine 250-pound depth charges on it in three passes. The German submarine was last seen settling by its stern, followed shortly by a large dome-shaped bubble of air rising to the surface. Admiralty officials scored the boat as “probably sunk,” later upgraded to a confirmed kill after ULTRA intercepted German reports indicating U-519 had disappeared in that region without a trace. The USAAF received its first credited sinking of the campaign.

Recent research indicates that Lieutenant Sanford’s crew actually struck U-752 on its way home from operations in the North Atlantic, inflicting minor damage. The fate of U-519 remains unexplained.

Operation Gondola showed what radar-equipped antisubmarine aircraft could do when employed in a maximum effort saturation campaign. During this 10-day surge Allied patrol planes logged 2,260 hours over the bay, resulting in 18 sightings and seven attacks. American B-24s accounted for 72 percent of all U-boat detections and 57 percent of attacks made, with Sanford’s strike on February 10 marking Gondola’s one credited kill.

The USAAF Withdraws From Biscay Operations

Coastal Command’s newly appointed commander, Air Marshal John Slessor, appreciated what these capable U.S.-crewed Liberators could do. Therefore, he was shocked when in March the 1st A/S Group unexpectedly pulled out of St. Eval. For their part, USAAF commanders understood that the sub hunters’ time in England would be temporary—they determined the U-boat threat in North Africa took priority over Coastal Command’s requirements and transferred their most combat-tested A/S outfit to Morocco in response.

This abrupt reassignment deprived Slessor of a powerful asset just as his spring offensives, codenamed Enclose and Derange, were gaining momentum. No. 19 Group would have to carry on solely with British and Commonwealth air units, now receiving new Leigh-Light Wellingtons and four-engined Handley Page Halifax bombers equipped with centimetric Mark III radar sets. In March a squadron of British-marked antisubmarine Liberators also began flying out of St. Eval.

The coming of spring brought both milder weather to the North Atlantic and a corresponding increase in Allied convoy activity. As Admiral Dönitz’ submarines sortied out to strike those convoys, so did Air Marshal Slessor’s maritime patrol aircraft scramble to meet them over the Bay of Biscay’s constricted waters. British bombers sank one boat in March, two more during April, and an impressive seven subs caught transiting the bay during the height of operations in May.

King and Arnold’s Fight Over Anti-Submarine Missions

John Slessor derived great pride from the results of his Biscay Offensive, yet the energetic air marshal could not help but wonder how many more U-boats might have been sunk if a few American patrol bomber squadrons had “joined the party.” In June, Slessor traveled to Washington seeking a renewed U.S. commitment to his summer bay campaign, called Operation Musketry. He arrived to witness a long-simmering dispute over control of antisubmarine aircraft finally boil over between the chiefs of the U.S. Navy and Army Air Forces.

General Arnold and the Navy’s commander in chief, Admiral Ernest King, distrusted one another intensely. These two officers created and maintained a poisonous jurisdictional dispute regarding the employment of antisubmarine aircraft, a quarrel that extended back to the dark days following Pearl Harbor. While the U.S. Navy was responsible for protecting American coastal waterways, the only long-range aircraft then available for patrol and convoy escort duties belonged to the USAAF. In March 1942, Arnold agreed to temporarily place Army antisubmarine planes under naval control, at least until the Navy could obtain its own sub hunters. Yet neither Arnold nor King was happy with this arrangement.

The brilliant, irascible King saw Arnold’s increasing involvement in antisubmarine warfare as a grab for power, an attempt by the USAAF to intrude on what was traditionally a Navy mission. Hap Arnold feared the Navy’s interest in obtaining long-range Liberators was merely a cover for involving itself in strategic bombing operations, which he viewed as the Army Air Forces’ purview. For months the two chiefs danced like boxers around this issue, each spitefully rejecting any attempt at improving antisubmarine organization or cooperation.

Opposing tactical doctrines provoked more ill feelings between the two services. Naval policy dictated that patrol planes closely guard merchant convoys, while USAAF guidelines prescribed a more free-ranging, offensive-minded air operation. King scoffed at the Army’s methodology, likening it to searching for a needle in a haystack. He further argued that by sticking to the convoys patrol planes would be more likely to find the U-boats stalking them.

