Diplomacy & Crisis News

For all his flaws, there has never been a better deal-maker on Capitol Hill, colleagues say.

Sebastien Roblin

Security, World

The Pentagon’s F-35 and F-22 stealth fighters, which it has made the lynchpin of its twenty-first century air warfare strategy, simply can’t fly far enough.

Here's What You Need To Remember: To conduct missions over hostile territory for extended time, America's jet fighters need fuel. Conventional tankers are vulnerable to long-range missiles, particularly Russian and Chinese ones. A stealth tanker might be able to avoid this problem.

The United States has devoted billions of dollars to building stealth fighters, stealth bombers, stealth cruise missiles and stealth spy drones. Surely a stealth tanker for refueling aircraft midflight would be an extravagance too much?

However, the concept of a stealth tanker is not as absurd you’d think for one simple reason: the Pentagon’s F-35 and F-22 stealth fighters, which it has made the lynchpin of its twenty-first century air warfare strategy, simply can’t fly far enough.

At first glance, the F-35’s six to eight-hundred-mile range doesn’t seem bad compared to conventional fighters like the Super Hornet or F-16. But those non-stealth designs can carry fuel in in underwing tanks into combat—meanwhile, an F-35 can’t carry those extra lumps of metal under its wings if it wants to preserve its miniscule radar cross-section.

Another problem with the short range of stealth and non-stealth fighters alike is the need to deploy them airbases or aircraft carriers well within range of an adversary’s ballistic and cruise missiles. Conflicts ranging from World War II to Afghanistan have shown that advanced fighters are never more vulnerable than when they are caught on the ground (or a carrier deck). It is virtually a given that in the event of a great power conflict, a terrifying missile barrage would rain down on forward airbases; and just how many airframes would emerge intact from that hail of death is anybody’s guess.

Fortunately, all U.S. jet fighters can be refueled mid-air. But though the modified airliners serving as tankers would strive to stay far away from hostile fighters, they are increasingly at risk to being shot down by very-long range air-to-air missiles like the Russian R-37, which can hit airliner-type targets from 250 miles away. The small numbers of stealth aircraft fielded by Russia or China would also likely concentrate on slipping past fighter screens to destroy the tankers and radar planes supporting them. After all, knock down the lumbering tankers, and you may also effectively strand a bunch of fighters over the Pacific without the fuel needed to return to base.

The dilemma is much worse for stealth fighters attempting to penetrate enemy airspace, as the F-35 is designed to do. Contemporary surface-to-air-missiles like the S-400 can already strike less agile aircraft (again, think tankers) up to 250 miles distant using 40N6 missiles. This means conventional tankers simply will have to loiter hundreds of miles back from defended airspace—and even there, will be visible on radar and vulnerable to attack by enemy fighters.

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A tanker with a reduced radar cross section, therefore could neatly address both problems, without having to be every bit as low-observable as a stealth fighter.

Enter the KC-Z

Currently, the Air Force is procuring 179 new KC-46A Pegasus tankers based on the Boeing 767. As it progressively retires its aging fleet of 400 KC-135 and KC-10 tankers, the Air Mobility Command originally planned to phase in another relatively conventional tanker called the KC-Y starting in the 2024s, before finally pursuing a KC-Z stealth tanker.

However, in 2016 General Carlton Everthart told Defense News the Pentagon may scrub the KC-Y in favor of procuring additional upgraded KC-46s and phasing in the KC-Z stealth tankers sooner—though by ‘sooner,’ think procurement beginning in 2035.

Already, there are multiple proposals as to what a KC-Z might look like—and they’re all bizarre enough to resemble the Quinjets from The Avengers movies.

In June 2018, the Air Force Research Lab, based in Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, floated this angular and very bizarre-looking ‘Advanced Aerial Refueling’ concept model at the AIAA forum.

Meanwhile, Lockheed has its own stealth tanker concept model dubbed the ‘Advanced Tanker Concept.’ (photos here and here) that looked ready for filming in Star Wars: Episode IX. Earlier in 2018, the major defense manufacturer lost a competition to produce an MQ-25 carrier-based aerial refueling drone; Lockheed’s proposed flying-wing design emphasized stealth more than other entrants in the competition. The firm has also proposed embedding the stealth tanker’s high-bypass turbofans on the upper surface of the wings, like on the B-2, for cross-section reducing purposes.

However, the proposed designs aren’t pure flying wing, but instead take their cues from the Air Force’s expressed interest in a ‘Blended Wing Body’-type tanker. Rather than crossing a tubular fuselage against the wings, a BWB aircraft seamlessly merges the wings into the fuselage, resulting in a triangular shape. These are also known as ‘Hybrid Wing Body’ designs, as they are not a pure ‘flying wing’ because of the size of retention of a fuselage and tail fins.