On the other hand, naval district commanders kept USAAF sub-hunting aircraft out operating over their districts long after German U-boats had moved into more productive waters. Flexibility, the greatest advantage of aerial antisubmarine warfare, remained an unexploited asset so long as patrol bombers were prohibited from following their U-boat prey across sea district boundaries.

Negotiating a Resolution to the Conflict

The two sides may never have reached agreement if it were not for a new factory being built in Renton, Washington. In 1942, Boeing Aircraft raised this structure to make the Navy’s PBB-1 Sea Ranger patrol plane. General Arnold thought it would be better served manufacturing B-29 Superfortress bombers for the USAAF, and in exchange for the Renton facility offered the Navy a percentage of future Liberator deliveries. This deal meant the Navy would finally obtain a land-based patrol aircraft while the Army got its Superfortress plant.

The Navy took another step toward accepting full control of the American antisubmarine effort when, on May 10, 1943, Admiral King stood up the Tenth Fleet. It was a paper fleet, wholly without ships or airplanes, but one that represented King’s determination to finally defeat the U-boat peril. Tenth Fleet had as its charter the mission of directing and coordinating all Navy sub-hunter activities worldwide. Curiously, in all of Tenth Fleet’s organizational charts there was no mention of the U.S. Army Air Force’s Antisubmarine Command or its 286 aircraft.

What happened next surprised no one. In a June conference held between Arnold and senior naval officials, an arrangement was made in which the Army would turn over its antisubmarine-equipped B-24s in exchange for an equal number of unmodified Liberators originally allocated to the Navy. Admiral King formalized the pact, writing to Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall on June 14, “The Navy will be prepared to take over all antisubmarine air operations by 1 September 1943.”

26 U-Boats Sunk

This horse trade did not signal an immediate end to USAAF sub-hunter activities. While in Washington, Air Marshal Slessor had persuaded King to release the Army’s 479th Antisubmarine Group for duty over the bay. Four full squadrons of B-24s (the 4th, 6th, 19th, and 22nd A/S) were set to arrive at St. Eval starting in mid-July, while Navy Liberators (PB4Y-1s in naval parlance) would follow along as soon as their crews could be trained.

The American planes deployed just as Operation Musketry reached its operational crescendo. Much had changed since the first USAAF antisubmarine squadrons in England pulled up stakes four months earlier. Admiral Dönitz’ U-boats were now traveling surfaced in groups during daylight hours and slugging it out with Allied bombers thanks to new quad-barrel 20mm antiaircraft cannons hastily mounted to their conning towers. Even more dangerous was the air threat—swarms of Ju-88 heavy fighters prowling the bay in search of unwary patrol planes. German gunfire compounded the normal hazards of weather, fatigue, and mechanical malfunction faced by all Allied sub hunters.

At least the situation at St. Eval had improved. Learning from past mistakes, Colonel Howard Moore’s 479th Group deployed with adequate maintenance, administrative, and logistics support. In August, the Americans moved to RAF Station Dunkeswell, 100 miles down the road in Devonshire. This newly constructed base, dubbed Mudville Heights by the airmen living there, would remain the hub of U.S. antisubmarine activity for the rest of the war.

Operational patrols commenced on July 13, and soon thereafter the 479th scored its first U-boat kill. On July 20, 1st Lt. Charles Gallmeier’s bomber surprised the surfaced U-558, delivering seven depth charges close aboard. The German vessel fought back, though, its well-aimed antiaircraft fire wounding one of Gallmeier’s gunners as well as disabling an engine. A British Halifax then finished off the U-boat, which went down with all 43 hands.

Team tactics resulted in another kill on July 28, when B-24s piloted by Major Stephen McElroy (commanding officer of the 4th A/S Squadron) and 1st Lt. Arthur Hammer joined a British Liberator to fight U-404 in an epic six-hour battle. The hard-fighting submarine damaged all three sub hunters before succumbing to a barrage of 27 depth charges.

The July Massacre ended for USAAF flight crews five days later when Captain Joseph Hamilton’s B-24 helped Canadian pilots sink U-706 about 400 miles west of the St. Nazaire sub pens. On August 2, Dönitz pulled the plug on his disastrous fight-back tactics. Hereafter, German submarines would hug the Spanish coast—where ASV radar proved less effective—surfacing only to recharge their batteries and then only at night. The Kriegsmarine also greatly restricted submarine operations, preserving its fleet while new wonder weapons were fielded—weapons that could change the course of the war.

Coastal Command’s summer Bay Offensive resulted in 26 U-boats killed by air between April and August 1943. Seventeen more had been damaged, significantly degrading the German Navy’s offensive capability. The U-boats were all but defeated, or so said Prime Minister Churchill when he boasted the Kriegsmarine had not sunk a single Allied merchant ship on North Atlantic convoy routes between May 1 and September 15, 1943. No. 19 Group contributed to this victory by whittling away at the Biscayan “trunk” with aggressive, coordinated attacks on enemy submarines.

Ju-88s Strike Back

Sub-hunter aircraft continued to prowl the bay throughout August and September, but by then Dönitz’s remaining U-boats rarely ventured from their pens. Instead, patrol bomber crews faced increasing numbers of Luftwaffe heavy fighters—cannon-armed Ju-88s operating in packs. The USAAF’s first clash with them occurred on July 26, when a Liberator commanded by Lieutenant S.M. Grider encountered nine fighters over the bay. Thinking quickly, Grider escaped undamaged by ducking into some low-hanging clouds.

The Americans’ luck would not last. On August 8, marauding Ju-88s shot down Captain R.L. Thomas’ bomber, killing all aboard. Ten days later they pounced on another B-24, this one with the luckless Grider aboard as check pilot. Grider and his aircraft commander, Lieutenant Charles Moore, managed to successfully ditch their stricken plane, no simple task given the Liberator’s propensity for breaking apart upon hitting the water. Six survivors were rescued by a British warship after spending four days bobbing around the bay on life rafts.

Altogether, the 479th A/S Group lost four B-24s to enemy fighters during 16 recorded air-to-air encounters. American gunners claimed five German warplanes in return, demonstrating that these battles were not always one sided. Yet the USAAF’s ungainly patrol bombers made excellent targets for prowling Ju-88s despite Coastal Command’s efforts to provide escort coverage.

The Navy Takes Over For the USAAF

Into this hazardous operational environment entered a new group of aviators when on August 17 the first PB4Y-1 Liberators of U.S. Navy Bomber Squadron 103 (VB-103) touched down at St. Eval. After several weeks spent familiarizing themselves with Coastal Command procedures, the Navy crews moved to Dunkeswell where they relieved the soon-to-be disbanded USAAF sub-hunter squadrons. By September 5, the PB4Y-1s of VB-105 began arriving, with VB-110 closing on the United Kingdom starting on September 24.

They were commanded by Captain (later Commodore) William Hamilton of Fleet Air Wing Seven (FAW-7), who located his headquarters in nearby Plymouth. The Navy commenced operations on August 30, and by November 1 had taken over all patrol duties from the Army. Most USAAF antisubmarine crews received new combat assignments with the Eighth Air Force while their specialized B-24s were repossessed by Navy flying squadrons.

Although experienced at overwater navigation from previous assignments, these naval aviators soon discovered the Bay of Biscay held many unique perils. On September 2, skulking Ju-88s shot down a Liberator commanded by Lieutenant Kenneth Wickstrom; no aircrew survived. Two days later, a dozen German fighters mauled Lieutenant James Alexander’s PB4Y-1 off the Iberian Peninsula. Alexander somehow managed to ditch his bullet-ridden plane, enabling the 11 men aboard to escape into rubber dinghies. Rescued by Spanish fishermen some 36 hours later, they eventually returned to duty.

The Naval Technology War

There were few U-boats left for FAW-7’s flight crews to hunt. Husbanding most of its submarines for the coming cross-Channel invasion, the Kriegsmarine started to fit them with a revolutionary new defensive technology. The Schnorkel (German slang for “nose”) allowed a U-boat to operate submerged while still taking in air from above, thus theoretically eliminating the need for it to surface altogether. Allied commanders worried how their hundreds of aircraft and thousands of aviators would find submarines no longer visible on ASV radar systems.

Navy sub hunters also introduced some new weaponry to the Bay Patrol. Their Liberators now carried sonobuoys, air-delivered sonar transmitters able to detect U-boats moving under water. Once the sub’s location was marked, PB4Y-1 crews could then drop a Zombie, also known as the Mk 24 acoustic homing torpedo, on their unsuspecting prey.