A flying wing’s curved wing surfaces are very efficient at generating lift, and its ‘infinite plane’ naturally lend themselves to low radar cross sections as they lack hard, radar-reflective angles. However, tanker aircraft are routinely called upon to do double duty as cargo jets, so a stealth tanker may still need to have a bulged cargo compartment and bay door to serve as a fully capable substitute—the ‘C” in KC-Z stands for ‘Cargo’ after all. Those wouldn’t gel well with a pure flying wing design, which is why extant concepts have been hybrids.

An upside of a stealthy cargo plane is that it could be used for inserting Special Forces operators behind enemy lines—a capability the Special Operations branch has discretely studied for decades—or delivering critical supplies to forward outposts located under the anti-access umbrella of an adversary’s long-range anti-aircraft missiles. Nonetheless, a cargo-carrying stealth tanker design would simply not be as stealthy as a pure flying-wing designed only for aerial refueling.

Another challenge to making an affordable stealth tanker concerns the fact that stealth fighters and bomber achieve their low cross-section partly by incorporating radar-absorbent material (RAM) coatings or panels. However, RAM application significantly increases the operating costs and maintenance requirements of small stealth fighters. Presumably, that cost would be far greater spread out across a huge tanker that needs to fly thousands more hours every years, so a more cost-efficient form of RAM is surely necessary to avoid the $135 to $169,000 per flight hour operating costs of a B-2 stealth bomber.

The Air Force has additional ideas for making its future tankers more survival, including incorporating active protection systems to shoot down incoming missiles—yes, possibly with lasers. Another concept, however, would involve using next-generation radar jammers that employ a cognitive intelligence system to automatically adjust frequencies to keep up with frequency-agile radars. Such jammers could obscure or even misrepresent the position of an aircraft on radar. The Pentagon also would like its next-generation tankers to feature more autonomation to reduce the number of necessary crew and speed up the refueling process.

However, the Air Mobility Command has also expressed openness to a radically different approach to a stealthy KC-Z—taking a page from the Navy’s MQ-25, and deploying small, stealthy unmanned autonomous vehicle.

Stealthy drone tankers might fit with a ‘distributed’ refueling strategy in which multiple drones draw fuel from a large, conventional tanker ‘mothership’ and then zip forward into to provide refueling for stealth fighter in contested airspace. However, such a chain-refueling scheme could crash catastrophically should the un-stealthy mothership tanker be targeted by adversaries. Thus a ‘system of systems’ could also proposed mixing multiple ‘tiers’ of stealthy and non-stealthy tankers.

It’s worth noting there may be simpler, less expensive solution: weaning the Pentagon from its dependency on short-range jets, perhaps by relying more on long-range B-21 stealth bombers or future sixth-generation Penetrating Counter-Air fighter, making greater use of stand-off missiles, or introducing long-range unmanned UCAV stealth drones.

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

Image: Reuters.

Charlie Gao

Security, Asia

The Navy has a wide variety of modern weapons to find and destroy enemy submarines.

Here's What You Need to Know: Anti-submarine warfare is an art learned in two world wars.

With things heating up in the South China Sea (SCS), much attention has been paid to the ships and submarines that could potentially square off against each other in the region. This ignores a key asset of most navies that is already on the “front lines” and shaping military interactions—Maritime Patrol Aircraft (MPA). Skillful use of these aircraft may determine how an engagement plays out, or it could prevent one from happening in the first place.

MPA have been around almost as long as combat aircraft. Navies quickly realized the potential of aircraft when it came to patrolling the sea, as they could move far more quickly than boats and had the significant advantage of altitude.

But modern MPA use advanced sensors to detect to see far more than what can be seen with the naked eye—Magnetic Anomaly Detectors (MADs) can detect underwater submarines, and radar systems are used to detect ships that might just be specks on the horizon. Infrared/thermographic cameras allow MPA to identify vessels even at night.

MPA can also deploy sonobuoys, floating sensors that either detect noises or send out pings to find submarines. ELINT sensors can detect the radar emissions of enemy MPA or ships. All of these sensors means that MPA are incredibly useful in peacetime as well as wartime.

One way they could deter potential escalation is through detecting potential violations of EEZ or civilian ships in contested waters ahead of time through the use of radar and infrared. Since modern MPA have all-weather detection capability, they can watch for fishing vessels day and night, and give a navy an advanced warning of such violations so they can be headed off before a more violent encounter up close.

MPA also can provide critical information in tracking enemy submarine posture. While this is a more intensive and not “guaranteed” way to track submarines—as the battle between submarine stealth and submarine detection is ongoing—determining the patrol routes and positions of enemy submarines is critical information. Such intelligence may allow nations to avoid potential losses to convoy raiding (if it occurs) and set up anti-submarine warfare plans before the event of war.

In their traditional role in the detection of surface ships, MPA are critically important in the SCS region. Due to the relatively short distances between islands, MPA flying out of Japan or Taiwan could potentially track the movement of ships from base to base in China.