Furthermore, the “MADCATS” of VP-63 operated their Magnetic Anomaly Detector-equipped PBY Catalinas over the Biscayan gulf for a time. Airmen used this apparatus to identify the gravitational disturbance caused by a submerged metal object like a U-boat and then dropped depth charges on the contact. Their PBYs proved easy pickings for Luftwaffe fighters, though, and the MADCATS soon moved to the Mediterranean’s calmer waters where their specialized gear worked more effectively.

The Fate of the Calvert n’ Coke

Liberators of FAW-7 joined Commonwealth aircraft in an all-day encounter with U-996 on November 10. Caught on the surface by two Wellington bombers, this resilient U-boat then withstood attacks by three U.S. Navy PB4Y-1s before a Czech-manned Liberator disabled it with rocket fire. Unable to dive, U-996’s crew finally scuttled its sub two miles off the Spanish coast.

As mentioned previously, the last flight of Calvert n’ Coke took place on November 12, 1943, when that VB-103 Liberator failed to return from a night patrol mission. Naval officials listed all 10 members of Lieutenant Ralph Brownell’s crew as missing in action but did not solve the mystery of their unexplained disappearance until after the war ended. Investigators examining captured German war diaries discovered the airmen had, in fact, sunk U-508 on that lonely patch of ocean before meeting their doom.

In December, all three patrol squadrons took part in an unusual battle against German surface ships, catching the blockade runners Osorno and Alsterufer as they traversed the bay bound for Asian waters. Heavily escorted by German destroyers, the two raiders traded blows with Coastal Command aircraft for three days starting on Christmas Eve 1943. Punished by relentless depth charge, bomb, machine-gun, and rocket attacks from dozens of Allied warplanes, neither vessel made it to port. One VB-110 PB4Y-1, commanded by Lieutenant W. Parish, was shot down while making a low-level strike against the Alsterufer on December 26.

These moments of excitement notwithstanding, most missions over the bay passed uneventfully. “The chief enemy of the patrol plane pilot is boredom,” recalled VB-105’s Owen Windall. “Boredom begets inattention, then indifference. Hundreds of hours are spent at sea with nothing to look at but an endless expanse of waves and sky.” Other hazards included miserable winter weather, which contributed to the loss of several FAW-7 Liberators. Most of all, crewmen feared ice—if enough of it accumulated on the wings of their heavily loaded PB4Y-1s they would fall out of the sky without warning.

Operation Cork: Sealing Off the English Channel For D-Day

The first American U-boat kill utilizing Zombie munitions occurred on January 28, 1944, when a VB-103 Liberator nicknamed The Bloody Miracle caught U-271 on the surface west of Ireland. Lieutenant George Enloe and crew put six depth charges across the sub’s beam and followed up with a lethal homing torpedo after they observed the vessel crash dive beneath them. Strike photos revealed first evidence of a Schnorkel, troubling news for the Allies then preparing to invade Normandy.

For D-Day, Coastal Command, now led by RAF Air Chief Marshal Sholto Douglas, planned to seal off all approaches to the English Channel with saturation air patrols. The aptly named Operation Cork would, if successful, prevent Dönitz’ U-boats from getting anywhere near the Allied fleet by creating an “unclimbable fence” of air antisubmarine forces for them to face.

Reinforced for Normandy with 25 squadrons, No. 19 Group began flying Cork missions on June 5. Navy Liberators, temporarily augmented by detachments from Gibraltar-based VB-114, were assigned to patrol a region off the Cherbourg Peninsula. The pace was intense. Directed to cover individual sectors of ocean twice an hour, each squadron generated seven missions per day compared to two or three flown previously.

Forty-three of Admiral Dönitz’ Biscay-based U-boats sortied against the invasion fleet in the weeks following D-Day. They failed miserably. By June 23, Coastal Command planes had killed nine U-boats and damaged 11 more.  Unable to move without being detected, the surviving non-Schnorkel-equipped submarines could only cower helplessly on the ocean floor. Just five vessels fitted with this new breathing device managed to make it past the escort screen, torpedoing three warships and five freighters before being driven off by British destroyers.

The Successful but Costly Bay Offensive

Thanks to Coastal Command, Allied forces were largely free to cross the English Channel without fear of U-boat attacks. In August, what remained of Germany’s submarine fleet in France transited the Bay of Biscay one final time as American ground troops approached their bases. The three-year Bay Offensive concluded victoriously for the Allies.