Basic MPA surveillance radars like the Seaspray 5000 have publicized ranges of around 200 nm. The more advanced AN/APS-115 and AN/APS-137D(V)5s mounted on Japan, and Taiwan's P-3C MPA undoubtedly have better performance. Even with a 200 nm range, an MPA flying over the East China Sea could easily track ships moving south along China's coast.

This could yield significant strategic intelligence on the development and deployment of Beijing’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). In addition, the ELINT suite onboard these aircraft could provide insight into the capabilities of Chinese radars.

However, MPA still face considerable limitations from the human component. Crews get tired and need to be rotated out, and MPA—like other aircraft—are expensive to fly and operate. Therefore, the future will see navies using UAVs to accomplish the MPA mission, assisting manned MPA and also surveying without them independently.

The U.S. Navy has already made significant steps in this direction with the acquisition of MQ-4C Triton UAVs, which can augment the P-8A in surveillance and patrols. As multiple UAVs can accompany a single manned aircraft, the amount of area patrolled can increase drastically with the integration of UAS, bringing even more benefits.

Most militaries in the region appear to have recognized the importance of MPA in securing their maritime borders. While not in the SCS, Japan's Defense Forces have one of the best MPA fleets, the star of which is their purpose-built Kawasaki P-1, which boasts advanced sensors and even artificial intelligence to reduce the crew workload.

Taiwan is also no slouch, acquiring twelve American P-3C Orions MPA in 2017. Other militaries in the region (such as Vietnam, Singapore, and the Philippines) field lighter MPA, mostly converted civilian light propeller planes as opposed to heavier purpose-built aircraft. While these converted aircraft are sufficient for tracking surface ships, purpose-built aircraft are far superior for tracking submarines, due to features like the extended tail on the P-3C, which houses the magnetic anomaly detector.

China's premier MPA is the Y-8Q, which is a rough analog to the P-3C in function. Like the P-3C it has a distinctive tail boom for detecting submarines, and a powerful surface search radar in a radome under the cockpit.

Charlie Gao studied political and computer science at Grinnell College and is a frequent commentator on defense and national-security issues.

This article first appeared in August 2018.

Image: Reuters

War Is Boring

Security, Europe

Moscow made a good investment when it created the Su-27.

Key point: The Su-27 is a fast interceptor that can find American bomber planes and threaten them. In fact, they've been doing just that to keep NATO on its toes.

On June 9, 2017, examples of all three of the U.S. Air Force’s heavy bombers — the swing-wing B-1, the stealthy B-2 and the lumbering B-52 — gathered in international air space over the Baltic Sea for a rare photo-op with allied fighters and patrol planes.

They had a surprise visitor. A Russian air force Su-27 Flanker fighter sidled up to the U.S.-led formation and flew alongside long enough to appear in multiple photos. A few days prior, an Su-27 intercepted a B-52 over the Baltic.

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

The Su-27 was apparently one of seven Flankers that fly from Kaliningrad, Moscow’s Baltic enclave, sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland and geographically separate from the rest of Russia.

The Kaliningrad Flankers are arguably the busiest—and most dangerous—Su-27s anywhere in the world.

They patrol over the Baltic, intercept NATO and neutral spy planes in international air space and, on occasion, harass the rival planes so aggressively that they have no choice but to flee.

If any Russian warplanes end up causing an international incident in the tense Baltic region, it will likely be the Kaliningrad Su-27s.

Over the Baltic on Oct. 3, 2014, an Su-27 with the numeral 24 on its nose in red paint flew so close to a Swedish air force Gulfstream spy plane—around 30 feet, according to Combat Aircraft’s Babak Taghvaee—that the Swedish crew could clearly identify the Russian jet’s weapons, including four R-27 and two R-73 air-to-air missiles.

In June 2017, Russia’s defense minister Sergey Shoigu was flying to Kaliningrad when a Polish F-16 intercepted the minister’s transport plane. A pair of Su-27s — likely from the enclave — intervened.

A few days later, an apparent Kaliningrad Su-27 with the nose code Red 93 flew so close to a U.S. Air Force RC-135 spy plane that the Pentagon formally complained.

While for many decades opposing air arms have routinely intercepted each other’s planes in international air space, NATO and Swedish authorities have grown increasingly concerned over Moscow’s actions in the Baltic region.

Russian aerial activity in the Baltic region has been on the rise for years — and escalated sharply following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2014. Fighters from NATO and neutral countries have intercepted Russian planes on hundreds of separate occasions since then.

“We have seen examples of the actions of air power that can be perceived as more aggressive than what we’ve seen in a long time,” army general Sverker Goranson, then Sweden’s top officer, told a Swedish news outletin 2014.

In June 2014, Kaliningrad Su-27s again flew within 30 feet of a Swedish spy plane. The Su-27s have also tangled with Swedish Gripen fighters and French Mirage jets. The Flankers have repeatedly intercepted, and occasionally endangered, American RC-135s.