This triumph came with a heavy cost. During their time in England, USAAF antisubmarine squadrons lost 12 planes and 102 men due to enemy action, accidents, or causes unknown. Navy patrol bomber losses over the bay amounted to 16 aircraft and 157 crewmen. In return, American sub hunters received credit for sinking 13 U-boats from February 1943 to the end of Biscayan operations 18 months later.

United States antisubmarine aircraft played an unsung but vital role in this campaign. American technology and manufacturing capacity, including long-range Liberator bombers and the Zombie acoustic homing torpedo, contributed a significant amount of striking power to the Bay Patrol. Yet victory was ultimately measured by the determination, fighting spirit, and sacrifice demonstrated by thousands of Allied airmen. These aviators proved themselves to be the deciding factor in this deadly cat-and-mouse game fought between Coastal Command and German U-boats in the Bay of Biscay.

This article originally appeared on the Warfare History Network. Originally Published December 15, 2018.

Image: Wikipedia,

Peter Suciu

military, Europe

Snipers have always been controversial, and have grown in ferocity over time.

Here's What You Need to Remember: By World War II the technology of the weapons—and more importantly the telescopic sights—had developed considerably, and nearly every combatant power saw the need for those snipers who could kill from a distance. 

They are the subject of movies, feared by the enemy in wartime, declared national heroes by some and just generally hated by Michael Moore. They are the military men and women who became snipers. 

While perhaps not as famous today as now-deceased Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, names such as Soviet Red Army snipers Klavdiya Kalugina and Vasily Zaytsev, U.S. Marine Sergeant Carlos Norman Hathcock II and Australian William “Billy” Sing are still quite well known among history buffs for their ability as marksmen and deadly killers.

Snipers have always been controversial. Whether true or not, there is a scene in 1970 film Waterloo that takes place prior to the famous battle in which a British soldier asks the Duke of Wellington if he can “take a crack at” the French Emperor Napoleon who had just arrived across the field. The Duke (played by Christopher Plummer) responds, “Absolutely not.” 

In the nineteenth-century the idea of a marksman taking a well-aimed shot at an officer—or worse a general—was considered unsporting to say the least. That isn’t to say it wasn’t employed on the battlefield. American marksmen played a crucial role in the American Revolution. While the British Regulars were issued the very fine and widely-respected Brown Bess smoothbore musket, American soldiers (including militia) were armed with early long rifles—and it made a huge difference. Trained British soldiers armed with the Brown Bess were accurate to 80 yards, while American riflemen could hit targets at 300 yards.

The Americans also employed new tactics, and instead of lining up in tight ranks the soldiers used concealment and hid in trees and shrubs. They were anything but “sporting” aiming for the NCOs and officers when possible, and if afforded the opportunity even taking a crack at a general.

By the Napoleonic Wars the British employed Rifles Companies, most notably the 95th Rifles made famous by the Sharpes series of books and TV movies. These were marksmen but not true “snipers” however. It would be another generation before the true sniper came to be.

Even before the term was adopted during the American Civil War, Confederate sharpshooters employed tactics similar to what the Americans had used against the British. Needless to say this didn’t sit well with the Union forces, who eventually countered with similar methods. Sniping, while still not known by that term, evolved further during the Anglo-Boer War as Boer marksmen began to make concealment as important as the actual marksmanship.

The British countered with similar tactics, but also employed men who were well practiced in field craft, map reading and observation. This is also when the term “sniper” came to be known – from the 19th century practice of using rifles to shoot small birds (snipe) from a very long distance. 

Sniping also evolved in the trenches of the First World War. At its onset only the German Army issued a scoped rifle to marksmen, but soon nearly all the combatants saw the need for men who could shoot and kill at a distance. British Major Hesketh-Prichard had been a big-game hunter, and by some accounts was the world’s best rifle shot. He was charged with creating a course entitled, “The First Army School of Sniping, Observing and Scouting.”

One issue that remained was that the military rifles used by the British military weren’t ideal for the role of a sniper, so Hesketh-Prichard sourced civilian rifles, which he often funded out of his own pocket. 

However, by World War II the technology of the weapons—and more importantly the telescopic sights—had developed considerably, and nearly every combatant power saw the need for those snipers who could kill from a distance. 

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

This article first appeared earlier this year and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

Peter Suciu

military, Europe

The Iskander-M tactical missile system was designed to strike adversary low-sized and site targets to a range of up to 500 kilometers.