In July 2014, an RC-135 was presumably monitoring electronic signals from the Russian enclave when at least two of the resident Su-27s—which as of 2014 included three Su-27SM3s, one Su-27P and an Su-27S, among others—vectored for an intercept.

Something about the Flankers’ behavior frightened the American aircrew. The RC-135 turned and ran—straight into Swedish territory. “The U.S. aircraft was directed towards Swedish air space incorrectly by U.S. personnel,” the Pentagon’s European Command said in a statement.

Five months later in September 2014, the Kaliningrad Flankers—which the Russian air force detached from the 6972nd Aviation Base in Krasnador, just north of the Black Sea—took part in a massive exercise that tested the Kremlin’s ability to reinforce Kaliningrad with scores of extra warplanes and hundreds of paratroopers.

War games have become commonplace off Kaliningrad. In July 2017, Russian and Chinese warships conducted mock naval combat off Kaliningrad. And Russia staged parts of its sprawling Zapad exercise in Kaliningrad in September 2017.

Russian Flankers have also escorted heavy bombers conducting mock attack runs on European countries—although it’s not entirely clear that those Su-27s came from Kaliningrad.

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

Image: Reuters

Kyle Mizokami

Security, Asia

New Delhi has two dangerous neighbors to keep an eye on.

Key point: India has worked hard to modernize its forces and that includes getting aircraft carriers. Can it really compete with Beijing?

India occupies one of the most strategically important locations in the world. A short distance from the Persian Gulf, Central Asia and Southeast Asia, India has been an important hub for ideas, trade and religion for thousands of years.

That geographic positioning has its disadvantages. India is faced on two sides by powerful, nuclear-armed countries it has fought wars with—China and Pakistan.

India’s most formidable rival is China, with whom it fought a short, sharp border war with in 1962. China’s growing military has transformed it from a mainly ground-based threat to a multifaceted one with powerful assets in the air, at sea and even in space.

India’s second most powerful rival is Pakistan, which was also part of the British Raj. India and Pakistan have fought four wars since 1947, and frequently appear on the verge of a fifth.

Complicating matters for India, the two countries are allies. Advances in military technology mean India’s large reserves of manpower are no longer as useful as they once were, and India will need to favor the former over the latter if it wants to match—and deter—Chinese and Pakistani forces.

AH-64D Apache Longbow Block III Attack Helicopter

Indian selection of the AH-64D Apache as its future attack helicopter is a prime example of technology over manpower. The Apache’s versatility means that it will be able to do everything from engage tank formations in a conventional war to hunt guerrillas in a counterinsurgency operation.

The heavily armed, fast-moving Apache can counter a number of land-based threats to India, sensing enemy armored vehicles with its mast-mounted millimeter-wave radar and destroying them with Hellfire missiles, Hydra-70 anti-armor rockets and a 30mm chain gun. The helicopter can also detect insurgents under heavy cover using its thermal imaging sensor and engage them with anti-personnel rockets or the 30mm chain gun.

Unlike other attack helicopters, the Apache has a proven combat record, destroying armor in Iraq and decimating Taliban hiding in the hillsides of Afghanistan.

INS Vikramaditya Aircraft Carrier

Commissioned in November 2013, INS Vikramaditya is India’s newest aircraft carrier and the only aircraft carrier that calls the Indian Ocean home. In the event of war, Vikramaditya will be used to blockade Karachi, Pakistan’s largest port, or sever China’s economic lifeline to the Persian Gulf and beyond.

Vikramaditya is 282 meters long and displaces 44,000 tons, making her about 20 percent smaller than China’s aircraft carrier Liaoning. Unlike Liaoning, however, she is a fully operational carrier, with an air wing capable of executing air superiority, anti-surface, anti-ship and anti-submarine warfare. The carrier air wing is expected to consist of twenty-four MiG-29K or Tejas multirole fighters and ten anti-submarine warfare helicopters. India has ordered forty-five MiG-29Ks.

Vikramaditya will operate as the centerpiece of a full carrier battle group, protected by the new Kolkata air-defense destroyers. A further two carriers of indigenous designs are planned, bringing India’s total carrier force to three.

BrahMos Anti-Ship Missile           

A joint Indian-Russian project, BrahMos is a short-range supersonic cruise missile capable of being launched from a wide variety of platforms. BrahMos is one of the most advanced missiles in the world, capable of hitting targets on land and at sea with precision. The versatility of BrahMos means it could equally target enemy ships and terrorist training camps with ease.

A ramjet propels BrahMos to speeds of up to Mach 3, or 1,020 meters a second. The anti-ship version is a so-called “sea skimmer,” flying just over the wavetops to give enemies as little as 35 seconds’ warning time.

Depending on the variant and method of launch, BrahMos is armed with a 440-660 pound penetrating high explosive warhead and has a range of 186-310 miles.