Here's What You Need to Remember: In addition to Iskander missiles based on the Russian mainland, the platform has been deployed to the semi-exclave Kaliningrad, where the missiles continue to threaten parts of Poland, Sweden, Germany, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Latvia. The mobile missile carriers, which have long been a Russian military hallmark, also provide the opportunity to choke off parts of the Baltic Sea.

The 9K720 Iskander mobile short-range ballistic missile system was developed during the final years of the Cold War, but it wasn’t tested until 1996 and only entered service in 2006. It has seen use in the Russo-Georgian War and the Syrian Civil War, but now the platform, which was designed to evade missile defenses, could be on the way out by the end of the decade.

Tass reported that Russia has already laid out the groundwork for a new weapon to replace the Iskander.

“The Iskander-M will comply with modern requirements for quite a long time and will remain the basic weapon for the missile forces and artillery at least until 2030,” Russia’s Missile Forces and Artillery Chief Lt-Gen. Mikhail Matveyevsky said in an interview with the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper. “As for the future weapon, we can say that quite substantial scientific groundwork is already available today for its development.”

The Iskander-M tactical missile system was designed to strike adversary low-sized and site targets to a range of up to 500 kilometers. It is equipped with two solid-propellant single-stage guided missiles, and targets can be located by satellite and aircraft as well as by conventional intelligence including an artillery observer or from aerial photos scanned into a computer. The missiles can be retargeted during flight. The optically-guided warheads can also be controlled via an encrypted radio transmission, including those from an AWACS or a drone.

The platform has also been adapted for use as an anti-ship platform. In the summer of 2019, Russia conducted two simulated “electronic launches” of the Iskander-M against targets in the Black Sea.

Iskander-M Potential Upgrades

The tactical missile system’s potential “has been tapped (upgraded) by more than a half,” the general added, but at the same time suggested that instead of further pushing it to its full potential, the Russian military is currently carrying out scientific work on the concept of an advanced rocket artillery armament.

Efforts are also reportedly underway for upgrading the capabilities of existing weapons systems. Russian artillery troops have been already receiving the upgraded Tornado-G medium-caliber multiple launch rocket systems and modernized Tornado-S launchers.

Export Platform

Even if the Russian military develops a replacement, the Iskander-M could find an export market. Several countries have expressed interest in the platform including Syria, Iran and the United Arab Emirates—but it is uncertain if the UAE still has interest. To date only Armenia and Algeria have received the Iskander systems, in 2016 and 2017 respectively.

In addition to Iskander missiles based on the Russian mainland, the platform has been deployed to the semi-exclave Kaliningrad, where the missiles continue to threaten parts of Poland, Sweden, Germany, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Latvia. The mobile missile carriers, which have long been a Russian military hallmark, also provide the opportunity to choke off parts of the Baltic Sea.

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

Image: Wikipedia.

Peter Suciu

F-35, Asia

It is likely Beijing stole much of the data to make the J-31 from the United States, but that doesn't mean this copy can actually compete with the F-35.

Here's What You Need to Know: It is also likely too early to tell if the J-31 can actually go toe-to-toe with the American and allied F-35s and it has been reported that the Chinese fighter has received largely negative reviews when it has been seen at air shows.

There is the old saying that "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" – and whether that is true or not, in the world of military hardware there have certainly been a lot of imitations, particularly in aircraft. The People's Republic of China has been among the nations that have arguably been most "sincere" in terms of military flattery in that case.

Of course the Chinese learned a key lesson from the Soviet Union, which didn't develop its best early Cold War bomber – Boeing did.

The reason that the Tupolev Tu-4 looked so much like the United States' Boeing B-29 Superfortress was that the Soviet airplane was completely reverse-engineered from one of three repairable B-29 aircraft that were forced to crash land in Soviet territory at the end of the Second World War.

The Chinese have taken this further and it's hard not to see the "influence" of the Lockheed Martin F-22 in the Chinese Chengdu J-20, or the Russian Sukhoi Su-33 in the Chinese Shenyang J-15 – but now it is quite obvious that Beijing's fifth-generation J-31 is essentially little more than a Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter stamped "Made in China."

As Kris Osborn wrote this week for FoxNews, "Virtually all photos and renderings of the J-31, since first unveiled, revealed a striking resemblance to the U.S. F-35. This does not come to the surprise of many in the U.S., given China's well-known and documented cyberespionage efforts."