The combination of speed and hitting power makes BrahMos a particular concern to the Pakistani Navy, whose surface ships lack adequate area air defenses. Even the Chinese Navy will find BrahMos formidable, as it would face the daunting prospect of a Mach 3 missile threat launched by aircraft, coastal defense batteries, destroyers and submarines.

Su-30MKI Fighter

One of India’s newest fighters is an updated design dating back to the late 1970s. An evolution of the Su-27 Flanker, the Su-30MKI has been extensively upgraded, and the result is a long-range, twin-engine fighter with a powerful radar and amazing twelve hard points for the attachment of weapons.

The Su-30MKI’s air-to-air armament includes R-73 infrared guided missiles and R-77 and R-27 radar-guided missiles. Of particular interest is the upcoming Novator K-100 “AWACS killer” missile, capable of engaging targets at up to 300 to 400 kilometers. Against targets on the ground, the Su-30MKI can employ laser-guided bombs, Kh-59 standoff land-attack missiles and the BrahMos missile.

The Indian Air Force has 200 Su-30MKIs air superiority fighters in service with another seventy-two on order. A portion of the IAF’s Su-30MKI force has been modified by Israel for the strategic reconnaissance role.

INS Chakra Nuclear Attack Submarine

India’s first nuclear attack submarine, INS Chakra, started life as a Russian Navy submarine funded to completion by the Indian Navy in return for a ten-year lease.

Based on the Soviet Union’s Akula II class, Chakra displaces 8,000 tons, making it more than twice as large as any of India’s German-made Type 209 or Russia Kilo class submarines. It can sustain a speed of 30 knots submerged and can dive to a depth of 520 meters. The submarine has eight submarine tubes enabling it to launch regular homing torpedoes, Kh-55 “Granat” cruise missiles, and “Shkval” supercavitating torpedoes, capable of traveling at 220 knots to ranges of 15 kilometers.

As a nuclear submarine, Chakra will be able to spend prolonged periods underwater, making it difficult to detect. During wartime, the advanced submarine will go after high value targets, such as Pakistani submarines (possibly carrying nuclear-armed cruise missiles) and Chinese submarines, destroyers, aircraft carriers and submarines.

Kyle Mizokami is a writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and The Daily Beast. In 2009 he co-founded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch. This first appeared earlier and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

James Holland

Security,

Why much of what you think about World War II is wrong. 

Here's What You Need To Remember: Germany, on the other hand, was very under-mechanized but had a vast army, which meant it was dependent on horse-power and foot-slogging infantrymen. As a result of so many German men at the front, their factories were manned by slaves and POWs, who were underfed and treated abominably, and whose production capacity was affected as a result.

The Second World War remains an enduringly fascinating subject, but despite the large number of films, documentaries, books and even comics on the subject, our understanding of this catastrophic conflict, even seven decades on, remains heavily dependent on conventional wisdom, propaganda and an interpretation skewed by the information available. 

In my new book The War in the West: Germany Ascendant 1939-1941, first in a three-volume history, I am challenging a number of long-held assumptions about the war, many of which are based on truth by common knowledge, rather than through detailed and painstaking research.My Damascene moment came some years ago when I was being given a tour of the Small Arms Unit at the British Staff College at Shrivenham. I was glancing at a German MG42, known as a “Spandau” by the Allies. “Of course, that was the best machine gun of the war,’ I commented, relaying what I’d read in many books.

“Says who? Says who?” retorted my guide and head of the unit, John Starling. In the next few minutes, he proceeded to deconstruct everything I thought I knew about this infamous weapon: that its phenomenal rate of fire caused massive problems of over-heating, that it was widely inaccurate (for which having since fired one, I can now vouch), that is was incredibly expensive to manufacture, massively over-engineered and lacked certain simple additions that would have made its handling so much easier. The men supporting this weapon not only had to carry vast amounts of ammunition to feed this thirsty beast, they also had to lumber around six spare barrels because of its readiness to over-heat. And each barrel bore multiple inspection stamps. “Which were,” John told me, “an utter waste of time in the middle of total war.”

I was gobsmacked, but this visit led me down an entirely new line of research, and one that was equally revelatory. I began to realize that almost everything the Germans made was over-engineered, from the tanks to gas-mask cases to the field jacket of the lowly landser. Eventually, in the German military archives in Freiburg in the Black Forest, I found a memo from early December 1941, signed by Hitler, in which was the line, “From now on, we have to stop making such complete and aesthetic weapons.” In other words, up to that point, they had been consciously doing so. Needless to say, his instruction was not followed; those all-metal, finely-designed-yet-cumbersome and utterly pointless cylindrical gas-mask cases were made right up to the end of the war, while still to come was the Panther tank, not to mention the Tiger, with its Porsche-designed six-speed hydraulically controlled semi-automatic pre-selector gear-box, as complicated and sophisticated as it sounds and entirely unsuitable for front-line combat or use by poorly-trained young drivers. The transmission on a U.S.-built Sherman tank was a robust four-speed manual, simply made in vast numbers. America built 74,000 Sherman hulls and engines; Germany built just 1,347 Tigers.

Studying such things in detail meant I was now looking at the operational level of war. Any conflict — or business for that matter — is understood to be conducted on three levels. The first is the strategic — that is, the overall aims and ambitions. The second is the tactical: the coal face, the actual fighting, the pilot in his Spitfire or man in his tank. And the third is the operational — the nuts and bolts, the logistics, economics and the supply of war.

Almost every narrative history of the war ever published almost entirely concentrates on the strategic and tactical levels, but gives scant regard to the operational, and the result is a skewed version of events, in which German machine guns reign supreme and Tiger tanks always come out on top.

Studying the operational level as well, however, provides a revelatory perspective. Suddenly it’s not just about tactical flair, but about so much more. Britain, for example, decided to fight a highly mechanical and technological war. “Steel not flesh” was the mantra and that’s why the British had a small army, yet still ensured it was 100-percent mechanized. They also developed a vast air force and built a staggering 132,500 aircraft during the war — and that’s 50,000 more than the Germans. Until the start of 1944, the priority for manpower in Britain was not the army or navy or even air force, but the Ministry of Aircraft Production. Well-fed men and women were kept in the factories.

Germany, on the other hand, was very under-mechanized but had a vast army, which meant it was dependent on horse-power and foot-slogging infantrymen. As a result of so many German men at the front, their factories were manned by slaves and POWs, who were underfed and treated abominably, and whose production capacity was affected as a result.

And if the ability to supply war was key, then in the war in the West, it was the Battle of the Atlantic that was the decisive theater. Yet Germany built a surface fleet before the war, which could never hope to rival Britain or France and in doing so neglected the U-boat arm. Despite sinking substantial amounts of British supplies in 1940, it was still nothing like enough to even remotely force Britain to her knees. In truth, there were never enough U-boats to more than dent the flow of shipping to Britain. In fact, out of 18,772 sailings in 1940, they sank just 127 ships, that is, 0.7 percent, and 1.4 percent in the entire war.

Suddenly, rather than appearing like David against Goliath and backs-to-the-walls amateurs as is so often depicted, Britain emerges once again as a global super-power in command of the largest trading empire the world has ever seen, while Germany, despite impressive victories on land early in the war appears to be woefully under-resourced and flagrantly squandering what supplies it could call upon. What’s more, after the initial glut of conquest booty, the occupied territories swiftly became a drain and burden that had to be manned and which proved a further drain on precious resources. The words “Teutonic” and “efficiency” usually go together; in the Second World War, nothing could have been farther from the truth.

Image: Reuters.

David Axe

Security, Asia

There's one region where mass-takeoffs are an important military procedure: the Korean Peninsula.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The air force maintains three F-16 squadrons and an A-10 squadron in South Korea and two F-15 squadrons in Japan. Additional squadrons, almost certainly including F-35 units, would join them during a crisis. An air campaign targeting North Korea would require 2,000 sorties per day, U.S. military officials told Air Force magazine.

On Nov. 19, 2018, two U.S. Air Force wings in Utah launched thirty-five F-35 stealth fighters in a short span of time.

The air force lauded the display as evidence of America's overwhelming military might. At least one critic dismissed it as a publicity stunt.

In fact, there's one region where mass-takeoffs are an important military procedure: the Korean Peninsula. Ironically, that's the one region where the Trump administration is deliberately limiting the flying branch's authority to organize large-scale warplane-launches.

The November group-takeoff, which the air force calls an "elephant walk," involved F-35As from the 388th and 419th Fighter Wings at Hill Air Force Base. The active-duty 388th and reserve 419th train air force F-35 pilots.

The 388th's 34th Fighter Squadron, whose F-35s have the latest Block 3F software, also has a front-line role. In late 2017, it became the first air force F-35 unit to deploy overseas, to Japan.

At the time of the elephant walk—the first for the F-35—the Utah wings possessed around forty F-35s. The wings are on track to receive a combined seventy-two F-35s by 2019.

The Hill stealth fighters took off one at a time in roughly 30-second intervals. In just a few minutes, the wings launched as many F-35 sorties as they normally do in a full day of routine training.

"Exercising with multiple squadrons of F-35s can demonstrate our ability to defeat potential adversaries wherever they may arise," Maj. Caleb Guthmann, the 34th Fighter Squadron's assistant director of operations, said in a statement.

But Valerie Insinna, a reporter for Defense News, echoed a more cynical sentiment when, on Twitter, she described the elephant walk as "cool" but "very choreographed."

“Call me when they fix all the ALIS problems and then we'll talk,” Insinna added, referring to the F-35's buggy Autonomic Logistics Information System, a computer network for the type's maintainers.