It is likely Beijing stole much of the data to make the J-31 from the United States, but that doesn't mean this copy can actually compete with the F-35. While Chinese officials have compared the J-31 to the F-35, it isn't clear if the Chinese aircraft will have the same stealth abilities of the American fifth-generation fighter.

The J-31 has a stealth aerodynamic design and likely has stealth coating – but there are other factors to consider including radar-absorbent coating materials and the use of internal weapons bays.

It is also likely too early to tell if the J-31 can actually go toe-to-toe with the American and allied F-35s and it has been reported that the Chinese fighter has received largely negative reviews when it has been seen at air shows.

That said it could still likely challenge America's fourth-generation non-stealth fighters, but the issue is how it will perform with the F-35 that truly matters. 

Even less clear at this point is if the J-31 will be inducted as a carrier-based naval fighter – and if so if it could operate from the People's Liberation Army Navy's (PLAN's) two carriers, which both utilize a ski-jump flight deck – or if it is intended for foreign customers to compete with the F-35.

In the latter case that could be where this look-a-like aircraft could be the biggest threat as it could be offered to countries that can't buy the real deal F-35 or simply may desire a slightly more affordable version for their arsenals.

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

This article first appeared earlier this year.

Image: Reuters

Caleb Larson

Su-27,

The Su-27 was designed as a direct competitor to the American F-14 and F-15 families of aircraft.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Therein lies the Su-27’s success: a capable and agile airframe that has grown and improved in increments, into the broad Flanker-family of aircraft that are still in service today, both within former Warsaw Pact countries, but also widely distributed within the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa.

The legendary Sukhoi design bureau has notched a number of notable successes when designing airframes for the Soviet Union and for the Russian Federation. Notable among those is the Cold War-era Su-27 design which just keeps on ticking. Why?

High-low Mix

No conversation about the Su-27 is compete without its origin story, its troubled birth in the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War.

The Su-27 is a Soviet design that adhered to the high-low mix theory of air combat, in which a larger number of smaller, less capable and less expensive aircraft are complimented by a smaller number of more capable (and therefore more expensive) aircraft.

This arrangement serves as a force multiplier, allowing the total number of aircraft to be as effective as a larger number of aircraft. The original Su-27 high-low compliment was the MiG-29, which is aerodynamically similar, albeit a much smaller airframe and considerably less capable.

The Su-27 was designed as a direct competitor to the American F-14 and F-15 families of aircraft. Its capable design reflects this. The Su-27 has a top speed of about Mach 2.35, and has up to ten hardpoints for missiles or bombs.

As long-range air superiority fighter, the Su-27 was intended to keep an eye on the Soviet Union’s borders, protecting against American/NATO bomber incursions, as well as be a multirole fighter.

Given its (at the time) long-range capabilities, the Su-27 was also intended as an escort fighter for Soviet long-range bombers such as the Tu-160 “Blackjack”, Tu-22M “Backfire”, and Tu-95 “Bear” — additional Soviet-era designs that continue to serve in their original bomber roles with Russia today.

Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee

It is exceptionally agile: the Su-27, and later more advanced variants of the family are flown by the Russian Knights, an aerobatic demonstrator team similar to the Blue Angels in the United States.

This is due to the Su-27’s super maneuverability: the airframe is capable of Pugachev’s Cobra, a super maneuver in which an aircraft flying at low-to-moderate speed quickly raises its nose, the airframe acting as a large airbrake and rapidly decelerating, then lowering its nose and accelerating away.

Perpetual Half-life

Like many interesting Soviet tank, aircraft, and weapons designs, steady incremental improvements have increased their service lives

There are also a dizzyingly wide array of Su-27 variants developed both for the Soviet Union as well as for the Russian Federation, and for export. The Flanker family of aircraft are also essentially improvements on the initial Su-27 design that incorporate better avionics, extended range, or additional capabilities, like ground attack.

Therein lies the Su-27’s success: a capable and agile airframe that has grown and improved in increments, into the broad Flanker-family of aircraft that are still in service today, both within former Warsaw Pact countries, but also widely distributed within the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa.

Despite the growing proliferation of stealth aircraft, the Su-27 will likely stay in service in conflict scenarios of lower intensity, against adversaries that do not have stealth aircraft or advanced air defenses.

Caleb Larson is a Defense Writer with The National Interest. He holds a Master of Public Policy and covers U.S. and Russian security, European defense issues, and German politics and culture.

Image: Reuters.