In a March 2018 congressional hearing, Lt. Gen. Jerry Harris, the air force's deputy chief of staff for plans, programs and requirements, said it cost around $50,000 to fly one F-35 for an hour. That's roughly twice what an F-16 costs for an hour in the air.

In fact, elephant walks significantly contribute to the readiness of American and allied squadrons in South Korea and nearby countries.

In the event of war with North Korea, U.S. and allied forces plan to quickly target the roughly 13,000 artillery pieces that Pyongyang has massed along the Korean demilitarized zone. In the early hours of a war, that artillery likely would bombard Seoul, which lies just 25 miles south of the DMZ.

"A serious, credible threat to 25 million [Republic of Korea] citizens and approximately 150,000 U.S. citizens living in the [Greater Seoul Metropolitan Area] is also posed from its long-range artillery," U.S. Army general Vincent Brooks, head of U.S. Forces Korea, told a U.S. Senate committee in March 2018.

The air force maintains three F-16 squadrons and an A-10 squadron in South Korea and two F-15 squadrons in Japan. Additional squadrons, almost certainly including F-35 units, would join them during a crisis. An air campaign targeting North Korea would require 2,000 sorties per day, U.S. military officials told Air Force magazine.

By comparison, the allied air war over Iraq and Kuwait in January 1991 averaged 1,200 strike sorties per day, according to statistics compiled by David Deptula, a former air force general who is now an analyst for the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in Virginia. The U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria averaged just fifteen strikes per day, according to Deptula.

The roughly 100 U.S. F-16s and A-10s in South Korea and Japan—and any F-35s that deployed in time for the first day of fighting—likely would be the first to hit North Korean artillery. And they'd have to launch fast to save lives in Seoul.

There is a reason that the 7th Air Force in South Korea and Japan has organized more elephant walks than most air force commands have done. "The threat here on the peninsula is very real, and countering that threat needs to be in the forefront of our minds," Col. William D. Betts, then-commander of the 51st Fighter Wing in South Korea, said in 2017.

But the Korea elephant walk is an endangered species. The 7th Air Force has conducted most of its mass-takeoffs, which require intensive planning and maintenance efforts, under the auspices of the annual Vigilante Ace exercise.

In 2018 the Trump administration suspended Vigilant Ace as a concession to North Korea, hoping that Pyongyang in turn would suspend its nuclear-weapons program. North Korea has continued to develop its nukes.

The air force organized elephant walks in South Korea in 2016 and 2017 but not in 2018. The suspension of large-scale exercises with South Korea hasn’t created "immediate" concerns about combat-readiness, Pacific Air Forces commander Gen. Charles Brown said in November 2018. But it could cause "difficulties" if it continues.

There's nothing preventing air force squadrons that aren't in South Korea, including Hill's F-35 units, from practicing mass takeoffs. These same squadrons might deploy to the Korean Peninsula during wartime, in which case their elephant walks would amount to more than an expensive public relations exercise.

They'd be preparation for the kind of sudden, overwhelming violence a new Korean war would require.

This first appeared in 2018.

Image: DVIDShub.

Michael Peck

History, Asia

While senior U.S. naval commanders were aware of Taranto and the danger posed by torpedo attack to Pearl Harbor, actual improvements to Hawaii's defenses were buried under memos and reports that meandered through the naval bureaucracy.

Here's What You Need To Know: The prelude to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor occurred two years earlier in the small Italian port of Taranto. 

“This was Lt. Takeshi Naito, assistant air attache at the Japanese embassy in Berlin. The implications of those sunken battleships were not lost to him.”

It was the hour before midnight when the battleships slept.

Snug in their harbor, cocooned behind layers of anti-aircraft guns and searchlights, the Italian fleet lay peacefully unaware of the fate droning towards them.

Through the dark skies came waves of aircraft lumbering under the weight of the torpedoes they carried. The date was November 11, 1940, the place was the southern Italian port of Taranto, and the battle that ensued that night was the prelude to the Japanese raid at Pearl Harbor.

In the fall of 1940, Britain was in trouble. France had fallen, Nazi Germany ruled Western Europe, and the British Empire stood alone. To make matters worse, Mussolini's Italy had entered the war. Though weaker than Germany or Japan, Italy had a priceless advantage: it was situated in the middle of the Mediterranean, athwart the sea routes to the Suez Canal and the vital island of Malta, which the British needed to supply as a thorn in Axis supply routes to North Africa. To avoid Italian naval and air forces, British convoys would have to forgo the direct route into the Mediterranean through the Straits of Gibraltar, and sail all the way around Africa to come up through the Suez Canal.

The Royal Navy rightfully reckoned itself superior to the Italian Regia Marina. Fortunately, so did the Italians. Though the Italian fleet was smaller, the Royal Navy was badly overstretched guarding against a possible German amphibious invasion, watching for sorties by German surface raiders against Atlantic convoy routes, and battling the German U-boat menace. The Italian Navy was often accused of timidity, but they had some reason not to risk their precious and irreplaceable ships in a big Jutland-like naval battle. Like the German High Seas Fleet in World War I, they could stay in port, only sallying forth -- covered by land-based aircraft in Italy -- to pounce on an exposed British force.

Nonetheless, if the Italian fleet wouldn't come out to fight, then the British -- in time-honored Royal Navy tradition -- would take the fight to them. After December 7, 1941, the idea of aircraft carriers striking a fleet in harbor seemed obvious. But just a year before, aircraft carriers were still a new and relatively untried weapon. Still, the British were studying a torpedo strike on Taranto by carrier-based aircraft as early as 1938.

Compared to the six aircraft carriers and 400 aircraft with which Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the forces that Britain could muster for Operation Judgement seemed but a child's version of a carrier task force. The Royal Navy committed just the carrier Illustrious, two heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and five destroyers. The Italian fleet at Taranto comprised six battleships, nine heavy cruisers, seven light cruisers and 13 destroyers. Had they intercepted the British flotilla, the outcome would have been a slaughter.

The Fleet Air Arm -- the flying fist of the Royal Navy -- also seemed a joke. The Illustrious would launch just 21 aircraft, and these were Fairey Swordfish-- nicknamed "the Stringbag." Obsolete two-man biplanes that looked like First World War leftovers, they plodded through the air at about 140 miles per hour. Yet they could fly low and slow to accurately drop torpedoes, as they did to cripple the German battleship Bismarck.

The British struck by night, when the vulnerable Swordfish could avoid Italian fighters that would easily swatted them from the skies. The Illustrious launched two waves of 12 and nine aircraft apiece, with half carrying a single torpedo each, and the remainder armed with flares to illuminate the ships and armor-piercing bombs to strike them. Not only did the British achieve surprise, they also had a lucky break: the Italians had laid some nets in the harbor to catch torpedoes, but the torpedoes weren't long enough to reach the seafloor, allowing the torpedoes to slip under them.

As one of the British aviators later recalled:

 “We turn until the right hand battleship is between the bars of the torpedo sight, dropping down as we do so. The water is close beneath our wheels, so close I am wondering which is to happen first — the torpedo going or our hitting the sea — then we level out, and almost without thought the button is pressed and a jerk tells me the ‘fish’ is gone.”

The attack began just before 11 p.m., and concluded around midnight. The British lost two aircraft, with two crewmen killed and two captured. But those mere 21 aircraft and a handful of torpedoes (the bombs did no damage) sank or damaged three battleships. Three battleships were torpedoed. The Conte di Cavour partly sank to the harbor bottom and never returned to service. The Caio Duilio was saved only by running her aground, as was the Littorio, whose hull had been punctured by three torpedoes.

For the price of just two aircraft, the Italian battleship force had been devastated. Just as important, the Italian Navy had taken a blow to its already fragile morale and aggressiveness. The Italians got their revenge later, when frogmen riding midget submarines planted limpet mines that badly damaged two British battleships docked at the Egyptian port of Alexandria on December 19, 1941. Nonetheless, in the autumn of 1940, when Britain seemed down and out, the Royal Navy demonstrated who ruled the waves.

However, the real significance of Taranto was to come later. “Several days after the Taranto raid, almost unnoticed in the confusion and destruction, a slight figure in an unfamiliar uniform studied Taranto harbor intently, inquiring about depths and distances, making careful notes,” according to the book The Attack on Taranto: Blueprint for Pearl Harbor.

“This was Lt. Takeshi Naito, assistant air attache at the Japanese embassy in Berlin. The implications of those sunken battleships were not lost to him.”

One problem with assessing Taranto is that there is a tendency to blame Italian inefficiency for the disaster, even though no one else had ever experienced such an attack before. Nonetheless, if Taranto supposedly reflected some peculiarly Italian failing, what was the excuse of the Americans?  Why didn't the U.S. learn from the Taranto raid that aircraft carriers could destroy a fleet in a port, namely Pearl Harbor?

Indeed, a U.S. Navy observer, Lieutenant Commander John Opie, was aboard the Illustrious to witness the Taranto strike, and he lost no time in reporting back what he had learned, including that the Royal Navy now favored aircraft-delivered torpedoes over bombs. Yet while senior U.S. naval commanders were aware of Taranto and the danger posed by torpedo attack to Pearl Harbor, actual improvements to Hawaii's defenses were buried under memos and reports that meandered through the naval bureaucracy. Opie's request to visit Pearl Harbor and pass on his Taranto experience was ignored. In fact, the Navy opted not to install anti-torpedo nets at Pearl Harbor on the ground that the waters there were too constricted to allow, and too shallow for torpedoes to run without hitting the bottom.

The Imperial Japanese Navy, and eight U.S. battleships sunk or damaged, would soon prove those decisions wrong.

Michael Peck is a frequent contributor to the National Interest. This article first appeared several years ago.

Image: Reuters.

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